Can we define success on a neurological level? Most people see success as something tangible, something you can touch, or show off with. But this is actually not the case.

Our brains are wired in a very sophisticated way. They fire off neurons which sends an electrical impulse to another neuron, so on so forth. This goes incredible fast and millions of neurons interact with each other.

With this said whenever you feel appreciated, accepted by a group or get an honest genuine complement neurons fire and they release neuro chemicals called dopamine oxytocine or endorfines etcetera. These neuro chemical impulses give you that feeling, that buzz we all like. Which translates to you feeling confident, accepted and joyful.

But this experience is purely based on those chemicals in your brain firing, just something that happens in your brain, not something external. The external world can only influence that what happens in your mind, but also that is based on how you interpret these external situations.

Neurochemical processes in daily life and how we feel connected

Based on these assumptions we can narrow down where happiness and fulfilment comes from. And how to reach those goals. Its simply not money but it´s the acceptance of others. Because these social situations are what releases these neuro chemical’s that we love to feel.

Also we seem to look how other people are different from us. How they are uglier, worse or more stupid than us. But this has an negative effect on us and the people around you. No one likes a person who is always thrash talking other’s. It’s better to focus on how other people are similar to you, whenever you feel another person has the same arguments or thoughts as you have, you feel a form joy because you connected with another.

Focusing on this makes you build positive relationships. So essentially success in life does not lay in all those material stuff but in how we relate ourselves to each other. Okay we might feel a little better when we come to a party driving in the newest car. But that satisfaction is purely based on how other people might react to it. So it´s not the car that does the job. It´s the way people react to your appearance which translates to you feeling looked up to.

Emotions are contagious. How we affect each other’s feelings.

Lets have a classic example of how a cycle of emotions this can happen throughout an ordinary day: At work you happen to have had an argument with a co-worker about something ridiculous and this personally offended you. There builds up a little tension on your general mood because of this argument.

You are happy to go back home and you cycle back through busy streets in the city. A car driver nearly runs you over and you are initially struck by fear, your emotional brain is kicking in and you responses are now based on your emotional state and you begin to act very impulsive in this state of mind. The car driver looks out of his window and reacts in an aggressive manner to you, calling you names and making offensive gestures. At this point most people don’t have the emotional control and handle the situation adequately. Now you feel your justified to react agressively aswell.

You are reaching to a peak emotional state and you have to calm yourself down. Now that you are almost at home you feel like you need something positive, you want to tell what happened today to a friend or lover. You are searching for atleast someone who agrees to you that the driver was an asshol and your co-worker a bitch.

Just to know that how you reacted is justified and correct. But! That is not the case now because you come home and your friend didn’t do the dishes in the kitchen and you take all that emotional baggage’s and overreact to your friend about him or her not doing the dishes. Now for this negative emotional cycle to break its up to the reaction of the friend on his skills to understand why you overreact and why you feel that way.
In most cases the other isn’t emotionally resillient enough to break this negative pattern but instead also kicks into defence mode and starts to argue about you overreacting about a few dishes.

What I try to illustrate with this story is that you can learn more emotional self-control when you carefully reflect on how and why you feel a certain way, then actively steer towards a more positive state of mind. When you have more control over your emotional state of mind, you will function better at tasks, build stronger relationships and give you an overall better feeling about yourself.

When you have more control over your own state of mind, you can also influence other people’s emotions. As an example: while they have a heated argument and you intervene. Because if you dont do that they end up having a fight verbally and it will ruin the whole atmosphere for the group.

I would argue that this sort of self-controlling behaviour falls under emotional intelligence which you don’t learn in a school, which is a shame. I feel it’s a very undervalued skill in our society. A key to success in life is learning this ability. By knowing how important our emotional state of mind is in certain situations we can also use this for building more positive relationships with others.

Say you are going out with friends to a bar. But there is no live band, bad music and boring people etcetera to entertain the group. Everybody is in a very neutral state and isn’t really having fun. And “going out with friends” is considered to be something that is fun. At this point you can uplift the whole “group’s state of mind” by actively putting yourself in the situation wherein you become the entertainer. Showing more joy, talking to others moving to a more active and positive place in the bar/ club or something. Just break the pattern of everyone’s perspective of the evening. Take the initiative, invest time and energy in the person of the group that feels the most negative.

Once you’ve turned his state of mind, others will follow. At this point you can sometimes see a positive feedback loop, wherein everyone affects each other’s emotions positively the whole evening. So whenever you exert this trait people pick up on this and see you as a more sociable and fun person to have around. People want to hang out with you more and you start having stronger relations with people. As you evolve, your social skills increase and you're having a positive impact on yourself and others arround you. This is in my mind the key to succes.

The body and mind connection, how your body influences your state of mind

So we have talked about controlling your state of mind, but how do we do this? Well there are a lot of ways to do this. And one of that is just the state of your body, or better said how you move and posture your body. This is a very broad topic which can spin off to body language. But let’s keep it brief and on topic.

What a fact is on your body and mind connection is that. Whenever you sit confident you are going to feel confident. Whenever you feel confident, you are going to sit confident. So your thoughts have influence on your body and your posture has influence on your thoughts. This is something to keep in mind if you want to have more control on your state of mind.

The mind is everything. What you think, you become. - Napoleon Hill

The brain doesn’t see the difference between you forcefully sitting confident or if you are naturally sitting confident. Also whenever you posture yourself in a confident matter people are going to react to you as if you are confident and treat you that way, and so the positive feedback loop begins again.

So, say you have a job interview but you are not feeling really confident from the inside. The meeting is starting but you just forcefully posture your tone in voice and your bodies movement to confidence you wil feel that way. At this point neuro chemicals start to do their job. The interviewer also perceives you as confident and treats you that way. Gradually you are going to feel more confident and you come across as a way more suitable person for the job.

If you didn’t turn your state of mind around and just went into the room with an unconfident voice, shoulders down and a less positive posture the end result would probably be different. So this is a way to alter your state of mind in a more positive way. I could go on about these topics for ages and feel I should elaborate more but this was just a brief introduction about how to own more in life. Trying to define success in a more suitable and more true way.

I’d like to know your thoughts about these topics I just described and if you would like to see more, I could go more in depth and describe things more concrete. This is just the surface of what I think are very important skills and rules people should act more on, rather than just impulsively following every state of mind your outside world projects on you.

Especially in our society where we are bombarded with massive amounts of information on a day to day basis.

Thanks for reading and have an amazing day!