Good morning everyone! Welcome to our first daily exercise in gratitude. There’s a nice feeling of solidarity knowing that we’re all doing this together. We are an army of appreciation. Our efforts will not only improve our days, they’ll improve our community’s days as well. In this, everyone’s a winner.
Let’s start off this process off with a longer post that reminds us about how our brains work. That’s important, because we’ll be using this knowledge throughout: The central ‘truth’ we all share is that our realities are created through the layering of one matrix of thought after another.
That unique combination of conceptions then creates our individual reality and sense of self. Our wiring was built by our experiences and only we have been present for all of our experiences. Speak a language we know well, and we’re fluent. No pre-built pathway for doing the tango? Then we will dance badly.
These pre-built pathways are for the tiny electrical charges that combine to bring us to life. And it is possible for us to focus so much of our mental energy in once place, that we can think about something so much that we can lose track of our larger reality.
As an example, it’s possible for us to be so busy using our minds on some issue in the present, that we forget to imagine the near-future. Examples of this include things like: we’re studying for exams and forget our birthday is coming up. Or maybe work’s been so intense we forget our holidays start in a few days. We’ve all had those things happen.
Those things show us that the good feelings don’t come from those events. It’s not like some positive, informative force-field suddenly impacts us once the event is close enough. If no one reminded us to recall the event, then we’re not thinking about it, and we don’t feel things we don’t think.
That said, when someone reminds us that a good day is nearby, we’ll often find our happiness gets amplified by shock. The wiring for our birthday was there, but the shock adds power. So it’s like putting the good feelings on steroids. We are actually surprised by our own birthday.
All that being the case, in today’s meditation we will hijack that existing idea that all of our minds have pre-wired for other purposes: the idea that a day can be special.
Our special days won’t always be great days. But our minds generally see some days as being almost guaranteed to be good because historically they often are. So we all have pre-built wiring for not only our anniversaries and loved ones birthdays, but we also have separate but connected wiring for ‘specialness’ that we can also wire into any event.
Our meditation today, will be to warm up that guaranteed to be good wiring in our brains with one idea: that tomorrow is destined to be a great day. We know we have to have special-day wiring for our special events. Let’s light it up.
By thinking about tomorrow’s specialness, we communicate to our brains that this idea is important. In response, our brains will build larger, more efficient pathways for these ideas because it’s anticipating we’ll keep using them a lot.
As we strengthen that wiring throughout the day, we’ll feel some bleed into whatever we’re doing, even if it isn’t special. Like with the other special events we do remember, we’ll feel a sort of Christmas-eve excitement impacting today. So this meditation about tomorrow, will impact today and tomorrow.
To accomplish this pre-heating of the writing, today, set an alarm for once an hour. It might even be better if it’s not right on the hour, but that’s up to you. The point is, before we go to bed we want our minds to repeat the same intention every hour until we go to sleep.
As the alarm rings every hour today, earnestly think about some special days you’ve had that were predictable. Revel in the really good memories. Think about them until you feel the chemistry that goes with the good thoughts. If we’re paying attention, we’ll notice it.
Once we have that chemistry flowing, start the intention that we know that tomorrow is going to be like that. Tomorrow will be one of those days. Belief is fact. As with athletes doing visualization, our brain won’t know the difference between today and tomorrow.
If we do this every hour it will only take a few minutes to do. But obviously, revisiting really enjoyable times in our minds will have an impact on our day today, in addition to charging us up for tomorrow. So let’s close this off with a set-up for tomorrow’s meditation:
We need to leave a note or notification for when we wake up. It should remind us that today (tomorrow) is our super good day. We then take that important period after we wake up, where our brains are loading their daily routines, and we want to direct some of that electricity into that pre-warmed idea that the day will be good.
The day may have challenges, but we will be focused on all that manages to be good about it. Even disasters have good fortune in them. And thanks to today’s meditation, that redirection of our life’s energy will be easier tomorrow. Even better, we are wise to continue to do this every morning.
Got it? Set the alarm. Think about the wonderful times. Remind yourself that tomorrow will be like that. Do it sincerely and it will impact today and tomorrow.
Then, leave a note for tomorrow morning. And from that point forward, let’s have every day start off with us conjuring up the anticipation for a good day. It’s always easier to catch one if we’re using the right bait.
That’s it. It’s that easy. So thanks for joining me in this. I like knowing others are COVIDing along with me. So have a great day everyone. And I’ll see you all here tomorrow for our next step in building the sort of awareness that can change our lives.
Until tomorrow,
peace. s
PS I tend to put a lot of positive things on facebook, so if you’re not following the feed there that may also help buoy your spirits during the day.
A serious childhood brain injury lead Scott to spend his entire life meditating on the concepts of thought, consciousness, reality and identity. It made others as strange to him as he was to them. When he realized people were confused by their own over-thinking, Scott began teaching others to understand reality. He is currently CBC Radio Active’s Wellness Columnist, as well as a writer, speaker and mindfulness instructor based in Edmonton, AB where he still finds it strange to write about himself in the third person.