"When my crisis came, traumatized and unprepared I did not know where to turn. My occupation and education should have given me the insight to cope but in my depths of despair I needed something more. The approach I share through my book became a life saver. It helped me to come to terms with difficult challenges... " - I. S. Szakal
1. 4. Let’s Do It Now
Think about the reasons you are reading this. Why would you want to work with this book? You might think you want to feel better or understand yourself, learn techniques to improve personal life, know how to be more fulfilled, be grounded in life, or maybe someone gave you this book. Then bring attention to doubts and resistance. Answer: Why wouldn’t you want to complete this book? Be honest, creative, open minded and try to recognize what might feed your resistance. Then get paper and pen. Divide the paper in two columns: Costs / Benefits. Write possible costs and benefits of completing your daily sessions throughout twelve weeks. Then compare and validate Costs / Benefits. Try to put them in a bigger perspective of time. Perhaps, put them in a scope of your life and their importance for the future.
2. 1. Negative Default of the Mind
To understand why to start in the mind if we want to feel happier we need to think about our ancestors. They lived life in physical threats. This got hardwired into their brains and DNA. This negative bias they passed down the generations to us.
Our ancestors also had to constantly scan the environment to survive and pay attention to what threats they were dealing with to distinguish real from their imagination. Thus, along the negative default it was awareness that got hardwired in brains and passed down to descendants, to us.
As we will later learn this genetically encoded information, awareness and negativity hardwired in the brain, is wrongly used these days. We can try to fix it and make it working properly. To do this we use the adaptability of the brain, so called neuroplasticity of the brain, which means “use it or lose it”.
3. 1. The Powerful Mind
Imagine a person fearful of darkness. To cope with their fear they might keep lights turned on in the whole house, they don’t enter dark rooms or they don’t go out after dusk. They notice feelings in their body caused by fear such as increased heart rate, lump in the throat, changes in breathing, might be shaky and sweaty, or they might feel discomfort in the stomach. They can also notice their thoughts, perhaps thinking about murders, criminals, the worst happening to them in the darkness, or they might think about negative personal experience.
To understand what is going on here we have to differentiate thinking, feeling and behaviour. Their experience starts with thinking about the darkness and interpretation of darkness. This generates their feelings, reactions in their body and emotions. They somehow behave to change emotions and compensate for unpleasant feelings. To cope with discomfort they do something,
Their behaviour seems logical because the darkness is a problem. But it is not completely true and there is much more happening.
It is not the darkness, a situation they are facing, but thinking about it that causes fear and reactions in their body. The behaviour, although compensating for their emotional discomfort, is dysfunctional, and in fact it maintains their fear of darkness. They don’t deal with the problem and fear will grow again in response to their thinking and behaviour.
People unintentionally keep themselves trapped because of their mind and brain. Each time when their actions release uncomfortable feelings they reinforce connection of a situation - thinking – feeling – behaviour.
