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Writer's pictureAndy Harrison

Thought for the Day: The Human Life Handbook?

If you are a human who has been alive for a while, you might have noticed a few things:

Life as a human can be less than easy sometimes. In fact, sometimes it can be really messed up!

It can range from being outrageously blissful to earth shatteringly terrifying in just a few short moments.

I’d like to cut through the red tape we have all heard about why things are this way and offer a simple explanation and an even simpler solution.

All the problems you have ever experienced as a human have come from your brain.

That’s right – your brain has created every single problem you have ever had because of one learned habit of thinking.

Go ahead, let yourself roll with all the reasons why you think what I’m saying is BULLoney right now:

“Yeah but what about this stuff? And this other stuff? Etc”

All those thoughts are just your brain trying to put the blame on something else. Hang with me for a second so we can explore the reality.

Your brain developed one habit of thinking by the time you were 2 ish that has now ruled you and your life up to this point. Because your brain has had X number of years of practice doing this habit of thinking, it has long been a complete expert at it.

In fact it is so good at running this one pattern of thinking that you don’t even notice it. You just go on living as if all the thoughts that come from this super engrained habit are actually reality – that they are actually giving you an accurate picture of what is really happening.

I’m here to tell you that the thoughts are wrong. I’m here to show you that the thoughts generated by this one habit of your brain are not giving you an accurate view of what is really happening. I’m here to point you towards noticing that what is really happening is much different than what these thoughts are telling you.

Since you were 2 ish your brain has divided everything you experience  into 2 big boxes in your head:

The “I” Box and the “Other” Box.

Your brain has imagined yourself to be separate from everything else and has put all the ideas of what it labels as “you” into what I’m calling the “I” Box. This includes your physical body, your memories of what happened to you, your hallucinations about what the future will be and all the ideas of what it has decided you can and can’t do. Every time you say the word “I” or “me” your brain is referring to it’s imaginary “I” Box.

The “Other” Box is where it has put everything that it has decided is not “you”. Your brain has imagined everything else as being divided up into separate “things” and has labeled them as not “you” and put them all in the “Other” Box. So this includes other people, places things, situations, circumstances – basically everything that hasn’t been put in the “I” Box.

These 2 boxes inside your brain ARE what has created every problem you have ever had in your entire life.

Here’s how your brain creates all your problems:

Using it’s fake imaginary versions of “you” (it’s “I” Box) and the “problem” (the situation in it’s “Other” Box), your brain then does a simple equation that also results in a fake imaginary possible result:

“I” + “Other” = Changed “I”

Your brain tells you that if “you” (it’s “I” Box) interact with this stuff (the situation or thing in it’s “Other” Box) then the result will be a changed “you”.

So you go ahead and act as if this is the truth and because you are acting on inaccurate information (your brain’s fake imaginary versions of what is really happening) the result is often times problematic and sometimes really messed up.

There are 2 versions of this same pattern that usually run most peoples entire lives: the Fear pattern and the Hope pattern.

The Fear pattern is:

“I” + Bad “Other” = A Diminished “I”

The Hope pattern is:

“I” + Good Other = An Enhanced “I”

These are both the same pattern using the same imaginary boxes to get the same type of imaginary result, it’s just the Hope pattern is a result your brain thinks it would prefer.

This is how your brain creates all your problems. This is how all of our brains have created all the problems in the world.

This is how some humans have learned to dominate other humans: by attempting to control the things that masses of people put into their “I” Boxes and their “Other” Boxes.

The Hunger Games movies lay this idea out very clearly: that the main mechanisms for social control are Hope and Fear. This is how it is done.

The solution is obvious isn’t it? The only way to stop creating problems is to stop relying on inaccurate information to make decisions with.

Recognizing that our brain’s “I” Box and “Other” Box are not reality is one step. Realizing that relying on the thoughts that come from them to decide what to do next is another step.

Finding out where to get better more accurate information about what is really happening and then using that to decide what to do next is yet another step.

Thanks for reading!

– Andy

For Music that Transforms Your Possibilities and More, visit: www.AndyHarrisonMusic.com

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