Cast aside your fears and start enjoying the rest of your life

Your mind’s one of the most amazing things in existence. But it has no instruction manual, therefore, for example, very few people know that we don’t actually see the world directly through our senses. Even though it feels as if we do. Or that only what your subconscious ‘attention system’ has tagged is passed into your conscious mind.

Everything else is completely and totally discarded, and so you’re never even aware of it. Which is why you can walk right past something you’re looking for, like your keys, without seeing them. Maybe even several times.

And have you ever watched a movie made with a hand-held camera? Everything jumps, tilts, jiggles and bounces. So how come the world seen through your eyes doesn’t?

It’s because you only experience the world via a mathematical representation of your surroundings that your brain is constantly computing and updating. Your brain knows that the world doesn’t jiggle, so the representation doesn’t either, even though the images on your retinas do. That’s why the world always looks so upright and solid.

Mostly this process works extremely well, but it can get confused when the data’s poor. For example, have you ever walked across a field after dark, and begun to be aware that there’s something in front of you? You’re absolutely sure it’s a cow, until suddenly you see it’s a tree! Your brain was trying to match the poor input it was receiving from your eyes with its knowledge of what usually happens in fields, until it received information which forced it to abruptly change the image.

Your brain’s internal picture of the world has some other drawbacks. For example, all your thoughts, preferences and prejudices about whatever’s happening around you are also fed into it. ‘This is boring’, ‘life’s unfair’, ‘no-one loves me’, and so on.

These feelings are all entirely in your mind, but because they’re built into your brain’s description of the world, they feel as if they’re completely real. Like your mind creates stories such as how tonight’s football match is super important, and that huge cars are driven by important people. So you get nervous before the game, and give way to big cars.

But now you know that these feelings are actually completely made up, despite how real they seem, so you can start to take control of them. They won’t go away, but now you can choose to put them aside. Including all the stuff that’s holding you back, like your fears and anxieties. Because they’re not real, they’re entirely created by your brain.

Putting aside your fears and anxieties means that you can really start to enjoy all the rest of your life. Such as the joy of nature, being close to your family, spouse and children, listening to beautiful music, enjoying your friends and reading good books.

Get the idea? Your mind can really lead you astray, so stop believing that everything you think is true. Because it isn’t!