Three Words to Avoid to Be Happier
...and maybe make the world a better place
This article is not specific to art or creativity or inspiration. This article is being written by me in an effort to (maybe) make someone’s day better.
Our world runs on negativity. Political parties use fear to push their agendas. Companies use worry to sell you their products. We use the word “hate” to describe our feelings toward anything or anyone that we don’t align with completely. Negativity is all around us and runs through us. We are surrounded by it and not only do we seem to accept it, we actually channel it!
Yeah, negativity is out there, but what can I do about it? There is no way that I can change the way our world works, right? Well… yeah, but also… no. You can make a difference in how YOU experience the world.
You may not be able to change how hate and fear and worry are used in the world around you, but you CAN change how they are used in you! See, here is the thing about our brain… it reacts to everything! What we allow to go into our brain strongly affects how we perceive the world around us. If we believe that the world outside our door is a scary place, our brain will probably see nothing by threats when we go outside. If we believe that the world is a beautiful place, we will likely see amazing things when we enter that same world.
Here is a true story about me and my brain. About a decade ago my mom was killed in a car accident. For about a year after that accident (which I was not personally involved in or even any where near) I was afraid of traffic and cars in general. This was not debilitating (I still drove around and used my car), but I did have a hard time when in traffic. I would regularly look in my rearview mirror and KNOW that the car pulling up behind me was not going to stop in time! They were going to rear end me! I knew for a fact that the car that was turning right at the intersection did not see the pedestrians in the cross walk and would surely mow them down! I saw car accidents everywhere I looked because that is what my brain expected to see.
It took some time for my brain, my amygdala in particular, to find peace and believe that cars could be used for good and were not rolling death machines. The amygdala is the little part of your brain that tells you you should be scared. It controls your fight, flight, or freeze response. It perceives threats and “scary” situations and tells you to act according to that threat. The problem is that it can be tricked into thinking there are threats when there are not. In my case, I was seeing threats from all vehicles, even though NONE of them were actually a danger to me.
Understanding that my brain can be tricked into thinking things are worse than they really are, I started thinking, can I convince my brain that things are going better than the world would have me believe, too? I believe that I can!
Some people call this bio-hacking or brain-training. Change the stimulus that enters your brain and it will perceive the world as a good place, rather than bad! But, what to change and how! There is SO much stimulus in the world… do you change what you watch on TV? Do you listen to different music? Do you change who you spend time with? Well, all of those are worth considering, but here is a change you can do today that can change how you perceive the world.
Stop saying “hate”, “scared”, and '“worried”. That’s it. For the next week, do not say “I hate…” or “I am scared…” or “I am worried…” and see how you feel.
The hope is that if you do not vocalize the things that you hate, then you will stop thinking about that thing. Hate is pretty crappy thing… have you ever looked it up? It is an intense dislike for something to the point that you would destroy that thing. That’s not the kind of thing that I want my brain hearing my mouth saying.
And fear, who has time for that? You know the problem that I have with fear? If I fear something, I give it power over me. If I fear something, that thing can control me. Odds are good that something I fear is the opposite of what I want driving me. Fear is stupid. Screw fear!
And worry? Talk about a waste of time! Worry is my brain spinning and thinking up scenarios that have not happened. Why should I spend any of my limited time here on earth stressing about things that have not and likely will not happen? I am not saying you should not be prepared, but there is a difference between preparing of a possible outcome and worry about what could happen. Seriously, potential outcomes are limitless, why allow your brain to spend time on that?
I am betting that if you spent a week refraining from hate, fear, and worry, you will see a change in what you think about the world around you. I am not saying that you should deny that there is bad around you. I am not saying you should deny that there are troubles in this world or challenges in your life. What I am saying is don’t give yourself over to living in those negative terms. Do not speak them into existence. See if you end up experiencing more positive when you deny those terms space in your life. You might just love it!