12/09/2025
It's fascinating to me how efficient and powerful our brains are.
Just from looking at this photo I experience an array of sensory information that has been stored away from the past yet can be recalled and brought forward at any time without any conscious awareness.
This proves that our brains are truly pattern matching meaning making machines.
One song can transport us back to a memory of old or a smell can conjure a feeling or touching something can create a physical reaction.
It's wild to think of all this happening without our conscious awareness.
This pattern matching functionality is predominantly for our safety for example if you touch a hot flame it will encode it as dangerous so you don't do it again...
But its not always to our advantage because our subconscious will refer to patterns of behaviour that is deemed familiar but might not necessarily be helpful.
For example : I could never get on a bus without a panic attack because everytime I got on my brain would remember what happened the time before and create the same physical reactions until even thinking about getting on a bus would create those feelings...
This is why suffering from anxiety can in effect shrink our world smaller because of the associations of the patterns that our brain is matching.
It's important to remember however that our brains are not fixed and are in fact malleable.
If our brain has learnt something it can also unlearn it !!!
We can change the templates that hold us back so we are creating positive neural pathways that benefit us.
We just have to learn how to work with our brain so it doesn't work against us.
Don't ever feel that something is impossible - you are strong, powerful and capable to do anything you set your mind to.
One last thing... what comes up for you when you look at that photo?? 🤪
Much love
Vix
