Life: Forget About It.
The brain will eventually forget. The hardest thing to forget is a song, but even with songs, given enough time, the brain will eventually forget the tempo, the right lyric — until you hear the song again.
Say, for example, you play a song, you like the song, so you play it two more times. But now, you’re singing along, memorizing the pitch of the song. Let’s also say the brain holds on to that song, its tune, your new found lyrics, say the brain holds on to that for one year. What we’ll have is this: That one song you listened to three times, by approximately a year later, you’d have to relearn those lyrics.
Now, say, again for example, you listen to a song, oof, you really like this one, like really, it’s from the “it” artist, easy to sing along, you can bop your head and tap your feet. Say, you listen to this song 50 times, but not only that, the radio, barbershop, the cab driver, the angry person at the traffic light, at every turn, you’re bombarded with this “hit song”. The intense constant reminder and your eagerness to sing along, the brain might hold on to this one for about five years, sometimes much longer.
Then there’s the song you had your first kiss to, the song you and your wife danced to, the song playing when your first kid was born, the song that was “our” song in your last painful heartbroken relationship. These songs matter more because they sparked emotions that matter. These songs you might not truly forget, ever.
I’ve used songs for these examples, because they are the most difficult to forget. Parents forget their kids name but rarely forget Marvin’s classic “Lets get it on” and all the freaky things they did listening to baby making songs, before they had a baby. You get my point.
Anyways, even songs, the hardest to forget, even really liked songs can be forgotten. Why? The Brain simply forgets. Not Alzheimers but healthy, normal, young brain, forgets.
Let’s try this, you remember your parents? pick one. Your dad you saw yesterday or your mom you saw just this afternoon, alright, pick one. Let’s say your dad (dads hardly get any recognition, so we’ll go with dad). Now, pick up a paper, grab a pencil, not a pen, a pencil. Good, draw the face of your dad.
I won’t be surprised if only the 2% of the 2% gifted people can immediately, without prior prep whip out a portrait of a parent they saw just two minutes ago.
You can identify them from a photo in front of you, yes. You can even recognizably sketch their face from that photo but it is very difficult for the brain to draw it impromptu — because while recognizing your parents is important, the brain still forgets.
I’ve left a social engagement and not remember the color of her shirt. She was sat in front of me for atleast thirty minutes, amongst everyone I spoke to, but the last thirty minutes we were laughing, talking, sharing a moment.
Now, I’m in the car, four minutes later, what color was her shirt? Uhm, uhm, right. Did she have on earrings? earrings? what? were her nails painted? her nails? can you guess their length? or the classic one, “what was the color of her eyes?.” I have no idea to any of these questions. I mean who thinks of those while having a conversation, even though the person is smack right in front of your face. There are people living in the same household with the “love of their life” who still cannot answer these questions after spending forever with their person. Why? You know why. The Brain simply forgets.
Most information about the person (not the conversation or the story of the evening) in front of me is immediately forgotten the moment my eyes look away. And if not that immediate, give me four minutes and I couldn’t tell you the color of her shoes.
I won’t be surprised if most people at the gathering can not answer the same about me either. My point is — The Brain Forgets.
Why am I bothering you with this? because I gotta bother somebody, haha
Truly, I’m bothering you for a reason and that reason is the brain forgets. Oops, incase you forgot, the brain forgets. Alright, I’ll stop.
I’m bringing this up because your brain can rewire itself, you know this, the brain will try to rewire itself without your active help but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get involved.
The way to improve your life is not just the knowledge or exposure of a better life but to feed your brain food (faith&works, information&practice) from that better life instead of the food from the life you’re running from. This is still too cryptic, give me a moment to decrypt it some more.
A person who wants to forget the lyrics to a horrible song, just don’t listen to that song ever again and after a few years, based on how heavy you listened to the song to begin with, you will begin to forget the song. The memory of an event renews its subscription in your head each time you’re exposed to that memory. A road less travelled is forgotten. Essentially.
In simple English, the way to improve your life is to reach for what you should want, not what you want, not what you used to reach for. Which would mean you have to first know what you should want, this is information gathering, establishing faith, deciphering life’s good path for you. After which, when your day starts and you want to reach for a cigarette, you grab a lolly pop or a bitter snack or whatever the current healthy alternative is to help you quit the old habit. Your brain will not forget how to smoke, if you’ve smoked all your life but the rest of your life can recover and forget certain urges once experienced. No one is going to do it for you, you have to want it enough to do it for yourself. That’s why majority of people will not quit a bad habit because they (mostly subconsciously) look at the long years invested in it, not the many years ahead of them that can be lived without the old habit.
Repentance is a thing, they wrote a whole Bible about it. It simply means switching habits. That’s it. I can repent, you can repent, we all can repent. Each day we should be examining which habits we can switch for better. Humility is a habit, so is pride. Exercise is a habit so is manners. Going out is a habit, so is choosing peace. The brain will remember what it’s being fed. You cannot ask self control of self, if you did not previously teach self control to self. You have to take charge of all of your life, not some of it. Examine yourself, always be in self examination mode. Your brain cannot serve two masters, you’re either here or you’re there. You change what you feed your brain, it will react like a dog would or a bird but eventually, it will get with the program and take to the new feed — or starve and die (which is still better than the horrible old habit).
While there are things you might not forget entirely, the amount to which you remember them reduces, significantly reduces. Quit your job today and after a few months, you won’t remember all the details of this job. Fact! You’d have to be “re-trained” to do the same job. Not because “processes change”, no, same process, same routine. You quit today and two months later? you do not do the same job with the same pace. Fact! After a year or two? forget about it. The building is about all you’d remember.
If a car reminds you of a painful divorce, you will forever remember the painful divorce, until you stop seeing that car. If a sweater reminds you of the happy part of the relationship, you will forever think fondly of that relationship whilst in company of that sweater until you throwaway the freaking sweater. A person’s name tattoo’d on your hand is a person you will always remember. Are you seeing the line?
You want to become a monk? the times you’d pick up a hooker, haha, I mean hookah with the smoke, oh boy, the times you’d pick up what’s bad for your health, instead pick up a monk playlist and listen to it. Rather than buy that new outfit, you buy a monk wear. Choose monk book instead of what you’d read in your “old” life.
If you want better, you have to leave good behind. Since the brain (eventually) forgets, and since the brain will (eventually) rewire itself, you can reach for the healthy options you want to see take root in your life and STOP (like forever) reaching for what you don’t want to see reflect in your life. Remember each time you interact with an item, a person, a song, a place, even a pet that is associated to a memory or behavior that memory or behavior is renewed in the brain and the time (the countdown) to forget resets. Cults are successful when they cut off their members from friends, family and other familiar ideologies. They then bombard the member with the new information that fits that environment. Don’t join a cult but learn new ways to elevate your life, using the information you have about your brain.
Stay away from what reminds you of what you want to forget. It’s really simple. Immerse yourself, completely, in the new life you want to be yours and completely separate yourself from the life you want to forget.
It is considered a privilege to be able to do repent, we tell ourselves, but many people today are able to switch a habit — more than we’d willing agree to. The word “Repent” seem to feel harsh, when I hear it from others or even now typing it. Again, the word simply means to switch one for the other. The age old argument of “it’s not easy to just stay away from what you’ve always done”, well why dont you think “it’s not easy to continue to stay away from what you should be doing?”
Each time you dip into what should be forgotten, you renew its subscription. If it’d take five years to forget a song, why not forget it forever by never ever seeking the song and staying away from anywhere you might encounter the song.
The brain forgets. The good things you’re enjoying now, the terrible things you push to the back of your mind, the brain will forget all. The most important part is the role you can play. Which is choosing what the brain should now remember. What the brain should continue to remember. You can play around with this, keeping things of fond memories around different places of the house, throwing away stupid books, cutting off insane friends, donating old gifts or burying them deep in your closet, away from your everyday normal life.
Work on changing the script that plays in your head about an event. Reword the situation to match your objective. “They were the best self they knew how, and so was I. Turns out their best self should live forever away from my best self, for the best of all.” No blame, no shame, no complain. When your mind drifts to it, you replay the tape, not the pain tape but this tape, the reworded tape. For as long as you have to and eventually the brain would move on.
If you don’t attach strong emotions to it, sometimes strong emotions are attached involuntarily, without our choosing, however, what you don’t attach strong emotions to, the brain won’t really care of it.
Use it or lose it is very true with memory.
The brain will hold on strongly to whatever you have not come to acknowledge, accept and move on from. Until, you remove that resentment, give forgiveness, undo any type of emotional coloring to the situation only then, will the brain move on. Because there’s literally nothing to see with that situation.
This is why one person can be fuming about another person, while the other person is sipping mimosas and not even thinking about the fuming person. One is feeding their brain intense colors and strong emotions about another person. While the other person is not registering a strong emotion about this person, so nothing for their brain to hold on to.
The best way to forget a thing is to forget the thing (actively not think about it by continually replacing, refocusing thought). The best way to begin a new thing is to continue to feed on the new thing. You can’t force interest, so find something good that interests you.
Your brain will forget. That’s why we read to remember, or in my case, write to remember. Your brain will forget. That’s your opportunity to feed your brain what it should remember. Stay away from your childhood principles and you will eventually begin to forget the ways of your childhood upbringing. But keep a strong bond with your childhood ways and you will be in forever remembrance of how you were raised to be an upstanding person.
If you don’t want to forget, keep doing it. Practice makes perfect, inactivity births oblivion. You can forget how to be curious, you can forget how to win, you can forget how to think right, you can forget how to trust your gut, you can forget how to show love, you can forget how to be nice, you can forget how to be respectful, you can forget how to be a good person, you can forget how to walk, you can forget how to talk, you can forget how to be a friend, you can forget how to play, you can forget how to drive, you can forget how to teach, you can forget your child’s name, you can forget your parent’s face, you can forget your password, you can forget, you can forget, you can forget.
What is not invested in, does not improve. What you think about continuously, with emotions, you remember.
This idea is pretty driven home. We stop here.
With Love,
Famous Steve.
