The brain uses up to a quarter of the body’s available energy, said Dr Bruce Lipton. Or about as much as a marathon runner uses for his efforts.
What does this have to do with health?
By keeping the mind less engaged, we save enough energy for the body to use in the processes of healing, maintenance and tissue building.
So, if we can “turn down the speed” of the brain, we are literally helping our bodies to better health.
But how do we stop the flow of thoughts or brain processes?
The thoughts – and the feelings – are not even problematic. As long as we think about neutral things that don’t leave a strong impression on us, the thought just comes and goes.
The problem arises when we attach a certain importance to a thought. This can be done consciously, but it often happens unconsciously or automatically.
In this case, the thought literally triggers a bodily reaction or changes the body’s chemistry. (In his book “Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself”, Dr Joe Dispenza explains how thought is “materialised” in the body in three steps – via neuropeptides, neurotransmitters and hormones.)
Let’s look at an example. Let’s open a newspaper and look at the headlines. Many of them we just glance at. We may read them, but since they leave no impression on us, we move on to the next one.
Suddenly, a headline catches our attention. We stop and start to read more slowly… and even as we read, we feel something “awakening” inside us.
This is the first step: we have focused on a specific topic from a multitude of topics.
The title that attracted us obviously speaks of something that – for us at least – stands out from the grey of the average. It may be an exciting new development … it may have knocked on the door of our conscience … it may have reminded us of something important … it may have awakened an interesting memory, and so on.
At this moment, a crucial turning point occurs, as thought and neutral feeling are joined by emotion.
How an emotion is formed
Some researchers divide this process into two stages. In the first stage, the thought is given a positive or negative connotation: it can be accepted, approved, encouraged, welcomed, and so on. Or, on the other hand, we may condemn it, reject it, criticise it, push it away, etc.
This creates a feeling that is either pleasant or unpleasant.
In the second phase, this feeling is shaped into a (final or more defined) emotion.
According to the second definition, an emotion arises when a specific meaning is assigned to a neutral perception. So, when we pass a thought – or a feeling, a view of an event/situation, etc. – through our own filters. In practice, it looks like when we perceive something, we say to ourselves: “This means that …”. In this way, as in the first example, we have assigned meaning to a neutral situation.
Let’s look at some situations where we have turned a neutral perception into a specific emotion.
Think of a partner or a good friend. The thought makes us feel good. We can keep this perception within us as just a soft, pleasant feeling.
Or we can say to ourselves, “How lucky I am to have her…” In this case, a (stronger) emotion of gratitude, happiness, joy … is awakened in us.
The same applies to those other, unpleasant (negative) feelings. For example, when we think of an ex-partner with whom we had a bad experience, we feel anger.
(By the way, all unpleasant feelings come from fear. Some examples: greed is the fear of not having enough, or not having confidence in the future. Jealousy and possessiveness are consequences of fear of loss. Anger is a defence against being hurt. Sadness is the fear that nothing good is in store for us in the future, or that our wishes will not be fulfilled.)
Depending on the degree of importance we attach to this area – in our case, a partnership or perhaps a relationship with a specific person – we are more or less shaken by the emotion; it can be in a positive or negative sense.
A different interpretation leads to a different emotion
The fact is that we could also give neutral perceptions a different interpretation and consequently change the emotion in us, both in content and in strength.
How do we know this? Because people react very differently to the same situation. What bothers one person does not even move another. The first may develop a very strong and specific emotion, the second a completely different one… or the whole thing may pass by completely unnoticed.
Let’s look at an example.
At a reception, we have a relaxed chat about informal things among acquaintances. A gentleman, an entrepreneur whose business successes have long been admired from the sidelines, takes the floor.
He points out that one of the things he absolutely does not approve of is an old car. He backs up this idea with his own experience. He once had an appointment with a local tycoon, but because his car had “stalled” while he was driving, he did not turn up at the appointed time. When he finally arrived, the tycoon was gone. “That old car – which, or so I thought, I had saved some money by not buying a new one until then – had cost me a fortune worth one house. That’s how much I would have made in that case if I had made it to the appointment on time, because it was all pre-arranged,” he jokes, “so every two years I change my car for a new one.”
We see the whole of society nodding approvingly … and we don’t feel good at all. We put a smile on our face, but inside we’re tearing up. The man we wanted to impress has just slapped us in the face.
The car we are driving is almost a decade old. We never thought that with all the expenses we have, we would buy a new car every two years! What’s more, it seems to us a complete waste of money.
We feel the entrepreneur’s story as a message “I don’t value and respect you because you don’t respect my core beliefs and values”.
It even made us start to defend our situation or defend our car – even though no one pointed the finger at us. In fact, very few of those present even know what car we are driving; least of all the gentleman.
How we turned a neutral situation into a divisive emotion
What happened?
We attached great importance to a story that was completely neutral. The opinion of the gentleman in question means a lot to us. When we learned that the entrepreneur did not approve of old cars, we took this information to mean that he had rejected us.
From that moment on, we experienced the situation in the same way as if, for example, we had been rejected by a girl (or boy) we liked. Even though the conversation continued with other stories, we were stuck in the car story, going over the situation in our heads… for hours or even days.
Indeed, no one in society pointed the finger at us – we did it ourselves. We assigned our own interpretation to a fact with no specific meaning(“The gentleman changes cars every two years…”):”… which means that he does not approve of my view on this matter… which implies that we are on different sides or do not agree… which means, finally, that the gentleman does not accept me.”
We have also attached great importance to it. There was a strong emotion that kept us in check.
But this is only our personal truth, based on our own beliefs, or a very specific view of the situation.
How do we know this? Even though five people heard the gentleman and his story, we were the only ones who felt bad about it. What’s more, because we knew two of the five, we knew exactly that they were also driving an old car … but they reacted very differently to the story.
They did not perceive it as the gentleman expressing his (dis)affection for people who drive old cars, but as an anecdote that concerned only the gentleman. Therefore, it did not touch them.
Where does anger come from?
This is exactly what happens with all emotions.
They do not arise “just like that” or automatically in certain situations, but are always the result of our attitude or specific interpretation of the situation and the fact that the situation is important to us. The situation itself is only the trigger or the trigger of the reaction.
Everything we feel comes from within us.
So emotion is the result of the “label” or (positive or negative) interpretation we have given to something and the importance we attach to that area, person, experience, etc. The latter also determines the amount of charge or “strength” of the emotion.
In the end, it also matters how much this emotion pulls us energetically into its vortex. Or to what extent we dwell on it – and thus maintain or even strengthen it – within ourselves.
Let’s summarise the key points about how an emotion is created.
So we have a thought or situation that we will label as neutral – because it may be encouraging to one person, it may trigger a negative reaction in another, and it may be perceived as completely irrelevant by a third.
In response to it, we assign it a) a sign or polarity (plus or minus) and b) a strength or charge that comes from our perception of its importance.
Emotions as the key to health and success
Emotions are like a messenger telling the body how to work. Dr Lipton said that each of our cells responds to a perception of reality. Not to “facts” or events, but to our interpretation of them. In the book “Deadly Emotions”, author Dr Don Colbert writes that fear triggers more than one thousand four hundred (!) known physical and chemical stress reactions in the body and activates more than thirty different hormones and neurotransmitters.
Emotions are also the key to all of life’s successes, as they determine how we view ourselves, others and life in general. They are the glue that binds our current awareness to past events, to desires, obstacles, motivations and so on.
The key thing to remember is that emotions are not imposed on us or conditioned by what is going on around us, but are the result of our perception of the world.
We feel what we experience. We experience what we express. And we express what we have previously constructed within ourselves.
In other words:
My world is based on what I experience.
I experience what I (feel).
I feel what I express.
But I can only express things that I have previously awakened through my own perception of the world.
I experience the world around me solely through my own beliefs about it. So my reality is conditioned by what is born in me through a specific view of the situation.
When I change my world view, I change my reality.
This article is based on the book “The Big Ugly Crisis”, by Boris Vene and Nikola Grubiša.