Our brain is not designed to create happiness, as much as we wish it were so. Our brain evolved to promote survival.
It saves the happy chemicals (dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin) for opportunities to meet a survival need, and only releases them in short spurts which are quickly metabolized. This motivates us to keep taking steps that stimulate our happy chemicals.
Build yourself a positivity circuit to do that, spend one minute looking for positives, three times a day for forty five days. This trains your brain to look for positives the way it is already trained to look for negatives. You may think there aren't enough positives in the awful world around you.
Let’s start with an example I call the Dog Poop Paradox. Pet mess was everywhere when I was young because picking up after your pooch was not the norm. Then customs changed and the streets were gloriously cleaner. Did that make anyone happy? NO. People barely noticed. They do notice an oops, however, and they get plenty mad about it.
We have inherited the brain that helped our ancestors notice threats in time to act. We are skilled at finding threats, even as we seek rewards:
Build Yourself A Positivity Circuit
Negativity will engulf you unless you build yourself a positivity circuit.
When Your Cortisol Surges
Realistic Expectations are the alternatives you generate when your cortisol surges.
PARE Your Negativity
When you build your positivity circuit, you will PARE your negativity with Personal Agency and Realistic Expectations.
What they’re really struggling to do is master their mind in a more capable way:
* I need to get a hold of my mind because sometimes I just have constant negative recurring thoughts that come up. I can’t get rid of them.
* Sometimes I get obsessed about this one bad thing that happened to me.
* Sometimes I can’t even control my attention.
Become more positive through these 8 techniques:
* Observe your thoughts.
* Scan for the 3 daily positives.
* Give someone a shout out.
* Help others.
* Surround yourself with positive people.
* Look after your body and mind.
* Subconscious re-training and inner healing.
* Make time to do something that you love.
On a continual basis you have to think:
* Where are my thoughts right now?
* Are they supporting me or are they automatically coming up negative and self-protective in ways that are not advancing my life?
Make that thing important to you by giving it a sensation:
* You feel that thing.
* You sense it.
* You sense what your next step would be.
* You sense how it would feel if the outcome would be better.
* How would it feel emotionally, psychologically, spiritually for that thing?
For me, I’m an avid reader. To make sure that I have the time to read every day, I wake up before everyone in my home so that I have the time to actually read. Since no one else is up, there aren’t any distractions that are preventing from reading
Since no one else is up, there aren’t any distractions that are preventing from reading. My boundary setting to help me be able to free up this time is that I don’t pick up the computer until I have enjoyed a little reading.
Write down five positive questions that you’re going to ask yourself three or four times a day. Every day you’re going to read these questions to yourself and answer them. They can be questions like:
* What can I feel incredibly grateful for right now?
* How could I surprise somebody right now?
* How could I have fun right now?
* How could I demonstrate love or excellence right now?
I want you to really think about this. The more you take action, the more your brain is automatically conditioned to understand that’s what we do. You can actually condition your mind without doing any thought other than just behaving in a more positive manner and suddenly you find yourself thinking more positively.
So be a person of good positive thinking. Be a person of good positive action. And suddenly, one day you’ll wake up and be like, I feel amazing, extraordinary, positive...