{"id":2724,"date":"2019-01-30T04:53:12","date_gmt":"2019-01-30T04:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chirnsideparkps.vic.edu.au\/?p=2724"},"modified":"2026-06-24T04:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:20:20","slug":"i-am-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robmacps.vic.edu.au\/upschool\/?p=2724","title":{"rendered":"I Am Enough"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
Sometimes in life, we don’t hear the words we need to and listen to the ones we shouldn’t.<\/span><\/p> Instead of being praised, we may be punished instead, and this can leave a lasting effect, causing us to unconsciously seek approval or find comfort from the world and its material things.<\/span><\/p> Everyone on earth wants to be happy, and by right we should be; and yet so many of us are not, as we believe the source of our happiness resides somewhere out there.<\/span><\/p> Your happiness in life is directly affected by your ability to concentrate and focus, understand your emotions and respond appropriately in any given moment. The term given to these balanced attributes is called equanimity: ‘Calmness and composure in any given situation, especially in a difficult one’.<\/i><\/span><\/p> With poor concentration and little awareness of the mind, you spend most of your time in what scientists call your\u00a0‘Default Mode Network”,\u00a0<\/em>which is where your mind wanders to when you lose concentration.<\/span><\/p> The Default Mode Network was a concept that underpinned a lot of the early research into the effectiveness of meditation at enhancing concentration and reducing anxiety.<\/span><\/p> In 2001 a research team led by Marcus Raichle,<\/span><\/p> a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, confirmed the existence of the default mode network and its role in constructing our identity.<\/span><\/p> Raichle was studying the areas of the brain that lighted up during different\u00a0cognitive tasks and found that when doing nothing, the mind was incredibly active.<\/span><\/p> “When scientists asked people during these periods of “doing nothing” what was going on in their minds, not surprisingly, it was nothing! They typically reported their minds wandering: most often, this mind-wandering was focused on the self – How am I doing in this experiment? I wonder what they are learning about me?; I need to reply to Joe’s phone messages – all reflecting mental activity focused on “I” and “me”.” In short, he and his team discovered that the mind mostly wanders to something about ourselves -“my thoughts, my emotions, my relationships, who liked my new post on Facebook –\u00a0<\/em>all the minutiae of our life’s story.” Raichle and his team had reconciled that the Default Mode Network<\/em> was where the construct of the self was made. It is where memories, fragments of ideas, emotions, hopes, dreams, plans and anxieties knit together to create your identity.<\/span><\/p> “our default mode continually scripts and rescripts a movie where each of us stars, replaying particularly favourite or upsetting scenes over and over”. Naturally, the mind wanders to things that are bothering us, so we continue to check on our worries over the day, making sure that they are still there, that the “I” still exists. – the problem with this is the more you visit your worries and anxieties the stronger they get because you are strengthening the connections between your attention and your\u00a0fear.<\/p> The more anxious you become, the worse your attention will be.<\/p> The area of the brain that controls your panic response and animal behaviours hijacks your prefrontal cortex – (the part of the brain that maintains focus and participates in the executive functions like decision making, emotional response, personality and self-awareness).<\/p>
(<\/em> Goleman, Davidson~ p.151 )<\/span><\/p>
( Goleman, Davidson ~ p.151 )<\/span><\/p>
( Goleman, Davidson~ p.151 )<\/em><\/span>
<\/p>The longer you spend in your default mode, the more likely you are to be unhappy.<\/h2>