Chapter 2, part 11, Perception and Focus, The Good and Bad.

I spent a long part of this chapter trying to open your mind to one thing, that your brain is unique. Even with seven billion others on this planet, there is not one other brain in this world that works the same way yours does. Why? Because you’re the only one with your experiences. It is also worth noting that the words ‘I would never do that if I was that person’ are irrelevant. If you were that person, with their upbringing, body and experiences, you would make their same choices. This is because their brain chemistry is based on their experiences, not yours.

So how does this help us?

Right now, if you believe that the world is a horrible place, then you are right. If you believe that the world is a beautiful place, then you are also right. Well, that is until you decide to change your perception.

The earth itself is neither horrible nor beautiful, but both simultaneously. At any single moment in any single day there are both good and bad things occurring without your control. There are 196 countries, 7000,000,000 people currently alive, 360,000 births and 151,600 deaths each day, 3000 religions, and there are 5000 planes in the air at any given time. Your little tiny vessel known as your body sees the equivalent of an anthill in comparison to the world. Furthermore, you will only meet up to 10,000 people in your lifetime if you are lucky. That means that you will never meet 6999,990,000 people that exist in this world right now. In fact, with the birth rates as listed above, within the next hour there will be another 15,000 babies born that you will never meet.

I mentioned the above statistics so that you can grasp the limitations of your reality. We know that the news focus on the bad stories, but which ones do you focus on?

There are 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86,440 seconds within each day. During that time how much do you remember? If you go through all of yesterday, minute by minute, how much do you actually recall? What about last Friday? What about the Tuesday 5 weeks ago? What did you eat for lunch back then?

We live such a massive life and yet our actual memories are extremely limited. We tend to memorize things in the long term mostly due to heightened emotional states, therefore most of our memories are based around joyful and horrible moments. The other mundane everyday boring memories that make up most of life tend to be forgotten, and yet this is where we live. Reality is not in that memory from 5 years ago where someone dumped you, it is in the now, it is in the mundane, and it is in the peace of normal everyday life. Your existence is not one memory, nor is your life the sum of your heightened emotions. Instead, your life exists in one place… the present.