So, like every year, the old year said goodbye to a lot of glitz and glamour and the new year welcomed us with sunshine. Sunshine, like rays of hope and new, fresh beginnings.

Which category of people do you fall into?

Are you one of those who make new New Year’s resolutions every year, or one of those who choose to skip the annual goal-setting phenomenon?

First New Year’s resolutions were written down by the Babylonians more than four thousand years ago, believing that whatever a person does on the first day of the year has a profound effect on his or her life throughout the year.

The start of a new calendar year causes our minds to reflect on and review the events that have passed and our thoughts drift to what could have been and what we could have done better or differently. The New Year marks a rebirth and a new beginning and encourages a sense of optimism that we can start afresh. The New Year is a great time to take stock and look at what changes we would like to make in our lives and how to make them happen.

Why don’t New Year’s resolutions come true?

Of course, the sad statistic is that most of our New Year’s resolutions never come true. We are excited to think that this year will be different from the last, when our resolutions fell into the water. But alas, the old patterns reappear: in February or even earlier, most of us abandon our goals altogether.

So why do we make pledges year after year, but then fail to keep them? For some it is a matter of tradition, for others it is the attractive thought of starting from scratch, for others it is the constant desire to improve oneself and to find happiness.

So how is it possible that we fail in our lofty goal of making our lives better, more fulfilled and simply happier? Of course we all want to be the best version of ourselves, but too often we lack the strength and will to change, or the belief in our own abilities. And as we all know, wishing is never enough.

In my opinion, the number one reason why people do not make New Year’s resolutions is that they know in themselves that they will not keep them.

Personally, I believe that New Year’s resolutions are nevertheless something to be taken every year, as they present us with a personal challenge. Of course, it is human nature to become complacent with our lot in life and ‘maintain the status quo’, but it is imperative that we grow as individuals and explore our potential and limits year after year.

The start of a new year is a great time to reflect and take stock of our lives. Have I been the person I want to be? Is there an area in my life that I would like to work on, to improve? Is there something I have been dreaming of for some time to improve myself or my life?

Taking a pledge is about our desire to take a step towards positive change. Even if we don’t follow through, we are still more likely to follow through than people who have not taken any vows.

The secret life of our brains

I was prompted to write this blog (in addition to the current topic) by the international bestseller How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain by psychology professor and neuroscientist Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett, who has spent more than 25 years researching the brains of thousands of subjects.

In the book, Dr Feldman Barrett explains that the theory of constructed emotions is named after its central premise: that emotions are concepts constructed by the brain. They sit in our skulls and receive all kinds of information from our eyes, ears, nose, skin and mouth. This information is informative, but it is also ambiguous. They need to be interpreted. In this way, the brain is constantly trying to make sense of the information it receives. One of the easiest ways to do this is to use past experience as a guide. If the brain can reconcile current experience with past memory, it can save a lot of time and energy. However, it would take too long to deal with thousands of old memories, one after the other, so the brain uses concepts instead. A concept is like a compressed version of hundreds or thousands of past experiences. Instead of having to remember every encounter we have ever had with, e.g. “Our brain stores the concept of a door. The next time we encounter a door, our brain only has to associate it with this concept to understand what it sees.

What are concepts?

Concepts are like labels or categories created by our brains to understand the world around us. When we see something new, our brains don’t ask “What is it?”; they ask “What is it like?” In other words, our brains are constantly trying to fit everything we perceive into an existing category. This is much easier than trying to figure out what it is – from scratch.

The idea that we use concepts to understand our experiences is not new. But Dr Barrett’s work makes a leap towards applying this idea to the messy, subjective world of emotions. Emotions such as ‘fear’, ‘sadness’ and ‘disappointment’ are concepts like any other. Just as our brain interprets the pattern of “neck”, it can interpret the pattern of bodily feelings as “fear” or “disappointment”. These emotions do not seem to be concepts because we experience them so intensely. But they are!

In addition, Dr Barrett also explains that the brain does not passively observe incoming data from the outside world, because doing so would make its decisions very slow, which could threaten our survival. In order to act faster, the brain starts reacting before it receives all the data – creating a ‘simulation’ or prediction of what it thinks might happen next. In essence, the brain is constantly guessing what it thinks will happen and then preparing to act on that guess.

The same happens with purely mental activities. As you are reading this text right now, your brain is predicting which word or idea is likely to be next, based on a lifetime of reading experience. These predictions save energy and help you read faster than would otherwise be possible. As the largest and most energy-consuming organ in the body, the brain prioritises this efficiency.

The ability to predict the brain

Prediction is such a fundamental activity of the human brain that some scientists believe it is the brain’s default mode of functioning. Our brains cannot help but constantly build predictive models of every experience we have, or any experience they think we might have.

This leads to a profound conclusion: that the simulations we create in our minds are more real to us than the physical world. What we see, hear, touch, taste and smell are simulations of the world, not reactions to it. We might think that our perception of the world is driven by events in the world, but in fact most of what we see is based on our internal assumptions. The information that comes from our senses merely influences our perceptions, like a small stone skipping on a rolling ocean wave.

This startling finding is supported by research on how people see. The part of the brain responsible for vision, the visual cortex, receives only 10% of its connections from the retina, the other 90% are connections from other parts of the brain that predict what we think we might see.

What does the brain do when its predictions are wrong? It can change its prediction to match what its senses are telling it. But it is just as likely to do the opposite: it sticks with the original prediction and filters the incoming data so that it matches the prediction.

In a sense, our brains are tuned to delusions: we experience a manufactured world of our own making, controlled by particles of sensory input. When our predictions are sufficiently correct, they filter our perception and determine what we can see at all. This can become a closed loop, where the brain sees only what it believes, and then believes what it sees.

The body’s energy needs

Everything our body does, inside or outside, requires energy. In order to manage our “body budget” of hundreds of body parts and billions of cells, the brain has to continuously predict the body’s energy needs. Just as the finance department needs a budget to predict where money will be needed, the brain predicts and issues corrections about when and where it thinks energy will be needed.

Many of these “budget changes” are emotional experiences. Our muscles, lacking energy, can feel ‘exhausted’, not getting enough sleep can be interpreted as ‘overworked’, and a lack of positive social interaction can be experienced as ‘loneliness’. But these feelings are not objective facts. They are concepts constructed by the mind from sensory data, cultural knowledge and the history of social interaction. Experiencing emotions is a happy (and sometimes unhappy) side-effect.

This means that a “bad feeling” is not proof that something is wrong. It just means that we have taxed our physical budget. Emotions are real, but what they seem to tell us is not necessarily true. Knowing that ‘negative’ emotions are simply our brain’s way of telling us that our reserves are running low, we can make a deliberate choice to replenish those reserves rather than resorting to less healthy coping mechanisms.

It can also become a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more we expect happiness to arrive, the more we prepare for its arrival and the more likely we are to experience it. On a neurological level, we also create our own reality.

As Dr Barrett argues, once we understand body budgets and how they affect our emotions, it becomes clear how much of modern culture seems designed to disrupt them.

Much of the food we eat is full of refined sugar, which cuts into our body’s budget. School and work wake us up early and put us to bed late, resulting in more than 40% of Americans (I daresay we Slovenians are not far behind that figure, if at all!) aged 13-64 not getting enough sleep on a regular basis, leading to chronic budget misspending. Advertisers play on our insecurities and imply that if we don’t look a certain way or buy a certain way, we will be judged badly by our friends (and social rejection is toxic to our physical budgets). Social media offers even more opportunities for social comparison, while the constant use of mobile devices means we never really relax.

Feedback loop

A very important observation is that the whole experience of emotions depends on our brain’s predictions of what it thinks our body needs. If these predictions become chronically misaligned with our body’s actual needs, it is difficult to bring them back into balance. Our body’s budget does not respond easily to our body’s warning signals. When our predictions are unfounded for long enough, we will feel chronically unhappy without knowing why.

Depression can be thought of as a relentless feedback loop of negative thoughts and feelings. Each feeling drives the next thought and vice versa. The brain focuses on negative past experiences and thus continues to raise money from an already taxed budget. The body’s alarm signals are switched off or ignored. In effect, the body and mind are locked in a cycle of uncorrected predictions, trapped in an unfavourable past when metabolic needs were high.

The theory of constructed emotions holds that every aspect of our emotions is malleable and flexible. We are not at the mercy of mythological cycles of emotions buried deep in some ancient part of our brain. We have more control over our emotions than we think.

Of course, we can’t just snap our fingers and instantly change the way we feel, nor can we ever gain complete control over how we feel. Emotions are inherently uncertain, and it is this uncertainty that makes for a vibrant emotional life. Life can be unexpectedly joyful, unexpectedly meaningful, unexpectedly profound. The promise is not that we can control the emotional waves that wash over us as we move through life. The promise is that we can learn to surf those waves with skill and pleasure.

The power of positive thoughts

In the light of all Dr Feldman Barrett’s discoveries, I can conclude that, over time, man becomes what he imagines himself to be. The mind is like an amazing computer that can be programmed to achieve wonderful things. So if we keep a steady stream of pure thoughts, desires and goals, reset and reprogram ourselves, we can achieve to feel and act confidently and decisively, especially under stress or in a difficult situation.

What do you think about most often?

Positive, happy people think about what they want and how to get it. Unhappy and negative Jews think about what they don’t want and often look for the culprit.

Our goal, or New Year’s resolution if you like, should therefore be to think about what we want. We need to programme our minds to work as successfully as possible and to feel comfortable in our own skin.

The law of cause and effect states that every consequence or outcome in your life has a cause. Nothing happens by chance. Your life today is a consequence of past reflections, and it could not be any different than it is. The law of sowing and reaping, which comes from the Bible, says: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” and speaks of the mind and personal development. If you want a different harvest in the future, you must sow different thoughts in the present.

Why it’s important to have goals

It is important to set goals in life to be happy, joyful and emotionally unburdened as often as possible.
And now we know that we have a success mechanism in our brain as well as a failure mechanism. The success mechanism is triggered when we have positive, loving and forgiving thoughts about ourselves and others and focus on our goals. Positive thoughts require conscious, continuous and dedicated effort on our part. They do not happen by chance, but we choose them. Unfortunately, the failure mechanism is triggered automatically when you stop thinking about what you want. This means that if we don’t consciously choose thoughts that make us happy, our focus revolves around thoughts that make us unhappy.
Fortunately, the law of nature dictates that if we discipline ourselves to keep positive thoughts, over time they can become an automatic way of thinking. When positive thinking becomes a habit, we see ourselves and our lives in a positive light.

And don’t forget the important influences on our health and, as we have learned from Dr Barrett, our energy, which are: diet, exercise, reading, continuous learning, meditation, socialising, sleep…
Diet is very important, if we eat fresh, healthy, good quality and varied foods and avoid harmful foods, we will have a lot of energy and will be more resilient to many illnesses, we will sleep better, we will be more productive, and we will also feel fighting healthier and happier.
In the same way, mental food affects our personality and character and almost everything that happens in our lives. When we feed our mind with positive thoughts, information, books, conversations, we develop a more positive and effective personality.

What is your New Year’s resolution?

And here we are back to New Year’s resolutions – do you have one? More of them?
What do you say to such a more general one: become the best you can be!

Mental health is similar to physical health. With regular training and practice, we gain a high level of self-esteem and positive mental fitness. And why not make it one of your New Year’s resolutions to take better care of yourself and be more loving to your body?

Create a facial beauty routine, because there’s something really beautiful about giving yourself all the love you deserve. Just like with diet, pay attention to what products you put on your skin. Let’s give our skin the best that nature has to offer, in the form of freshly prepared products full of active ingredients such as antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids and plant extracts, which you can find in abundance in any NANU products. Gently massage your face and give it at least 5 minutes a day. A nourished and beautiful complexion is also an important boost to your self-confidence. And the more confident we are, the more goal-oriented and successful we are. And the more successful we are, the happier we are and the circle is complete.

And all the power is in our hands, or should we say in our brains! Resolve today to make your ideas come true, to bite into the sour apple, to deal with life’s unpleasant situations and to become a completely positive, happy and healthy person.
There is almost nothing we cannot achieve if we want it long enough and hard enough and are willing to work for it.
Let me conclude this article with a thought from Orison Swett Marden: “Failure occurs when we stop trying. Failure is in ourselves, the only insurmountable obstacle is the lack of meaning that is ingrained in us.”

I WISH YOU TO FIND A PURPOSE AND NEVER STOP TRYING. GOOD LUCK!