01. I understand how the mind works

Well, we know that the brain is very important but the most significant for us is the awareness

It is the ability to realize what happens to us, to reflect about ourselves

And of all the information that reaches our brain, we have to bear in mind that we are only aware of 5%, there are people who say even less

The brain is also a dynamic organ, cells are known to organize and reorganize

This happens constantly and this happens depending on what we experience, our thoughts, our emotions

And in this sense, psychoneuroimmunology points out that by modifying attention, we can transform our brain

Professor Breuer, highly recognized and prestigious from Yale University, explains that the main function of the brain is to increase coherence between our beliefs and the life we experience and for this the brain uses two networks

One is, by default, the neural network which is the subconscious mind, the distracted mind and the task-oriented network, the ANN or mindfulness network, which is consciousness, the one that fully pays attention to things and that is related to our ability to choose, the most creative too, because we are continuously, if we realize, choosing a lot of things and there we decide where to point our attention

and it is there where we decide where to point our attention

In the first one, when the default neural network is present, the mind is distracted, it works automatically by action-reaction, subconsciously and there is no attention or it´s divided or dispersed and this has been shown to be more stressful in the long run

They call it monkey mind, zombie mind and it works as we have said stimulus-response, it is operating by an automatic pilot

95% of the time we do it in this network, automatically, we are not attentive, all daily activities are carried out in this network of action-reaction form

However, the second, the mindfulness neural network, the mind is open, it's aware, it's attentive, it is the mind of concentration

And there we can choose where to direct our attention, there we only spend 5% of the time, because we are usually worried about the past for the future and in this network We only live in the present moment

This mindfulness network, some call it the network of choice, logically, but some call it the network of happiness

And this explains that among the recommended interventions to prevent and recover from addictions, exercises are used that lead precisely to that network or to redirect it

Exercises well, related to breathing, daily activities, sports, food, sleep, any activity in which the person may be able to choose where to direct that mindfulness, focused on the present moment

Through strong stimuli of color, sound, light and movement screens produce a powerful chemical reward effect on our nervous system, that steals our attention and makes us more passive towards ourselves and to the world around us

This creates a permanent appetite for more information, stimuli and entertainment, that feeds an active spiral as drugs themselves

For example, let's take a look carefully how a fan of a football team behaves, when putting all his current of attention plugged into a display when his team plays

Literally closing himself off to receive any other stimulus from the world around him

Focusing only in a source of reality, which is, truly and completely, alien to his live

In addition negative impressions and violent are more addictive because they have more capacity to attract our attention, generating then difficulty of enjoyment in other images more positive, such as a sunset or nature itself

Take a look at how society is increasingly fascinated by the most destructive, violent content and deadly

You just have to take a look at the news or the most watched movies in the last decade

We allow them to enter our screens scenes that we would never allow to enter our real life

Bear in mind that this media reality is not alien to us since all that information is entering our brain, conditioning the way we think, we feel or we behave, making us much more manipulable and less free

We have to understand that our brain works primarily by imitation and repetition

This is how our own nature has programmed us, therefore everything we see is conditioning us and that especially happens to younger people

Our internal chemistry is altered and it's constantly seeking to fill that inner void that we have

To feed this void, the current pharmacopoeia has created a new wave of drugs, also designed with high technology which include antidepressants, sedatives and painkillers that try to make us feel better and try to counteract the harmful effect that the screens have generated in our nervous system

Interestingly, first our medical system prescribes powerful drugs to mitigate the effects and when they have proven ineffective, lead to natural treatments that encourage exercise and personal balance