Neuro Scientists are discovering that the main cause of human unhappiness is an area of the brain they are calling the default mode network.
The default mode network is a collection of neural connections in our brain that traps our attention and focuses it on certain thoughts for most of our time during each day.
The thoughts that the default network focuses our attention on are primarily about who it has decided we are and how that relates to what has, is and might happen with our circumstances.
In my own research, I’ve found that there are three main thoughts within the default mode network that appear to generate all the other thoughts that it focuses our attention on: a judgment about who we are, a judgement about what’s happening now, and a judgement about how we should interact with what’s happening now. These thoughts are the assumptions that:
We are not worthy of all the love we want now so
We need to control certain circumstances because
We want things to be different than they are
My theory is that these three assumptions relate to the three main sections of our brain and provide often times less than ideal answers to the questions who am I, what is this and what do I do now?
I’ve been experimenting for quite some time on how we can redirect our attention away from the default mode network to improve our experience by using questions that allow us to focus beyond it when we want to. Simply by asking ourselves a different question, we can break our attention free from the assumptions of our default mode network. Repeating a question can make new pathways in our brain and create a new habit that makes this easier and easier to do over time.
The latest version of this is one question that addresses all three main thoughts of the default mode network and is designed to help us break free from all three at once. Try this out if this seems exciting and let me know what you think. Thanks!
Here is the question:
How is letting this moment be how it is
and allowing the best thing to happen next,
me being worthy of all the love I want now?