But all is not lost. You have the power to completely repattern your brain routes. You’re the driver. You can take the wheel of your brain and drive it on a new pathway. A route nobody has seen before.
What is this power? Why, it’s you! Neuroscientists say it takes between three to five weeks of repeating a pattern to form a new habit. The more you practice, the more that pattern becomes your new go-to, knee-jerk response. Not only do your existing cells (with millions of interconnections) remap when you learn new things, but you also add new cells. In just three to five short weeks, those little synapse coyote trails become the new wagon trail to glory.
Three to five weeks. That means be patient with yourself. Don’t give up. It won’t be easy; you’re fighting to get out of ruts built over a lifetime. Like toboggan tracks in snow, the longer you’ve careened down that path, the deeper the grooves. Without active perseverance and determination, the old behaviors your parents, teachers, culture, and everything you ever thought about yourself—positive or negative, true or false—will do their damnedest to keep you rolling in those ruts. Is that what you want? Of course not! Remember to ask yourself, “Is my behavior getting me the results I want?” If not, you can change it, a little at a time, but consistently over time. Nothing succeeds like success, and overcoming challenges is what makes success so rich. When we do, we believe in our power again.
Start with something small. For example, maybe you say, “I’m sorry” a lot, when you’ve done nothing wrong. Or maybe you compulsively check your phone while driving. Or maybe you beat yourself up over small mistakes. Practice stopping, breathing, and returning to the moment. Let the energy of the present flood you with a regenerative force. Warning: we live in a culture that celebrates laziness. You are not your culture. Use the power of your conviction to repeatedly push against your patterned norm until you break through to a new norm. Train your mind to see what’s going right and track your wins. This will help you win more. Be patient. Once you start seeing results, you can start making bigger changes. Soon, you’ll be redesigning your whole brain.
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
GRATITUDE
One more time: your brain is programmed to help you survive; it is not programmed so you’ll be happy. Nor is your brain against you being happy. It’s just more compelled to keep you alive, regardless of how happy you are while you’re alive. Since people traditionally find happy individuals more enjoyable to be around, more magnetic, and more charismatic, I am interested in giving you as many happiness tools as possible. Your brain keeps you alive, your soul steers that life. For those souls interested in reaching destination: happiness, I suggest a gratitude practice.
Do you like the word “gratitude,” or is it soft cotton, void of any real meaning for you? How about the words “God” and “love”? We know “gratitude,” “God,” and “love” are fine words. They stand for phenomenal concepts, but I’m afraid they’ve been overused and misused to the point of meaninglessness for many of us. These words are like the perfect skin caress that was once sublime but with repetitive, unconscious stimulation now feels numb at best, irritating at worst.
With that said, you know what I mean when I say gratitude. To make sure my words are not lost on you, do me a favor and feel what gratitude feels like. Take the time to do it until you are really feeling grateful. Maybe you feel the heart-pleasure-body-warm-tingle-fullness thing when you think of your pet or your dreamy, yellow curtains. Maybe you feel it when you think about some unexpectedly nice something someone did. Or maybe you get the gratitude rush when you recognize that you. are. existing. Whatever it is that makes you feel grateful, once you’re there, ask yourself how you got there. What did you do to feel this warm, regenerative, contentment-inducing feeling?
If you read the “Brain” section above and thought, “Hmmm . . . I’m not sure which patterned rut to reroute,” then start a gratitude journal. Crafting your brain to feel gratitude instead of lack is one of the best things you can do for your happiness quotient. The reason the word “gratitude” (and probably “love” and “God”) has been so overused is that it is so powerful. Everyone’s doing it these days. Sometimes what everyone’s doing is not sane, but in this instance I agree with Nike: “Just do it!”
THE WAY OF THE SEVEN-STEP GRATITUDE JOURNAL
1. Buy journal.
2. Keep journal by bed.
3. Begin journal with brief documentation about what’s going on in your life and how you currently feel.
4. Every night before sleeping and every morning upon waking write ten things you are grateful for.
5. Repeat this practice religiously for three to five weeks.
6. Complete journal by documenting how you feel now and in what ways your life has changed.
7. Continue your gratitude journaling process until you reach your grave (even if the only “journal” you continue to “write” in is your heart)!
Grateful people are offered opportunities and are people magnets.
DANI JOHNSON
Don’t want to make a journal or do a seven-step anything? No problem. Just bless. Bless. Bless. Bless. Bless your water bottle. Bless your cat. Bless your hard drive. Bless your toenails. Bless your friend. Bless your salmon. Bless what she said. Bless what he said. Bless where you’ve been. Bless where you are. Bless your doubt. Bless your sadness. Bless your growth. Bless your stagnancy. Bless the wind. Bless your joy. Bless your toilet seat. Bless your backyard (bless its dirt). Bless your veins. Bless your books. Bless your reading glasses. Bless this moment. Whatever it is, bless it.
The hot sun and the total absence of water made the mouth feel as though it were stuffed with cotton. Endurance was part of the sacrificial side of the dance. I did make it through three hot, exhausting days and nights. Thirty pounds of mostly water melted off my lanky twenty-three-year-old frame. I now had a much better sense of who I was, of courage, of the importance of my life, of what I might be able to teach others.
TOM JOHNSON, WRITING ABOUT THE SHOSHONE SUN DANCE, 1967
I can relate to Johnson’s experience. At twenty-one years of age, I too chose to go through my own sacred ordeal.aa Staying up into the sunrise, night after night after night. To the left and right of me, chiffon-clad women taken by dance, offering joy in hand gestures and song. The sweat, dirt, fire and countless hours, footprint after footprint, etched into sand. Know me, I spoke silently with each footprint. Remember my signature, the curve of toe, my commitment to meet you each time I pound my body into you. That ordeal and the ones I have chosen since take all I have to make it through the dark nights. Much like Johnson, I must become Great if I want to survive.
I am forever grateful to my Fire family. You know who you are.
You can find an “ordeal ritual” in almost every indigenous culture around the world, and for good reason. If we persevere beyond the pain at the edge of our limits, we discover we are more powerful than we thought. Once a boy; after an Ordeal, a man. Our industrialized culture is founded on the premise that an easy, comfortable life is a good life, but this has a cost: Our fear of discomfort limits what we attempt to do, so we never find out what we are capable of. We never know how great we really are. How can you be confident in your amazing human abilities if you have never risen to the demands of an ordeal outside the status quo?
A friend of mine made the empowered choice to birth at home. At 5′3″ and with hips like a skinny adolescent, she knew this could be the most painful experience of her life, but instead of opting for a hospital setting, with painkilling epidurals and the option of a Cesarean, she trusted herself