Happiness is Asking Better Questions

Mentallurgy LifeChange teaches you how to take creative control of your life. If you started the game from the beginning (“Start Here 1-2-3”) and followed the steps of the change process in order, then you are already enjoying more of the life you really want.

Creative change really begins with asking the right questions. Once upon a time you probably asked some good questions, and either received or discovered some decent answers. But then answers became conclusions (the formal end of questioning), conclusions became assumptions, and eventually assumptions closed off the possibility for greater growth, discovery, and innovation.

Truth is, creators never stop asking questions, and the best questions are the ones that can put your hands on the currents of change. There are four currents (or forces) constantly impinging on the quality and success of your life, and if you can better understand how they work and interact, you will soon be able to use them to your benefit.

As is our practice in Mentallurgy LifeChange, we will explore these four currents in light of what we know about the brain. At the center of the diagram above is your brain (facing right), split down the center lengthwise and showing the left hemisphere with your limbic system and brain stem exposed. The arrows show how your brain is involved in the coordination of what we are calling the four currents of change. Let’s look at them more closely.

Your brain stem is the part of your brain that regulates the autonomic process in your body – breathing, heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure, etc. In Mentallurgy we call your body The Alchemist, as its glands and organs interact to mix up the chemistry (enzymes and hormones) that produces your internal state, or mood. Your internal state is one of the major forces in the stream of creative change.

Moving upward along that same vertical axis brings us to the crown of your head, and the region of your brain called the parietal lobe. This is where your sense of orientation is managed, including not just how your body is oriented in space but where you are in the context of your surroundings. How aware of your present situation are you? Are you oblivious to what’s going on around you, or do you have an acute understanding of your context?

Shifting to the horizontal axis and starting at the left brings into view a third force, one that pushes you from behind. It can take some effort to make habit visible, so to speak, because it operates prior to conscious thought and choice. When you first learn a new skill there is significant dedication of conscious attention to the control and coordination of movement.

With practice, however, your brain begins to memorize the routine, which effectively moves it back and down into networks responsible for “muscle memory.” Your cerebellum – that dense region behind the brain stem in the diagram above – initiates the automatic routine (habit) in any mastered skill.

Across to the right puts us in your frontal cortex, where all that focused attention and deliberate control in the learning of a skill is concentrated. This is the part of your brain that enables you to look down the road and into the future, to inhibit spontaneous impulses in order to stay on track with your intended goal. In Mentallurgy LifeChange the process of designing a strategy capitalizes on (and further develops) your ability to look ahead, clarify your goal, and make forward progress.

To truly be a creator of the life you really want, it’s important to take these four currents into account. Ultimately to be successful you will need to:

1. Put yourself in a creative state (color code green: confidence, desire, joy, optimism).
2. Orient yourself responsibly and realistically to the larger system of your surroundings.
3. Scrutinize the habits that have been pushing you thus far.
4. Move strategically in the direction of what you really want.

So begin by asking yourself the following questions:

• Look within: How are you feeling? What are you saying to yourself?
• Look around: What is the situation? Where are your resources?
• Look behind: What have you been doing? Is it helping or hindering progress?
• Look ahead: Where do you want to go? What’s the best way to get there?

Unhappy people typically don’t ask such questions of themselves. All the while, however, they are engaged in self-talk that pulls them down into the whirlpool of negative moods. Because they are so preoccupied with their fear, anger, or sadness, unhappy people have a very narrow (not to mention skewed) view on the reality of their present situation.

They also keep doing things the same way over and over again, despite the meager payoff and frequent failure of their efforts. And if you should interview chronically unhappy people, you’d find they aren’t really reaching for much and lack clarity regarding what they really want.

Unhappy people tend to want only to be less unhappy. They are anxious and want to be less anxious. They are frustrated and want to be less frustrated. They are depressed and want to be less depressed. As you know, there are experts in the wings who will take their money, diagnose “the problem,” and design a treatment plan around the problem.

These so-called experts (talk therapists and drug therapists) will regard it a “success” if the anxiety, frustration, or depression has been managed (ideally eliminated). Therapeutic success, in other words, is a less unhappy client or patient! But less yellow (anxiety), less red (frustration), or less blue (depression) is not at all the same as green (happiness) – and more green, is it?

Is this new to you? Maybe now is the time to step into the game of Mentallurgy LifeChange. Just go the the category “Start Here 1-2-3” and proceed through the posts in their numbered order. There’s no reason you can’t start living the life you really want – right now!