HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT HOW YOUR LIFE HAS LED YOU TO WHERE YOU ARE NOW? It’s easy to blame events, other people, or bad luck for our problems. What if, instead of seeking answers outside of ourselves, we looked within? What if improving your life starts with how you think, feel, and behave every day? It might be a tough pill to swallow, but consider this: Who says you’re not holding yourself back?
Get ready to take charge of your life! Here’s a simple truth that many won’t say: You are not defined by your past events — you have the power to shape your own future. If you let go of the past and welcome new opportunities, you can achieve everything you want.
The Science of Becoming:
Rewiring Your Brain
Ninety-eight out of 100 people go through 95% of their lives without asking themselves why they do what they do. You do this while you wake up, and your body simply gets into a routine without you having to think about it. Every day, you engage in routine activities such as checking your phone, brushing your teeth, driving the same route, scrolling through social media, and watching the same shows, all while experiencing the same thoughts and emotions.
This loop keeps you stuck in your life. Every time you repeat the same action, you strengthen connections in your brain, making them as solid as a well-worn path in the woods. Over time, you develop habits so well that your body starts to crave the comfort of what’s known, and you get stuck in the past. You undergo significant changes, but your mind and body still stay connected to the past.
Rewiring Your Brain: Harnessing the Power of Neuroplasticity
Brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, refers to the brain’s extraordinary ability to organize itself by forming new neural connections across a person’s entire life span. It assists the brain in acclimating to new conditions, learning new information, and recovering from injury. This occurs for various reasons: learning, experience, injuries, in life, etc. Neuroplasticity is not limited to childhood; it happens at every age. The brain, like the rest of our body, changes and adapts as we age—even into old age.
Neuroplasticity in this article’s context means that by regularly practicing positive thoughts and behaviors, you can slowly change your brain and create new, healthier links. This can improve how you feel and how you see yourself. Your brain has billions of nerve cells connected by trillions of links. Some experts believe that even though neuroplasticity can help create positive changes in the brain, it also means the brain can easily develop negative patterns if it’s often exposed to harmful thoughts and behaviors.
So, every thought, feeling, and action builds certain links and makes it easier to reach those links later. If you keep telling yourself daily that you are not enough, over time, that belief becomes deeply rooted in your mind, just like a well-worn road in the woods. Changing that path takes careful work.
Understanding How Thoughts and Feelings Are Connected
Your thoughts are much stronger than you realize; each thought works like an electric signal in your brain. They don’t just stay still; they trigger feelings, hormones that move through your body. When you think, “I’ll never succeed,” it can fill your brain with stress hormones like cortisol. These hormones cause fear, worry, or self-doubt, and then your body sends these feelings back to your brain, which makes the original thoughts even stronger.
As time goes by, this process shapes you. You no longer have those thoughts and feelings; they start to control how you act. Your body can get used to feeling worried, angry, or guilty and may start to crave those feelings. If you’ve been feeling this way for a long time, it probably feels like a normal part of who you are, which makes it harder to change those feelings.
Breaking Free from Emotional Addiction
How does it feel to start each day with worry or a sense of not being good enough? Your choices today will probably be like yesterday’s, leading to similar outcomes and emotions. This design holds you back. Constantly beginning your day with self-doubt and anxiety can create a cycle of negative thinking and stagnant behaviors, preventing personal growth and happiness.
The good news is that your brain can easily change and adapt. It changes depending on what you think, how you feel, and what you do. When you learn or practice, your brain makes new links. The more we use these new ways, the better they become, helping us see things in a new way. Just like a trail in the woods gets easier to walk on the more you use it, your brain’s connections become stronger and work better when you think and learn regularly.
Becoming the Creator of Your Reality
We are not just physical beings; we are also made of energy and regularly send out signs to the world around us. Your feelings and thoughts affect these words. If you concentrate on what you lack or on your fears, that’s the energy you send out into the world, and it will bring more of the same into your life. This concept suggests that by shifting your focus to positive thoughts and feelings, you can attract more positive experiences and outcomes into your life, aligning with the principles of quantum physics and the law of attraction.
Imagine holding a bunch of colorful butterflies—your feelings and ideas. This is called the butterfly effect, and it happens when you release the negative emotions and keep focused on the affirmating ones, like gratefulness, happiness and love. They’re delicate yet hardy, but they poke through soil — these butterflies symbolize your ability to consciously shape your universe.
Gratitude, happiness, and love generate good energy and procession of good events will flow to you. This is no magic; it’s science that reveals how energy responds to our intention. Not just what you want; the world shows you your true self. It mirrors your thoughts, emotions and behaviors. You will perform well to the extent that you practice gratitude, joy, and love. And it can create situations that reflect how you feel, reinforcing the notion that like attracts like.
Awareness:
The First Step to Transformation
Change starts with being aware. It’s the first step to changing your thoughts and behaviors. If you don’t recognize the trends in your life, you can’t change them. Consider what you pay attention to throughout your day. How will I feel when I wake up tomorrow? What habits are holding me back? Consider this with love, not judgment. To change your habits, you must first recognize them.
Observing Without Judging
By becoming more aware of your habitual thoughts and actions, you can consciously reshape your mindset and behaviors, ultimately gaining greater control over your life. Most people hardly take time to think about their thoughts and feelings. About 95% of your actions are habits, so you’ve been doing them for years without thinking about it! Although these thoughts may seem normal, they don’t define you; they are simply fleeting thoughts in your mind. Once you notice them, you can start to question and change them. If you know something needs to be changed, you can change it. But you can’t change it if you don’t know it’s there.
Breaking the Cycle:
How to Interrupt and Replace Old Habits
The journey from darkness to light involves numerous steps, and this transformation is not a sudden event but a continuous series of events. As they progress, we must also muster the courage to begin again, even when we are uncertain about the direction of the next step.
In the image above, the flowers and grass have their hues, representing the rewards and riches of hard work and what is born out of the image of good habits. Thus, each step we take limits the old paradigm behind and opens up to the new opportunities and horizons. For only in the pursuit of light will we know life — our new lease — brimming, speedy, raucous, like the universe.
Changing your attitude isn’t just about hoping for it; you must take action. The first step is to notice and change the habits that are no longer helping you. After breaking old habits, the next step is to purposely build and reinforce new habits that match your goal for the future. Let’s look at how to change the pattern and create a better way of thinking.
Interrupting Old Patterns
You need to break your old habits to change your way of thinking. It starts with being aware:
Manage your negative thoughts. If something happens, notice it and stop it. For instance, tell yourself, “I learned this thought when I was younger.”
Alter the schedule. Do something surprising to change your feelings — like standing up, taking a big breath, or laughing. This breaks the routine and allows for new reactions.
Installing New Patterns
After you stop a bad habit, make sure to start a new one. Choose ideas that match the future you want. Change “I’m not good enough” to “I can do great things, and I deserve them.”
Thinking happy thoughts repeatedly helps the brain make new connections. These new connections become the main ones your brain uses instead of the old ones. Say these words out loud or write them down every day. Regular practice speeds up the process of changing how things are connected.
The development of new habits is not a single moment, but an entire map of the future like a traveller who uses a new map. Picture stepping stones across a still stream. Each small step means a deliberate action, like a new thought or a positive affirmation, or a moment of mindfulness. Just as these stones help you get to the other side, these small, incremental choices and changes can lead to massive change over time. And, as you focus on each step, you will notice that you’re taking the waters of change with balance and with purpose.
Daily Practices for Becoming Your Best Self
Building a new brain takes daily dedication of your time. Whenever you have a thought, feel happy, or take steps to get what you want, you strengthen the connections that help you create the life you want. Just as a gardener nurtures a plant with daily care to encourage its growth, dedicating daily to positive thoughts and actions fortifies the neural pathways that lead to a fulfilling life.
Think about what your future self looks like when you wake up. Try to understand what that person is thinking, feeling, and doing. Pay attention to yourself during the day. When old habits come up, take a moment to stop and choose a different way to respond. What did you do today, and how can you feel closer to the person you want to be before going to bed?
The Power of Repetition and Focus
So, how does one become the best version of oneself? Just as water can carve canyons over time, repeating things can reshape your habits and ways of thinking, allowing you to transcend previous versions of yourself. It’s not about making huge changes all at once. It’s about showing up for yourself daily.
Every thought you entertain, every feeling you allow, and every action you take are constructing the neural circuitry in your brain to become the person you wish to be. Treat your brain like a garden: Healthy habits and positive thoughts are the seeds you tend to. Just as sunshine and water nourish seeds to grow into healthy plants, so does daily practice. It is this steady care that transforms short-term goals into long-term changes.
Overcoming Setbacks and Staying the Course
You will face setbacks, take detours, and wander into overgrown meadows you do not know how to get out of. Focus is the compass that keeps you on course on this journey. Otherwise, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns. So, every day is an opportunity to reimagine who you want to become.
Imagine what that version of yourself is thinking, feeling, and doing. Set aside time throughout the day to practice mindfulness. Observe how you react when old habits resurface. When these moments occur, pause and choose a different response. The small and significant decisions you make shape who you are becoming.
This requires repetition and attention to make changes. They may not yield immediate results, but their far-reaching impact is phenomenal. They cause you to evolve from who you are into the best version of who you can be.
~ Conclusion ~
Embrace the Power of Change
Take one step consistently every day, and change will come. Imagine your life as a block of stone and yourself as the sculptor. Your thoughts and deeds are carefully cut with a chisel, turning rough materials into art. With every minuscule, consistent grind, you reveal the figure of the best version of yourself lying underneath the surface.
Do one small thing today for a better future. Change, like any great statue, requires careful time, effort, and dedication. Every little endeavor you make every hour accumulates to become your entire life.
Even though walking for 10 minutes a day may seem insignificant, it can significantly improve your health, happiness, and energy. It’s a powerful example of how small habits can make a significant difference in your life, much like editing a piece of art. Your consistent efforts pave the way for long-lasting transformation.
Craftsmanship, not haste, creates great statues. It starts with small daily actions that reveal the life within you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SIR PERCIVAL has always been a teacher at heart, and even in retirement, his passion for teaching and inspiring others still burns brightly. He shares the universal relevance of life’s wisdom in his writings, believing it can resonate with everyone. His experiences as an educator have shown the transformative power of these ideas, sparking motivation to embrace life fully.
While retirement has moved him away from the traditional classroom setting, writing allowed him to connect with a wide range of people and provide them with guidance and motivation when needed. This new adventure holds immense potential to impact his life and others positively. His ultimate goal is to help individuals appreciate the beauty of life and find happiness along their unique journeys.
