Are you being brainwashed?

December 11, 2022
The Midlife Revolution

Are you being brainwashed?

December 7, 2022

A while ago someone asked me if I was being brainwashed.
I am seemingly way too happy and not worried enough about my future so something must be up.

Or perhaps I joined a cult??
In terms of cults – I could probably start one, but not sure anyone would really welcome me in theirs since being compliant never made it to my list of strengths đŸ€Ł

My initial response to the brainwashing part of the question was:

Yes.
I am being brainwashed.
I am brainwashing myself every single day.
I am brainwashing myself happy all the time.

And isn’t that better than being brainwashed into living in fear and anxiety by constantly following the news, focusing most conversations and thoughts on all the bad stuff happening around the world and giving my energy to things I cannot influence or control?

Isn’t mastering my mind and feeding it with what I want to feed it with better than allowing it to be constantly bombarded with sensation driven, fear inducing headlines and soundbites?

I see so much content around feeding your body healthy food, yet so little about feeding your mind ‘healthy’ thoughts.

Anyway, better or not, it’s not what the majority of people do so surely – it’s ‘not normal’.

One of the reasons I choose to work on mastering my mind is that even if you think that your analytical mind will protect you from believing in everything you see and hear around you; even if you believe that you are in charge and will always decide how you filter everything that enters your mind – the truth is that if you hear it enough times, you will start believing it. And you won’t even be aware of it as it will become a subconscious belief.

And I want to choose what I believe – based on objective and holistic learning and not on what the world screams at me to believe in.
And to do this I need to be consciously selecting what I am focusing my mind on.

Since I don’t live on a desert island and I am part of the wider society, there is of course a reality to it, but making conscious choices about what I predominantly feed my mind with is important to me.

Going back to the question I was asked though: it popped back in my mind this morning again and I realized that my response to: “are you being brainwashed?” was completely wrong.

I was wrong.
I am not brainwashing myself at all.

In fact, what I am doing is the opposite.

The natural state of being when we enter this world is happiness.

As babies and kids we are naturally happy and it requires someone or something outside of us (e.g. a scary toy, being hungry, being uncomfortable or sitting in our own waste etc.) to make us feel unhappy.

Then as we grow up and our minds get filled with what and who we should or shouldn’t be and what we should or shouldn’t do or have, our state of being begins to change.

By the time we get to adulthood, enter the world of work and jump on the ‘being responsible adult treadmill’ we are in fact brainwashed and hypnotized. 

Brainwashed into believing that what and who we are is not good enough. 
That we and our dreams and desires should fit into a box of a certain size. 
That we need to fit into the cookie cutter of standards created by societal expectations.

Then we get hypnotized by skilled marketers
if only you buy this, become this, achieve this

And all the other rubbish our minds get fed over the years until we start believing in it all
and stay in our box, and begin to strive to fit into the cookie cutter we think we need to fit in, in order to belong, to fit the standards of success and happiness.

I reflect on this and on the fact that 1 billion people are suffering with mental health challenges:
“In 2019, 1 in every 8 people, or 970 million people around the world were living with a mental disorder, with anxiety and depressive disorders the most common. In 2020, the number of people living with anxiety and depressive disorders rose significantly because of the COVID-19 pandemic” (WHO, 2022)

and the fact that a large percentage of the world’s population reports living in stress “Based on stress statistics worldwide from 2020, Brits and Americans reported the most stress, anxiety, and great sadness—26% and 33%, respectively. Additionally, 26% of Canadians, 24% of French, and 23% of Australians have reported mental health issues” (MedAlertHelp, 2021).

I am not surprised that my happiness raises eyebrows and sparks questions at times when stress, anxiety, depression and general misery is rampant across the world.

When we look at the facts and the state of humanity, surely it’s clear that the cookie cutter approach to the human experience we created isn’t working though?

 

YET..

Even despite all the evidence 
we are still not waking up and changing the direction of our travel, but simply trying to put a plaster on it. 

Now the quest for self care and dealing with mental health challenges has begun. I’m not discrediting the efforts, they definitely play an important role and are a good start, but neither seems to tackle the root of the problem that’s driving our stressful and miserable experience.

Since our thoughts drive our emotions, our emotions drive our behaviors and our behaviors create our experiences (and the overall experience we call life) – wouldn’t it make sense to start at the beginning? 

To start with the driver behind the wheel of our experience – our thoughts?
How about the ultimate self care starting with us becoming aware of our thoughts and becoming the masters of our minds? 
Becoming more conscious, more aware and more intentional with what we feed our minds with and what thoughts we want to have?
How about us being in charge of our minds and not letting them run our lives on an autopilot we no longer even notice?
It makes sense to me so that’s what I am doing. Each of us has our own logic though and is free to choose.

In conclusion, my response to the question I was asked was completely wrong because I am not brainwashing myself at all. 

I am simply going back to my natural, human state of being – happiness.
The happiness I came here with.
The happiness I knew so well and experienced before I allowed the world around me, my experiences, traumas and environment tell me who and what I should and need to be.
And what is appropriate and what is not.
And what standards I need to follow.
And what is right and what is wrong.
And what is good and what is bad.

To be clear, I am not advocating not having standards or being reckless. Not at all. 

I believe in leading life with love, kindness, consideration for the world and people around me, compassion and having a sound set of values, principles and beliefs – but ones that are decided by me, come from my heart and ones that I believe will help me to positively contribute to the world.

Happy people spread joy.
Loving people spread love.
Kind people spread kindness.
Peaceful people spread peace.

And I want to be the person who spreads joy, love, kindness and peace.

“We are all born happy. Life gets us dirty along the way, but we can clean it up”

― Isabel Allende

Love, Nina x

đŸ’« Get better not bitter
đŸ’« Choose courage over fear
đŸ’« Choose wisdom over wounds
đŸ’« Lead with love, not hatred

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