Have you been following the news lately? Did you notice that most of the news we are bombarded with on a daily basis are negative; it constantly conveys negative messages and transmits a sense of danger threat? Each day, millions of flowers blossom, thousands of surgeries succeed and millions of patients are healed, thousands of planes land safely, millions of babies smile, millions of friendships are built, billions and billions of dollars’ worth of business successful transactions take place, millions of birds sing and one bomb explode somewhere on our planet. Which piece of news do you think the media will rush to cover? Voilà, you’re totally correct!

Your brain is designed to protect you. It is wired in a special way to pick up any signals of threat and danger. It has to stay alert and sensitive to all sorts of things that can endanger your life and it can act automatically to protect you when necessary. It is designed on a fight or flight basis in order to keep you alive. And that’s pretty much it!

Think of your brain as a computer with huge processing capabilities that tops any manmade machine. It receives and processes a huge amount of data every single day – and still, no matter how excellent its processing powers are, still it does what it is told to do. It is just an instrument that strictly follows a predefined set of rules.

You can choose to use it to support your success and vision or to put it on autopilot and leave your life for the chances. Simply put, your mind doesn’t have a mind of its own! Therefore, you have to think for it and install whatever operating system you like.

Photo: Sybren Stüvel

Are you familiar with the carrot and stick approach? It simply implies that we are primarily driven by two forces. We try to get closer to happiness and move away from pain, right? Well, if you think about it carefully you’d find that we are first and foremost driven by a single solo force: We move away from pain. We hate to lose more than we like to win – we would do more to avoid punishment than what we would do to get the award.

If you’ve been to college you’ll know what I mean. We all know that maintaining good and consistent studying habits is our paved way to A+s in most courses. It is common sense that you should study from day one and digest the material step by step along the whole semester; this way it is stored in your long term memory and you can easily retrieve it anytime you want: say during the exam for example. But in reality what happened with most of us is that we bluffed, right?  We pushed and pushed studying times until the absolute ultimate deadline; the night before the exam. Back when I was in college, I had this motto that I used to repeat over and over again: NEXT SEMESTER I WILL STUDY HARDER! But then again there was always a way to maneuver.

Sure enough, we all want to be successful and wouldn’t mind graduating on top of our classes (If you did that already, I deep heartedly salute you). We all want be rich and famous and live the happily ever after version of life. How come that we always try to be happy or to install new good habits into our lives and still succeed in failing to maintain them? It is simply because your mind won’t decisively act unless there is a near danger, a real threat, a prominent risk.

Once you absorb this concept, playing and experimenting with it gets exciting. You are no longer enslaved to the primitive setup of your brain. You become the master of your fate; you become the captain of your soul!

Do not be intimidated by the complexity of the human brain. No matter how complex that grey matter between your ears gets, you can easily control it and trick it if you go back to the basics. One of the things I liked the most in my engineering education was field trips; Lots of field trips. I remember when we visited the control room of a large factory or a power plant, we would see a crazy amount of buttons, switches, lights, push buttons, levers, wires and you name it. However, once the control engineer started explaining how did controlling actually work, it went somehow like that: see those 150 swishes? They are for the lights; the other 50 buttons to the left to turn on the turbines, the 30 green buttons are responsible for the steam and so on. You don’t have to be an unprecedented genius to get a grasp on it in a short time. Most importantly, you don’t have to understand every single connection and wiring in order to use it effectively.

All you need is a clear understanding of the most basic concepts and a few strong, yet simple tools to leverage your powers. The same applies to your mind; you don’t need a degree in cognitive psychology in order to achieve great success and happiness in life.

Always remember: your brain isn’t designed to make you happy. It is your job to nurture it and use it to achieve happiness, health and wealth.

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Photo: Steve Jurvetson

So what do you think? have you mastered the mind game yet? you are welcomed to share any ideas and thoughts you have on this topic.