REMEMBER WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL HAPPY

I’m not a big fan of dwelling on the past, for me it’s all about thinking about the future and getting excited about it.

However, reliving past experiences in your mind can actually work wonders for boosting your mood today… and therefore improve your future.

I learnt recently from a book called “Psycho cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz (if you like reading about how the mind works I highly recommend it) that every memory of every experience we have ever had is stored in a part of our brain called the Cortex. Believe it or not, they’re all in there, stored with the emotions we felt at the time, and if you’re human, some are good and some are bad.

I found it quite weird to think that all of these memories are still a part of us, and their outcomes are there inside our minds guiding our decisions and shaping who we are today.

When I start to think about what my memories look like, I get curious about how they have affected my life so far and how they’re affecting it today, even right now… even how well or badly I’m writing this blog post…even why it’s about this subject…even what I’m writing it on…even where I’m writing it…even… OK I should to stop now :)

But I do, I start thinking about what decisions in life I’ve made because of these stored memories. Then I started to think about if my memories had been different, how would it have affected my life and where would I be, would I be in a better place or a worse place?

Say for example you and I had only these amazing, uplifting, confidence building, reassuring memories stored in there, just imagine how our mind would work and what we would believe we could achieve in life.

All of the memories where we’d felt we’d failed at something or regretted something wouldn’t be in there. All of the negative emotions that those experiences provoked wouldn’t still be lingering around in our heads, holding us back from taking more chances in life and believing in ourselves more. The fear of going through it all again wouldn’t be there stopping us.

In some ways these bad memories are there to protect us but as we all know, in lots of ways, these memories can also massively restrict what we believe we are capable of.

So let’s leave those bad ones alone now…the less attention they get, the easier it will be to forget them and they can eventually drift off into the distance and out of our sight.

But those good ones need some light shining on them, some exercise . . .they’re there for the taking.

After all, we created them, we own them, we did the hard work to make them happen so let’s get our money’s worth!

The way I see it, we can think of our cortex as this amazing free library of feel good short films of our happiest memories. We have exclusive access to this place and can go in, playback and relive these experiences whenever we want.

If you like this idea, make some time to practice this properly for the full effect. Take ten minutes alone, lay down, close your eyes, get comfy and chill out. Pick the memory you need to remind yourself of and whatever it is, take time to explore it properly. When you’re imagining it all again, look around and take it all in, remember how you felt at the time and enjoy feeling it again. Make use of all of your senses, see what’s around you, hear what’s happening, notice any smells, and always, always be aware of how great you feel.

Doing this when you need a lift will not only improve your mood instantly but feeling these positive emotions is proven to be really good for your physical and mental health.

Maybe it would help to write down a list of your top ten happiest memories to start you off? If you’re like me they’ll all be different experiences that come along with a variety of positive emotions, emotions that we’ve felt before and that have had the greatest effects on our lives so far.

The nervous system has no filter, so by feeling these emotions again we are automatically telling our brains that this is who we are, this is what we can achieve, have in our lives, this is what we do and this is where we are going.

Our minds will happily believe and take in this information just as effectively as if we were physically experiencing these moments again, today. This is when your subconscious will take over and naturally guide you towards experiencing more wonderful moments like these  in your life and create more happy memories to look back on and enjoy.