MENTAL WELLNESS Brain and Mind Pleasure is the mechanism that connects all aspects of ourselves, our senses and our body, our mind and our brain. Right now, consider what is on your mind most of the time. Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that “Life consists of what a man is thinking of all day.” Is your mind crowded with obligations, pressures, needs, wants, aspirations, planning for the future, trying to do more, and have more? When you jog, do you think about the wonderful scenery or your latest challenge? When you go to the gym to lift weights, are you thinking about the beauty in your world or about how to firm your buttocks? When you eat, do you discuss family problems or the taste and texture of your food? When you take a vacation to “get away from it all,” what is the “all” you are getting away from? Does the “all” stay on your mind? Why do you want to get away from it? Are vacations an escape from your own way of living — brief pleasure probations from a life sentence of obligations? As John Lennon warned, is your life what is happening while you are making other plans?
What’s On Your Brain? We often don’t stop to distinguish between the brain and the mind, but the difference is profound. Your brain is processing the light that conveys the pattern of print that makes up what the brain sees as words right now. Your mind gives the words meaning now and as compared with the past and future. Your mind is where pleasure is born or aborted and it is the source of your seventh sense. Your brain is capable of talking louder than your mind, droning out the messages of your seventh sense. To see who’s getting the most airtime in your life right now, try the following exercise. At the end of the day before dinner, sit down in a quietly place with a pad and pencil. Without any effort at censorship, write down what your brain is saying to you. Don’t edit, just write. Is your brain urging you to eat, to work or worry about work, to avoid something you should be doing, or telling you that you need sex? What brain commands are travelling over your system? Write down at least ten thoughts from your brain, (sometimes called “brain bulletins”). Put this brain command list away until late evening. Later, put on some music you find relaxing, sit down again, re-read your list. How many of those thoughts do you want on that list? How many represent the way you want to lead your life?
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(C) Creating Resilient Educators
