The Emotion Machine

Principles are core beliefs that we try to adhere to on an everyday basis.

Many people view their principles as strict rules that should never be broken, one who goes against their principals is viewed as a “hypocrite,” a person who doesn’t follow what they actually say they believe.

However, I find principles work best when we view them as guidelines. In this way, our principles become a general rule of thumb, but something that we may have to break every now and then.

Breaking your principles isn’t always a sign of hypocrisy, it could just mean that your principles don’t apply within a particular situation and context. You cannot expect to discover a set of principles and think they will apply to every future situation in your life.

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Every little detail in our environment can have an influence over our choices and behavior. Often we aren’t even aware of these details and how they influence us – it happens below the surface of our conscious minds.

Just as you can only see the tip of an iceberg floating in the ocean, we only see a snippet of what is actually going on inside our minds when we make a decision.

Becoming more aware of these unconscious influences can give us a deeper understanding of our own minds and some of the situational factors that can change the way we think and act.

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A ritual is any meaningful or symbolic behavior that we believe helps us face a situation or overcome an obstacle.

Our daily lives are filled with small rituals that we believe benefit our lives. For example, putting on your “lucky shirt” before a big date, or giving yourself a pep talk in front of a mirror before a job interview, or visualizing yourself scoring before you shoot a basketball.

While these rituals can often seem irrational and superstitious, research suggests that they may actually serve a positive function.

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When I was first seeking self improvement about 8 years ago I was in a dark place, so I was pretty desperate and gullible. The more someone claimed they could help me, the more I was willing to devour everything they said.

I was quickly introduced to the promising ideas found in Law of Attraction, The Secret, and What the Bleep? – and I was captivated.

They offered the perception that everything in the universe was a product of my own mind. And if I didn’t like reality, all I had to do was change my mind and through some mysterious power in the universe things would begin to work out for me.

How can anyone not find that idea just wonderful and amazing? It makes you feel like some kind of omnipotent God.

Today, millions of people fall for this idea just like me, but I think in the long-term these fanciful ideas actually lead to disappointment, and in worse cases even self-blame and self-hate.

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What makes one person different than another? Many may say it’s a combination of genes and environment, but recent neuroscience shows that it’s more than just that.

In an interesting study published in Science, neuroscientists studied the brains of 40 mice who were genetically identical and grew up in the same exact environment.

They found that despite these genetic and environmental similarities, the mice each culminated their own individual experiences which contributed to underlying changes in their brain’s wiring.

Due to these unique experiences, each mouse developed different brain and behavioral patterns while interacting with their environment, and over the course of 3 months these differences continued to increase in size over time.

Specifically, they noticed significant changes develop in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

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I’d rather do what I love and make a modest living than do what I hate to become rich and famous.

Motivation is a psychological process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behavior.

It begins with a particular goal in mind that we want to fulfill, then follows with the actions needed to make that goal into a tangible reality.

A goal can be anything we want to achieve: happiness, relationships, money, health, education, or whatever.

And whether we recognize it or not, we all have certain goals in life, even if they aren’t things we would normally consider “goals.”

This is because every action has an intention behind it. We feel a desire for something, then we take action to make it happen – even something as simple as feeling thirsty and grabbing a glass of water is a goal-oriented behavior.

This article gives you a mechanistic breakdown of how motivation works and things to keep in mind when pursuing long-term goals.

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Don’t wait for that one big “enlightening” moment, just recognize the small insights of each and every day.

Self-affirmations are a popular tool in self improvement. The basic idea is that we can adopt healthy, positive, and productive beliefs if we recite a belief enough times to ourselves.

For example, if we repeat a thought like “I’m a smart and happy person” 20 times every morning, then we may begin to actually believe that about ourselves, and thus act in ways that could make that belief a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Reciting these beliefs is said to work because increased repetition of certain thought patterns (and neural pathways) is said to condition our brains to begin thinking in these new ways. It’s kind of like working a muscle: the more repetitions you do, the stronger the thought will become.

This article is going to recap scientific evidence for the different ways self-affirmations have been shown to improve our lives.

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