I think this is my weekend of epiphanies...lol. I bought a magazine yesterday that was all about happiness. I started to browse throught it this morning and came across a small article, only two pages, called Think Yourself Happy. Sounds like something I would be interested in doing so why not. WOW!!! The premise of the article is that you really only need to know three things about how your brain works in order to have it fully cooperate with you in achieving what you want out of life. 1. Your mind does what it thinks you want it to do and is wired to move you towards pleasure and away from pain. 2. The way you feel about any situation is linked to only two things: the pictures you make in your mind and the words you say to yourself. 3. Your mind loves and wants to return to what is familiar (thought-wise). To achieve success, you must work at making the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar. For example: How many times have you gone on a diet and then been confronted with a piece of chocolate cake and thought to yourself...”I really want that piece of cake but I can’t have it because I am on a diet.” Remember fact #1. Your brain wants to get you what you want so your desire for that piece of cake actually increases. So what you say to yourself instead is “I have chosen not to eat that piece of cake and have chosen to feel great about that because I have chosen to drop down a dress size.” The specificity of it is apparently important because it very clearly instructs your mind what it is you want. So...today, instead of me saying to myself that “I really want H but I can’t have him,” which only increases my want of him and my sadness and my regret and my anger, etc... Instead I have been saying, “I have chosen not to want H right now and to feel good about it because I have chosen to live a better and a more satisfying life for ME.” Bam!!!! Feeling so much better today.
My H was here this morning and we had a nice chat. He said he has mostly been working this weekend. He did not volunteer any info about Friday’s trip to the city and I did not ask. I am choosing not to care what he is doing and am feeling good about it because I choose to not put myself through any further pain over something I cannot control.” See what I did there? There could be any number of reasons he was there. Clearly it was not a romantic dinner as the restaurant was not that kind of restaurant and it was not enough $ to be paying for two but who really knows. Again...choosing not to care.
The other interesting thing about the mind is that it’s job is not to make you happy. It’s job is to make sure you survive on the planet. It does this by remembering anything that hurt you so you can avoid it in the future. It is a hardwired survival instinct. Has anyone ever had the experience when you are dreading an event or a day at work and the morning of, you wake up with a migraine or the flu? That could very well be your brain giving you what you want which is to avoid doing that thing that you didn’t want to do. It is such a simple concept but also very illuminating when you think of how it works.
Also... pay attention to your words and images as they make a big difference. Think about going on vacation and during the flight thinking about the beaches and beautiful scenery you are going to see. You will have a very different experience of that plane ride than the person beside you who is thinking all about crashing in midair. Soften your words...make them less negative. I.e. “This client is hell,” changes to “this client is a challenge.”
Anyway... I really loved this article because it is just so darn simplistic but also makes so much sense. I already feel so much better. Every time I think of my H now, I am changing my thoughts to that one sentence. I think it is going to really help me over the coming months and hopefully my brain will just start to believe it and I won’t have to keep consciously telling myself that. That’s GAL at its core!!!
There could be any number of reasons he was there. Clearly it was not a romantic dinner as the restaurant was not that kind of restaurant and it was not enough $ to be paying for two but who really knows. Again...choosing not to care.