Always Miserable? Try These Three Steps to a "New Normal"

• If our family is depressed, depression becomes a part of our normal.
• If our parents are anxious, anxiety becomes a part of our normal.
• If those who raise us tend to get angry, anger becomes a part of our normal.

Before we can hardly talk, our brain has set these environmental feelings as the “normal” for our lives.
Later in life we may struggle against an angry, worried, depressed or unloved sense of normal. Despite our efforts, our brain quickly finds its way back. We wake up miserable each morning, or return to our misery even after something positive happens.
Without retraining our brain to a new normal that is exactly what will happen!
Three Steps to a New Normal

The first step to a new normal is learning to feel appreciation in my body.
Appreciation, gratitude and thankfulness all work, provided I notice what they feel like in my body. Noticing the body feeling insures that the right parts of my brain are working together (prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate and insula.)

When my brain discovers that I can feel appreciation at will a new range of possibilities opens for me.

The second step toward a new normal is learning to sustain the feeling of appreciation until I can feel appreciation for five straight minutes.
To do this, I begin to collect a series of appreciation experiences and memories by giving them names like: island sunrise, morning coffee, Fido at lake, Julie’s birthday. Now I can keep my appreciation going longer by remembering one appreciation experience after another.

When I can do this for five minutes, my brain realizes that I can feel this as long as I like.