Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Be Happy - Improve Your Brain’s Chemistry

In case we put out emotional heart out of our body, we would be called a machine developed by God. In our materialistic world, whenever we purchase a machine, the manufacturer provides us a booklet named as Owner’s Manual which contains the system, nature and how to tackle the troubles if we come across while using the machine. But sorry! We did not get any Owner’s Manual explaining how we were designed to function and live correctly and happily.

As we grow up, our education and experiences tell us how to move on. That way, we get an owner’s manual in our individual life. Good people are there giving direction to the road to happiness. Reading about the insights of other great teachers and thinkers, helps us to fine-tune this owner’s manual.

Human beings were designed by the Creator to all function the same way. A good analogy is the hardware of a computer. We are all hard-wired the same. What makes us behave differently from each other is the way we think, feel and act, which you can call, is our software.

What most individuals don’t realize is that the power of the brain. It varies according to the chemistry of our brain. We can dramatically increase the power and efficiency of our brain by optimizing the chemistry of its cranial fluid. Let’s take it step by step.

It is critical to conceptually understand that our brain actually secretes chemicals corresponding to our positive and negative thoughts. The resulting chemistry of our brain’s cranial fluid influences all of our natural abilities and functions. This, in turn, determines how well we perform in everything we do because our brain is like a powerful computer.

The power and efficiency of our wonderful personal computer can be increased dramatically by optimizing the chemistry of our brain’s cranial fluid. This fact is very easy to demonstrate in the world of sports with athletic performance because of the mind/body connection.

For example, do you know the chemical composition of the gasoline that powers your automobile or how the engine in your car works? You know that if you turn on the key and step on the gas pedal, your car runs. If not, you take it to a mechanic to have it fixed. You know that if you put water in the gas tank, your car will not run. It is not necessary for you to become a chemist or a mechanic to drive your car, as long as you understand the basic principles. It may be nice to know the details, but unless you want to be a chemist or a mechanic is it worth the time to learn?

The same is true of our electrochemical nervous system. Higher levels of serotonin in the blood correlate to higher performance levels and that changes in behavior cause serotonin levels to change. Our mind and body function together. Athletes live and die by the performance of their bodies. From their own personal experiences, they easily relate to the concept that their negative thoughts cause their brain to secrete chemicals that immediately impair their performance. This awareness helps them to be more objective and positive when dealing with challenges. It helps them to control their emotions and increase their performance.

A good metaphor to help us understand the influence of our brain's chemistry on our performance is a fine-tuned racing engine. Those engines, designed to run on super high-octane gasoline, sputter when using regular gasoline. This is similar to what happens when we are negative. We put low octane chemicals in our brain, causing our performance to suffer. When we are positive and operating on instinct, our brain, metaphorically, secretes super high-octane chemicals and our ability to perform excels as we enter the “zone.”

Our brain receives input through our five senses. See, Hear, Feel, Taste, Smell

Whenever we ‘see’, ‘hear’, ‘feel’, ‘taste’, and ‘smell’ something, it enters our nervous system as an electrical impulse through a neuron (nerve cell). Once the electrical message reaches the end of the neuron (called a synapse) the electrical impulse/message converts into a biochemical (called a neurotransmitter). Then, this chemical message is converted back into an electrical impulse/message when it reaches the next neuron. This process repeats itself over and over until the message reaches the brain and is acted upon.

In reality we have an electrochemical nervous system. As the chemicals change, the messages change and our brain’s performance varies accordingly. When we are positive and operating on instinct, our brain, metaphorically, runs on super high-octane chemicals. Our performance excels and we feel at our best.

It is important to realize that our electrochemical nervous system is an alternating electrical current that generates an electromagnetic field, which is infinite in nature. The strength and quality of our electromagnetic field is felt by those around us. As our awareness increases we will realize that we can’t hide our feelings from those we interact with and they can’t hide theirs from us. That’s why we have good chemistry with people we enjoy being with and bad chemistry with those that we don’t.

What is even more important to realize is that the electromagnetic field that our thoughts create cause attractor fields which affect our life and happiness. We can increase your natural abilities and happiness by consciously adjusting the chemistry of our brain's cranial fluid. This fluid is affected by our thoughts, diet/nutrition, exercise, rest, environment and physiology.

Thoughts

Our positive and negative thoughts cause our brain to secrete chemicals. These chemicals, in turn, affect all our natural abilities and functions. Our thoughts have two components: facts and emotions. Every stimulus we receive through our nervous system is nothing more than a fact. However, we attach emotions to these facts. It is imperative for us to realize that negative emotions cause adverse chemical secretions and hinder our natural abilities. We may increase our awareness of the profound influence negative emotions have on our brain's chemistry, performance and happiness and become more objective and restructure any negative emotional attachment we have to certain facts. Facts are merely facts. However, we can choose our emotional response to them.

Diet/Nutrition

Everything we eat and drink is a chemical, which affects our performance and how we feel. A person’s behavior changes when they drink some alcohol. In the early cave dwelling days there were no factories and no processed foods. Humans are designed to live on natural foods with the proper amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fat. We need to eat wisely and in moderation without tending to be neurotic about what we eat. Our emotional state is far more important than what we eat, even though what we eat is important.

We must follow proper schedule of our working – we should fix up our priorities, we must coordinate our working with those factors which are to play an important role in our system, we must have regular meals with proper nutrients to supplement the requirement according to our work schedule/our activity. We can replace our medicines with them and we would remain happy by doing so. We should not permit any disease to begin – we must take action to prevent that’s occurrence by improving our working system and supplementing our meals with appropriate nutrients from time to time.

Exercise

In the early days of time, humans engaged in many forms of physical activity just to survive. Our body is designed to function properly with physical exertion so it can remove toxins and secrete beneficial chemicals. We can understand the importance of exercise if we do when we are depressed and notice how much better we feel after exercising.

For our body and mind to function at their best, it is important to exercise to make up for the lack of physical activity resulting from today’s modern conveniences. Is 20 minutes of aerobic exercise three times a week too great a price to pay for a healthy body and an alert mental state?

Rest

Sufficient rest is necessary for the body to eliminate toxins and rejuvenate itself. We usually sleep more when depressed than when we are excited and happy to be alive. While we sleep, our brain is busy processing all the information it received during the day so that it can make spontaneous decisions when we are awake.

It is therefore essential that we must have proper scheduling of our working and accord proper priorities to our tasks so that we have enough time to relax. Sometime, napping plays a very good tonic for restoring our spent energies. That can also be afforded during our busy schedules.

Environment

Environment means our social surroundings and the people around us. The electromagnetic fields they generate, as well as their thoughts and actions, can adversely affect us.

We must associate only with positive people. The only time we should associate with negative people is when we are trying to help them. Our stronger electromagnetic field and positive thoughts and actions will have a positive effect on them.

Researchers have found that emotions, positive and negative alike, are nearly as contagious as colds and flu. We can catch feelings of elation, euphoria, sadness and more from friends, family, colleagues, even strangers. Mood "infection" happens in milliseconds.

When interacting with a negative person, we must take extra steps to remain positive. Otherwise, we may be influenced by his or her negativity.

Physiology

Our body reflects our emotional state. When we are positive and confident, we stand erect with our chest out and a smile on our face. If we just won $10,000,000 in the lottery, we can imagine how we would feel and how our physiology would respond. We may feel on top of the world. Everyone watching us will see it by the way we carry yourself.

You may imagine how you would feel and look if you lost your winning lottery ticket. If this depressed you, your eyes would be down and your shoulders slumped. Some individuals would probably feel like killing themselves for losing their winning ticket.

Your physiology works both ways. Your body reflects your feelings. However, how you carry your body affects your feelings. One of the quickest and easiest ways to improve your chemistry is to change your physiology. By taking slow deep breaths, standing tall and sticking your chest out, you automatically increase your chemistry and immediately feel better. Raise your eyes to the sky and smile right now. Do you feel a change in your energy and alertness? If you always carry yourself like a winner, you will feel like a winner.

Your thoughts, diet/nutrition, exercise, rest, environment and physiology have a positive or negative impact on your brain’s chemistry which affects how well you perform and feel. To become happier and more successful, part of the process is to consciously work on increasing the chemistry of your cranial fluid so your brain can perform more efficiently and at higher levels.

When you have positive thoughts, your brain secretes positive chemicals and increases the power of your brain. When you have negative thoughts, your brain secretes negative chemicals and decreases the power of your brain. This is a simple, but profound concept to realize. Your happiness depends on it.

In the world of sports, this is very easy to demonstrate because the mind/body connection provides you with immediate feedback. When you are positive, your performance excels. When you are negative, your performance is adversely affected. This same understanding applies to your entire life.

However, when it comes to your personal, social and business behavior, the feedback may not be as obvious or as immediate. It may take you days, weeks, months or even years, to see or feel the repercussions from your negative thoughts and actions. I’m sure that if you reflect on your life, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. Since you know the story of your life better than I do, I’m going to let you provide your own personal experiences and stories of how positive and negative emotions affect your happiness. Don’t confuse short term pleasures from external sources with happiness. True and lasting happiness always comes from within. External pleasures never last.

Your thoughts from outside stimuli have two components: facts and emotions. While you may not be able to control the facts you encounter in your life, you can choose how to respond emotionally to these facts. If you choose positive emotions, you will be happy. If you choose negative emotions, you will become unhappy. Your happiness depends on what emotions you choose to experience and how you live your life. Your own life experiences will prove this to you if you are honest with yourself.

Major Positive And Negative Emotions

Anytime you have any degree of love, generosity, praise and bravery or multiple combinations of these emotions, your brain secretes positive chemicals and enhances your natural abilities. Positive emotions make you happy; Anytime you have any degree of hate, greed, jealousy, and fear or multiple combinations of these emotions, you immediately lower your brain’s chemistry and your ability to reason and function at a high level.

Your negative emotions are the cause of most of your bad decisions, actions and unhappiness you experience in your life. The rest is caused by ignorance or lack of self-awareness. Stop and let this sink in.

Be Happy - Improve Your Brain's Chemistry.

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