HOW TO TAKE FULL CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE ACCORDING TO SCIENCE — PART II
To Change Or Not To Change? — That Is NOT The Question: The Question Is HOW Will You Change
Your choices create your life, and you have more control over the outcome than you can possibly imagine.
In my previous post*, I told you the story of Matthew, a little boy who lost half his brain and still carried on with a normal life due to the fact that our brains reorganize themselves spectacularly, even when one of the hemispheres is missing.
*If you haven’t read my previous post, I strongly recommend you do so before continuing. Direct link ⬇️
If, after reading my previous article, you still can’t believe you (and your life) can change, keep reading.
I ended the article with two questions:
— “How much do you think your life will change in the next 10 years?” — “How much has your life already changed in the last 10 years?”
These questions were actually in a study developed with more than 19.000 individuals, published in Science Magazine — a peer-reviewed (and one of the most respected) magazines in the world. The results were fascinating.
You certainly hear people talk a lot about personality or essence.
Personality is the essence, the root of who you are: temperament, character, emotional profile, behaviors, and thoughts, all these are influenced by what science calls personality.
From the study, they came to the conclusion that a person’s personality changes more in 10 years than one actually thinks it will change.
According to science, your personality is the most stable thing you will have in your entire life — and yet, it will change more than you imagine.
However, according to the same study, there are things that change more, such as your preferences: what music you prefer, what foods, movies, books, series, you name it.
As you can see in the graphic, once again, people think they will change less than they actually do.
And then there’s something else, that the majority of people think will never change: your moral and ethical values.
The most important lesson we can take from this study is that no matter how much you might think you will change in the future, the reality is you will change much more than you realize.
What this means to you: in life, the choice is NOT to change or not to change. That choice simply doesn’t exist — your life WILL CHANGE. Period.
What you can choose, is to have control of your life in your hands — so that you can change it for the better, and for you to become even a better person than you were yesterday — OR, you can just lie down in the bed of accommodation, thinking that things will always remain the same, while your life is actually getting worse, being destroyed by the day.
Bottom line: you will change, like it or not. However, you do have a choice to change for the better or for the worse.
One thing is certain: accommodation is death. If you are accommodated in your love life, it will die. If you are accommodated in your relationship with your son or daughter, that relationship will change, and he/she may not even want to look at you when he/she becomes an adult.
If you get comfortable in your professional career, you won’t develop it further, and you can even lose it.
When you get comfortable and don’t challenge your brain with knowledge, you know what happens with your neurons (I’ve shown you in the part I of this article).
Accommodation is death, in all possible senses. Our biggest enemy is not other people: it’s ourselves. The name of this enemy is self-sabotage.
If you’re reading this article, chances are you are already looking to improve your brain function and your behaviors, in order to change your life for the better. You are here, focused, and enjoying the knowledge I’m sharing with you, nurturing your brain.
This is what’s amazing in today’s world: we have solid knowledge, and tools that allow us to self-improve and create consistent changes in our lives. But unfortunately, there’s a sad irony: most people don’t invest time in reflecting and seeking self-knowledge, but they are always ready to judge the lives of others. Be aware of it. Worrying about what others think almost always means putting the value of your life in the hands of inept brains. What’s the point of being judged by someone who can barely understand himself/ herself? What value has that judgment?
Takeaways…
As shown, change is a fact, it will happen. Our lives will change much more than we imagine. In light of this, I challenge you to take the reins of your life in YOUR HANDS, to make sure the change will happen for the better, making you a better person tomorrow than you are today. This is the greatness of having a human brain: the capacity to transform, to create an existence of which you can be proud.
Very important: never compare yourself to others! You will only build expectations that might lead you to frustration since everyone is different — different skills, different brains, different lives, and different existences.
The only real criteria to measure success is for you to compare yourself to whom you were yesterday! Read that again.
In today’s digital world, where everyone seems to be on social media, there is an insane amount of people comparing themselves to others — and thus living in misery. This creates all kinds of mental illnesses.
Always remember: what you see on social media is the stage, you never see the backstage. This is also valid in real life, not just on the internet. On stage, everything is always flawless, amazing, and incredible — especially on social media. But you don’t know others’ essence, you only see appearances. What you do know, is YOUR essence.
Depending on your choices, you can have a better brain tomorrow than the one you have today — in science, this is called neuroplasticity. So, never compare your backstage with someone else’s stage — compare your own stage and backstage to the ones YOU had yesterday. That’s how you measure success — and make no mistake, you are changing every single day.
In the meantime, I invite you to stay tuned to my upcoming post about Focus — if this is something you have been struggling with, you’ll be surprised by what science has to reveal.
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Yours truly, Sally. _