Livin’ the Dream, Beyond Your Dreams

Do you want to be healthy, happy and deeply fulfilled? You can practice self-improvement and wellness of body and mind until the cows come home and still not feel happy or find health and fulfillment. This psychiatrist, naturopath, brain researcher and experienced meditator offers guiding principles to create a dream life that is beyond what you can dream.

I’ll bet you want to be in great health, to be strong and feel boundless energy? Well, you can exercise ‘til the cows come home, eat perfectly, take the best supplements in the world and do everything health experts recommend and still not have optimal physical wellness! So, what gives?

How could you hope to be in good health if you’ve got a troubled mind? Mental wellbeing is needed for physical wellness. Feeling victimized by life, having low self-esteem, being driven to self-destructive behavior—can all rob you of physical health. Of course, the opposite is also true—feeling physically well helps you feel mentally well.

Now, you can go to therapy for a hundred years, follow all the self-help advice in the world and any other treatment recommendations mental health professionals give you and still not feel mentally well. Now what gives?

How could you hope to be mentally well and as happy and at peace as you can be if you have troubled relationships? To love and be loved, to belong and share life’s moments in a supportive community—this is all crucial to feeling well and happy inside. Of course, in return, it helps to have mental stability and wellbeing to be able to create an empowering community.

With the best of intentions, you can surround yourself by the most loving and supportive family and friends in the world and still not be able to fully benefit from your relationship with them? What gives, you ask?

If your life is a mess, if you are disorganized and ineffective in your daily life, if you are financially irresponsible, don’t manage time well or maintain your home and possessions, you will wear on the people in your life. In the other direction, it’s challenging to get through life and all that it requires if you don’t have support from people—both logistically and emotionally. 

Well, you can engage in excellent health practices, deal with your underlying emotional issues, create love and support in your life and organize your life ‘til your blue in the face and still not be successful in living the life of your dreams. What gives this time, you ask?

You need to live in accord with your highest values and principles. If you aren’t living in accord with your highest values and principles, you are not going to be a success in any area of your life. Without sticking to higher principles you will lose sight of what is in your best interests. One in particular, one special value, is to leave the world a better place because you were here using your unique talents or interests. This is called your mission or purpose. Without having a mission, you will soon feel trapped by life.

Yet a mission can quickly turn self-serving and values can get corrupted even with the best of intentions. So, what gives now? What could you possibly need this time?

An appreciation of your existence! An appreciation of your existence helps keep you in touch with your highest values and gives you passion to change the world. Appreciating your existence requires that you penetrate the truth of this simple fact: your birth defied astronomical odds considering the countless events that had to happen over eons of time in exact way. In other words, this moment, right now, that you are alive, is miraculous. And, the fact that you can know you are alive is the most miraculous thing in the universe!

The more you penetrate this realization, the more you awaken to the miracle of your existence, the more it changes your life. It refocuses your values from the trivial, gives your life instant meaning, relieves you of stress, vitalizes your health, frees you from self-limiting beliefs and self-destructive behavior, and helps you value your relationships in ways you couldn’t before. You become wiser and more effective in how you negotiate life.

At this point, you are close to living a dream life, beyond your dreams. Are we done now? Almost.

You can think about the miracle of your existence ‘til you pop, practice gratitude and even do several kinds of spiritual practice and still not come to a full appreciation of your existence—or at least not for very long.

That’s because to appreciate your existence you must grasp that this moment is really happening now, that you are alive right now—that this is not a dress rehearsal or never-ending story. Yet, this is a brain skill not a thought or idea. Actually, it is a series of brain skills I call “Inshifting.” Inshifting means that your higher brain (the parts that tell you you are alive) is more activated than your lower brain (basically your mind programming). This process helps you grasp being alive and let go of self-limiting beliefs that blind you to how monumental this moment is.

Mindfulness practices are just the beginning of the Inshifting process, but a good place to begin. To get a better sense of what it might be like to be Inshifted, try asking yourself this question: “Where do I most experience ‘now’?” Then notice what you do to try to lock your attention onto that answer. It is not as simple as it may seem, but arguably the most important skill you can learn.

So, practice an interconnecting web of wellnesses that are integrated with brain evolution skills such as mindfulness or Inshifting…and you will live the dream, beyond your dreams! 

Are You a Compulsive Happiness-Seeker?

Find out why most of us are barking up the wrong “happy-tree.”

[Eastern spiritual wisdom has much to say about happiness. Combining Eastern wisdom with Western psychology and wellness can reveal some interesting facts and clear strategies for finding deep and abiding happiness –and resisting compulsive pleasure-seeking.]

Eastern spiritual wisdom has much to tell us on the subject of happiness — brought to you by the people who coined the term “Nirvana.” We’re talking serious happiness here.  

Individuals in most of Eastern traditions who have attained the highest stages of human development possible have been able to describe how they did it in a way that can be readily separated from religious or cultural biases.

Here’s what they said. And it won’t be a surprise, because these notions have been popularized in Western cultures for decades. Yet, profound thought bears repeating — for all of us.

Happiness is a matter of definition. There is a world of difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a sensation. A transient state. It feels good or even great. Yet, it quickly fades. You all know it: sex, coffee and other drug buzzes, being praised, winning a contest, discovering a new place, enjoying a video game.

Happiness is a trait, a characteristic or style of experiencing that lasts. It is a deeper, abiding sense of wellbeing. It is more profound than pleasurable states. Most of us do not know this trait, except in rare moments, such as feeling pride in the accomplishments of a loved one, in intense love that is not self-serving, in being absorbed in utter tranquility that feels safe and secure, in the discovery that one’s existence is profoundly significant.

Why do we bark up the tree of pleasure at the cost of happiness?

Neurophysiologically, you could say that pleasure releases high amounts of dopamine faster than happiness which can require enduring low dopamine levels before levels rise. In other words, happiness may require letting go of control over dopamine secretion.

Psychologically, you could say that pleasure is immediately reinforcing. It has a more immediate outcome than happiness, which requires a few extra steps of awareness or behavior before it can be reached.

Also getting pleasure is more straightforward than happiness. Happiness requires trust and letting go, etc. Behaviors that are not necessarily built into the survival wiring of our brain. Pleasure is a more primitive and instinctual.

Sociologically, pleasure is reinforced by popular cultures as a way to control the masses. Pleasure is powerful means of control. Happiness cannot be manipulated in that way. Economically, pleasure can be bought. Happiness cannot.

So, what is the reason we bark up the wrong tree? It is the reason that may underlie all the others: We all know what pleasure feels like. Happiness takes advanced personal development to really feel it, or a good deal of trust in other’s descriptions of it to work towards it, or a lot of luck to stumble into it. It takes time. Pleasure doesn’t.

So, what are the consequences of barking up the wrong tree? What’s so wrong with that tree? We all know the answer, but again it bears repeating.

Pleasure is addictive. It’s a bottomless pit — like an itch that cannot be scratched enough. You can scratch an itch, use sex and drugs, work for praise and try to have new experiences until you are blue in the face and never find the penultimate pleasure — which incidentally is happiness! That’s how people die from overdoses when they are addicted and from thrill-seeking that knows no end. That’s how people’s lives get ruined, by working for a level of approval, praise and respect that cannot be achieved — at least not enough to cause real happiness or to make up for the unhappiness hole that the pleasure is trying to fill.

So, if pleasure is hard-wired, easily and quickly achieved, reinforced by society and if happiness requires skill and patience and time, what hope do we have of achieving happiness?

OK, step one: recognize and remember the difference. Believe that happiness exists. Understand intellectually at least that it is the ultimate kind of “pleasure.” That it is unlike other kinds of pleasure because it is deeper and more fundamental. This knowledge will help you resist the impulse to dive into pleasure addiction.

Step two: recognize happiness when it happens. It can present more subtly at first until it builds on itself.

Step three: learn the skills of happiness-building. They are holistic skills that encompass every area of your life: physical vitality, mental wellbeing, love and social connection, competence in expressing your talents and abilities, adhering to morals and values that make the world a better place, and spiritual practices that lend themselves to wide perspectives and existential experience.

All of these practices must be informed by and focused on activating certain parts of the brain that are key to happiness. The parts that help you grasp the significance of each moment.

Vive la difference!

Learn more about this at ZenBrainDoc.com.