February 16: Focus, Thought Patterns, and Neurons

This physical body is a bio mechanical, chemical, hormonal, and electric machine.  It is an energy-producing, power-generating, vibrating miracle.  The better and faster we learn how to manipulate, use, recalibrate, utilize, program, automate, and operate it, the more quickly we can manifest the life of our dreams!

I was taught about this idea and theory of Neural Grooves in the year, 1991:

“Every thought we think literally creates a neural groove in our brain.  The more we think that thought the deeper that line becomes.”

Science now teaches us that the neurons that fire together, wire together.  Repeated thoughts literally bring neurons together until they truncate into thicker and thicker bundles.  The more repetitious the thought, the thicker the bundle!  It is entirely possible, through repetition and practice, to build a forest of Redwoods within our minds, automating useful habits, and resulting in a life of meaning, purpose, fulfillment, and OUR ideas of success.

Science now teaches that there are no memories stores ANYWHERE in our bodies.  They theorize that all memories are stored in what Albert Einstein described as, THE FIELD.  We access these memories through the neurons, which are now considered to be soft antenna.

Ever heard the term, “If you don’t use it you lose it!” when people are talking about muscles?  Well, just as with muscles, the neurons we don’t use, we also, “lose.”  The neurons we no longer use for old thought patterns are reassigned and recruited to the new thought patterns we are practicing and repeating, and they fire and wire together with the new thoughts, creating a thicker trunk of neurons.

We are literally co-creators with the universe.  We create our lives and we create our destinies, through repeating thoughts.  We can change, alter, improve, grow, and evolve the course and trajectory of ANY part of our lives, THROUGH our repeated thoughts and what we choose to focus on.  Each of our lives is literal proof of the truthfulness of this.  It takes an evolved, conscious, courageous, and committed person to admit this, learn from it, and to practice it.

THIS is the importance of repetition and practice!  The more we think something, listen to something, focus on something, and repeat that thing, the easier it becomes to repeat it with ease.  At first, new things feel uncomfortable, but through repetition and practice, ANYTHING becomes easier.  This idea has been solidified in my mind by the book, MINDSET, by Carol Dweck.  I highly recommend buying the audio version of this book.  It is an empowering book which has helped me to recreate a better life for myself and my loved ones.  To learn more about Carol and her book, go to the YouTube search engine and type, IMPACT THEORY CAROL DWECK.

FOCUS IS EVERYTHING!  What we choose to focus on tends to repeat itself.  What we choose to focus on is attracted into our lives.  What we choose to focus on soon becomes an obsession, and soon becomes all we can see, think about, and create more of.  Our minds are programmed and hardwired to seek out proof and support of what we focus upon.  The neurons that fire together, wire together.  In this way, our lives are literally our responsibility, and the outcomes of our lives are literally our, “fault,” because we chose our thoughts, which dictated our words and actions, which then determined everything else in our lives-including things like habitual patterns we form, speech patterns we chose, and the way people responded and reacted to us, each moment, all along the way.  WHAT WE FOCUS UPON, WE ATTRACT MORE OF.

The RAS, or Reticular Activating System, is a small piece of hardware in our brains that directs our conscious attention ONLY to the information which we WANT and CHOOSE to focus on.  Basically, the RAS ensures that what we consciously and decidedly focus on, with clear purpose and intent, is ALL that we will BE ABLE to focus on AND SEE throughout our day.

The life we are currently living is entirely our responsibility.  This may be difficult to accept, at first.  I know that I rejected this idea for years!  My desire to be successful, while only being able to focus on all of my many perceived failures, made it too painful for me to admit that my train wreck of a life was ALL MY responsibility.  It was so much easier to blame others, come up with excuses, compare my successes to the failures of others, and feed my insatiable ego, while never choosing to change a thing I thought or did.

The belief that our life is entirely our responsibility is excellent news, because our life a year from now is also entirely our responsibility, and we can begin now, to create the life we want a year from now.  One way to start now, creating that life, is outlined in the goodinthehead habit hacking challenge.  Google it now, and check it out!

Our food and drink choices for the past year have dictated and decided our current health conditions.  The food and drink choices we chose over the past year determined and decided the chemicals and hormones our thyroid and brain released all day and all night into our blood streams.  Our food and drink choices helped us heal or made us weak and sick.  Nobody forced us to eat and drink the way we did.  We CHOSE that.  Every bite we take and every thought we think helps us heal on a cellular level and empowers our cells to regenerate and replicate in a healthy way, or slowly destroys us.  Every bite we choose and every thought we think determines our physical, mental, emotional, chemical health, and eventually even our spiritual health.  These choices certainly dictate how effectively we are capable of living our lives, moment to moment.

The amount of exercise we chose this past year, each and every day of that last year, determined and decided which hormones and chemicals were released into the body, how our bodies adapted to the environment, and how our bodies learned to heal,  or how our bodies forgot to heal.  Remember the phrase, “If we don’t use it, we lose it?”

Our habituated, automated thought patterns we allowed for the past decade dictated and decided the current emotional and mental state our minds are now in.  Our habituated, automated thought patterns also now dictate and decide the physical makeup of the neural jungle in our brains, and which chemicals and hormones are continuously being pumped into our blood streams, all day long, and at night while we sleep.

Our thought patterns and what we choose to focus on, become what we continue to think about, what we say, what we do, and who we become.  It is so important we choose what we think about and how often we think about it.

In a world filled with distractions, it is up to US to choose the positive, helpful, empowering thoughts to focus on that will help us accomplish our goals and hit the targets we are aiming at.  We must think our thoughts on purpose.  These thoughts we think, over and over, will thicken the neural trees in the forest of our brains which we WANT to develop, and will become the habitual actions by which we accomplish our own, personal growth and success.

Reminder to self:  Remember those goals you wrote down and thought about so much at the beginning of the year?  What are you doing as part of your daily routine to accomplish these goals and hit the targets you are aiming at?  Do you need to recommit to anything?  Do you need to re-think your purpose?  Do you need more clarity?  Do you need to readjust your focus in any way?  Is there something in your daily routine that needs to be changed or tweaked in some way?  Which neurons in your brain do you want to fire together, in order to wire together?

REMINDER TO SELF:  Your personal success is yours and yours alone.  It must be CONSISTENTLY thought about, spoken of, and worked on, on purpose.  Your personal success must be a priority.  As you work towards accomplishing the goals to make you more of who you want to be in a year, create your own daily checklist that will make you who and what you want to become by the end of that year.  Remember what Les Brown says:  “SHOOT FOR THE MOON!!!  Even if you fail, you will land among the stars.”  Dream big!  Accomplishing those daily tasks and working towards your goals, each day, will make you a more valuable version of you.  

Today’s challenge for myself:  Today I will review my goals and make sure they are EXACTLY what I WANT.  I will adjust my daily routine as needed, and continue to think about and do what will help me the most, in order to accomplish my goals and hit my targets.  I will repeat these thought patterns and actions and deliberately, habitually, and automatically alter my future every day by choosing the neurons which I want to fire and wire together, that go along with these thought patterns and actions.

Here are a few videos about the RAS:

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Remember:  Mindset matters.  Character counts.  That which we choose to consistently focus on is what EXPANDS in our lives.  WE CREATE our personal realities.