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Every day, without even realizing it, you’re doing one thing that’s quietly pushing away everything you want. Someone doesn’t text back, you spiral. The kids melt down, you snap. Someone cuts you off in traffic, you lose it for the next ten minutes. And then you wonder why the same patterns keep showing up in your relationships, your business, your life.

In this solo episode I take you inside what’s actually happening in your brain and body the moment you get triggered, and why the 90 second window right after could be the most important 90 seconds of your day. Grounded in both ancient wisdom and neuroscience, I share the teaching that changed how I see every trigger that used to run me, and I walk you through the exact practice I created to interrupt the pattern for good. Learn this and you will respond differently to everything, and call in what you want a lot faster than you thought possible.

In this episode we chat about:

• The daily habit almost nobody realizes is sabotaging their own life (3:10)
• The 1 percent of reality you can see, and the 99 percent quietly running your life (4:24)
• How your reactions are actively pushing your dreams further away, every single time (5:50)
• What actually happens in your brain in the split second before you snap (7:01)
• The 90 second window that decides whether you stay stuck or finally break the pattern (8:23)
• The tiny gap between what happens to you and what you do next, and why it holds all your power (12:00)
• The practice I built from ancient wisdom and neuroscience that changes everything the moment you learn it (12:52)
• Exactly what to do the next time you feel yourself about to react (18:17)

Episode resources:

• Higher Self Visualisation Meditation (get the meditation)
• Best Day Brainwash (get the brainwash) 
• Book your 1:1 Strategy Session with me (book here)
• The ICONIC Mastermind (join now)
• Mastering Your Mean Girl by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Open Wide by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Comparisonitis by Melissa Ambrosini (book)
• Time Magic by Melissa Ambrosini and Nick Broadhurst (book)
• My stroke of insight | Jill Bolte Taylor (youtube)
• Conversations With God & Neale Donald Walsch (podcast)
• Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue by Neale Donald Walsch (book)
• Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl (book)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

[00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa, best-selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, Open Wide, Comparisonitis, and Time Magic. And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week, I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version of yourself possible.

Are you ready, beautiful?

Welcome back. I’m so excited about this episode. It’s been a while since I’ve done a solo, and I am so pumped to share the one habit that is pushing everything away. Every manifestation that you want, everything on your vision board, this one habit is literally [00:01:00] pushing it away, my friend Before I tell you the habit, let me just share a little story with you.

So last week, Nick asked me something in the kitchen. I can’t even remember what it was. It was a simple question, probably something about dinner or something about the kids’ schedule. And the old me, the me from many years ago, would have snapped. I know it. I just know. I would’ve snapped. And it wasn’t because of the question.

It might have been because I was tired, and tired me sometimes reacts not in the best way. I’m not alone in this, I know that. So last week, I felt, you know, it rise within me, the tightness in the chest and the words, like, coming in my mouth, and then I paused. Three seconds I paused. Maybe four. And in that gap, something in me said, “This isn’t about dinner, Melissa.

This is [00:02:00] about what you are carrying that has nothing to do with Nick. This is about the emotional load that us women carry.” And because I paused, I was able to see that, and I answered him calmly. He had no idea what almost happened in my body, and that tiny, invisible moment changed the whole night. If I had have reacted the way old me would’ve reacted, I know how that night would’ve planned out, and it wouldn’t have been ideal.

But because I paused, and I took a breath, and I saw what was happening, that it had nothing to do with what he just asked me, that it had everything to do with how underslept I was in that moment and everything that I was carrying, I was able to transform that whole evening. And this is what this episode is about, this one habit, the most ordinary habit in the world, and that is reacting, [00:03:00] and how it might be the single biggest thing standing between you and everything that you want, that you are trying to build.

Now, I have reacted to my kids before. I have reacted to Nick. I have reacted to tech issues. I have reacted to people cutting me off in the traffic. I have reacted in the past. I’m not gonna say I’ve never reacted. And when I was thinking about this episode, I was trying to think of a time in my life where I have found reacting actually served me, and I could not think of one time that it made me better or anything like that.

I could not think of it Every time I have reacted to my kids, to a tech issue, to my husband, it’s only blown things up. The conversation got harder. The [00:04:00] relationship got a little more distant. An opportunity closed instead of opened. Reacting has never once built anything that I am proud of. And this is not a guilt trip, by the way.

This is just data. And once you see that data clearly, you can’t unsee it. Now, you know that I am a student of Kabbalah. I love Kabbalah. And there’s a teaching in Kabbalah that has changed how I see all of this. Now, it says that the world that we can touch, the world that we can measure and prove, is only 1% of reality.

1%. The other 99% is unseen. It’s the source. It’s where connection comes from, where abundance comes from, where everything that you are wanting to call into your life actually lives. Now, most of us spend our whole lives sucked [00:05:00] into that 1%, living from that 1%, reacting from that 1%, reacting to what happened to us.

Someone doesn’t text back, and we spiral. A launch underperforms, and we panic. Or someone cuts us off, and we lose it for the next 10 minutes in the car. Every reaction is your ego trying to protect itself, and your ego only knows the 1%. Your ego, or what I call your inner mean girl, your inner critic, she doesn’t know the 99%.

She only knows the 1%. It has never been to the 99, okay? It has never been to the 99%. It doesn’t even believe that the 99% exists. Yeah? The 99% is where all the miracles are. It doesn’t even believe in it. So here’s the part that blew my mind. So this really landed for me. So if reacting keeps you stuck in the 1% and [00:06:00] everything that you are trying to manifest lives in the 99%, then every single reaction is you pushing your desires, your manifestations, your vision board goals, pushing it further away.

When I realized that, when I learned that, my mind was literally blown. I thought, “Holy smokes, okay, every time I’m reacting, I’m pushing away everything that I want?” Every time you react to your children, to your partner, to someone cutting you off in the traffic, to tech issues, you are pushing away everything you want.

And this is not the universe or God or the creator punishing you. Uh-uh. That is not what I am saying. This is an opportunity for you to evolve, to get back into the space where miracles are, the 99%. This is [00:07:00] where the magic is. And here’s the thing, because ancient wisdom and modern science agree with each other completely, when something triggers you, here’s what happens.

Your amygdala, it fires before your rational brain even knows what happens. It, it’s like a split second, okay? That happens. That is biology. Scientists call it an amygdala hijack, okay? That’s what it’s called. So you get triggered. That’s what happens. You get triggered, and your amygdala fires before your rational brain even knows what has happened.

Then your nervous system makes the choice for you in a millisecond, long before the thinking part of your brain gets involved. So before your rational brain has a chance to do anything, the nervous system fires, the amygdala gets hijacked, okay? So if you have ever reacted and thought, [00:08:00] “Why do I keep doing this?”

Like, why did I just do that? I know better than this. Like, why did I do that? If you have ever thought that, and I know I have before, you are not broken. You’re wired, and wiring can change. This is the most exciting part. This is what neuroscience actually teaches us now. You can rewire your brain. Now, there is a researcher named Jill Bolte Taylor.

If you have not watched her TED Talk, do yourself a favor and go and watch it straight after this. It is so amazing. She’s incredible. Now, she studied her own stroke while it was actually happening, my friend. It’s incredible. You’ll know more when you go and watch the video what I’m talking about. Now, her research found something completely remarkable.

The actual chemical life of an emotion, the flood through your [00:09:00] body, that only lasts 90 seconds. That’s it, 90 seconds, and then it’s designed to pass. So any emotion, fear, anger, frustration, embarrassment, any emotion, it only lasts 90 seconds. But what most of us do is as soon as an emotion comes up, we go, “Oh my, I don’t wanna feel it.

I don’t wanna feel it.” We push it down, we push it down, we suppress it, we suppress it, we push it down. We’re like, “I don’t wanna feel it. Oh my gosh, it’s so painful.” But if we just opened both of our arms wide, and we allowed that emotion to wash over us like a wave, it’s only gonna last for 90 seconds.

That’s it. It’s not gonna overflow you. It’s not going to take over your whole world. It’s only 90 seconds. Everything after that 90 seconds is up to you. Yeah, you get to either keep it alive by replaying the story in your head, [00:10:00] so keep getting angry at the person who cut you off in the traffic or whatever it is.

You’re the one that is still narrating it three exits later. So after the 90 seconds, once the emotion has washed over you like a wave, you get to choose, “Am I going to keep narrating this story in my head, or am I gonna let it go?” And then there is neuroplasticity. So neurons that fire together, wire together.

We have all heard that. Neurons that fire together, wire together. So every single time you react the same way, so if you’re constantly reacting to tech issues or your kids or your partner or someone cutting you off in traffic, if you are constantly reacting that same way, you actually deepen that groove in your brain.

You deepen that wire in your brain. You’re not just having a bad moment, you are reinforcing the exact version [00:11:00] of you that keeps attracting the exact same outcomes. So if you want something different, if you want a different life, you cannot keep strengthening the wiring that built your current one. I interviewed Neale Donald Walsch many years ago.

I’ll link to the episode below here. He wrote Conversations with God, and there is something in that book that he said that has never left me, and I think about it all the time. “If you don’t like what you have created, create again.” And this is what neuroplasticity is saying. If you don’t like the reality that you have, if you want a different life, you get to rewire your brain.

You get to rewire the programming that is attracting that. You don’t have to keep strengthening the wiring that has built the current reality. Okay? [00:12:00] So Viktor Frankl, he wrote Man’s Search for Meaning, an incredible book. Literally read it tonight. It’s so good. He said it so well, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space.”

Yeah? So we’ve got stimulus, we’ve got a response, and then we’ve got space in the middle. We all learnt this in science, right? In that space is our power to choose our response, our power to choose how we will respond, and in that choice lies our growth and our freedom In that choice lies our growth and our freedom.

We have a choice. Stimulus, response, space in the middle. What are we gonna do with that space in the middle? So I built something called the 10-second truth. I teach my clients this. I teach my mastermind this. It is [00:13:00] what I have been using myself for years, and it is a blend of ancient wisdom and neuroscience, and I’m gonna walk you through it.

It’s only four steps. I want you to write it down. You can save it in the notes section of your phone, and any time you get triggered, you’re gonna pull this out and look at it. Write it on a Post-It note, stick it on your computer or your fridge or wherever until it becomes so deeply ingrained that you don’t even have to think about it.

Like I said, it’s called the 10-second truth. The first step is you get triggered, okay? So whatever happens to you, let’s use the getting cut off in traffic example again. So you get triggered, and you allow that trigger to be there. “Okay, I feel triggered.” That is the stimulus. Yeah, that is the stimulus. “I get triggered.”

Before you do anything, you pause. That is the space between. You pause. You do nothing. You take a breath. The third step is you see. You see this as an opportunity [00:14:00] for growth, for evolution Every trigger is an opportunity for growth and evolution to rewire an old pattern, to rewire an old neural pathway that is not serving you anymore.

And then the fourth step is you get to choose. You get to choose again. You get to choose how you respond after that trigger. You get to choose. You can choose something inspiring, or you can choose something that is going to reinforce that old neural pathway that you don’t want, okay? So that is the whole thing.

10-second truth. You get triggered. Okay. You feel it. Remember, it only lasts for 90 seconds. So we feel that trigger for 90 seconds, and we pause. We do nothing. We do nothing next. Pause. Then the second step is we pause. We do nothing. We just pause. We take a breath. We pause. The third step is we see the opportunity that is hiding [00:15:00] inside this trigger.

This is an opportunity to lay the foundations for a new neural pathway in our brain, one that is more inspiring, one that is aligned with our higher self, one that is heading toward the dreams that we want. And then the fourth step is we choose. We get to choose. We get to choose how we respond after that moment.

Are we going to keep narrating the story about the person cutting us off in traffic, or are we going to choose something more inspiring, more in alignment with our higher self? That is the whole process, and I want you to practice this every single day because you will be triggered in your day, and I want you to practice it every day and let me know how you go.

But here’s what nobody tells you about reacting. In the moment, it feels like power. Snapping at someone feels like taking control. Firing off the text feels like standing up for yourself. Losing it at the person who [00:16:00] cut you off in traffic feels like justice or principle. It is the complete opposite. It is you handing the wheel to the least evolved version of yourself and calling it strength.

That’s it. It is you handing the wheel to the least evolved version of yourself and calling it strength. The pause doesn’t feel powerful in the moment. I get it. The reacting feels like the most powerful thing to do. It feels like taking control, justice, principle It feels like restraint when we pause, like you’re holding something back, but it’s the only one.

But it is the power. It is the higher choice. It is the most evolved next move for you. So if you have been doing all the work, setting the [00:17:00] intentions, saying the affirmations, doing your gratitude, praying, breathwork, meditating, all of the things, and it’s still not landing, I want you to consider something, and it might not be that the work isn’t working.

It might be that you are retriggering the same old frequency on loop day after day without even realizing it. Every reaction is a vote for the life that you already have. You’re saying, “Yep, I’m content. I love this. It’s great.” And every time you take yourself through the ten-second truth, every time you pause, remember there’s stimuli, space, trigger, and every time you react, you are retriggering that same old wiring.

And every reaction is the vote for the life that you already have. Every pause is the vote for the life that you are wanting to build, that you are going for, that is on your [00:18:00] vision board, that you are manifesting. Now, you cannot out-affirm a nervous system that is still running the old program 10 times a day.

You cannot out-affirm that. No amount of affirmations can out-affirm that. This is why this work is so important. So let me give you a couple of examples of how you can take yourself through the ten-second truth. So for example, when it comes to your kids, maybe one of them throws the plate of food on the floor, and you feel very triggered, or one of them melts down over something so small.

Pause Take a breath before you open your mouth. You see that this isn’t about the plate on the food. This is about something so much deeper for them, right? So then we choose, and from there I get down on their level, I am calm, and I meet them there. I can see that this is about something so much deeper.

Yeah? When it comes to your partner, [00:19:00] maybe they trigger you, maybe it is a comment that used to feel like criticism. You’re gonna pause, you’re gonna take a breath, you’re gonna feel that trigger, and before the defensiveness kicks in, you see that he is not attacking you. He is tired as well, or maybe he is overwhelmed, whatever it is, and then you get to choose what happens from there.

You can ask a question instead of firing back. Yeah? The traffic example. You get triggered, someone cuts you off, you pause, put your hands on the wheel Nothing else. You see that this person has nothing to do with my day or my worth or my next hour. You see that this person may be racing to the hospital or may have just got news that someone has passed away.

Like, you literally have no idea. Or maybe their kid is sick, and they’re rushing to the school. You have no idea. And then you get to choose, and you get to let it go, and you get to send love to that person. That’s it. [00:20:00] So there’s different situations, but all of them, when you apply the 10-second truth, will give you a completely different elevated, expansive outcome, one that is more aligned with your higher self, one that is going to pull your manifestations toward you.

Nothing is going to push your manifestations faster away than reacting from your small self, from the 1%. So this is your homework. This is what you’re gonna do for the next week. You are going to practice the 10-second truth. You are going to take yourself through that. You’re gonna feel the trigger.

Remember, it only lasts for 90 seconds. You’re gonna pause. You’re gonna take a breath. Then you’re gonna see this as an opportunity for growth and evolution, and then you get to choose. How do I respond from here? Do I give that person a hug? Do I send them love? This one habit will bring your manifestations closer to you faster than anything.

But every time [00:21:00] you react, you push everything you want away very fast. I want you to try that this week. It’ll be interesting. Maybe even write down how many times you get triggered in one day. At the end of your day, look at your phone. Make a note in your notes app. “Okay, I got triggered 15 times today.”

Whatever it is, there’s no judgment here. You don’t have to share this with anyone. Well, you can tell me if you like. I’m super fascinated with this stuff, so you can come and tell me on Instagram. But every time you feel that pull to react, whether it is with your kids, with your partner, with an email, a text, whatever it is, do the 10-second truth.

Trigger, pause, see, choose. That’s it. And you don’t need to get it perfect. There’s no such thing as perfect, just so you know. You just need to catch it. Just catch it once, and then you are smoothing out that divot in your brain a little bit more. But every time you do the same thing and react the same way, you are [00:22:00] making that divot in your brain even deeper.

And when you catch it once, you’ll start to see it everywhere. And every time you choose to pause over react, you’re not just changing that moment, you are changing the neural pathways in your brain, and you are changing what you are calling into your life. 10-second truth is your homework. Do this. If you want to call in your manifestations faster, don’t do it if you wanna push them away.

I hope you got a lot out of this episode, and if you did, please come and let me know on Instagram what is your biggest key takeaway. What do you react most to? Come and tell me what you react to. I would really love to hear. And if you did love this conversation, if you got a lot out of it, please leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, and send me a screenshot of your review to hello@melissambrosini.com and I will send you my Wildly Wealthy guided meditation.[00:23:00] 

Now, this is not just an ordinary meditation. It is infused with binaural beats, solfeggio frequencies, and isochronic tones designed to literally rewire your brain. So send me a screenshot of your review, and I’ll gift that to you as a thank you for taking the time to leave me a review. And if there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, please share it with them right now.

You can take a screenshot, share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them. Do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, my friend, do not forget that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. I am so grateful that you are here. I absolutely love serving you, and I cannot wait to share this space with you next time

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Thank you so much for listening. I’m so honored that you’re here and would be SO grateful if you could leave me a review on Apple podcasts, that way we can inspire and educate even more people together.

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