The Secret to a Better Life
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There was a time when I wanted to study the brain when I grew up. I had heard that we only use a small part of our brain and I thought it would be amazing to be able to figure out what we could do if we just unlocked those other dusty sections.
Turns out it wasn’t true. According to MIT, we actually do use 100% of our brain, which is good news because I would’ve had to take tons more math classes to become a scientist and that just wasn’t for me.
But while we may use 100% of our brain, we don’t always use it in the way we could.
A sentence from my Simple Abundance book: “The greatest secret to living a happy and fulfilled life is the realization that everything is created in our minds before it manifests itself in the outer world.”
I’ve often heard that our subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between what’s real and what’s imagined. That’s why you can imagine yourself hitting the golf ball straight down the fairway and your brain thinks you’ve actually done it. You can essentially “practice” a sport just by thinking about it, and it’s been proven that doing that is just as powerful as the real thing.
I recently found an article on Medium titled “Everything is Created Twice: First in The Mind Then in The Reality.” The author suggests that we look around and realize that everything in the room you’re in was once first imagined in someone’s mind - the tv, the phone, the couch, the bookcase, etc.
They give the example that if you wake up in the morning thinking it’s going to be a terrible day, you will definitely have some awful experiences that will support that thought. But, if you wake up in the morning thinking you can’t wait to see all the good things that are going to happen, you’ll end up with several great experiences that prove you were right.
“You created your reality based on how you perceived things, and that all started in your mind.”
Change is good
The crazy thing about this is that by focusing on the positive, your brain literally begins to change. You create new neural pathways so that you are more positive in the future, thus bringing you more positive experiences.
Here’s a personal example. I used to think that the idea of writing and publishing a book was crazy. It could never happen. But I started imagining what that looked like in smaller chunks (a great idea with any big project).
I could see the beginning of the story and I wrote it down. From there, I took the three main characters (because three is always a magic number in literature) and thought about what their life was like and how their stories were all interconnected. I wrote that down. After realizing I had enough ideas for an entire book, I started making sure I was writing and exploring those ideas every day.
Now I’ve begun to think about what the book launch party is going to be like. You’re all invited, by the way.
If you’re not happy with the way your life is going, all you have to do is rethink it. Start with your dream, no matter how big it may seem. If the dream is to own a restaurant, move to Italy, or become a doctor, what is one small project you could do today to move you closer to making that dream a reality?
You’ll notice that once you’re open to ideas, the knowledge you need magically appears. And if you’ve forgotten what that dream you had was, it’s time to get quiet and go within, because all the answers are somewhere inside.