I think, therefore I become what I think.

Your mind changes - literally - as your mind changes.

Change your lifestyle, change your behavior, and you change your genes. Who knew? Your genes do what you tell them!

You are energy. A computer of sorts. Whatever you experience changes your biology based on your perception of the experience. You compute the event and your computation determines the effect the event has on your biology.

You change time with your perceptions. Something fun seems fast, something boring seems slow. Also, something epic seems to make time stand still - because you stopped noticing time. Something horrible can make time seem to speed up - because you perceive time as running out.

Attention, and intention, change you. What you focus on, thrives. Whether you focus on blessing or misery, you get more of the same. Try it. If you think of something that made you sad, you will perceive current events in a way that adds to your sadness. Think of something that pleased you, and current events are more pleasing.

Add these all together - YOU control your destiny, YOU control your perceptions, YOU control your happiness.  No one can MAKE you unhappy, you do it that to yourself by focusing on the actions of others in ways that focus on the misery. No one can make you do anything. You always have choices. By blaming X for making us do Y, we deny our own power and our own responsibility for ourselves.

If you hold a gun to my head, I have the options of: 1) doing as you say, 2) not doing as you say.  Either way, I decide which to do. While I'd like to believe that I'd be brave enough to refuse to do your bidding, I'd probably do as I was told simply because I would be anticipating the pain of being shot. That is 'living in the future' - fearing what might come rather than experiencing what is present.

After the event, I can blame you for forcing me, or I can admit that I chose what I perceived to be the least painful path. I chose. Mind you, my decision was coerced - I'm not saying you have no responsibility. You are responsible for your actions. I'm also not saying that victims always have choices. A baby has no choices, it can't possibly stand up to an adult. But there does come a point when we can stand up and make choices, and we often choose to blame others for the choices we make.

When we honestly don't have a choice, and when we choose to survive, we have to learn to forgive ourselves for having been victimized! And we have to learn to forgive those who wronged us. Otherwise, we remain victims. Those who hurt us don't suffer when we don't forgive them, we do. We suffer because we give the past power over the present. Forgiving is NOT excusing. It isn't saying 'it's okay that you did this', it is saying ' I'm moving on, you have no power over me.'

 So, these two options I have in perception - being the victim or being the one who chose my action - are reflected in my mind and body. I can stand tall or I can huddle into myself. Standing tall is reflected in my health and perceptions - I get sick less often, I have fewer regrets, I feel less fear and experience more joys.  Huddling is likewise reflected. I am more easily frightened, I am more susceptible to illness, I spend a lot of time thinking 'if only'.

The really cool thing about the mind/body connection is that simply standing taller can make you feel better. Try that. Hunch up, like you are afraid someone is going to hit you, and pay attention to your emotional state. Now stand tall, and pay attention to your feelings. One feels much better than the other, doesn't it?

Where ever you are, walk like you own the place. When you do something well, celebrate it, not matter how small it might seem. Finished the crossword? YES! Made a decent scrambled egg? (My personal challenge.) YES! I MADE A GREAT EGG!

Celebrate every single thing you possibly can. Pretty day? Celebrate. raining cats and dogs? Celebrate that too, because rain brings food and flowers, and keeps the dust down. Broke your finger? Celebrate not breaking your arm. The opposite is to moan about the rain and the broken finger, which will only make you more aware of every minor thing that goes wrong.

The other day, I lost an envelope of money. Now, I can dwell on the loss - which definitely annoyed me - or I can be thankful that I had taken most of the money out of the envelope before I lost it.  I am glad of that, and in spite of this long post about how we control our perceptions, I have to admit that being aware of the loss generates feelings of scarcity. So I have to make a conscious effort to focus on abundance to counteract the feeling of scarcity.

Yesterday was a sad anniversary for my family, the birthday of a child who died young. It was also a happy anniversary, the birthday of a child we were allowed to love and cherish. When I paid attention to the loss, the day was miserable. I found dozens of connected memories that exacerbated the misery. When I chose to focus on the blessings attached to the day, everything felt better. There is nothing in the past that we can change, except how we look back.

We can't control the future, we can't change the past, we can only live in this moment, and in this moment, we have to chose whether we are going to be happy or miserable. What we choose alters our brain chemistry, which alters our bodies, which alters our perceptions. It's a circle, and we have to chose which side of the circle to stand on.