Your brain is built to keep you safe, not happy

One of your your brain and nervous system main’s concern is to keep you away from threat.

Constantly aiming for happiness and joy will create more frustration in your life.

“The secret” is to aim for safety. Once the body feels safe things naturally fall into place and you will be able to focus on what is important to you.

A simple practice:

Once you notice a discomfort external (in your environment) or internal (in your body) turn to something that feels ok or neutral, in the moment.

If there is pain in the left knee, how is the right knee doing? Is it ok or neutral? If the right knee is not ok, where else in the body feels ok in this moment?

If there is uncomfortable noise. What can I find in the environment that feels soothing to my body? A flower? A tree? The sky? For folks with sensory processing issues this might be a bit of a challenge, with noise you might need to leave at some point, but I hope you get the gist.

Work on expanding what feels good, ok or neutral.

Your brain is already trained in looking for problems and threats, so your effort to find safety needs to be focused on the opposite, to invite a sense of safety into your system.