Words That Will Change Your Life
Buckle up, because when you have finished reading this post, you will be a changed person. Maybe not dramatically different, but changed for sure.
95% of our brain activities are automatic activities, controlled and governed by the subconscious mind. We are creatures of habits, and our actions and thinking are largely based on automatic patterns.
On top of the 95%, we have an awareness, which partially resides in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that lies directly behind your forehead. Everything you consciously feel and think is interpreted and experienced here. Consciousness is a strange thing, partly because science cannot explain what it is and where it comes from. The theories surrounding consciousness range from everything has consciousness (panpsychism) to a theory that it is nonexistent, and that our experience of consciousness is just an illusion.
We humans are always in flux and forever changing. It’s hard to keep track. Many of us, especially those who are suffering, think that life is static and that the pain you are experiencing will always be there. But we are constantly changing. Every time you think, every time you learn something new, every experience you have, changes you as a person. You change as the nerve cells in your brain and body connect in new patterns (you have 40,000 nerve cells in the heart, 500 million in the stomach region and 100 billion in the brain). Every thought, experience, and memory you have, are represented in the brain by nerve cells (neurons) connected in synapses. Each neuron can be linked to 7,000 other nerve cells.
Every human being constitutes one of the most complex structures we know of in the universe. That is part of the reason why human life is so sacred to me, worth a whole world in itself. I love you, even though I have never met you. You are worth the entire world because you are the entire world. For you!
What changes us the most are ideas that are powerful enough to start a new path.
I have had many epiphanies throughout my life, some of them existential crises that have pushed me off the track and thrown me down the rocks in a painful recoil down the mountain side. Others have been incredibly positive experiences, which I refer to as golden experiences, where I feel I’m one with the universe; where I intensely experience that everything is one. You and I are one, along with everyone else and everything else; everything that has ever existed and is going to exist.
You may think that it is utter nonsense, but the experience actually has a scientific foundation. From quantum physics, we have the term entanglement, which tells us that two elementary particles that have been in contact with each other can end up in a state where they are forever connected, regardless of distance. We were all part of the same primordial substance once. In the Big Bang.
Since we largely function based on our habits and since we are constantly changing, any moment could be a crossroad in your life. You are always heading in one direction, but that direction may be wrong and painful for you. The positive is that you can always change direction.
And that’s what I want for you; for everyone out there feeling excluded, lonely and depressed. Regardless of how you got there, your depression originated from thoughts and feelings, both of which are interwoven concepts that can be changed.
You are already changing; you are continuously changing. You have changed as a result of reading this. That said, you will change if you read an article from the tabloid press as well, but I like to think that the change happens on two different levels.
Imagine a stream running down a muddy mountain side. One day a man comes and digs a hole on one side of the creek. Part of the water flows into the hole he made. The water begins to dig out a larger hole. One day there was so much water in the creek that the hole formed a new creek further down. The stream has changed direction. And it all started with a small shingle shovel.
By reading this, something has begun changing in your brain. A positive change. You may already notice the change? Can you feel it?
What we have experienced so far in life is in many ways not important. You cannot change the past, but you can change how you relate to it. You can also change the days ahead. Not necessarily a dramatic, revolutionary change, but a gradual change, moving things little by little every day.
The rest of your life can continue to be painful, or you can gradually create a better future.
All you need to do is take small steps in a positive direction and continue the journey. Life is an adventure, even if you suffer today.
Continue your change with 14 Steps to Happiness.