Want To Change Your Life? Change Your Memories
Why do we do the things that we do?
I’ve never given this question much thought until recently. In The Order Of Time, Carlo Rovelli explains, that at the quantum level there are no things, just events. Everything is constant change — some rates are quicker than others, making them more noticeable — but everything is always evolving.
That is to say, we are just a series of events or layers of experiences. So if experiences shape our lives — what shape our experiences? Fate? Luck? Intuition? Perhaps, but there’s a more tangible explanation too.
Our Relationships
As John Rohn said, “We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.” Your peer group influence your thoughts, emotions and actions. And over time, your habits shift too, especially when you spend a lot of time with this group.
As this Behavior Scientist Article states, when you live with others, you do a sort of habit negotiation. You develop or drop certain habits based on the habits of your housemates. In fact, studies show you actually have fewer habits overall due to more “interruptions”, inhibiting the subconscious creation of habits.
Our Habits
Obviously, those habits can be beneficial or harmful — hence the importance of choosing your peer group wisely. But why, do we tend to choose similar peer groups, time and time again?
Similarly, why do we find it so hard to stop a habit even when we’ve identified it as harmful? Part of it is — it helps us to know, to recognize ourselves. It helps us to form our personal identity.
We have a hard time seeing ourselves — in any reality (past, present, future) — without the habit. Buy why?
Our Memories
It’s our thoughts of the past, and associated emotions, which drive our future experiences. We limit ourselves to what we have done in the past, projecting that onto our future, continuing to fortify the pattern which becomes increasingly subconscious.
Adding to the mix, is our evolutionary need to identify possible future threats causing us to visualize everything that could go wrong. While we believe our anxiety is helping, we are actually experiencing those (mostly made-up) future threats in our mind. This activates negative physiological responses in the body which register as very real, negative memories in the brain.
Our Dreams
So if — our lives are driven by experiences, which are driven by our relationships, which are driven by our habits, which are driven by our memories — how do we get out of the cycle? We flip the script.
If we can change our memories or shift the way we see ourselves in the past, we can change our future through new experiences, new relationships, and new habits. It’s more than just positive thinking, it’s truly shifting the mindset from “Seeing is believing” to “Believing is seeing”. Visualizing your ideal future as if you are already living it.
It’s how you build the future of your dreams, not the future of your memories.
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