Our brains have five different brainwaves, and every time we access any of these brainwaves, we access a new type of personality.
And this new personality creates a new personal reality and gives us new ways of thinking. These five brainwaves are:
- Delta: When you’re asleep.
- Theta: When you’re half awake, half asleep.
- Alpha: When you’re wide awake but relaxed.
- Beta: When you’re awake but hyper.
- Gamma: When you’re in bliss.
But I want to focus on two: high beta, which we are all addicted to around the world, and alpha.
The Addiction to High Beta
High beta is a state we become addicted to without even realizing it. Our addiction to certainty pushes adrenaline into our bodies, reinforcing this cycle.
As it pushes adrenaline into our bodies, it creates an energy of exploitation, a false sense of control. In this state of anxiousness, we can’t be adaptable.
In a state of frenzy, there’s no curiosity about strangeness—only protection of what we already know, which means that our human brain never evolves. It continuously stays stuck.
I’m Middle Eastern, so I can say it quite comfortably. Middle Eastern mothers, Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, Indian mothers—all mother from anxiousness.
Because if you’re not worried about your kids, you’re a bad mother. What a ridiculous notion that we’ve created in our culture. No kid wants to be stressed about; they just want to be uplifted.
But we don’t realize this because we’ve been duped into the idea that we must be worrying.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, said it best: “Oh darling, you never had control, you just had anxiousness.”
We have become addicted to fueling ourselves with adrenaline, creating a continuous feeling of fear and anxiety for no reason whatsoever.
We live in a world with more money, comfort, and luxury—everything you could want—yet people are more afraid and anxious than ever. Adrenaline fuels our bodies.
The Consequences of High Beta Brainwaves
- You suffer from OCD – People are proud of OCD, but you’ve got to remember OCD is like a dog chasing its tail. You never arrive. It’s a fool’s game.
Because we have this adrenaline running through our bodies, we don’t know what else to do with it, so we get obsessive. - You can’t sleep well – Neuroscience proves that if you’re addicted to a high beta brainwave for longer than two years, your brain never switches off.
25% of it is always on, looking for danger. That’s why when you go to bed at night, you sleep lightly and must take sleeping tablets or find other ways to switch off. - You have a loud critic inside your head – When you’re in a high beta brainwave, you always feel ugly, poor, or inadequate. You never arrive.
You never get there. You’re constantly chasing a scenario, always stuck in the past, never exploring the future.
High beta brainwaves don’t allow adaptability. They keep us stuck in old ways of being human instead of embracing new ways.
The Transformative Power of Alpha
There is another brainwave: alpha. Alpha occurs when you’re wide awake but super relaxed. The last time you were probably in an alpha brainwave was on holiday.
Picture yourself packing your bags, setting your out-of-office reply, and finally stepping away from the daily grind.
That moment when you start to unwind, leaving behind stress and responsibility—the last time you truly felt that way was probably on a long holiday.
Do you remember the person you were before you went? The grumpy, overworked, frustrated version of yourself? Everything sucked—your husband was fat, your kids were misbehaving, your boss was unbearable.
And then you go on holiday. By the third day, you wake up realizing all the drama at home was unnecessary. By day five, your perspective shifts—your husband isn’t fat, he’s curvy.
By day seven, your kids aren’t misbehaving; they’re just expensive. By day ten, your boss isn’t unbearable—you start to have empathy.
By day twelve, you realize you were the problem all along. All that changed was your brainwave state—from high beta to alpha. And in alpha, you start creating lateral solutions.
You make lists: “I should spend more time with my kids. I should cook more instead of ordering delivery. I should stop drinking vodka on Wednesday mornings.”
By day fourteen, you’ve solved all the problems you had before your vacation.
But what happens when you return to work? By the third hour in, the words come out, “I can’t even remember I was on holiday.”
Why? Your brain state changes back to high beta, and suddenly, you’re running again without knowing where you’re running to.
The Benefits of an Alpha Brain State
- Exploration Over Exploitation – You’re not fixated on an outcome but open to lateral creativity.
- Better Decision-Making – People with calm hearts and clear minds make better decisions. When you’re stressed, you make defensive decisions, not exploratory ones.
- Increased Creativity and Adaptability—You can see more when you’re emotionally regulated. Your vision expands beyond tunnel vision, allowing new perspectives.
- Enhanced Collaboration – You become naturally more collaborative and open to others’ ideas.
- Greater Absorption of Information – In a high beta state, you resist views that don’t align with yours. But in alpha, you absorb and process information in new ways.
A high beta brainwave is like a car stuck in second gear on the highway, revving at 7,000 RPMs. It leads to burnout, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
Our nervous systems have been running at too high a level for too long, keeping us defensive about the past rather than excited about the future.
By shifting from high beta to alpha, we can cultivate adaptability, creativity, and curiosity—allowing us to embrace the uncertainty of the future rather than fear it.
The choice is ours: remain stuck in stress and rigidity or step into a flow state where opportunities expand, solutions emerge, and life becomes something to explore rather than endure.
Note: This blog post is an adaptation of the transcript from the video below.
