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When You’re Tired of Trying: How to Rewire Your Brain for Joy

• Dr Amen Kaur

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Feeling tired of trying? In this episode Dr Amen Kaur blends neuroscience and spirituality to show you how to calm your amygdala, reset your nervous system, and rewire your brain for genuine joy and freedom.

When life feels like constant effort, it’s not because you’re weak - it’s because your brain has been trained for survival, not joy.


 In this deeply personal episode, Dr Amen Kaur unpacks what really happens when you feel exhausted from “trying” and how to gently re-program your nervous system to make calm and happiness feel safe again.

You’ll hear:

  • Why the amygdala tags disappointment as danger - and how that blocks joy
  • How “foreboding joy” makes us catastrophize good things
  • The neuroscience of emotion as energy + frequency
  • A simple practice to tune disappointment into compassion
  • The four-step Frequency of Compassion framework to rewire the brain through love
  • What “true power” means - and how it frees you from fear and burnout

You’ll learn that giving up isn’t failure; it’s surrendering the war against yourself.

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Watch my free webinar “How to Reset Your Biology for Success.”
Discover how your body and energy system work together to create success without burnout.  👉 www.amenkaur.com/masterclass

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Every share helps more people learn how to calm their nervous system, heal through compassion, and raise our collective frequency.


 Together we’re building a world with more love, connection and support - one conversation at a time.

Sending you love,
Amen
 


🌿 Free Gift for My Listeners:
If you’ve been feeling stuck, overthinking, or ready for a calmer, more confident way to grow — I have a free masterclass for you.

It’s called “How to Reset Your Biology for Calm, Confident Success — Even If You’ve Faced Setbacks.”

You’ll learn how to release survival stress, regulate your nervous system, and grow from safety, not struggle.

🎁 Watch it free here → www.amenkaur.com/masterclass

Because you can only grow as far as your body feels safe to go — and it’s time to start again from calm, clarity, and connection. 🌸

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🧠 Best For: Empowerment, self-help, confidence, mindset, healing, manifestation, entrepreneurship, psychology-based growth, neurobiology, success without burnout.

⚖️ Disclaimer

This podcast is for educational purposes only and does not replace professional advice.

If engaging in guided practices, ensure you’re in a safe, grounded space.
By listening, you accept full responsibility for how you use this information.

SPEAKER_00:

Have you ever woken up and thought, I am just done? I'm not angry, not sad, just I'm so tired of trying. That was me today. I caught myself thinking, oh my gosh, what's the point of all of this, all this pushing? All I was trying to do was wake up my children and get them to school on time. And then I thought, wow, oh my gosh, why do I want to give up? And then I realized, wow, if I feel like I want to surrender, that means that I have been trying to avoid a feeling. Okay, what is it that you're trying to avoid here? I was trying to avoid disappointing society for not getting my children to school on time. Okay, what is where does this originate from? And then I realized that disappointment, that feeling that I've been trying to avoid was the feeling of disappointing my mother. I thought, I didn't even realize I was carrying that. And then I was like, wait, what's really underneath this? And then I realized it wasn't even her disapproval I feared. It was the feeling of experiencing being a disappointment. I didn't want to be disappointed in myself, experiencing being disappointment within my body. That feeling, that feeling has been wired into my body. And yes, there's a part of my brain called the amygdala that's learned that being a disappointment is danger. Do not experience it because we are afraid of experiencing it. So every time life offers me even something beautiful. Let's move on from trying to wake up my children in the morning. If something beautiful happens in my life, something amazing, some sort of success, there is that fear of, hey, hang on, we don't want disappointment to be experienced. Careful, don't get too excited. It could all fall apart. And this is the wild part, right? Science tells us that the amygdala, this part of the brain, actually tags unprocessed pain as a threat. Any emotion that was unprocessed that I couldn't process when I was younger, it's in that part of the brain, the amygdala, and it's been tagged as a threat because we can't feel it. We're not allowed to feel it because it's too painful. So what we try and do is avoid those emotions. But what happens is we actually avoid also the very emotions that would heal us, like joy, like love, like success, like intimacy, because we then get afraid that we're going to have to lose those. And if we lose those, then we're going to have to experience those emotions that are tagged in the amygdala as painful. So Brene Brown calls this the foreboding joy. It's the moment when you look at your child or your partner or something amazing that you've created. And instead of feeling pure joy, your brain fast forwards to the worst-case scenario. We can catastrophize happiness, or we pick people that aren't good for us because we're afraid of losing someone that is good for us. But here's the thing I'm starting to learn. Every time I try and outrun disappointment, I also outrun joy. So maybe actually giving up, surrendering, isn't failure. Maybe giving up is giving up the war against the feeling that you're trying to avoid. Maybe it's permission to stop performing and to start really getting real with yourself, to stop managing the world's expectations and to start tuning back into your own frequency. Science is telling us everything is energy. Then emotion is just a vibration. And then disappointment is a low, dense vibration. And maybe joy is a high, light, open, feeling good vibration. What if our work isn't to fix anything, but to actually change the station of the vibration and the frequency that we're tuned into? And that's what we're going to explore today: the science and spirit of letting go. And let's see what happens when we stop trying so hard to be okay and start allowing ourselves to be human and to experience. You know what's strange? Joy and happiness sound like it's like the thing that we all want. And it's like the natural most, you know, what we want. And that's what everybody says that they want. But when it actually shows up, we are tense, we get suspicious, we start scanning for what could go wrong. And this is why so many toxic individuals get away with what they do, and then so many really decent, good human beings aren't believed, etc. Because a lot of the time people are suspicious of good, of love, of joy, and that's of the real thing. And that's when I realize something. Joy doesn't always feel safe. Okay. Some of these emotions that we're trying to go for don't always feel safe. Why is that? Let's really look at this. Why is this this, right? And I think we have to understand that our brain's number one job is survival. It's not wired for happiness. Imagine that we have this body, and we're like a container. This body is like a container, and you've been given this brain, and its only job is for you to survive. It's not wired for what experiences you're going to have, like what energy or frequency you're going to experience. It's wired purely and simply to keep you alive. So when something feels good, your nervous system will start to search for what's the catch, what's not this doesn't feel right. It's almost like a security alarm will go off every time your heart opens, you'll contract. Yeah. It's because it doesn't feel safe. It's because something has been tagged in your brain. And this is where I want to introduce that tiny almond-shaped part of the brain called the amygdala. Or I call her Amy as well, for short. She is your emotional smoke detector. She's looking at the emotions that you're experiencing as a vibration and frequency, and it's saying, okay, these emotions are dangerous, even if they're real or imagined, and it will flood the body with stress hormones. That's why you could be imagining or doing visualization exercises, etc., and you will start to think about something else, or you'll have a thought and you'll try and suppress it, or you can't really imagine what it will be like to have what it is that you want, because there's something else blocking it, and that is your amygdala. Your heart might race, or your muscles might tighten, or you might feel numb, or your breath shortens, or you don't really get into it. This is because you're wired, that's been wired into you. And there's also it's a survival mechanism, but we've also got to understand that sometimes it might be wired into you and it's been passed down from generations as well. This is called epigenetics. But now what we need to understand is that it can be triggering when someone loves you too much, or when success feels too close, you might self-sabotage, or when you're meant to do something and there's just on the other side is your future self, but you can't get to it because there's all these emotions holding you back. And here's the kicker: if you grow up equating love with tension or criticism, your brain usually tags calm and joy as unfamiliar. It feels unsafe. So when your life gives you something peaceful, so you're holding a different type of vibration, it will unconsciously stir up some sort of chaos, something will go wrong, where you get triggered, and then that energy and that frequency come back. Not because you want drama, but because your nervous system is trying to get back to what it knows. It wants to hold that frequency and vibration that it feels comfortable with. Brene Brown talks about this moment that she calls foreboding joy, right? She says that when we feel deep joy, the brain rushes in with visions of loss. You might see your child sleeping and something terrible happening. It's not because you're weird, it's because your brain is just trying to get back to the old frequency and vibration. You might get good news and immediately you think, what if it doesn't last? Or you think, oh my gosh, I need to move on to the next thing. I can't enjoy this experience. Or maybe even when we're trying to imagine something good for us, we're pre-grieving our happiness. Like it's not coming to us, it's not going to come to me, it's not possible for me. Those feelings will come. All we're trying to do is protect ourselves from some sort of disappointment by rehearsing a disaster. So we're trying to think someone's telling us it's possible for you, and we're thinking, oh, I don't think it's possible. There's something wrong with me. All we're doing is protecting ourselves from some emotion that we are not able to experience. But the problem is with this, and this is the paradox, every time we armor ourselves and have a protection against something that we're trying to avoid, a certain emotion, we're actually blocking the exact emotion that will help us heal, which is love, which is joy, which is happiness. And that's the pattern that we all live in. Mistaking patterns and protection for some sort of safety, mistaking fear as though it's some sort of wise thing. It's not wise at all. Because your body knows the difference. When we allow joy, even for a second, there's a softness that moves through our chest, there's a sense of expansion, we feel our energy shift, and it's like we get our spirit back, we get ourself back. And our nervous system feels like, see, this is what freedom feels like, and this is who you were when you were a baby. You didn't know any of this nonsense, fear of expansion and things like that. Spiritually, joy is our natural resonance. That's why babies are so amazing, is because they are so comfortable in themselves and they're so delightful. It's because we're being reminded of who we are. We were before the world taught us fear. So the work isn't to force joy to try and achieve something. It's about making safety sacred again, to allow you to hold the frequency of success, of joy, of love, of everything you want, to let your brain and body remember that peace doesn't mean jet danger. When we reassociate safety with calm instead of chaos, what we're doing is actually rewiring the whole system again so that you're able to hold. Remember the container analogy, you're able to hold a different vibration and frequency before the brain chucks it out. That's where science and spirituality meet. You're not actually broken. There's nothing wrong with you. Your nervous system just needs to learn to hold a new song, to sing a new song, if you like, that allows you to feel a different frequency. So let's really play with this idea if everything is vibration. What note are you living in today? So let's really talk about energy, about the frequencies of joy and disappointment, and how we can start to tune in to ourselves differently. So let's imagine that everything you feel is like a sound, a kind of sound. It's like a vibration, a frequency that you can, every thought, every word, every person, every environment carries a tone, a vibration. Science calls it electrochemical energy, tiny charges moving through your neurons, releasing hormones, and shifting the magnetic field of your heart. It literally changes everything. Spirit just calls it frequency. Yeah? Frequency and vibration. Different words, but same truth. When I first heard this, I thought, yeah, cool concept. Let's really run with this because vibration and frequency is everything. But then I decided to really start looking at everything has vibration and frequency. Disappointment is like a weight. It sits heavy in your body. Shame can feel like you just want to run away, like it's buzzing, it's like uncomfortable, and you just want to get away from it. Joy, oh, it just relaxes your whole body. It's like a relief to the system. And this is the wild part. Science is incredible because it's catching up with everything that spirituality has been trying to teach us. When researchers hook up people to EEGs or heart rate monitors, they can see emotions literally change the rhythm of the body's electrical fields. Your heart rhythm becomes smoother when you feel gratitude or compassion, and your brain waves become more coherent, so you feel more like you. So when ancient texts say things like raise your vibration, or maybe they're not just being metaphorical, they're maybe describing neurobiology before we had a language for it. So let's just do an experiment together. Wherever you are right now, just take a deep breath in and out. And then just notice the word disappointment. Just the word disappointment. And just see, feel the tension where it is in your body. Maybe it's heaviness in your chest, or maybe it's like you're in your gut. Don't try and fix it. Just notice the tone of it. If it had a colour, what color would it be? If it looked like something, what would it look like? If it had a sound, what kind of sound would it be? And then just take another deep breath in and out and just tune into love. Or a higher level frequency note, whatever it is that you can feel like without forcing it, just feeling good within your body. Just let yourself feel good. Not forcing it, just let it freedom, happiness, joy, compassion. Just let it lighten. You might picture something. What do you see? What does it sound like? Just let yourself breathe. Is it expansive? What you're doing is you're adding compassion to the frequency that was heavy. That's the actual mechanism of change. When you bring awareness plus safety to an emotion, your brain recodes it. It's like the amygdala saying, Oh, I can feel this emotion that I've been avoiding and still survive. And it's okay. And the cortisol drops, and the oxytocin and the serotonin rise, and the neural pathways start to remap and around connection instead of fear, so I feel more connected to myself. And then the energy shifts because the biology shifts and everything starts to shift, and I'm no longer afraid of it. And spiritually, that's the moment that love enters the equation. God is love, love is healing. Love isn't just a feeling, it's a frequency. It's a frequency that the nervous system needs to learn to hold. You knew how to hold it before, you can learn how to hold it again. The more you practice compassion and love and safety towards yourself, the more yourselves memorize safety. That's why forgiveness for yourself, gratitude towards yourself, everything feels lighter. You're literally moving yourself into a different resonance with life itself because you are life. So when you can start being different within yourself, towards yourself, you actually start being different towards life itself. So maybe the real healing work isn't about chasing a new identity or fixing an old one or trying to reinvent yourself. It's actually just tuning in the frequencies and the vibrations that are innate to you, that are really you, and tuning out the frequencies and the vibrations that are heavy. This is science, this is spirit. It's you remembering your own harmony, if you like, you know, your own vibe. Next, I want to talk about compassion, how it really rewires the brain, how the chemistry of love becomes the structure of freedom. So let's talk about compassion. Honestly, this is so important. It's not just about sending someone a card or saying the right words. Real compassion is actually biologically like a miracle. When you feel genuine compassion towards yourself or anyone else, they can really feel it. And what happens is there's a huge change within your whole body. You feel different. Your ventral vagal complex lights up. That's the part of your nervous system that tells your body, we're safe, someone really gets me. And your heart rate slows, and your breathing evens, and your brain starts to make chemicals and oxytocin and serotonin that whisper, I feel like I can connect back to myself again, and connection to another person is available. So when every time you choose kindness instead of criticism, you're literally training your brain to interpret life differently. Remember, you are life. That story of I'm broken or there's something wrong with me stars to fade. And you start replacing it with compassion and understanding, and I really get me. And that then changes the meaning that you've associated to the emotion that's been wired into your amygdala. Yeah? Because what happens every time we don't process an emotion is that there's a meaning that we've associated with it. The amygdala doesn't know the difference between physical and emotional threat. So when you flood your system with some sort of judgment, oh, it must mean I am a disappointment or I'm a failure, or there's something wrong with me, I can't have love, it literally fires the same survival alarm as though you are physically going to be harmed. But when you bring compassion where there was fear, the alarm quietens and the prefrontal cortex, your wise, reflective self that thinks things through comes back online. And honestly, you cannot think your way through this because your amygdala is four times faster than your prefrontal cortex. So you can't, you can have all the greatest plans in the world, but you cannot outwit this. If you do it in a way where you quiten your amygdala and you allow your prefrontal cortex to come online, you can actually choose what it is again that you want. So compassion isn't a weakness. Anyone that tells you that compassion and feeling your feelings is a weakness and anything like that, it is all they're doing is trying to have power over you. Because when you are compassionate scientifically, you have nervous system power. You're getting your nervous system back online, you have brain power, your whole biology shifts. So you're getting your power back. It's the difference between reaction and response. It's between repeating the same old patterns and then rewriting it. Let me tell you what it looked like for me. I used to think that I had to be perfect. And because I couldn't be perfect, I didn't belong. And because I didn't belong, I might as well not try and belong. And that then kept me safe. But that trying to keep myself safe by trying to fit in was just a self-protection, wearing nice clothes. When I really allowed myself to feel that I'm not perfect, I belong to myself. I don't need to belong to and try and fit in with everyone else. When I allowed myself to really feel the pain of not belonging, not fitting in, and not trying to outrun it or trying to protect myself from it, the emotions softened. I didn't have to do anything to fix it. And I allowed myself to belong to myself. I accepted myself. And that's the essence of compassion. Because then I was able to connect with others. I'm real, I'm authentic. I can use my pain to actually try and make a difference. Like do this podcast. That's what science would call neuroplasticity, new neural pathways forming because of safety, not shame. So spirit might call it grace. I like to think of this as a frequency of compassion. Become aware. Awareness, number one, notice your vibration, become aware of how you're feeling. Two, allowing it. This is what makes you so different from, say, a toxic individual who can't allow themselves to feel their emotions because they have too much protection around feeling any emotions about themselves. They don't allow themselves to have that self-awareness. And in order for us to get to the amygdala, we have to, this is scientific, we have to have self-awareness to be able to get to it. Not analyzing, not overthinking, but actual self-awareness to go inward. Only then can we then reassign what we used to feel with a new meaning. We can create a new meaning and we can create what that does, it actually liberates that emotion. It liberates it, you let it go. And as you let it go, you actually then are able to switch on to the rest of your brain. And that you have more compassion for others and you have more wisdom for yourself and for others. The more you practice these four steps, the faster your system learns that calm doesn't mean danger or emotion doesn't mean danger, that being gentle and loving with yourself doesn't mean you're weak. It means you're whole. And maybe that's what healing really is. It's not erasing the past. It really isn't because you can't. It's impossible to erase a past. But it's giving your nervous system new evidence, proof that peace is possible, a new vibration is possible for you. Next, I want to zoom out to look at how fear and power play out in the world around us, because there's a lot of that going on right now. And how reclaiming your inner frequency becomes an act of freedom.

unknown:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

So let's talk about fear and power. A lot of people misunderstand this because the more I study people and the more I study myself, the more I realize how much our world actually runs on fear. This is true in families, in companies, in businesses, in entire nations, how countries are run. All built on the idea if you can make someone afraid, you can control them. And that's what we've grown up in. And that will help you have more compassion towards yourself about any situation that you're in or any patterns that you replay. Okay. And I know it's wild, right? It's the same mechanism once protected us from predators of the tigers in the jungle and stuff, is now being used to manage employees or sell products or sh even shape our identity. I was watching this documentary about the mafia. I don't know if anyone else has seen it on Netflix. There's quite a few actually. And I was like, this is really fascinating how they keep everyone loyal through fear. The most important thing for the mafia boss is to instill so much fear into all its people and those around them that the more fear they can use, the better they become. You don't know what will happen to you. And that unpredictability creates chaos in the brain and the body. So your nervous system stays on high alert, waiting for what's going to happen next. And it's not different from certain workplaces or families or relationships or the governments. It's intermittent reinforcement where you get approval sometimes and a rejection sometimes, where you reject others. You have to have an enemy of some sort, where you're part of a group, a society, a belonging. And that's why we've misunderstood belonging in a lot of ways. And our brain has learned safety equals control, which is completely wrong. We aren't in control of ourselves, somebody else is. So if you stay small to stay safe, you're under the control of someone else. When fear runs the system, love can't move freely. There's no love, okay? It's either love or fear that's running your system. And if fear is running your system, it's in it's inevitable that you will shut down. You will start to shut down and it will start to lock out the prefrontal cortex where you can't think straight. And that part then lets us. That means that we can't empathize with other people or imagine or create what it is that we want. We can't even imagine that it's possible for us. That's why people who are lost in fear need to have someone else to blame. You could be the most amazing person, you're really trying to help someone. If you come across a narcissist, they will be the best victim out there and they will be blaming everybody else, but they will be instilling fear into everyone, guilt and shame. You literally are fearful of in having these emotions and experience these emotions, so then they make you under their control. When you get people who are toxic, they literally can't access the Of the brain that would allow them to look inward and do self-reflection. And that doesn't happen just in individuals, it happens in institutions, it happens in countries. The more power is hoarded, the more fear is needed to maintain it. True power, real power, the kind that lasts, doesn't come from dominance. It comes from self-connection. You don't need to have control over somebody else. Because those people think that there's only a finite amount of power. They don't realize that true power comes from within you. If you can connect to yourself, you can do anything. You don't need to go around dominating other people. Because once you can sit in your own pain, no one can weaponize it against you. When you can feel like I don't care what anyone else thinks about me, then they can't use that against you to try and control you. That's what I mean by freedom. Freedom isn't doing whatever you want, it's about no longer being controlled by the frequencies of fear that were installed in you. It's about the ability to pause and breathe and choose a higher vibration. Even when things around you are screaming for you to collapse and you want to give in. It's about actually facing the fear, facing the emotion that you fear. And that's where science and spirit come together. When you face fear with awareness, the amygdala stops hijacking the show. The frontal lobe lights up, giving you perspective. Your body shifts from fight or flight into what neuroscientists call rest and connect. Spiritually, it's the same moment the heart reopens. The frequency changes, from contraction to expansion. You are unlimited. And you can reclaim that power that was always yours, the power to stay present. That's why every spiritual teacher, every wise tradition keeps returning to love. It's not sentimental, it's a state of consciousness. Love is what you're wired up for. Love expands, fear contracts. Fear is all about giving power to someone else. And you decide, breath by breath, which vibration you're going to feed. So let's bring it home. Let's talk about connection and what happens when we remember that love is not something we earn, it's what we're made of. Just take a moment with me to take a deep breath in. You've walked through disappointment, fear, compassion, and power. Notice what your body feels like right now. Maybe there's just a little bit more room in the chest. Maybe there's a little bit of heaviness, and that's okay. This is what allowing feels like. Remember that story about the little boy or girl that you used to be. Maybe you thought you had to be perfect. The truth is you never needed to earn love. You only needed to be reminded that you are love. That is the truth. You were born connected. Before the striving, before the fear, before the noise, before the conditioning, before all the pain that's stuck in the amygdala, you were already whole. Neuroscience tells us that the brain can always rewire. Spirit tells us the heart can always reopen. Together they say it's never too late to tune back to the frequency of love. So maybe giving up isn't quitting. Maybe it's laying down the armor that kept you from feeling a pain that you're afraid to feel. Maybe it's surrendering the illusion of control. So you can experience the truth of connection, the truth of connecting to yourself. Love is not an emotion we chase, it's the field we return to when fear gets released. Every act of compassion, every moment you pause instead of judging yourself, is you remembering that field? And the more you remember, the easier it becomes to live there. So tonight, or whenever you're listening, ask yourself quietly, what frequency am I holding? And if it feels heavy, what note of compassion or love could I add to lighten it up? Just a little. That's all the healing really is. Learning to say soft, enough to keep tuning. You don't have to try so hard, you don't have to fix yourself. You just have to keep returning again and again to love. And before we wrap up, I want to give you something that can help you take this conversation deeper. I've created a free webinar called How to Reset Your Biology for Success. It's about understanding how your body and your energy system work together and how you can literally reset your system to align with the life you want. It should be available by tomorrow. I'm working on it today, maybe even today. So do come back here and check the show notes or the podcast description for the link. It's completely free. My gift to you for being part of this community of people who are ready to shift from fear into freedom. So you can be who you're meant to be. And if this resonated with you, this episode, please do subscribe and share it with someone who might need it. Because every time you share or you're helping someone else remember that healing is possible and that we can raise our collective vibration and frequency together. The more of us who connect through love, compassion, and understanding, the faster the world will change. And you're such an important part of this. We're building a world with more connection, more love, more support, one conversation at a time. I'm sending you so much love until next time. And remember, you can be whoever you want to be. So it's time to be it.