Before You Fix Your Thoughts, Change the State of Your System
We’ve all been there: trying to make positive changes to our lives so we can feel better, get more done, be healthier, think clearer, live with more purpose, finally “get ourselves together,” or whatever version of that particular mountain we happen to be climbing at the time. And there is absolutely a place for goals. There is a place for discipline. There is a place for making the decision, drawing the line, getting the trainers on, starting the thing, and pushing through.
But there is also a trap. More often than not, the positive changes we are trying to make become one more layer added on top of all the other layers of stress we were already trying to deal with in the first place. We are already tired, already stretched, already overstimulated, already carrying work, bills, commitments, relationships, unfinished tasks, phone notifications, future worries, old failures, and the low-level background pressure of modern life. Then, on top of all that, we decide to improve ourselves. Brilliant. Now we have another thing to fail at!
I’m typing that with a smile, but I mean it seriously. I’m speaking partly from a personal trainer’s background, and partly from having been there and done it myself. After my first Great North Run, all my training, focus and drive ended with that cookie I bought on the walk back to the station at the end of the race. And not just the cookie either. There was the rest of the crap in the bag along with it. But I felt good at the time because I had achieved the goal. Good work me!
And honestly, it was good work. Finishing the run mattered. Giving it a go mattered. Training for something mattered. There is always something to be said for showing up and taking action. But what happens after the goal? How many of us reach the finish line, feel the relief, taste the achievement, and then quietly slide back into the same patterns that made us want to change in the first place?
Then there are all the failed attempts: the fitness plan that lasted two weeks, the new routine that collapsed by Thursday, the habit tracker that became one more reason to feel useless, the journal that started beautifully and then disappeared under a pile of other abandoned good intentions. The problem is not always laziness. It is not always weakness. It is not always a lack of knowledge. Sometimes your system is simply overloaded.
And when that happens, the attempt to improve can become another source of pressure. Another layer. Another “should.” Another quiet little accusation sitting in the back of the mind. Eventually, we can become conditioned to avoid the feeling of failure by not even trying again. What kind of place is that to be in? Not a good one, that’s for sure.
At the same time, it is important not to be too hard on ourselves. There is a lot to be said for giving something a go in the first place. How many people never even get that far? But time passes quickly. Too quickly, sometimes. The weeks blur. The months slip by. The thing we were going to sort out “soon” somehow becomes part of the furniture of our lives.
Wouldn’t it be useful if there was a way to deal with stress before it accumulated? Not by ignoring it. Not by pretending everything is fine. Not by forcing ourselves to be positive. But by helping your system settle enough that change no longer feels like another battle.
Because all of this — the thoughts, the failures, the pressure, the resistance, the frustration, the little bursts of motivation and the long stretches of avoidance — is happening inside a living system. Your thoughts are not floating around in some separate mental cloud. They are happening inside a body, inside a nervous system, inside an organism that gets tired, hungry, overstimulated, under-recovered, defensive, reactive, braced, and worn out.
Work and daily commitments can be physically exhausting. The extra demands on your attention and emotions add more load. Before long, you are stressed, stretched, tired, worn-out and on edge, wary of the next thing you have to cope with. That becomes a burden on the mind. And when your system is under pressure, the mind narrows. Attention narrows. Patience narrows. Imagination narrows. The next useful step becomes harder to see. You end up inside a vicious cycle: stress makes thought tighter; tight thought makes life feel heavier; life feeling heavier creates more stress. A living, negative feedback loop!
There is relief, of course. Holidays. Weekends. Films. Walks. Sport. Music. A bit of peace and quiet when you can get it. Whatever does it for you. But sometimes even that is not enough. Sometimes the weekend is recovery from the week rather than actual rest. Sometimes the holiday is a collapse. Sometimes the film is just zoning out because there is no energy left for anything else.
Sleep helps, obviously. Sleep is crucial. But how many of us get enough of it? And how many of us still feel knackered even after we think we have had enough? So when we try to add some new positive, healthy, creative or disciplined endeavour into our lives, hoping it will alleviate the chaos, it can feel like we are just adding one more thing to the chaos.
And the biggest kicker is that, as habit research often suggests, it can take weeks or months for a new thing to become a you thing. Months! It’s as if our minds, bodies and our very souls try to reject any of this good stuff we try to do for ourselves, at any cost! Naughty!
Maybe there is another way. And maybe, in principle, it is surprisingly simple: begin by changing the state of your system.
That is where Deep Rest comes in. Deep Rest is not passive relaxation. It is not zoning out. It is not collapsing on the sofa and doom-scrolling until your eyes glaze over. It is a shift in the whole system. Alexandra Crosswell[i], one of the researchers working in this area, describes deep rest as being “beyond relaxation – it’s a coordinated shift of the whole nervous, endocrine and immune system into an overall state of safety signalling.”
That is a powerful idea. Deep Rest is not just “feeling chilled.” It is a psycho-physiological state: a state of body, brain, attention and internal signalling in which your system begins to receive the message that, at least in this moment, all is well enough. The body can stop bracing. The mind can stop gripping. Attention can widen. The next grounded action can become clearer. Not because you forced yourself into a better mindset, but because your system has room to settle.
This matters because stress is not only a thought. Stress is a whole-system event. It affects the nervous system, hormones, immune function, breathing, posture, attention, perception and behaviour. So if we try to fix everything only at the level of thought, we may be starting too far downstream. It is a bit like trying to tidy a room while someone keeps throwing boxes through the window. Yes, you can tidy harder. But maybe close the window first.
Breathing techniques can definitely help here. And if you are not aware of at least the existence of a few mindfulness techniques by now, then you have probably been sleeping with your head under the pillow! But then again, maybe you don’t have time to indulge and entertain such things. Maybe meditation sounds like one more thing you are supposed to be good at. Maybe you have tried it and thought, “Nope, my brain does not do that.” Fair enough.
But, this is where I stick up the “sceptics welcome” sign! Not because scepticism needs to be defeated, but because this is not really a matter of belief in the first place. You do not have to sign up to a worldview before your body is allowed to respond to breathing, attention, posture, safety, rest, or recovery. If you are human, you have a body. You have a nervous system. You breathe. You brace. You soften. You react. You settle. So the invitation is not “believe this.” The invitation is “try this and notice what happens.”
One of the useful things about breath-based practice is that you can test it directly. Your breathing is one of the few processes that is both automatic and voluntarily influenceable. You do not have to micromanage every breath to stay alive, thank goodness, but you can also choose to slow the breath, lengthen the exhale, soften the body, and notice what changes.
Research into breathing and arousal has shown that breathing is not merely a passive background process. It is connected to patterns of calm, attention, arousal and emotional state[ii]. One Stanford study in mice identified a small group of neurons in the brain’s breathing rhythm generator that helped regulate the balance between calm and arousal behaviours[iii]. In plain English: breathing is not magic, but it is not nothing either. It is one of the most direct handles you have on the state of your system.
And the great thing about a practice like Deep Rest is that, once you get the hang of it, the shift can become more accessible. At first, you might need a few minutes. You might need quiet. You might need guidance. You might need repetition. But over time, the body begins to recognise the doorway: a slow breath, a softened jaw, feet on the floor, attention widening, the body here, the world here, awareness here. This is not about escaping life. It is about training yourself to return to life with less internal noise.
The THR33 RINGS 3-Minute Deep Rest Reset is designed as a simple beginning point. A way of training yourself to enter, or at least move toward, a deeper state of rest and regulation. And the beginning could hardly be simpler. You do not have to visualise perfectly. You do not have to believe anything. You do not have to perform meditation correctly. You sit. You breathe. You notice. You soften. You let attention include the body, the world, and awareness itself.
So, yes, in one sense, you are doing “nothing.” But in another sense, you are training your system to shift. You are practising the art of not adding more force to an already overloaded organism. You are giving the body and mind a chance to stop bracing long enough for something clearer to emerge.
If you can practise this for just three minutes a day, alongside the usual foundations — decent sleep, movement, nutrition, sunlight, human connection, and all the ordinary things we already know matter — you may start to feel the benefits of a life that is not necessarily free from stress, but better able to meet it. That distinction matters. The aim is not to become a perfectly calm person floating above the chaos of life. Good luck with that! The aim is to become more able to notice when your system is narrowing, tightening and reacting — and to have a way back. Back to the body. Back to the world. Back to awareness. Back to the next grounded action.
THR33 RINGS begins with experience first. Not belief. Not dogma. Not ideology. Not “here is a grand theory you must accept before anything useful can happen.” Experience first. Try the reset. Notice what happens. See whether your system shifts. Then, if it helps, you can go deeper. You can explore the symbology of it all, the science of it all, the philosophy of it all, the Nature, Existence and Consciousness side of it all. That is there too. And I love that side of it. I am 20-plus years into this exploration and I am still fascinated.
But the simplest way in is not to understand everything. The simplest way in is to stop for three minutes and let your system breathe. So, before you fix your thoughts, change the state of your system. Before you force the next version of yourself into existence, give the current version enough rest to see clearly. Before you add another layer of pressure, create a little space.
Dip your toe. Have a go.
Try it for 3 minutes a day.
Try it for Thr33 Months.
See what changes.
If you would like to begin, sign up to the THR33 RINGS newsletter below and I’ll send you the 3-Minute Deep Rest Reset PDF for free, along with occasional discoveries, insights and practical tools relating to deep rest, science, philosophy, poetry, art, and conscious participation in your own development.
MAKE IT HAPPEN.
[i] Crosswell AD, Mayer SE, Whitehurst LN, Picard M, Zebarjadian S, Epel ES. Deep rest: An integrative model of how contemplative practices combat stress and enhance the body’s restorative capacity. Psychol Rev. 2024 Jan;131(1):247-270. doi: 10.1037/rev0000453. Epub 2023 Dec 25. PMID: 38147050; PMCID: PMC11003855.
[ii] Sheikhbahaei, S., & Smith, J. C. (2017). Breathing to inspire and arouse. Science, 355(6332), 1370–1371.
[iii] Yackle, K., Schwarz, L. A., Kam, K., Sorokin, J. M., Huguenard, J. R., Feldman, J. L., Luo, L., & Krasnow, M. A. (2017). Breathing control center neurons that promote arousal in mice. Science, 355(6332), 1411–1415.