Happiness On Demand

Hello Reader,

I’ve been feeling better and better lately, and I’ve been wondering what the key to my healing has been.

I thought much of it was just because enough time had passed, until I saw this quote from a psychologist:

And it hit me. It’s not time that’s healed me, it’s the new input I’ve been consistently giving my mind.

I’ve literally been teaching my mind not to be depressed.

In this newsletter, I’ll try to explain how it works.

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Your Mind Dwells on What It Knows

What I’ve learned about the mind lately is absolutely fascinating to me.

You see, the mind seeks what’s familiar, not what makes you happy.

So if you’re constantly experiencing (or have experienced at some point in your life, possibly in your early childhood) failures, grief, heartbreaks, or any other negative thoughts and emotions, those become the familiar experiences for your mind.

Your mind’s job is to keep you safe, and the safest things it knows are the familiar ones, even though they may have brought you nothing but pain.

It sounds stupid, but that’s how our minds have kept us alive through the ages. Familiar things were safe; anything unfamiliar could have been possibly life-threatening.

It’s a survival wiring, a leftover from a different time.

The mind also has biases, one of the most prominent being the confirmation bias.

This means that the mind seeks to confirm what you already know.

You have a belief about life, and your mind tirelessly seeks evidence in your life that will confirm this belief. If you believe you are not worthy of love, your mind will seek evidence for this. If you believe you have bad luck and are always left depressed, that’s what’s familiar to your mind, hence it seeks evidence to confirm this.

Your mind will shift your focus to what you believe to be true, whether positive or negative. Your mind will guide your actions unconsciously, making you repeat patterns and habits that confirm what you already know to be true.

But now that you know how your mind works, you can use it to your advantage.

Because, of course, the confirmation bias (the mind seeking what’s familiar and what it knows) works both ways. It can multiply the positive things in your life as well, not just the negative.

So how do you fix your mind? How do you make health, success, and happiness familiar to your mind? How do you give your mind “new input” to align your system?

Well, you’ll just have to use your imagination.

No, literally.

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Imagination Is Creative

This is perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned while recovering from depression:

Your mind responds to imagination the same way it does to real experiences.

Imagination can be used to gather information from your experiences to build something new, but it can also be a creative force, creating new experiences from pure thought alone.

The mind doesn’t differentiate between what’s really happening and what’s imagined. It reacts pretty much the same way to both.

Think about it: Have you ever woken up from a nightmare covered in sweat, heart pounding?

That was just a dream, but your mind (and body) reacted to it as if it were really happening.

So if you want to familiarise your mind with positive things, like great health, loving relationships, success at work, etc, you have to imagine it.

That’s how your mind will learn to think and react in a new, positive way.

Imagine all the things you want, and your mind will become familiar with them.

Your mind will then use the confirmation bias to your advantage: It will seek evidence around you that proves your newfound beliefs right. It will make you think, speak, and act in a new way that confirms what your mind thinks is true.

That is the key.

Really, that is the key to healing from disease, creating your dream life, and being happy (of course, there can be more to it, but this is the key to getting started).

Imagination is the gateway to everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

That’s what I’ve been using to gently rewire my mind and bring my body/mind/spirit system back into alignment.

It’s mind-boggling how powerful just imagining things can be.

You can literally teach your mind to expect and experience good things.

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The exercise I've been using to teach my mind happiness and fulfillment can be found at the end of this blog post:

Alignment: How to Create Your Life with Intention

Try it for a week or two and see how it works for you.

Until next time,

​Think happy thoughts!

​- Atte

P.S. Your brain doesn’t choose what’s “good” for you; It chooses what’s familiar. But that familiarity doesn’t have to come from real-life experience. Your mind responds the same way to your imagination as it does to your reality. That means by repeatedly imagining new, positive experiences, you can teach your mind that these states are safe and familiar, rewiring it for a happier life.

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Happiness On Demand

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