Is your glass half empty or half full?

“The eye only sees what the mind is ready to comprehend” – Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost

The general attention of your mind is your mindset or bias. Some common biases are:

• Positive
• Ambivalent
• Negative
• Aggressive
• Defensive
• Controlling
• Submissive

These occur through establishing patterns and behaviours based on our experiences. For example, the brain does not know the difference between fear and excitement, it is our perception based on our experiences that determine whether the signals go to the the amygdala or the nucleus accumbens. It has been said that “brain cells that fire together, and your bias is determined how your brain is wired. The good news is that you can rewire it if your bias is not working for you. 

The challenge is that we tend to end up in these self-confirming loops. We have the core wounding, or original sensitising event, that plants plants the seed for the pattern and the interpretation. As new experiences will come up reminding your brain about the original wounding, you will then be further validated that the thoughts you had around the original wounding are correct. Your reticular activating system will then be on the lookout for aspects of your experiences to further validate the original wounding. And around it goes. 

Your connection to the core wounding are your emotions, which you can’t control. However, if you understand that you don’t need to engage with your emotions, but rather observe them from you awareness, then you can also observe your thoughts arising with the emotion, and your thoughts you can control, so you can direct them where they can reflect on the emotion rather than perpetuating it. If you can find your way back and heal the core wounding and direct your thoughts, then you can alter your bias. However, mind yourself, because unless you have self-actualised and become enlightened, you are likely to end up with a new bias, perhaps one more in alignment with your authenticity, but a bias all the same.