Our brain is arranged in such a way that it is easier for us to focus on the bad, to look for the cause of all troubles in ourselves, than to notice the good in ourselves and others. Therefore, most of the time we are dissatisfied with our appearance, failures at work and in our personal life, inconsistency with our own idea of an ideal person...
We worry so much about who and what will say or think about us that we forget to enjoy life, let alone manage it. As a result, our complexes are getting bigger every day, and self-esteem is getting lower. The author's simple and useful recommendations have helped thousands of people to forever say goodbye to self-doubt and become happier.
Each person has psychological immunity that protects his psyche, just as immunity supports the health of the body. However, while the immune system has to resist any ailments, from catarrhal inflammation to cancer, the psychological immunity has to cope with all kinds of misfortunes and troubles, starting with a carelessly thrown critical remark and ending with the loss of relatives and loved ones. Everyone handles loads differently. Maybe something you don't pay attention to can cause depression in your neighbor. Why is everything so arranged?
Let's philosophize a little ...
You, and I, and other representatives of the human race perceive the inner and outer world, passing it through the brain; that is, in order to perceive the world around us, in one way or another, we have to move this world to our thoughts. But only mental images can be stored there. Therefore, we need to transform the surrounding world into them.
This is what we do all the time! By the way, you are doing it right now. In order to improve the reading process, the image of the book perceived by the eyes must be transformed into nerve impulses that are transmitted to the brain. This is the only way the book becomes visible to you. It is not at all like the physical movement of a book to the mind. Firstly, then it would disappear from the field of view, and secondly, it would hardly fit in the head. In other words, you have now created a mental image of this book. We do the same with everything else.
The mental images created by most of us correspond quite accurately to the surrounding reality.
Therefore, we mostly interact effectively with the world. However, things take a different turn if our mental images cease to correspond to reality. Then we get disoriented and face unforeseen problems. The accuracy of the mental images we create depends on the quality:
- our attention;
- our thoughts
WARNING
Let's talk about focus first. It is the link between you and the world. You receive all information about the environment through attention. It acts as a kind of spotlight. What it illuminates becomes visible to you and moves to your mind. That your attention is not directed remains invisible to you. For example, right now you are ignoring some sounds coming from outside because you are concentrating on reading this book. Is everything just the opposite? Is your attention focused on these sounds and therefore you do not fully understand what you are reading about?
Attention captures certain elements of reality that depend on the person. This means that, even when we are in the same situation, we will focus our attention on different aspects of it. Your spotlight is not exactly what mine is. In general, research results indicate that people with reduced psychological immunity are more inclined to focus on negative information, for example:
- sad, tragic or dangerous events;
- sad, angry or disgusted people;
- words have a negative meaning (for example, "war", "violence" or "murder").
From this it follows that if your "spotlight" is usually directed at everything sad or dangerous, then the picture of the world for you is woven entirely of misfortunes. Then it is not surprising that you often feel anxious and depressed.
Thoughts
The second process that directly affects the quality of the mental images we create is thinking. Attention as such does not correlate the received information with the meaning it has for us. This evaluation is carried out by thinking.
In the human brain, connections are organized in a network: one of them contains positive information about ourselves and the world around us, the other contains negative information. If, as a result of your conclusions, the information is determined as negative, then it is included in the negative network, and you have negative emotions, such as a sense of hopelessness, fear, anger, etc. If your thoughts determine information in a positive network, you have positive emotions, such as joy, curiosity, admiration, etc.
This mechanism can be illustrated by the following example. Imagine a man sleeping soundly - let's call him Oliver. Suddenly he is awakened by a sound coming from the living room. Oliver thinks that a thief has broken into his house, gets scared, grabs his cell phone and listens intently, ready to call the police at any moment.
Now imagine a slightly different situation. Anna, a peacefully sleeping woman, suddenly wakes up from some sound coming from the living room. She thinks it might be a slapped doorbell. Hanna feels safe and falls asleep again.
Oliver and Hanna's attention is focused on the same object - the sound that came from the living room, but they think differently when thinking about this sound. Thus, we got to the main point: our thoughts are not something unambiguous. Oliver and Hanna interpret the sound differently, and therefore they form different mental images of the situation. Oliver's mental image tells him of danger, while Anna's mental image carries no threat. And, as we have just seen, this has its consequences for each of them: Anna peacefully falls asleep, and the frightened Oliver, having lost sleep, continues to clutch the mobile phone in his hand.
If the mental images you create are excessively negative, then perhaps your thinking is infected with thought viruses. Thought viruses are practically imperceptible mechanisms that, being embedded in your mental process, affect it. Infected thoughts are often believable and based on real experience, but they are excessively negative. From the book, you will learn what mind viruses are and, importantly, how they manage to fool your psychological immunity.