Hello Hive community,
I am delighted to be with you again today for a theme that is particularly close to my heart, because I am going to talk to you about the brain. A question that many people ask themselves: how does the brain work with our emotions?
First of all, I am going to schematize the brain in a rough way, but which is nevertheless important, there are three big parts:
The first one is what we call the neocortex, which will manage the whole Cartesian part. Then, in the middle, inside, you have the limbic part, which will manage the emotional part. Finally, under the limbic part, you have the reptilian part, which is also important because everything that is reptilian is instinctive, which will allow you to drink, eat, sleep....
Photo from pixabay and edited on fotor
Recently I did some research on the human brain, and the important data that I am going to transmit to you on this extraordinary organ were for me impressive and of which I was absolutely not conscious.
It is important to know that the brain contains more than 100 billion neurons and more than a million billion connections called synapses. These are important numbers, because in the small cranial box, there is all that inside, but it does not stop there. We have in an adult brain more than 150,000 kilometers of axons and many dendrites, which alone, axons and dendrites, could cover the entire earth of 4X its surface. Yes, 4X the surface of the earth with a single human brain, that's really extraordinary. And this is data that marked me, because I was not aware of the potential and what we had inside, and it does not stop there, because either axons or dendrites, until the end of our life, the brain can create.
An important concept to know is that our brain generates more than 60 thousand thoughts a day. And you should know that the brain and emotions work together and humans tend to generate negative emotions more than positive ones.
So, here's an example I like to give, because it's very compelling. It's the story of a teacher at school who says to her students, "I'm going to show you the multiplication table of 9 and I'm going to do it on the board. She takes her pen: "9x1 = 7, 9x2 = 18, 9x3 = 27", and she goes like that until "9x10 = 90". And there, the whole class explodes with laughter: "9x1 is not 7, 9x1 is 9! The teacher looks at them and says: "It's incredible, because out of 10 results, I was wrong on only one, and nobody congratulated me for the 9 right ones. You only retained the one that was wrong".
This is very convincing and significant about the way our brain works. We tend to retain what is wrong, instead of retaining everything that is right.
Second example: I used to work on social networks, I made videos, posts, etc. and I got comments. When you get comments on what you do, you're going to retain only the bad comments, while on the contrary, you have the majority of them that are good. You see the impact of our brain and how it works, and what it can even generate.
That's why I'm currently doing positive psychology training. My dream is to be able to help myself and others to think and see life in a way that is helpful, propulsive, constructive and positive, not negative. Because today, the good news is that we have the possibility to modify our mind, so that it does not manage us, but that we manage it. And it is us who will say to it: "No, no, no, no, no, STOP! All the negative thoughts that you send me, I know today how to observe them, to put them aside, and to catch up with positive thoughts and to focus my attention only on these positive thoughts".
How can we minimize the impact of negative emotions on our own lives?
First of all, accept what is in the present moment, live in the present moment, in the here and now. This is one of the first things that can make you get out of your negative emotions. And above all, what is linked to the present moment in the here and now, is also learning to have the ability to catch negative thoughts and to transform them in a fraction of a second into positive thoughts.
How do we do this? Simply by projecting yourself in a place, in a moment, in a memory that was good, in which you felt positive emotions. It could be the birth of your first child, it could be a weekend spent with your lover, it doesn't matter, but project yourself into an image that makes you feel good. And as soon as you have a negative emotion coming up, sit down, breathe, close your eyes and visualize with your five senses. Everything is encoded in our brain with our five senses. So feel with faith and catch the negative thoughts and turn them into positive thoughts. That's one of the keys. There are others in life. There are no difficulties, there are only challenges. There are no mistakes, there are only feedbacks, learnings and life stages.
And then, also, one last key that I wanted to talk to you about is to stimulate your brain. The brain is a muscle. Stimulate it with things that are good for you: inspirational reading, inspirational videos, people who make you feel good. We'll talk about this in a future article, because I'm preparing it for you. The happiest people in the world, and this is scientifically proven, it was the longest scientific study in the world, are the people who know how to surround themselves with good people and who have a big social network with people who give them love, because they know how to give it.
That's how today, we can transform our emotions and make sure that positive psychology comes into our lives, comes inside us and makes your life, every day, happy. It is only happiness to function in this way. Getting into action, implementing, that's what will make the difference. There are two types of people: those who will succeed and those who procrastinate and do nothing. There are those who just watch and listen to videos and read books, but don't put anything into practice.
