Years ago, when I had to choose a slogan for my “Be happy in LIFE” business, I chose happiness is a choice. Many people tell me they have things in their lives that make them unhappy, and they did not choose them. This is true! I have things like that too. While we might not always be able to choose to have things that make us happy, we all have the choice to decide what to do with the things we have.
I think the question of choice is very sensitive. Beliefs because lots of our thoughts, feelings and beliefs are formed in the subconscious mind, the part of the brain that is hidden from us and seems like a complete mystery. Our minds are like an iceberg. The conscious mind is just the tiny tip sticking out of the water, while the subconscious is the massive body underneath that is in charge of 90% of our actions. How can we choose to control something we have no access to?
All we need to do is change our perception of our subconscious. It is actually within our control to change. We have a lot of access to our brains. In fact, we access our subconscious every second, but we do it so fast and naturally that we do not even notice. Slowing down and noticing what is happening to us can help greatly make good and happy choices.
In order to notice what is going on with our brains, we need to know how it works and how it is wired. There are 3 parts in the brain:
The Primitive Brain
Also called the Reptilian Brain. This part of the brain is the oldest part and is mainly used for survival. When you think of it, think of a snake, searching for food. It bites when it thinks there is danger.
The Mammalian Brain
Also called the Limbic Brain. This part of the brain was developed a bit later in our evolution and is in charge of our connections, our ability to care, relationships, intimacy, pleasure, spirituality, and emotions. When you think of this brain, think of a puppy that goes around looking for adventure and wagging its tail happily as a sign of attention.
The Analyzing Brain
Also called the Neocortex Brain or the Thinking Brain. This part of the brain was developed later in our evolution. This part of the brain is the most complex part and is in charge of abstract thinking, analyzing, and making decisions. When you think of this part of the brain, think of a calculator, which always calculates to find the right answer, the right choice, or the right way.
Each part of the brain has an essential function, and they work together. However, in some situations, like stress, the primitive brain takes over. At our house, we call it the Lisa Doolittle syndrome (from “My fair lady”) – no matter how much you learn and evolve, when you are stressed, you revert to your primitive instincts.
The Superior Snake Brain
The snake of our primitive brain uses pain and pleasure to function. It has two main things in its “mind” – food (yummy, yummy!) and the thought of biting at the first sight of danger. If it is full, everything is nice and happy, but when the snake sees a possible threat, it is ready to bite everyone around. In our modern lives, this snake perceives danger in every discomfort. Danger is immediately translated to an increase in heart rate and high alert functions. We find ourselves getting jumpy at shadows.
Understanding the relationship between the three brains is essential to understanding our subconscious. When we are under pressure, the snake brain takes over. After how many stressful situations have you found yourself saying, “I should have done this” or “I should have said that”? But it is too late. In these situations, the reptile brain thinks you are under threat and automatically shuts down the puppy/mammalian brain. Because this is not the time for connections and relationships. It is too dangerous. It also shuts down the calculator/analyzing brain. Because who has time for thinking right now? You are in danger! This means our feelings are out of balance and it is very hard for us to think and make good decisions.
Just think of your health or weight, if you are in danger, who cares if you are sick or fat?
Imagine you are walking through the jungle, and you see a lion. Which part of your brain takes charge?
Is it the calculator saying, “Well, Lion, let’s talk reason. If you eat me now, you might have indigestion due to my medication overdose. The smartest thing to do would be to eat the monkey and I suggest doing it early in the morning when the monkeys come to drink in the pond”?
Probably not.
Is this the time for the puppy brain to say, “Listen lion, I had a bad day today, I had a fight with my husband this morning. She told me I snored last night and hurt my feelings. I am not in the mood for your attempt to eat me alive. I have a bit of an issue with your morals. Why can’t you be a considerate lion and leave me alone? Can’t you see I am busy feeling sorry for myself now?”
Probably not that one either.
When you see a lion in the jungle, the snake takes over and shouts either, “Attack”, “Run” or “freeze” (the three F’s – fight, flight, freeze). It does it so loudly you do not even have time to turn on the calculator or feel sorry for yourself. Whatever happens, when our stress levels are too high, the other parts of our brains are completely out of the picture. We either bite or pretend we are not there and eaten alive as hard or run as far as we can.
Wires and highways
The thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and every transaction in our mind is like a very sophisticated chain of roads, streets, and highways. Think of it as wires where the electricity is moving at different speeds.
The speed and the length of this wire is determined by how many times you pass through this “street”.
Let’s understand how highways are formed.
On a conscious level, we would label all kinds of anger with the same five letters: a.n.g.e.r. The puppy brain is able to distinguish between “I was slightly angry”, “I was angry”, “I was very angry” and “I was soooooooo angry”. In the brain, the feeling is stored along with its intensity.
Whenever something happens to us, the puppy brain searches our emotion bank for similar feelings we experienced in the past. This helps it decide how to translate the new information.
Every experience creates an emotional reaction or a wire that links our brain stores. When the event is significant to us and we experience strong emotions, or if it repeats itself, the wire becomes “thick”. Later on, we can reach that emotion faster.
When our ratings of our feelings are very strong, as in “I am so angry, I’m furious”, we are at risk of letting the snake take over.
Thick highways
Wires are a string of nerve cells or neurons called dendrites, linked together in a particular pattern. This is the storage of our experiences. It is estimated that each person has 100 billion neurons and each of them is connected to 100 to 100,000 other neurons. Some connections create a circuit. Wires become “thick” when the experience stimulates strong emotions or occurs repeatedly.
Wires in the brain are like a path in the tall grass. If you run through once, and never go back again, the grass gradually straightens up and you cannot see the path anymore. If you run through it firmly, or you run through it a couple of times, it becomes a road, and you can see it from a distance. When you walk through it repeatedly, it eventually becomes a highway. On a highway, it does not take long to get from A to B. It is the same with your emotions. Once a particular event is linked strongly to a particular emotion, you will find yourself experiencing the reaction much quicker when the event happens regularly. This is the main reason we go to food for comfort straight away. We have a highway that was formed the second we were born. I cry because life is tough, and the boob comes with food to comfort me.
What this means is that if something were to happen to us today, we would react automatically based on our wiring from previous years. For example, when you were a kid, you felt belittled when your dad yelled at you. If the experience happened repeatedly, you would have developed a wire in your brain (a thick wire, maybe even a highway) that says, “Someone yelling at me makes me feel small and helpless”. Now you are all grown up. But the next time your partner yells or even your child or boss, you might feel exactly the same. Even if the partner, child, or boss is yelling because they are tired and frustrated, or because of something that does not have anything to do with you.
To understand our emotional reactions today, we can use the same methods astronomers once used to look at the sky. When you see a star in the sky, it is a dead sun whose light we still see light years after. Our brain is very similar, we react today, based on old wiring that was created and thickened in our pasts.
Here is an example of how it works: If you had the most wonderful experience as a kid, spending a day on the beach with your family, your puppy brain will trigger the same emotions every time you go to the beach, even when you are 55 years old.
On the flipside, when you have painful experiences as a kid, for example, if you were punished because you played with matches, your puppy brain will trigger those emotions every time you hold a match in your hand, even if you are a mature and responsible adult today.
Our brain uses a pattern matching mechanism. Whatever events happen to us trigger the brain to search for existing wires (or synaptic connections if you want to get technical). You might be thinking, “Why ever would it do that?”. Well, that is the reason it stored the information in the first place – so that we could link future events to previous experiences and protect us from harm. Life is complicated and the brain needs to simplify. Otherwise, we would be completely overwhelmed. This just makes things a whole lot easier.
First, the brain notices the thick, big wires – the significant emotional experiences or the highways. Those extreme feelings tend to trigger the snake brain. If we are at our ultimate joy, the snake is happy, and the ride is smooth. If we are stressed, whether it is because of a real threat or a perceived one, our snake runs, bites, or freezes (fight, flight, freeze). This happens so fast we have not even had a chance to think of involving any of our other brain parts, like the calculator. This ability to bite, run or freeze is a highway – we have created a strong emotional connection between a particular stressful situation and our reaction. It is essential to our survival.
In general, this is a great process, and it keeps us functioning well. Thinking in a specific way strengthens the wire and makes it thicker. The problem occurs if we think bad things. For example, if you constantly think you’re not good enough, not deserving, a loser or helpless and you are walking across the same path, again and again. When something does not happen, they want it, when you are struggling, when you are not “perfect” or not successful in your first attempts to change your habits. If it is slightly similar in one aspect to previous events where you felt the same, you will find yourself zooming down the highway and quickly reaching your emotional destination of “I’m not good enough… not deserving… looser and helpless”. This is true in a positive way as well. when you say “I am able and capable… I can do it… I am strong… I’m committed”. Every tiny thing will remind you that you are. We call this the self-fulfilling prophecy. It is not a theory; it is wiring mechanism. What you think over and over again, is your reality.
Our brains are full of neurons – synaptic connections that link our life experiences to our emotions. Think of them as wires. If you want to change anything in your life, you need to learn to notice your wires, evaluate them, choose good wires, and change wires on your way to happy, healthy you.
So, how do we change our wires?
The key is to choose what you want to think, feel, and believe in. Focus on the things that make you happy. The more you focus on them, the more you will notice them. This is because the more you link positive experiences with positive emotions, the faster your brain will recognize that “this event is making you happy”. Your brain has created a highway.
Here are 5 exercises to help you change your wirings and create wonderful and happy wirings (remember, happiness is a choice, so choose well!):
Make a list of 100 thoughts, beliefs and feelings that are very good and healthy for you. Post this list up in a place where you can read through it often. Here is an example of how this works: I have a belief that “I am very creative”. Every time I do something creative (even if it is a small thing), I strengthen my belief that I am very creative. Make sure the statements do not involve the snake brain. These are events that incite a run or bite response. If you write something down and you feel a bit pressured, maybe it is not a good idea to add this to the list.
This is list is very useful to read whenever you have doubts, feel sad, bad, frustrated, and insecure. It is amazing how easy it is to lift your spirits by reading this list.
If you do not think you could possibly come up with 100, let me tell you that you have billions of happy beliefs and thoughts. You just might not be aware of them all. Take some time to think it through. Start with one thing and the rest will come.
Make a list of 100 thoughts, beliefs or feelings that are badly wired and find alternatives to them. For example, “I freak out every time I need to speak in public”. Think of the one time you succeeded. You can change it to “I was able to speak in front of my friends at the party on Friday” or, “If I practice and rehearse what I want to say, I will be fine to speak in public”. All you need is one example that the statement is not 100% true. If you cannot find one, change it to something empowering, something that you can do and feel better about it. This list will give you an indication of how many wires you need to get rid of. Do not judge yourself. Most of the wires were created when you were a kid, and you did not have the ability to control your wiring.
At the end of every day, write 10 good things that happened to you during the day. Do not be tempted to write about the things that did not go well. There is no point treading that path again. We want those wires to die off. It will give you an opportunity to make better wiring connections. A psychologist by the name of Seligman, found that writing down good things that happened to you during the day for 3 weeks increased people’s happiness significantly. Try it for 3 weeks.
When you experience a feeling, rate it. In emotional intelligence, we believe that rating is a great way to measure your feelings and be able to manage them later on. If you are upset 1 or upset 5, the management of it is different. Rating is a very practical and powerful tool. The more you do it, the better you will be at noticing how you feel. Learn to treat your feelings the way your brain does. Your brain uses chemicals to give a physical rating, but you can simply use a written scale. Try rating your feelings on a scale of 1-3 or 1-5. I personally like the 1-10 scale and in the fine-tuning stages of emotional awareness, 1-100. Any scale is fine. Choose the one you like best. This technique is useful at every age, every stage, every intellectual ability and for any purpose.
Imagine a scene in your life where you were extremely happy. When everything is perfect, and you are very happy. Find that scene and write it down. If you have a photo of it, use it. I you can make a collage of the scene, that is great. If it is a piece of music, keep it. The idea behind this activity is to disturb your bad wires or connections. Whenever you are down or unhappy, abruptly shift your focus (even for a split of a second) to your happy thought/photo/collage/music. This will disturb your bad wiring. If you do it several times, the brain will look for other paths.
There are some other, more painful strategies to divert the attention, like using the rubber band technique. This is where you flick a rubber band on your wrist whenever you experience a negative event. It works, but I personally do not like it. It is much better to use a positive strategy much like the EBT (emotional brain training) than to replace pain with another kind of pain.
If you are struggling with health or weight or wish to make a change, remember your subconscious wiring is running the show. If you want to take over, you first need to stay away from the primitive brain. The primitive brain is a prison. When you are inside, you can’t access other parts of the brain and if you feel stuck or jailed it is because you are.
If you learn the mechanism of the three brains and those highways, you can choose… to be free!
Happy wiring!
Ronit
The Happiness Coach
https://www.behappyinlife.com
https://www.ronitbaras.com/
