Once again the New Year rolls around. Have you made your new year’s resolutions yet? Did you make any last year? If so, how many of them did you fulfill? If you didn’t, remember that if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got! This means that you need to change your mind. “Herb, ole buddy”, you say, “How do I change my mind? I have been trying to do that all my life with out success”. That’s the simplest thing in the universe. Just rewire your brain. There are two ways to do this. One is to open up your brain, pull all the wiring out and put new wiring in with a different pattern. “Can’t do that” you say? Well then the second method might be more to your liking. The first thing you do is to identify the erroneous or incorrect thoughts you have during the day. The way you determine the ones you need to change is to determine how you feel about your thoughts and how they make you feel when you have them. If you feel the thoughts are negative or if the thoughts make you feel bad, this is a red flag! You have found a thought that needs rewiring. The reason some of our bad memories seem to fade is because we try to put them out of our mind and become somewhat successful doing that. This can be a good thing. I am not asking you to become Cleopatra, I’m asking you to deal with them the best you can and after you complain, confess or describe your problem to three people, you need to go on with your life and put it behind you. There are some people who have been in therapy for many years trying to make some sense of something that happened and trying to find out “why me” when they will NEVER know and can’t ever know. The answer is “rewire your brain” or “don’t worry, be happy”. Yes, any time you feel bad because you are thinking negatively, stop and just do a short meditation, bringing the situation into your mind. Then re-experience the situation, only this time visualize it as being the way you would have liked for it to have been. Yes, pretend it went your way.

Pretend it’s different. Each and every time you do this, you make new pathways in your brain, Different neurons firing. After they fire in a new progression multiple times, you have a new way of thinking about things. Like trauma and drama or “break up to make up”. Want to stop? Once you determine these things you are addicted to, you can rewire your brain by recognizing these thought patterns and simply “daydream” it different. Doing this repeatedly will not remove all the old memories, but will give you the desire to act and react differently so that you can have a better chance at living your New Years’ resolution.

Herb The Cat is a freelance writer for Oracle 20-20 whose New Years’ resolution is not going to get “potty faced” at this years’ company party or for that matter, ever again in his life and believes that the less you set up in your life that needs rewiring, the better off you are.