 | Your internal dialogue is critical... |
Why is this so?
Your hunter/gatherer ancesters did not live in the controlled environment that we benefit from today. They needed to be constantly aware of ever present and life threatening surprises.
I had the priviledge of hiking through the wilds of Wyoming recently. Trust me, when your environment becomes one where every square yard has some kind of animal tracks and you come across fresh grizzly bear scat during cub season, you become uniquely aware that neither your college degree nor your Nikon are going to protect you from a dangerous encounter.
Those of your ancesters that were predisposed to focus on the negative likely survived at a greater percentage and were thus "naturally selected," surviving to pass on their negative focused genetics to us... It makes sense for us to have an innate fear of spiders and snakes, since the act of learning about them could be deadly, and so these spider and snake survivors passed this on to us.
"Well, we have evolved since then!" I hear you say. No, we haven't... Evolution is a very slow process. Civilization has been on the scene for a remarkably short time relatively (the first roll of toilet paper was only patented in 1871!) and so we are still very much pre-disposed to seek out the negative.
The difference in today's world is the negatives/dangers/worries we spend our time seeking are no longer deadly. This fact, however doesn't stop our inherited brains from their chronic search for the bad... We are also bombarded by negative messages; "Only the strong survive," "You're not good enough," "It's a dog eat dog world," and "Only the cream rises to the top," which further erode our experience and add an additonal helping of NEGATIVE to our plate...
The good news is we can reprogram our own brains! Think of a map where all the cities and towns are marked but no roads connect most of them. When you focus on a thought you build a tiny road. The more often you travel that road the bigger the road becomes. You can actually build a superhighway from the city, "How am I feeling" to the city "Look at all the positives surrounding me!"
Seriously this takes practice, and it takes five positives to overcome one negative thought because of our genetic inheritance, but the more you seek the positive, the more you will reprogram your brain to notice them. Your existence will steadily become a more positive one!
Today, notice when you hear the negative messages begin to play their loop in your head, or when people say things like, "Same shit, different day," and pull a 180. Immediately look for something good right then. Practice doing this all day, everyday and you life will become brighter, more positive...HAPPIER.... Trust me, trust me!
Duffy
No comments:
Post a Comment