Reinventing yourself

Mario Alonso Puig

• Editorial: Plataforma
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9788418285912
• Categoría: Desarrollo personal
• Categoría: Superación personal

At the oracle in Delphos, at the entrance to Apollo's temple in ancient Greece, there was a stone which had some strange signs written on it. It was an invitation to begin one of the most fascinating adventures that a human being can undertake. In other words, the adventure of self-discovery. This book is a map which will accompany us on this trip inside ourselves. Little by little the secret of how people create the eyes through which we observe and perceive the world, will be revealed. It is with the same eyes that so often make us focus on our guiltabout the past rather than on future opportunities.Reinventing yourself does not mean becoming someone different from how we really are but rather bring our REAL SELF to the surface. It is in this new area of possibilities where creativity fl ows, along with the wisdom and energy to completely transform our experience, bringing with it morecalm, desire and confi dence into our lives. The key lies within ourselves, in the exercising of our personal freedom, taking choices that slowly but surely lead us to transform our outlook.Marcel Proust said that, "the real act of discovery does not consist in going out to look for a new land but in learning to see the old land with new eyes." It is with our new eyes that we will be able to see what before we were blind to. It is also these new eyes which will lead us to discover how to reach what before had seemed unattainable.

1. Reinventing yourself

“It isn’t the strongest species which survives, neither the most intelligent, but rather that which adapts best to change.”

CHARLES DARWIN

One of the hardest things to do is to be open-minded when you are exploring some ideas which challenge our usual way of thinking. We all know that what our brain is capable of perceiving is only a small part of what reality entails. However, the moment we wish to act, we tend to do it as if what we saw was the only thing that exists. How often, for example, the well-trained eye isn’t what makes out colours and shapes instantly but what discovers what people feel but don’t say. There are areas of reality which, if we were to reach them, would reveal many things which would make us live longer and with a better quality of life. It is logical that we ask ourselves why this strange situation has arisen which makes us so blind to those life opportunities, which without our awareness, are being offered to us.

Only understanding a little more about the interaction between the mind and the brain can we find an explanation as to why the brain doesn’t work at the level of efficiency that we would expect of it. We often hear that we only use 10% of our brain. This statement has no scientific base, and even if it had, we all know, in some intuitive way that we have resources, strengths and talent within ourselves which are still to be discovered.

The brain is such a complex organ that, despite only taking up 2% of our body weight, consumes 25% of our blood flow. Processes such as analysis, learning or creative thinking require a great deal of energy which comes in the form of glucose and oxygen through the blood. The most important mission that the brain has is to help us to survive.

“The brain is such a complex organ that, despite only weighing 2% of our body weight, it takes up 25% of our blood.”

More than two million years ago, Homo habilis survived whilst his cousins, the parantropos did not. The reason is simply that the first of the two developed a bigger and more efficient brain.

The task of surviving has a lot to do with the problem-solving capacity, decision making, facing challenges and learning from one’s mistakes. Our ability to observe and analyse, combined with intelligence, memory, imagination and creativity, make up the foundations we need in order to face life’s challenges efficiently. That said, all of these abilities and faculties are pretty much useless if we get overcome with anxiety and worry when we come face to face with our challenges.

Whether we like it or not, someone who is overcome with emotions is intellectually dead-end.

The emotions we feel and which have such importance when we come to try to solve problems, do not come out of a void but rather have a clear and specific root. Knowing the origins of these emotions is very important if we wish to manage them effectively. This is particularly true when we find ourselves in tricky situations where we are put under a lot of pressure and in those in which our decisions can have important consequences.

When feelings like fear or desperation take hold of us we experience a kind of “brain kidnapping”, and however intelligent we may be, our intelligence will not be found anywhere. What makes most of our problems unsolvable is not the difficulty of the problem but rather the feeling we get that we are not up to the challenge, the moment we face them. For this reason, the true capacity to solve problems in a creative way lies in keeping the sufficient mental balance when these problems arise, so that we react in the best possible way and find an efficient solution.

From metallurgy we have adopted the word resilience which basically refers to the resistence that a metal has to being deformed. We have also adopted the word elasticity from the same science, which is the capacity of the metal to return to its original form when the force that has deformed it has disappeared. Steel, for example, has a great resistence as it is very difficult to deform it and it also has a great elasticity to return to its original shape once the force that has acted on it has gone.

There are people who have an extraordinary capacity to put up with adversity and who rarely lose their patience. It tends to be these same people who overcome in a faster way a painful episode in their lives.

We have coined the word homeostasis from medicine which refers to the group of mechanisms which stabilize internal physiological conditions. We are keen to learn how to develop this resilience and this elasticity within ourselves. We are interested to find out how to develop these mechanisms to hold on to our homeostasis, our balanced state, when we find ourselves in difficult and even adverse, circumstances. To achieve such competence, it is necessary to look into the complex springs of the human mind with the aim of discovering how to manage them in the best possible way.

Even though I do not like the analogy between the human brain and the computer it could be very useful in order to understand certain slippery notions. Our brain is quite like a very sophisticated computer able to carry out the most challenging calculations and to find the most innovative solutions. Nevertheless, just as a computer works with a software programme, our brain also functions with a kind of software located within it. A wonderful computer using poor software generates poor results. An exceptional brain functioning with a limiting mental software will only produce limited operations.

“Mental software is basically built up of experiences.”

Our mental software is basically built up of experiences. These experiences become the reference points which decide the way the brain has to work in the future. Let’s imagine, for example, that someone has had a series of very negative experiences with a person of the opposite sex as a boss. The consequence of this would be that if that person has a boss of the opposite gender in their next job, he would most likely begin to feel some very unpleasant feelings. Among these we could, perhaps, find frustration, resentment, or even anger. The performance of this individual could be poor, being absent-minded and making many mistakes in their work. This would be a clear case of a perfectly capable brain being made unable to cope due to an experiencial software that is continually imposing limits on him.

Something similar could happen to a child who has experienced a lot of suffering when learning something new. Pushed into a new learning experience, the child will be unable to hold his attention, to understand and to memorise things.

Part of the experiences we have built up throughout our lives are essential for survival and, therefore, are where they should be. Nevertheless, other experiences are, as we have seen, deeply limiting, and they impede an adaptation to unstable and changing circumstances. It is precisely these kinds of experiences which we most need to know about and understand because, when we change them, our brain also changes and becomes more capable.

The software cannot damage the hardware (the physical structure of the computer) except if it has caught some kind of computer virus. However, the mental software, when it is dysfunctional, can harm the physical hardware in the brain. For this reason, if we change a dysfunctional mental programme for one that works well, this does indeed produce a clear improvement in the physical structure of the human brain.

It is generally accepted that the adult brain is malleable. We now know that, changing the way we think, changes the neural networks. We also know that people trapped in a negative frame of mind favour the death of neurons, and those of us that have decided to think positively, give birth to new neurons from stem cells in the brain.

“Mental software, when it is dysfunctional, can do harm to the physical body, the hardware in the brain.”

Human beings, when we change our most limiting mental programmes for others which are less so, physically modify the structure of our brains. Perhaps it is for this reason that Dr. Santiago Ramón y Cajal, our first Nobel Prize winner of Medicine, who won it in 1906, declared that, every human being can be, if he so wishes, the sculptor of his own brain. It is important to realise that Cajal was not speaking metaphorically but literally. This should make those of us who aspire to grow and develop our intelligence and our capacity for learning very joyful. But it also puts into our hands a great responsibility, that of discovering what it is we need to do, and to train ourselves to reinvent ourselves.

Final Summary

If you wish to reinvent yourself, focus on what you wish for and not on what you fear.

2. Looking inside

“Who is able to make dirty water clean? Leave it be and little by little it will become clear.”

LAO TZU

Our experiences, when they have been intense from an emotional point of view, above all if they have taken place during our childhood, can give rise to what is known as “unconscious beliefs”. This type of beliefs are in fact convictions that we have. We are dealing with what we feel is a certainty and that, therefore, cannot be debated. They are not like ideas, but rather are true feelings. It is very different to think, for example, that I am not capable of doing something, than to feel myself unable and to know I am unable. When we speak of these beliefs we are speaking of something deeply rooted in our minds. I would like to highlight the fact that the majority of the convictions which limit us, do so without us even being aware of it. That is, they act in our subconscious mind.

Possibly, many of us have heard of the intelligence coeficience test which, for years, was considered able to measure the intelligence of a person. It is curious that when a group of young people were helped to uncover some of those deeply limiting convictions they had about who they were and to transform them into more positive convictions, they managed to raise their intellectual coefficient by an extraordinary degree. This means, basically, that some of our convictions can limit our intellectual development in a very significant way.

“Most of the convictions that limit us, do so without us being aware of it. That is, they act in our subconscious mind.”

Very often we are convinced that we are made a certain way and we feel it is impossible to transform ourselves. However, I state again that what our brain is capable of recognising and to understand about ourselves is only a small part of the reality about who we are. Besides, it is convenient to know that our brain, in regard to perceptions, can completely mislead us.

When you observe a sunrise and follow the movement of the sun until it disappears from sight, the visual perception that one has is that the sun has moved, while you stayed still. It was very difficult for Galileo to open the minds of the people to an idea that was in complete opposition, not only to what they thought, but also to what they saw.

There are a series of ideas that we tend to ignore from the start because they contradict what our five senses show us. I’ll give you another example to make the point clearer. We all understand that matter is formed of atoms and that, as our body is composed of matter, it is also made up of atoms. When we look at our body, we perceive it as something solid and, nevertheless, this is a perception which does not tally with reality.

On one occasion I visited the Science Museum in London and I was explained something surprising. The part of an atom which we can call “solid” is the nucleus, that if we recall some of our physics lessons, is surrounded by an empty cortex where the electrons are in motion. So, to get an idea of just how empty an atom is, the nucleus would be the size of a football placed in the centre of London, whilst the surrounding cortex would take up all of London, whose diameter is about 50 kilometres. If we are formed of atoms, as indeed we are, this means that we are basically empty and, despite this, we see ourselves as solid matter.

Our visceral being changes so much that many of the organs that we have now do not have any of the cells we ha...