No Regrets

10/08/2021

Maybe you saw the YouTube video showing a huge chalkboard placed in the middle of New York City with the words “WRITE YOUR BIGGEST REGRET” written at the top.  People of all descriptions began to write -- and there was one word that showed up in every response. 

What do you think it was?  PAUSE --”Anyone want to make a guess?”

It was the word “NOT” -- not finishing my MBA”, “not spending more time with the kids,” “not traveling the world,” “not starting a savings account in my 20s,” “not saying YES to things,” “not following my artistic talent,” “not being a better friend,”..

All these regrets have something in common.  There are all about chances not taken, words not spoken, dreams never pursued. There were tears -- and there was one man who said “Thank you, thank you” several times.

Then the people who lingered were given an eraser.  You should have seen the smiles as people wiped the board clean.  One woman commented: “A clean board seems like where I want to be, seems like where I want to go.  It’s hopeful.  It means there’s possibility.”

It’s liberating to know that it’s not the missteps -- some of them colossal -- that I’ve taken in life that I’m likely to regret;  it’s the steps not taken. 

IT’S TIME TO TAKE SOME STEPS!

REBOOT THE POWER CENTER OF YOUR BRAIN

06/20/2015

I grew up with the truism that few of us use more than 10 percent of our brain power.  It turns out that we're using even less -- WAY less.

What kind of power are we talking about?  Here's the new thinking:  "If you were to write out your brain's potential as expressed by the number of possible neural connections it could make, it would take you 75 years to write out all the zeros."

In other words, our potential to achieve what we want is essentially without limit.

So why do so many of us feel powerless and stuck?  Basically the answer is that we don't understand where our greatest power resides.  

More oversimplification:  We have two brains --no, not the left brain and the right brain-- the CONSCIOUS BRAIN and the NONCONSCIOUS BRAIN.

Mr. Assaraf calls our conscious brain "the captain of the ship."  It charts the course and gives the orders.  Will, memory, perception, reasoning, intuition and imagination all originate in the conscious mind.  Courage, discipline, loyalty, perseverance, vision are the conscious mind's domain.

The conscious mind is where dreams are born, new paths are chosen, new risks are taken, new initiative explored.  Pretty impressive stuff!

So, why doesn't it take us all the way there:  Why do we procrastinate, fail to persist, worry and get distracted?

The answer is:  The conscious mind is limited and very short term when compared to the nonconscious mind.

Let's look at pure physical mass:  Conscious Brain -- 17 %    Nonconscious Brain -- 83%

How about speed of impulse (as recorded by MRI, PET, SPECT and/or MEG -- see above)?  Conscious Brain ---  120-140 mph (pretty fast, right?)  Nonconscious Brain -- over 100,000 mph!

Bits per second?  Conscious Brain -- 2,000         Nonconscious Brain -- 400 BILLION

Control of perception/behavior?  Conscious Brain- 2 to 4%  Nonconscious Brain --96-98%

As the authors of The Answer say, we should all be very glad that our conscious mind is not in charge of running our biochemistry -- 10 quadrillions reactions per second.  We wouldn't last 5 seconds.  Our conscious minds can't keep track of all that.  The good news is that our nonconscious minds can.  Your conscious mind is the captain, but your nonconscious mind is the whole crew.

Our conscious minds lose focus every 6-10 seconds.  How often do our nonconscious minds lose focus?  NEVER, not once.  Not ever.

Our nonconscious mind is the power center of the brain.  It's where our habits reside.  The conscious mind defines, articulates and sets goals, but it's our nonconscious minds that follow through with all the millions of actions necessary to achieve those goals -- OR obstructs us by running on old programs.  

So, we need to re-boot with new productive, empowering programs.

To follow: IS THERE ANYTHING TO AFFIRMATIONS AND VISUALIZATION?

PART ONE: THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE SECRET

05/20/2015

Most of us subscribe to the language of "attracting" good things in our lives, but maybe, like me, you feel that it's more voodoo than an actual plan of action, more wishful thinking than reality.  

That's how I felt -- like the agnostic who might be thinking, "Okay, I'll hold God open as an option just in case hell fires exist" -- I thought, "Okay,  I'll say my affirmations using the present tense, keep an upbeat attitude, visualize all good things raining down on me -- just in case there's something to this Law of Attraction business."

Then someone loaned me a book called The Answer by John Assaraf and Murray Smith. Assaraf and Smith are not scientists, but interviewed hundreds of scientists and people who had created spectacular success in their lives to find out WHY some people seemed to be able to orchestrate their lives with more certainty and less struggle.   It was a big AHA! moment for me -- the science behind the law of attraction!

It turns out that there are people, throughout history, who have learned how to tap into a part of the brain that hadn't even been mapped until about about 18 years ago.  To quote Mr. Assaraf, "98 percent of what we know about the brain we learned within the last decade (pub. date 2008) and 80 percent of what we thought we knew turned out to be false."

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and even more precise brain-scanning technologies like Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Magnetoencephalography (MEG) are all instruments that have allowed us to map the brain's electrical activity in detail.  Finally, we could watch the brain think in real time.  This literally revolutionized the world of neuroscience.

AND Mr. Assaraf proposes, this new science revealed a critical error in how most of us are using our brains.  

To follow:   REBOOT THE POWER CENTER OF YOUR BRAIN