The power of thoughts - strengthen the neural pathways that conduct electricity to your happy-chemical faucets
Appreciating yourself is not like sending yourself flowers because it builds positive neural pathways that last longer than flowers.
Feeling good is no substitute for action, of course. They’re two separate skills that are both essential. Acting good doesn’t always make you feel good because good feelings depend on the neural pathways you’ve built to the happy neurochemicals (dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphins). More-developed links to your “happy chemicals” turn on the faucets more easily.
When life hits your brain, you route the experience down one neural pathway or another. The electricity in your brain seeks a path the way water flows downhill, finding the path of least resistance and flowing toward the biggest channels. If your big neural channels lead mostly to your unhappy chemicals, they dominate your response to life experience.
Our unhappy circuits are well-developed for a reason. The brain evolved for survival, and it scans for things that can go wrong. We might not be here today if our brains were mainly scanning for things to feel good about. But while we face and conquer threats, we also crave happy chemicals.
Your happy chemicals did not evolve to flow all the time. Good feelings evolved to alert you to things that promote survival in the state of nature. If you want to coax more happy chemicals from this ancient operating system, you have to create the infrastructure. Fortunately, it’s easy, and it’s free.
All it takes is dwelling on the good. Every time you linger on the thought of something good in your life, you strengthen the neural pathways that conduct electricity to your happy-chemical faucets.
It would be good if some of the people involved in the “happiness industry” considered the broader implications of the simplistic approach to happiness that they promote.
There’s an implication (accidental I’m sure but no less dangerous) that if you are in control of your own happiness than it is your fault if you are unhappy. Not the fault of circumstance, of societal conditions, of external factors but your own sad fault.
Comment by Loretta Graziano Breuning
Unhappiness is not your “fault” but it’s not the system’s “fault” either. The whole “fault” concept is a waste of energy that could be better spent doing what it takes to find life rewarding.
If you believe the system’s failure causes unhappiness, you are powerless to improve your life except to rage at the system. Investing your energy in blaming the system is a habit that’s easy to fall into because teachers reward students for blaming the system. The habit is hard to break because it creates a sense of moral superiority and social support which feel so good, even as the bitterness and resentment feel bad. In my experience, people get frustrated with their lives no matter what their circumstances, and anyone who is waiting for a perfect system to fix it is likely to stay frustrated.
“If you believe the system’s failure causes unhappiness, you are powerless to improve your life except to rage at the system.”
I respectfully disagree. Consider all the major improvements in society. Equal rights for women, emancipation, civil rights. They all began with an understanding of how the systems failure was causing suffering. Change was effected through the channeling of justified anger.
Obviously waiting for a perfect system is a bad idea. Surely those who feel complacent are effectively in the same situation?
Related
Mammals learn survival skills during their childhood. Mammals learn from experience instead of just running on instinct. But early experience builds the basic wiring in the cortex. It takes a long time to build all that wiring, which is why mammals have a long childhood. We don’t throw away our neural circuits after spending years to build them- they’re built to serve for a lifetime. Most mammals die outside the niche their survival skills were adapted to.
Advice-mongers exhort us to “change,” but adult brains tend to rely on the wiring they have. That’s why so many people fail to quit smoking, fail to recover from a stroke, and fail to respect the law when corrupt opportunities appear. We cling to old survival strategies even when they get us into trouble because we evolved to adapt to the niche we’re born into.
Sometimes people succeed at building new neural pathways in adulthood. They learn to do something else with their hands and their anxiety without cigarettes. They learn to walk after a stroke in the painstaking way that a baby learns to walk. They learn to obey the law instead of grabbing everything they can get their hands on. Building new pathways in adulthood is hard work. There’s no substitute for the individual struggle to put one foot in front of another until the new connections build. Getting angry at the cigarette industry doesn’t help you stop smoking. Getting angry at doctors doesn’t help you recover from a stroke.
Getting angry at the corruption of others doesn’t help you build a law-abiding society. It takes courage to reject the survival skills of your youth and build new ones, but this courage stops new tragedies from occurring. The path to peace is built from the pathways in each brain.
- Loretta Graziano Breuning
Our mammalian limbic brains - Happiness and survival are intertwingled
Neuronal rhythms impact memory
synaptic plasticity - neurons that fire together, wire together
