Brain Magic – Making your life come true
Quick and Easy Results
When you watch a skilled magician at work, making things happen that seemed impossible only moments before, it looks effortless. But anyone who’s ever practiced magic knows it’s not. You learn basic skills, you practice moves, until the sum of small improvements eventually make big magic happen…effortlessly. For every real magician, there must be a million kids who spend a few minutes or hours trying to learn a trick, stumble through it a few times then forget it. Lots of people dream of doing magic; only those who work at it long enough and hard enough actually make the dream come true.
That’s what this book is about: Creating magic in yourself that makes the life of which you dream come true. We all imagine what our life will be, how we’ll perform in our world, how others will see us, how we’ll feel. All of us know people who seem to have made those dreams a reality. Looking from the outside, it’s easy to believe it just happened for them: they were luckier or had more help, that it was effortless as a good magic trick. But those who actually make their lives come true know they had to work a bit harder, stay focused a bit longer, give up a few more short-term pleasures, take a bit more advantage of openings life provides. It only looked like magic.
Cultural cross-currents
The major thrust of western culture over the past 50 years has been to move increasingly away from the idea of hard work and commitment toward a dream of magical solutions. Whatever is “wrong” with us is because of a “disease” and can be fixed by taking the right combination of pills. We deserve bigger houses and cars. We can get rich by borrowing money and spending it. There is a “secret”: if we just imagine what we want in detail over time, it will come to us. Stay thin without diet or exercise.
The ideas of commitment, sacrifice, working hard and sharing have gotten lost in the consumerist fantasy pumped into us every day, part of the shows we watch, the movies we stream, the internet sites we surf, the music in our heads. Instant is better, all growth is good, all change is progress, you deserve whatever you want, and you deserve it now.
Since the 1990’s though, a counter-current has hinted at something new to those who have bought the plugged-in, tuned-in, better-living-through-chemistry, instant-messaging package and have found themselves further and further from the life they imagined. There is a real magician in each of us: our brains.
The Brain and the Mind
Science has increasingly shown that a kid who can’t pay attention to homework assignments isn’t lazy or not trying or stupid. His brain is not able to sustain certain levels of energy for very long. An angry, stressed, anxious adult isn’t “crazy”. Her brain operates with too much or too little of specific types of energy. Meditators and peak performers in any field show certain patterns of brain activity in common. In short, the brain is the physical underpinning of the mind.
Many of us use the terms interchangeably, but we have learned over the past decades: it may be possible, as psychology has promised since Freud, to change the brain by working the mind; but it is absolutely possible to change the mind by working the brain.
Unfortunately, for many of us, this revelation is about as useful as having someone tell us that by tuning up our cars we can improve its performance. If anything, understanding how important the brain is to our performance has reduced our sense of ability to change ourselves. It’s all about “chemical imbalances” we’re told, or “genetic predispositions”. Who wants to mess with the most complex system in the universe?
But during this whole period of stunning discovery about the brain’s importance and how it works, there have been several quiet revolutions taking place, under the radar of most of us, which have opened a door to opportunity that instead of making us more helpless has given us a glimpse of the true power we have!
The Power to Change Yourself
The human body’s metabolic energy system is also impossibly complex: interlocking processes turn what we eat and drink into energy, store and burn fat and glucose and maintain a stable body weight over long periods of time. Through a process called homeostasis, they are able to accept a burst of indulgence or restraint without toppling off track. The brain is the same way.
Although our metabolic systems are complex and stable, we know that WE CAN CHANGE THEM! If you consistently change the inputs (what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, how you eat) or the outputs (how much you exercise, how you exercise, how long you exercise) over time you can change your body’s set point up or down.
We have the same power to change our brains! It’s work—not magic—but you (and only you) can make your life come true! If you’re up for the challenge, read on!
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