Why Your Brain Doesn’t Like Life
Episode #1 of the course How to be happy now … not “then” by Colin Triplett
Welcome to the course!
I’m Colin, founder of Modern Happiness, where we empower people to get out of their heads and start loving their lives.
Over the next ten days, you will learn about how the mind works, why your thoughts are so negative, how to quiet the mind, and how to be happy now.
Happiness, like most things, is a skill. You have to practice, but the cool thing is that it doesn’t require anything but your effort.
You don’t need a different life—you need a different mindset.
That is what this course is all about.
But before we dive in, I want you to know why I do what I do. The reason this is so important to me is due to the profound impact it has had on my life.
It was not that long ago that to me, life was the enemy.
Here is what I was facing:
• two kids under the age of 3
• very little sleep
• daily neck and low back pain from an overuse injury
• my wife battling postpartum anxiety and depression
• stresses of running a business (I own a personal training studio)
The worst part: I didn’t even realize I was depressed.
In fact, the only reason I did realize it was because of the show, Working Moms!
It’s a great show about new moms trying to find the balance between being a mother and working.
In one episode, a new mom was going to counseling, and she said, “Do you even daydream about being on an airplane … and then it crashes? That sounds wonderful.”
Yikes! But that is how I felt.
That episode was a big wake-up call. Luckily, it was not long after that I met a mindset coach who changed my life. He gave me a whole new way of seeing the world and sent me on a journey that has transformed my life.
That is what this course is all about: sharing with you what I have learned.
Understanding the Mind
It’s time to dive in! I want to first explain why your brain doesn’t seem to like life very much.
Just think about it: If there was someone standing next to you who was saying all the stuff that you think, you would be concerned about this person’s sanity. They would be the most negative, neurotic, confused person whom you had ever met!
So, this raises the question: Why? Why does our mind do what it does?
There are two parts to this:
1. Your mind can only live in the past or the future. The thoughts you have are always going to be about something that already happened (even if it just happened) or they will be about something that is going to happen.
2. Your mind’s job is to solve problems. The reason that we have thoughts is so we can solve problems. This is why we are at the top of the food chain! But this system does not work well when we are always thinking. When we are always in the past or future, there are so many problems to solve!
This is where we get ourselves into trouble. If you spend a great deal of time thinking about the past, you probably replay situations or conversations over and over. You get obsessed and either wish that things were different or worry that you did/said the wrong thing.
If you are someone who lives in the future, you are constantly playing out how upcoming situations/conversations might go and are constantly worried that things will go terribly wrong.
If we can agree that both of these are bad, then you are ready for the next lesson.
Tomorrow, we will go over the most important idea you will take from this course—and it’s going to be a game-changer.
To Your Happiness,
Colin
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