In the telling of your life story, you can be a victim or the hero.
A key to your happiness is the locus of control. If we see life as hostile, unpredictable and beyond our control, we become anxious, demoralized and hopeless. To prevent this spiral down with the stresses of life, we must recognize what we must accept and what we have the power to change. Accept what you cannot change, but accept responsibility to change what you can.
Become an agent of positive change.
Though you, your world and everyone around you is in constant change, you can be dynamically responsive to change and seek out the positive potential of every moment. Our brains are naturally resistant to change. We quickly fall into habits of behaviour (e.g. eating and physical activity) and habits of thought (e.g. conceptualizing and ruminating).
To be efficient, frequently repeated thoughts and behaviours become entrenched with reinforced neural pathways. As Canadian neuropsychologist Donald Hebb said, "Neurons that fire together, wire together."
The good news: the science of neuroplasticity also tells us that our brains can change for the better; we can literally rewire our neural pathways and create new habits of thought and behaviour. This is how we adapt to our changing world.
But it requires effort and practice to reinforce new more positive habits and ways of thinking. You can retell your life story in a more empowering way: see beyond the illusion of a separate smaller self, embrace more fully the present moment and create a more positive future.
Mindfulness has become in my practice an essential tool for emotional well-being and health. One aspect of mindfulness is meditation - focusing attention on physical sensations, the breath or sound. We learn to be present and with deepening awareness recognize that all things change and nothing lasts. Even our thoughts and emotions are changing, transient states.
We recognize that much of the suffering in life comes from our reaction to these phenomena. The second dart or second arrow is made up of clinging, rejection or negative ruminations.
Mindfulness teaches us particular attitudes with which we meet life's challenges and changes: with acceptance, without judgment, with compassion. We become less reactive - and more responsive - to life.
Relatively recently, neuroscientists have recognized the human brain's Default Mode Network (DMN or Default Network). It is a network of brain structures - the posterior cingulate gyrus (PCG), medial prefrontal cortex (MPC) and angular gyrus - that are activated together when we are not focused on a specific task or attending to our immediate environment. This is when we are daydreaming, reliving the past, contemplating the future and ruminating. It is an important network through which we make sense of our lives - creating our stories.
Neuropsychologists have also discovered that this Default Network is modulated by meditation. We can literally change the structure and function of our own brains. Experienced meditators create a new default mode: being more fully aware of what is being experienced in the present moment.
You have the power to change how your brain works and transform your life story.
WALK FOR HEALTH
On Saturday, May 12, come to our Walking Festival at Edmonds Community Centre from 10 am to noon.
And don't forget Move for Health Day on May 10. Burnaby will again be providing a host of opportunities to enjoy exercise at our parks and recreational facilities and the Burnaby Division of Family Practice invites you to "Walk With Your Doc" - a fun walk around the track of Confederation Park. I'll lead the event, with a talk on the benefits of being active and how to make it part of your daily life, at Confederation Seniors Centre at 6 p.m. For more information go to tinyurl.com/moveforhealth.
