The Brain Science Behind Depression, Anxiety, Anger and Most Mental Misery Part 1

Why is it so damn hard to be happy? Because your brain does not care about being happy or your happiness, it has zero interest in that. Of course you may be thinking, “Wait a minute, I definitely care about being happy”. But that is not the brain talking, that is your mind. And they are not the same. Your mind is the consciousness that resides in your brain. Your brain’s main job is to keep you alive with all of the involuntary actions. Try to hold your breath, it will knock you out so you can get breathing again, if you drink too much it will have you pass out, so you will stop drinking. That’s it’s job. It cares about danger not your unhappiness . If you never heard this before, it is because this is a rather recent finding. We now understand that our brains barely notice the positive things in our lives. Over the next several articles I am going to explain to you how to overwrite your brain and rewire it so that it begins to look for all the positives in your life, In 2 to 4 weeks you will be feeling more happy, less stressed and less anxious than you have in years. I will show you how to harness the control of your mind to rewire your brain, so you can find joy again. Your brain is not against pleasure and enjoyment, it just was never wired to understand that happiness is what will keep you healthy and safe in the 21st century. Being anxious and upset will make you sick, miserable and can eventually kill you. In 1998 neuroplasticity was discovered. Meaning that our brain areas can switch jobs, grow new cells and even enlarge areas depending on how much use we give them. Neuroplasticity is what happens to the blind person who can suddenly hear almost superhuman. All because the occipital lobe that you used to receive input from his eyes will now look for the closest input it can get which is the hearing, so it joins forces and doubles the amount of brain power used to hear. There are people who after a head injury can suddenly play piano or paint when they never did before. This discovery is the foundation of all hope regarding the brain’s ability to repair damaged areas and improve itself. Rewiring the brain’s tendency to focus on negativity to refocusing much of it’s attention on the positive, is the core of this article and those to follow. Here I will explain why we are so accustom to finding the problems in our life when we all just want to find the good and be happy. To do this I will be distilling the latest neuroscience discoveries and my own experiences of the last 18 years into a practice that you can begin right away. The brilliant neuroscientists, psychologists and neurobiologists of the last 20 years have been paving the way for this practice, many building on each others discoveries. I am none of those. I am a counselor who has spent the last 26 years working with people who were trying to find ways to control their emotions to have a better life. In this search together, I have learned as much from them as I have from the world of science. This workbook is to assist people using a practice of focusing on the good. Author and Neuropsychologist Rick Hansen has done a great job of writing 2 very in-depth books on this subject, (Hardwiring Happiness and Stress Proof Your Brain) which paved the way for me to create this workbook. Here I tried to breakdown the practice of taking in good experiences using tangible examples in everyday life, metaphors, and explanations of past behavior. This will assist you with developing a conscious, regular habit so that you will see very fast results. Like with meditation, which is simple but not easy, so can this practice be described. But with just some daily effort in 10-second clips you will see amazing results in 2-4 weeks.