Choose your nervous system wisely

We’re always in a state of understanding what’s in our environment, internally and externally, and acting accordingly. Detect and respond. Detect and respond. Detect and respond. From the outside in and the inside out. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the role people play in our ability to feel connected to healthy systems of joy, creativity, love, and fulfillment. It’s nothing new to consider the significance people have in our lives. Poor relationship hygiene is an executed contract, guaranteeing stress.  Beautiful relationships, however, help you hold up the sky. Because we’re all so damn connected.

If you love someone, but that someone is treating their life like a disposable paper bag that should have been recycled, you’ll feel their choices one way or another. However, if you love someone that actively taps into peace and joy with their heart wide open, that person will elevate your entire experience: teaching, lifting, guiding you on how to do more of the same when you’re feeling low.

I recently spent time in a group that was so much of the latter. They were smiling wildly and generously offering their attention and their encouragement to everyone – their partners, their family members, the bartenders, the hosts, everyone. No one was exempt from the love and the entire room felt electric. If I had been on any kind of psychedelic I probably could have seen the energy systems connecting us all, neon with with care.

In this middle of this celebration I took a photo with someone I’ve known a long time. I looked at it and said damn, we’re so happy!He looked at it and said, we amplify each other. That word, amplify, sang for me. I took note of everyone around and realized, that’s exactly what’s going on here, like a plane showing up to write the word amplify across the sky. That was it. Our people, your people, my people, amplify the energy. Our experience. Our feelings. One way or another.

Our nervous system, which is basically one giant electrical system anyways, feels our surroundings. It feels whatever is being amplified. So then, it’s worth asking: those people around you…what are they amplifying?

Do they amplify your confidence? Or feed into your doubts?

Do they amplify your love? Or cause your chest to contract?

Do they amplify the colors in your dreams? Or throw fire on your regrets?

Do they amplify your capacity for expansion or drain all that you have to give?

Do they amplify the laughter, making even the simple things hilarious? Or do they make the moments dull?

If you’ve ever met someone and said, “I just love their energy” …that’s because this person is positively adding to the surrounding that your nervous system is picking up on, a system that goes far beyond your own body and connects into all the people you’re connected to. It persuades how you feel. It’s a system so much more complex and far more attached to all versions of energy around us. So be thoughtful about what inputs into your nervous system. Decide every time to surround yourself with positive amplifiers, ones that enchant your days with peace and cast your world into many derivatives of love.