Mindfulness, Memory, and Moodiness is the topic of today’s show. Have you noticed that people you interact with lately are more moody than you remember? Does it seem like there are more people you’re exposed to who are experiencing depression, discouragement, a lot of feelings of negativity? How about you? Do you seem to be having more down days – you know, days when you just feel like your inner bully is winning? Well, I talk about that inner bully quite a bit and the reason is because those negative self-voices play a big role in a lot of peoples’ lives. Mine included. This is the perfect day to talk about moodiness, your inner bully, and how that self-talk is related to mindfulness. Well, it is. Mindfulness is all about how we think. Yes, thinking in the present is mindfulness, but there’s so much more to it than that.. Listen & Subscribe on: iTunes / Stitcher / Podbean / Overcast / Spotify Many of our thoughts are connected to our memory. Every time we decide to do something, we depend on our memory to know how to do it. We depend on our memory to know whether we’ve just brushed our teeth, or whether we were about to start. You might not have thought about it before, but our memory has a lot to do with how we see ourselves, how we define ourselves as a person. A lot of the ideas I’m sharing with you today are from Lisa Genova who is a neuroscientist and has written a book called, “Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting”. A lot of the time, we tie our well-being to memory. We think our brain is healthy and thriving if our memory is sharp and the opposite is true. If we feel like we’re forgetting things, we start to wonder about our brain health and even our mental health. Yesterday morning I got dressed, came downstairs and was about to get in my car to drive to my studio and I realized I didn’t have my wallet. “Where on earth could it be”, I wondered. The crazy think was, I knew I’d had it a few minutes before that because I remembered dropping it on the floor. Some credit cards and id fell out on the carpet and my memory was crystal clear … I knew I bent over and picked them up and put them back in my wallet. But now my wallet was missing and I’d already searched the kitchen, all my pockets, I’d gone back upstairs twice, and still no wallet. There are times when I would have thought to myself, “I must be brain–dead, or am I losing my memory? This time I just kept looking. I went back upstairs with my son and we both looked. Suddenly I spotted it sitting on a brown footstool where I absolutely never leave my wallet. I realized I must have set it there without thinking as I grabbed some books to carry downstairs. That’s when I started to wonder if the pandemic is affecting my brain. According to Lisa Genova, the answer is definitely yes. There are two main reasons why the pandemic is messing with our memory. The first reason has to do with the way our brains are wired and the second reason is related to stress and how our brains deal with stress. 1/ How Our Brains Are Designed The first reason has to do with how our brains are designed to remember things. When we remember what is meaningful, our brains go to “what is new? What is emotional? We don't remember the same old habitual routines. So this is why you might remember your first date, but not your 10th. I don't remember the details of brushing my teeth this morning or taking a shower. It's the routine things we don't remember. And so here we are in a pandemic, and many of us are confined to our homes, we’re going out way less. We’re not able to go to concerts and plays and movies and dinners and parties like we did pre-pandemic. Those are the sorts of things that make memories and that, for many of us, give us a ZEST for life. We get excited as we look forward to these more exciting events, we enjoy them as they happen, and of course, that’s mindfulness. Enjoying the moment and just taking it in, feeling the emotions and being there.