Watershed integrated hydrological model

You do not think in a vacuum. Every time you have a thought, there is a biochemical reaction in the brain—you make a chemical. And as you’ll learn, the brain then releases specific chemical signals to the body, where they act as messengers of the thought. When the body gets these chemical messages from the brain, it complies instantly by initiating a matching set of reactions directly in alignment with what the brain is thinking. Then the body immediately sends a confirming message back up to the brain that it’s now feeling exactly the way the brain is thinking.

To understand this process—how you typically think equal to your body, and how to form a new mind—you first need to appreciate the role that your brain and its chemistry plays in your life. In the last few decades, we’ve discovered that the brain and the rest of the body interact via powerful electrochemical signals. There is an extensive chemical factory between our ears that orchestrates a myriad of bodily functions. But relax, this is going to be “Brain Chemistry 101,” and a few terms are all that you need to know.

All cells have receptor sites on their exterior surface that receive information from outside their boundaries. When there is a match in chemistry, frequency, and electrical charge between a receptor site and an incoming signal from the outside, the cell gets “turned on” to perform certain tasks.

Figure 3A. A cell with receptor sites that receive vital incoming information from outside the cell.

The signal can influence the cell to perform myriad biological function.

Neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and hormones are the cause-and-effect chemicals for brain activity and bodily functioning. These three different types of chemicals, called ligands (the word ligare means “to bind” in Latin), connect to, interact with, or influence the cell in a matter of milliseconds.

— Neurotransmitters are chemical messengers that primarily send signals between nerve cells, allowing the brain and nervous system to communicate. There are different types of neurotransmitters, and each is responsible for a particular activity. Some excite the brain, others slow it down, while still others make us sleepy or awake. They can tell a neuron to unhook from its current connection or make it stick better to its present connection. They can even change the message as it is being sent to a neuron, rewriting it so that a different message is delivered to all the connected nerve cells.

— Neuropeptides, the second type of ligand, make up the majority of these messengers. Most are manufactured in a structure of the brain called the hypothalamus (recent studies show that our immune system also makes them). These chemicals are passed through the pituitary gland, which then releases a chemical message to the body with specific instructions.

— As neuropeptides make their way through the bloodstream, they attach to the cells of various tissues (primarily glands) and then turn on the third type of ligand, hormones, which further influence us to feel certain ways. Neuropeptides and hormones are the chemicals responsible for our feelings.

For our purposes, think of neurotransmitters as chemical messengers primarily from the brain and mind, neuropeptides as chemical signalers that serve as a bridge between the brain and the body to make us feel the way we think, and hormones as the chemicals related to feelings primarily in the body.

Figure 3B. Neurotransmitters are diverse chemical massengers between neurons. Neuropeptides are chemical couriers that signal different glands of the body to make hormones.

For example, when you have a sexual fantasy, all three of these factors are called to action. First, as you start to think a few thoughts, your brain whips up some neurotransmitters that turn on a network of neurons, which creates pictures in your mind. These chemicals then stimulate the release of specific neuropeptides into your bloodstream. Once they reach your sexual glands, those peptides bind to the cells of those tissues; they turn on your hormonal system, and—presto—things start happening. You’ve made your fantasy thoughts so real in your mind that your body starts to get prepared for an actual sexual experience (ahead of the event). That’s how powerfully mind and body are related.

By the same means, if you start to think about confronting your teenager over the new dent in the car, your neurotransmitters would start the thought process in your brain to produce a specific level of mind, your neuropeptides would chemically signal your body in a specific way, and you would begin to feel a bit riled up. As the peptides find their way to your adrenal glands, they would then be prompted to release the hormones adrenaline and cortisol—and now you are definitely feeling fired up. Chemically, your body is ready for battle.

The Thinking and Feeling Loop

As you think different thoughts, your brain circuits fire in corresponding sequences, patterns, and combinations, which then produce levels of mind equal to those thoughts. Once these specific

networks of neurons are activated, the brain produces specific chemicals with the exact signature to match those thoughts so that you can feel the way you were just thinking.

Therefore, when you have great thoughts or loving thoughts or joyous thoughts, you produce chemicals that make you feel great or loving or joyful. The same holds true if you have negative, fearful, or impatient thoughts. In a matter of seconds, you begin to feel negative or anxious or impatient.

There’s a certain synchronicity that takes place moment by moment between the brain and the body.

In fact, as we begin to feel the way we are thinking—because the brain is in constant communication with the body—we begin to think the way we are feeling. The brain constantly monitors the way the body is feeling. Based on the chemical feedback it receives, it will generate more thoughts that produce chemicals corresponding to the way the body is feeling, so that we first begin to feel the way we think and then to think the way we feel.

Figure 3C. The neurochemical relationship between the brain and the body. As you think certain thoughts, the brain produces chemicals that cause you to feel exactly the way you were thinking. Once

you feel the way you think, you begin to think the way you feel. This continuous cycle creates a feedback loop called a “state of being”

We will delve deeper into this idea throughout the book, but consider that thoughts are primarily related to the mind (and the brain), and feelings are connected to the body. Therefore, as the feelings of the body align to thoughts from a particular state of mind, mind and body are now working together as one. And as you’ll recall, when the mind and body are in unison, the end product is called a “state of being.” We could also say that the process of continuously thinking and feeling and feeling and thinking creates a state of being, which produces effects on our reality.

A state of being means we have become familiar with a mental-emotional state, a way of thinking and a way of feeling, which has become an integral part of our self-identity. And so we describe who we are by how we are thinking (and thus feeling) or being in the present moment. I am angry; I am

suffering; I am inspired; I am insecure; I am negative….

But years of thinking certain thoughts, and then feeling the same way, and then thinking equal to those feelings (the hamster in the wheel) creates a memorized state of being in which we can emphatically declare our I am statement as an absolute. That means we’re now at the point when we define ourselves as this state of being. Our thoughts and feelings have merged.

For example, we say: I have always been lazy; I am an anxious person; I am typically uncertain of myself; I have worthiness issues; I am short-tempered and impatient; I am really not that smart;

and so on. And those particular memorized feelings contribute to all our personality traits.

Warning: when feelings become the means of thinking, or if we cannot think greater than how we feel, we can never change. To change is to think greater than how we feel . To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorized self.

As a practical example, let’s say you’re driving to work this morning and you begin to think about the heated encounter you had a few days ago with a co-worker. As you think the thoughts associated with that person and that particular experience, your brain starts releasing chemicals that circulate through your body. Very quickly, you begin to feel exactly the way you were thinking. You probably become angry.

Your body sends a message back to your brain, saying, Yup, I’m feeling really ticked off. Of course, your brain, which constantly communicates with the body and monitors its internal chemical order, is influenced by the sudden change in the way you’re feeling. As a result, you begin to think differently. (The moment you begin to feel the way you think, you begin to think the way you feel.) You unconsciously reinforce the same feeling by continuing to think angry and frustrated thoughts, which then make you feel more angry and frustrated. In effect, your feelings are now controlling your thinking. Your body is now driving your mind.

As the cycle goes on, your angry thoughts produce more chemical signals to your body, which activate the adrenal chemicals associated with your angry feelings. Now you become enraged and aggressive. You feel flushed, your stomach is twisted into a knot, your head pounds, and your muscles start to clench. As all those heightened feelings flood the body and change its physiology, this chemical cocktail fires up a set of circuits in the brain, causing you to think equal to those emotions.

Now you’re telling your associate off ten different ways in the privacy of your own mind. You indignantly conjure up a litany of past events that validate your present upset, brainstorming through a letter recounting all those complaints you’ve always wanted to lodge. In your mind, you’ve already forwarded it to your boss before you even arrive at work. You exit the car dazed and crazed and a breath away from homicidal. Hello, walking, talking model of an angry person … and all of this started with a single thought. In this moment, it seems impossible to think greater than you feel—and that’s why it’s so hard to change.

The result of this cyclic communication between your brain and body is that you tend to react predictably to these kinds of situations. You create patterns of the same familiar thoughts and feelings, you unconsciously behave in automatic ways, and you are mired in these routines. This is how the chemical “you” functions.

Does Your Mind Control Your Body?

Or Does Your Body Control Your Mind?

Why is it so hard to change?

Imagine that your mother loved to suffer, and through long observation, you unconsciously saw that

this behavior pattern enabled her to get what she wanted in life. Let’s also say that you’ve had a few tough experiences in your own life, which created quite a bit of suffering for you. Those memories still elicit an emotional reaction, centered around a specific person at a particular place at a certain time in your life. You’ve thought about the past often enough, and somehow, those memories are easy to recall, even automatic. Now imagine that for more than 20 years, you’ve practiced thinking and feeling, feeling and thinking, about suffering.

Actually, you no longer need to think about the past event to create the feeling. You can’t seem to think or act any other way than how you always feel. You’ve memorized suffering by your recurrent thoughts and feelings—those related to that incident, as well as other events in your life. Your thoughts about yourself and your life tend to be colored by feelings of victimization and self-pity.

Repeating the same thoughts and feelings you’ve courted for more than 20 years has conditioned your body to remember the feeling of suffering without much conscious thought. This seems so natural and normal now. It’s who you are. And anytime you try to change anything about yourself, it’s like the road turns back on you. You’re right back to your old self.

What most people don’t know is that when they think about a highly charged emotional experience, they make the brain fire in the exact sequences and patterns as before; they are firing and wiring their brains to the past by reinforcing those circuits into ever more hardwired networks. They also duplicate the same chemicals in the brain and body (in varying degrees) as if they were experiencing the event again in that moment. Those chemicals begin to train the body to further memorize that emotion. Both the chemical results of thinking and feeling, feeling and thinking, as well as the neurons firing and wiring together, condition the mind and the body into a finite set of automatic programs.

We are capable of reliving a past event over and over, perhaps thousands of times in one lifetime.

It is this unconscious repetition that trains the body to remember that emotional state, equal to or better than the conscious mind does. When the body remembers better than the conscious mind—that is, when the body is the mind—that’s called a habit.

Psychologists tell us that by the time we’re in our mid-30s, our identity or personality will be completely formed. This means that for those of us over 35, we have memorized a select set of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, emotional reactions, habits, skills, associative memories, conditioned responses, and perceptions that are now subconsciously programmed within us. Those programs are running us, because the body has become the mind.

This means that we will think the same thoughts, feel the same feelings, react in identical ways, behave in the same manner, believe the same dogmas, and perceive reality the same ways. About 95 percent of who we are by midlife¹ is a series of subconscious programs that have become automatic

—driving a car, brushing our teeth, overeating when we’re stressed, worrying about our future, judging our friends, complaining about our lives, blaming our parents, not believing in ourselves, and insisting on being chronically unhappy, just to name a few.

Often We Only Appear to Be Awake

Since the body becomes the subconscious mind, it’s easy to see that in situations when the body becomes the mind, the conscious mind no longer has much to do with our behavior. The instant we have a thought, feeling, or reaction, the body runs on automatic pilot. We go unconscious.

Take, for example, a mother driving a minivan to drop her kids off at school. How is she able to navigate traffic, break up arguments, drink her coffee, shift gears, and help her son blow his nose … all at once? Much like a computer program, these actions have become automatic functions that can

run very fluidly and easily. Mom’s body is skillfully doing everything because it has memorized how to do all these deeds through much repetition. She no longer has any conscious thought about how she does them; they are habitual.

Think about that: 5 percent of the mind is conscious, struggling against the 95 percent that is running subconscious automatic programs. We’ve memorized a set of behaviors so well that we have become an automatic, habitual body-mind. In fact, when the body has memorized a thought, action, or feeling to the extent that the body is the mind—when mind and body are one—we are (in a state of) being the memory of ourselves. And if 95 percent of who we are by age 35 is a set of involuntary programs, memorized behaviors, and habitual emotional reactions, it follows that 95 percent of our day, we are unconscious. We only appear to be awake. Yikes!

So a person may consciously want to be happy, healthy, or free, but the experience of hosting 20 years of suffering and the repeated cycling of those chemicals of pain and pity have subconsciously conditioned the body to be in a habitual state. We live by habit when we’re no longer aware of what we’re thinking, doing, or feeling; we become unconscious.

The greatest habit we must break is the habit of being ourselves.