Value Totems Mini-Experience – Step 3

“Everything that flows is healthy.” Tao Te Ching

Apply the A.B.C.D/D Framework

Aaaaannd here we are at the final step. Now that you’ve decided on what to ‘play’ with – your Thing. And you’ve chosen your Totem to catalyse the attention and meaning on your chosen subject. I’ll introduce you to my A.B.C.D/D framework.

I’m calling it a framework, as that’s the best term I have for it, but it’s really an intentional responsive thought sequence for re-wiring the meaning and reactions your mind dictates in given situations.

Here I have to take a little space to explain. Come along with me – this will be interesting…

Understanding Your Predictive Mind

Your brain is essentially a predictive machine. You’re born with essentially blank hardware and software, but as you grow, you collect experiences—situations, people, places, things—and your mind starts shaping meanings based on these experiences, with a little help (or sometimes interference) from the people around you.

What’s fascinating is that two people can experience the same thing but interpret it completely differently. Take Joe and Kay, for example. When they both hear “amusement park,” Joe might get excited, thinking about thrilling rides. Meanwhile, Kay might feel anxious, remembering a time when he got sick and was laughed at by his friends.

Same concept—totally different reactions. Why? Because their experiences shaped how they feel about the amusement park. Joe’s excited, while Kay’s dreading it. This is how your mind works: it uses past experiences to predict how you’ll react to future events of similar kind.

Once you’ve accumulated enough experiences, your brain starts creating beliefs and values, often without you even realizing it. These beliefs guide your attention and shape how you see and feel the world. And here’s the thing—they’re mostly unexamined, running in the background, yet influencing every decision you make, and the things you pay attention to every moment.

Your mind’s job is to prioritize what’s important to you. Problem is, it’s often working with old/outdated programming and information and what served you once, may now be creating unnecessary discomfort or suffering – that you no longer need to feel.

Imagine you smell smoke: your brain is wired to jump to conclusions about danger—fire alarms start ringing. Or if you smell melting cheese and hear the doorbell, your brain predicts pizza!

This predictive process is automatic and deeply ingrained. As neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky points out, by the time you’re aware of how you’ve reacted, the decision has already been made, based on your past experiences. But not every smoke smell means fire. Some mean a cosy fireplace waiting for a romantic moment in a winters’ evening.

So here’s where my A.B.C.D/D framework comes in: It gives you a way to step in after the automatic reaction and start rewiring those old meanings in the way you feel is more up-to-date. By doing this as close to the heat of the moment as possible, you create the chance to change how you respond the next time around—and move closer to reacting in the way you want… eventually.

Now Here is My A.B.C.D/D Framework

My A.B.C.D/D framework is an acronym representing the quick steps through which you rewire your perception, reaction or meaning of a person, place/environment, thing, or feeling you experience repeatedly.

It combines and leverages your natural predictive processing setup, taps directly and manually into your nervous system, and allows you to harvest timely feedback that then maximises your chances to inform a more desirable reaction the next time you’re exposed to the same or similar set of circumstances.

Said another way: it leverages neuroscience, your physiology on an autonomic and conscious level, and behavioural psychology to get you to learn to respond differently to a stimuli you experience repeatedly.

BUT it’s stupid-simple to learn, remember and implement. If you want to.

A.B.C.D/D stands for:

  • A – awareness: As in become aware of your commitment to change the thing (meaning, mindset, mindstate, message – 4Ms) you want to rewire.
  • B – breathe: Literally take 1-5 breaths to create mental and maybe even physical space between yourself and the thing that triggered you;
  • C – choose: Ask yourself (now with a little space between the stimulus and you) what would be your desired appropriate response in this situation?
  • D – do and or D – decode: This step is interchangeable – depending on what you’re trying to achieve, sometimes you only need to Decode. Another time you might need to take action (Do) and then Decode. But basically, depending on what the situation calls for, you take the action you wanted/planned to take or, assess the meaning of the situation. And yes – sometimes you will choose to do something AND then decode it into its meaning.

One last note on BREATH before I hand over to you.

Breath as a Powerful Neuromodulator Tool

This is a powerful and useful segue that may exponentially increase your influence over your emotional states. It applies to every aspect of your emotional life not just here.

Your breathing is one of the very few physiological processes that you can do consciously, but it’s also taken care of by your autonomic nervous system. As you know it’s vital for life. And not just because of the oxygen it carries to the inside of you. It balances CO2 and with that delicate balance between O2 and CO2 it regulates a bazillion other processes in your body to keep it running optimally.

If you want a deep-dive into the topic and you could just read a single book – see The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown.

For our purposes here, and in very simple but useful terms, I’ll mention breathing’s affect on your state of activation. In other words – you can use different cadence of inhale – hold – exhale to either:

  • calm yourself down (all the way to meditation or even sleep);
  • maintain your current arousal state;
  • or to activate and arouse yourself for a performance or competition.

The general rules are as follows (although the permutations can be many):

  • to calm yourself: exhale for longer than the inhale.
    So your cadence ratios may be: inhale for 4s – hold for 4s – exhale for 8s – repeat.
  • to stay as you are: make the inhale and exhale the same duration.
    Your cadence could be: inhale for 4s – hold for 4s – exhale for 4s – repeat.
  • to activate yourself: make the inhale longer than the exhale.
    Cadence for this one: inhale for 6s – exhale for 4s – repeat.

I’ll leave you to dig into these if you find them intriguing. But for now I want to introduce you to what I’d invite you to use in the B stage of the ABCDD framework.

The Physiological Sigh.

It’s a failsafe naturally occurring type of breath your mind is already familiar with and uses on autopilot to mitigate stress. Here’s the how and why as presented by one of my mentors Dr. Andrew Huberman:

Now – let’s put the whole lot together, so you can take action with clarity and confidence.

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