How To Be My Best Version: A Narrative From Neurosciences
The first invitation I want to make to you is to review what concept you have of success, what it means for you to be a successful person and when you look in the mirror, you reflect happiness. So what is success? The first mental image we receive is a person (man or woman) traveling, surrounded by friends, with prosperity and financial balance
What I am describing to you has to do precisely with the mental programming associated with culture, with the ways in which we interpret the world, that is, with subjectivity. Success is related to what is important to me, there is no absolute concept that describes it, it would be petulant and rude of me to attribute a single concept for excellence because in the end, I am going to end up talking about what matters to me.
Success is a state of constant flow that allows me to connect mainly with myself, with my desires and my dreams Achieving it involves a constant search that takes us time to process and understand; Furthermore, it leads us to face obstacles that allow us to build character and lay the foundations for determination. Success is the deepest way I have of relating to myself, it is an attitude that allows me to sustain the reality and challenges of life itself; Failure is implicitly contained in success since only when you have allowed yourself to go through failure, will you be able to feel the enjoyment and inspiration of success.
A successful person is one who is capable of choosing their own path and being responsible for what it gives them. A successful person takes care of themselves and the people around them because they understand the importance of belonging and being a community. He is not afraid of losing because he recognizes that it is part of the life experience. You can always rebuild the idea and perception that I choose to have of myself and everything that surrounds me, as many times as necessary until one day you wake up with the certainty of being present and alive.
And then language appears, that way we have to communicate Language is one of the most powerful tools that we have been able to develop and that has allowed us to evolve as a species; Language gives shape, meaning, and nourishes our experience, it gives us an identity that allows us to collect memories that later give meaning to our own existence. Language is our best ally.
With every word I utter, I represent my being
So what is language and how does it determine me? Language is nothing different from a system of oral, written or gestural signs that serve as a bridge to express ourselves and communicate. Communication is one of the most powerful representations of language since it has allowed us to group and congregate as a species, until we reach the point of being the most evolved species. The language has multiple functions, to mention a few:
Understand, then, that language has as many uses as the sender wants to give it and as many interpretations as the receiver is willing to receive. Now, have you asked yourself, what are internal dialogues? Very often we listen to that internal voice, which is characterized by emphasizing our mother tongue and gives us ideas, reproaches, guidelines, it shows us realities that sometimes we do not appreciate, Internal dialogues are connected to our emotional brain, especially with our amygdala, which is responsible for storing our emotional memories These dialogues converge in such a way that they give us conscious and often transcendental information.
All of the above to remind you that language determines you in every possible way, and also allows you to create your reality from your narratives. Be careful with your words, because they speak about you. Have you ever wondered what people you are surrounding yourself with? And why do I bring up this question if we are building from ourselves? Well, the other generates an impact on my reality, the other also invites me to be better, questions me and establishes a bridge from empathy.
Try to surround yourself with vitamin people, those people who are willing to listen, to be a channel of cooperation, supportive people, who do not relate from reproach, but from positivity, people who invite you to be a light and a beacon, people who can hold deep conversations. And this explained in a more scientific sense, let’s remember mirror neurons; how do they work?
The role of mirror neurons
Mirror neurons are cells of the nervous system that are responsible for transferring information through chemical and electrical signals. They are a type of neurons that are activated when an action is performed or when other people are observed executing actions, that is, When a person performs an action in front of us, these neurons show a mental representation of the action even though we are not performing it
They work like an invisible network, inviting us to unite with people and allowing us to learn from them, enabling us to understand what the other feels, just by observing their actions. They are located in different areas of the brain and have a great influence on cognitive functions, such as perception, motor skills, language, learning and attention:
Empathy is one of the main functions of mirror neurons and this is understood as the ability we have to connect with the reality of another, it makes it easier for us to relate to others and even allows us to recognize people’s emotional state. Learning tends to develop through imitation, which is why mirror neurons allow us to develop new neural connections. It should be noted that the relationship between mirror neurons and imitation is very strong. In fact, without them, our way of imitating would change. completely, evidencing a great weight when it comes to learning language and of course communication. This is how we are programmed to recognize facial gestures and body movement, facilitating non-verbal communication.
In conclusion, mirror neurons allow us to anticipate the thoughts, feelings and intentions of others, which are essential to being able to lead a full and satisfying life. And the concept of memory cannot be left out of this narrative. Memory is as complex as its name indicates. Memory is key for learning processes and of course for adaptation to the environment.
Sensory memory is directly connected to the senses, as it allows us to save impressions and information once we perceive the stimulus Its storage is limited, its perception is extraordinary. Maybe you remember that time you were walking down the street and a smell took you to a place, or maybe it brought you the face of a person, or maybe it generated an emotion in you, your body reacts in some way with the stimulus stored in it. our sensory memory.
Sensitive memory also allows us to perceive signs, for example when you are driving your car it allows you to follow traffic signs. It has a close relationship between perceptual systems and cognitive processes, this is how we nourish our information processor that at the end of the day will allow us to connect the inner world with the outer world and take the best access routes based on our intentions.
Do you learn to be a better person?
In short, yes, being a good person is continuous learning, and the latter occurs in different ways. All our perceptual channels in a state of alert are open to receive information from the environment, and we nourish ourselves with ideas that end up being more complex thoughts about how the world looks and we weave that relationship and interaction with ourselves, with the self and with the other.
Being the best version of myself is an act of self-love, it is a reconciliation with the Self Understanding that life is like a boomerang, I get not what I want but what I am, this is why we must improve that version of myself. Gratitude. Gratitude is one of the most powerful tools, it invites you to connect with who you are and raise your own consciousness, it allows you to flow from possibility and not from lack.
Accepting allows you to break down value judgments, whoever accepts does not suffer. Acceptance is one of the sources of greatest emotional benefit. You can definitely learn to be a better person, and when we talk about good or bad it is not associated with a moral system, but rather with the way we relate to ourselves and the environment. Neurohackin is a very useful tool to accompany therapeutic processes; it refers to an individual and personal training system designed to adapt to the current environment.
An environment that is hostile (aggressive), with scarcity of resources and with a constant need for stimulation, bombardment of stressful and addictive stimuli. In my therapeutic practice I have developed some programs that facilitate this training, it has been very useful for people who present symptoms associated with anxiety, depression, or simply people who seek to have a more caring relationship with themselves and with the environment in which they develop.
