Hacking your nervous system

Now we are going to see how the nervous system can be altered for ones wellbeing. The strategy is to interrupt the default flow of the nervous system that defines your state of being by intentionally changing parts of it to align with your desired goals instead of our current reality. This can be done by altering any one of the four main areas, the cortex through thought, the limbic system through emotion, the body through action and the environment through perception. It works best if you use multiple approaches that are designed to influence each of the four areas.

The cortex

The cortex is the area of the brain that is responsible for thoughts. It is capable of creating new connections when we learn new things and storing old connections when we repeat them regularly. The act of regularly repeating a thought makes it easier to think that thought in future without much effort. So a negative thought once repeated becomes easier to think about leading to a constant distasteful emotion and negative mood that is associated with it.

In order to change the thought pattern of the cortex therefore we have to find a different path that leads to a pleasurable or calming emotion in our limbic system. Through the power of thinking we can find positive thoughts in our memories or our imagination and try to repeat these thoughts more regularly. For instance your mind can go back to that fun trip you took last summer, or that  funny joke you read online, or that awesome friend who is always there for you, your cute kids, your pets anything that makes you smile. By hunging on to these thoughts alittle longer than is necessary you are creating stronger pathways in your brain that make it easier to think positive thoughts and recognise positive opportunities in your external environment.

By changing our perspective from negative to positive we can find alternative interpretations about a distressing problem thereby forging new neural pathways that do not lead to distasteful emotions in our limbic system but rather calming or pleasurable emotions. For instance you can see your loss of your job as a difficult problem due to the loss of income or an opportunity to focus on yourself and build a sustainable business. By changing your perspective you build a different neuro pathway that influences your actions and manifests in your external environment.

In the morning before I get out of bed i let my mind drift from one thought to another but ensuring that all my thoughts are focussed on how i can improve my personal wellbeing, my social wellbeing or my occupational wellbeing which i see as the key areas in my life. I go deeper and look at the details for instance for my personal wellbeing, i see my health as an important key aspect. And so i will try to see how my health has been a challenge for me and imagine how it could be better. I recognise my weaknesses for instance my weight but also take note of my progress but dwell more on how i could be much better. Am trying to pick new ideas from the quantum field of possibilities to bring into my reality.

We can also hack our cortex circuitry by learning new things. When we increase our store of knowledge by reading and learning extensively we create denser packed neuro circuits some of which are linked up with external triggers and others to internal drives. This means we are more likely to find paths that are of benefit to us and find creative solutions to problems by finding alternative pathways. We are more likely to see opportunities in our external environment because we have enriched sensory neurons increasing our chances of recognition and application of our knowledge.

Limbic system

The limbic system is hacked through intention. Without thinking of the forms and shapes of thoughts you can decide on an emotion you want to feel and practice repeating it in your meditations. For instance a feeling of abundance, love or gratitude. Ask yourself what it would feel like to posses these virtues and deeply feel them in your being without considering the thoughts or shapes in which they come in. You can resite the word under your breath like a mantra in case your thoughts drift away from it. This will make it easier for you to experience positive emotions inspite of your external environment and spot positive emotional triggers in your external environment.

Another way to hack your limbic system is to cling onto the positive sensations for abit longer than the negative sensations. For instance if you are embarased for coming late for a lecture you can focus on this and fail to pay attention or you can recognise it, set it aside and focus on the content you are learning in that lecture.

I pick one particular emotion i would like to feel as i drift off to sleep for each day, its either security, peace, freedom, productivity, love, vitality or abundance because these are the sensations i value the most. If i focused on security, i will wake up the following day feeling safe and go through my day finding aspects of my life that reinforce this feeling thereby creating a more secure life for myself.

Body

The body is primed to act in a specific way due to its habits and environment. If you are accustomed to doing a particular thing regularly its not only your brain that rewires itself to make that thing much easier but also your body experiences physiological changes that make that particular activity more effortless. This means you can grow new muscles, nerve endings, hormones, antibodies that make a particular activity easier. For instance if you are particularly afraid of performing a difficult task while exercising like jogging, you can challenge your self everyday by running afew extra miles than you did the previous day. As your body adjusts to the new challenge, eventually you will be running extra miles because your physical capacity has grown. In order to grow and improve your body always make sure to challenge it by doing tasks that are alittle more difficult than you would usually do and you will be surprised how much you are capable of with a slight improvement everyday.

You can also train your body to resist things that you crave for that you know are not healthy for you such as sugar, junk food and alcohol in the same way by intentionally lowering your consumption alittle everyday. With time your body should reset its emotional baseline and crave less of its unhealthy habits.

You can also hack your body's physiology through mindfulness, being aware of your internal and external states in the present moment. By focussing your attention on for instance the sensations running through your organs, the air in your lungs, the food in your stomach, the chills on your skin or the pulse on your temples you can ground yourself on the moment and divert your attention from worrisome thoughts that are  pulled from the past, the future or from your imagination. You can notice where there is tension in your body and release it. This process should break the cycle of stressful thinking and slowly but surely slow down the tension in your nervous system making you think more clearly and be more positive in your outlook towards life.

You can also focus on the physical events in your external environment like the beautiful trees, sound of birds or fresh air blowing on your skin. Focussing on nature also has a calming effect on the nervous system that releases tension and worry.

Regular exercise also helps release built-up stress within the body by producing calming hormones like dopamine and serotonin and reducing stress inducing hormones like cortizol and adrenaline. This encourages positive feelings and strengthens the body to be resilient in the face of physical or emotional stress.

We can also hack our body through the words we speak. When we intentionally speak positive language with words like I can, I have, I receive instead of words like I can't, I lack, it's impossible we prepare our body and mind for positive experiences in our life thereby increasing the odds of them happening.

Environment

We can also hack our nervous system by altering our external environment to match our needs. For instance by surrounding ourselves with people who are positive and optimistic we improve our own level of thinking making us more likely to manifest positive things.

Avoiding things that tempt us into our negative habits like being in the presence of  alcohol or junk food and being in the presence of things that promote our good habits like having your exercise gear at reach, your fruits and vegetables in your fridge and your favorite music on your stereo also improves our chances of adapting good habits and improving our mental state.

Sensory neurons

What you look at determines your thinking, which determines your emotions which controls your actions and your results. Therefore it's important to focus our attention on uplifting and positive content because our attention span is finite. Our sensory neurons should be primed to focus on what is most relevant, important and urgent in order to fully utilise our limited attention span. We often spend a lot of time on negative social media content, or content that is irrelevant or distant from us thereby wasting our attention and having little left to focus on the things that are truly important.

Through controlled mind wondering we can setup our sensory neurons to know what to look for in our external environment because we have already visualized what it might look like. We think about things that can uplift our wellbeing and imagine what they could look like in great detail so that when they cross our path we simply can't miss them.

We can also focus our attention intensely on the present moment, looking at all of the objects in our external environment and paying attention to the sounds while avoiding getting lost in our thoughts so that we will not miss the objects that manifest our vision.

Exposing yourself to multiple external environments also helps improve your odds of manifestation because you are more likely to find useful triggers. Therefore do not be afraid to try out new things because every failure is an opportunity to learn and encourages you to keep trying. You will never manifest your dream by sitting around your cave visualizing it only, you have to go out and expose yourself to the real world and watch how things play out by themselves.

These are the best tips I can offer on manifestation, good luck and be careful what you manifest, it might come true.