
Wired for Success: The Ultimate Brain Hack for Overcoming Obstacles
Michele CollisonShare
Do you ever feel like you’re just about to get your life sorted, only to be knocked back by life’s circumstances? Like even with the best intentions, your plans are ruined by something going wrong? I know I have. For a long time, my entire day, good or bad, was a direct result of what was happening to me. I even believed in the “rule of threes” – good things or bad things always came in threes. No traffic on the way to work? Great! Found a parking spot? Even better! But watch out for that third good thing, because that's when…well, you know…life happens.
Or maybe it was arguing with my boss on the same day my husband needed to work late, leaving me to handle school pickup, dinner, bedtime – the whole shebang – alone. Then I’d brace myself for the next thing to go wrong. And it usually did. Burnt dinner. Overflowing bathtub. Disaster day. And tomorrow? No better.
I woke up with 10% of my vision obscured.
Then, on April 25th, 2022, my world shifted. I woke up with 10% of my vision obscured. Terrified doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’d never even heard of retinal detachment. Turns out, the part of my eye that receives images and sends them to the brain had, quite literally, detached. Why me? Why now? What else could possibly go wrong? We’d just moved to Spain! I was still trying to figure out how to pronounce ayuntamiento and get my padrón!
The next twelve months were a blur of surgeries, failed surgeries, and more surgeries. The most challenging period of my life. But it was during this time that I rediscovered my journal. Day after day, I poured my experiences, my feelings, my thoughts onto those pages. I devoured books and podcasts about the mind-body connection. And that’s when I stumbled upon the concept of the mirror principle.
This idea, rooted in psychology and spirituality, suggests that our lives are a reflection of our minds. How we perceive the world is deeply influenced by our thoughts, feelings, and our beliefs. In other words, life doesn’t happen to you. It’s a mirror reflecting what’s happening inside you.
Think of it this way: are you a thermometer or a thermostat? A thermometer simply reflects the temperature of the room. A “thermometer person” reflects how the world is treating them. Their emotional state depends entirely on external events. A thermostat, on the other hand, sets the temperature. “Thermostat people” wake up and choose joy, choose gratitude. They emanate that energy.
I was definitely a thermometer. How about you? Which resonates more?
When I first encountered these ideas – mirrors, thermometers, thermostats – I was skeptical. I mean, have you seen the stuff that’s happened to me? This “woo-woo,” spiritual stuff felt disconnected from science, from evidence. But I was intrigued. It kind of made sense. I needed proof.
So, I dove deeper. I researched the science behind how our thinking affects our actions. And the evidence is astonishing. One study, led by Dr. Alia Crum at Stanford, looked at patients with peanut allergies. (My friend’s son has a peanut allergy, and it’s terrifying. Even a tiny exposure can trigger a serious reaction.) The researchers divided the patients into two groups, giving them the exact same treatment.
Group one was told that side effects (hives, nausea) were likely. It would be tough, but they needed to persevere for the treatment to work. Group two was also told about the side effects, but with a twist: they were told these symptoms were a positive sign that their bodies were getting stronger, that the treatment was working.
The results? Group two experienced less anxiety, fewer symptoms, and the treatment was more effective. What they believed about the treatment became their reality.
This, along with countless other studies, highlights the power of the mind-body connection. We can choose to be controlled by our circumstances and beliefs, or we can take charge, challenge those beliefs, and change the outcome.
But how? What actually happens in the brain?
Until recently, scientists believed our brains developed until our mid-twenties and then began a slow decline. Luckily, that’s been debunked! We now know our brains can create new neural networks throughout our entire lives. And we can influence this development through our daily actions, through repetition.
Think about it: we all have deeply ingrained programming, built up over decades of repetitive actions, conscious or unconscious. But science has proven that our brains are incredibly adaptable. We can learn anything, at any age. A new language, a musical instrument, a new habit, a new way of thinking. We can literally become a different person!
Our nervous system and our body-mind system can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s imagined, between the past, present, and future. This means you can actually hack your system into believing almost anything! You can create your reality by thinking, imagining, visualizing the details of what you desire, of the person you want to be.
One of the key ways we do this is through brain chemicals. Our everyday behavior is largely driven by these chemicals, triggered by our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. Negative thoughts trigger stress chemicals (cortisol, adrenaline). Positive thoughts trigger “feel-good” chemicals (dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin – the DOSE!). These chemicals create sensations we experience as feelings. And our conscious mind creates thoughts to explain those feelings.
Let’s take an example. My teenage daughter, almost fifteen, barely speaks to me anymore. She comes home from school, headphones on, straight to her room. Disaster zone of a room, too. What kind of teenager am I raising? These thoughts trigger stress chemicals. My body prepares for fight or flight. My heart races, blood pressure rises, breathing quickens. These sensations trigger anxious, agitated thoughts.
But the opposite is also true. Imagine I’m thinking about my amazing daughter, who secretly spent weeks before Christmas crocheting gifts for everyone. She’s taught herself to crochet, guitar, drawing – so many talents! She’s going to rock this world. I’m raising a beautiful soul who will positively impact everyone she meets. These thoughts trigger endorphins, serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine. My brain registers these, responding with love, admiration, pride, and even more positive thoughts.
So, what I think, feel, and believe creates chemicals that reinforce those thoughts, feelings, and beliefs? And it's not too late to change this? Can I rewire myself from a thermometer to a thermostat? Can you imagine the power you’d have if you could control your experiences instead of them controlling you?
You’re probably thinking, “Okay, I get the woo-woo and the science, but how do I use this?”
When my retina detached again, and I needed yet another surgery, I hit rock bottom. I was consumed by fears of complications. I was terrified of hospitals, especially after losing my dad and my best friend, Vanessa, after they went into hospital. I had to change my thinking.
I challenged myself to test this concept. Could changing how I thought about the outcome actually affect the outcome? What did I have to lose?
I created a simple, powerful, five-step process to align my thoughts and actions with my desired outcome: a healthy mind, a healthy eye, and abundance. I call it MINDSHIFT75 – because you do it for 75 days.
The acronym is GARDA.
Gratitude: I know, you might be sick of hearing about gratitude. But just do it. Every day, write down five good things in your life. Or even just one. Sometimes, I’m just grateful the day is over and tomorrow is a fresh start. Gratitude focuses us on the good. It releases dopamine and serotonin, boosting happiness and optimism.
Awareness: Write down how you feel in response to the day’s events. Notice which feelings come up most often and what triggers them. Don’t judge. Just observe. In my journal, I was shocked by how often I wrote about feeling overwhelmed. Just keep writing.
Reframing: This doesn’t need to be written every day, just a moment of reflection. Is there another way to think about your experience? Your beliefs? Maybe I can change. Maybe if I think differently, things could be different. I realized my life was always busy, but I loved that! The overwhelm wasn’t about how much was happening, but my state of mind and my belief in my ability to handle it. I reframed “I feel overwhelmed” to “My life is full, and I am capable of handling it.”
Dreamcasting: Write down your goals. But not in a boring SMART way. Dream big. Then double it. I want to travel the world, see new places every year I can still see. And I want to do it in first-class luxury.
Action: This is the ultimate hack. Start small. Want to get fit? Start by walking for ten minutes a day. Then fifteen. Want to learn something new? Meditation, salsa, crochet, coding, creating a course, growing a YouTube channel? Just start. Take one small step. And then another.
That’s it. Five things, every day, for 75 days. I promise, it will change your life.
Whether you believe in the spiritual or the scientific, remember this: it’s not just your thoughts and feelings, it’s your beliefs about yourself and the world. The stuff in your subconscious mind. Your core beliefs, built up since childhood. Everything you watched, observed, heard from parents, teachers, friends.
All those experiences stacked on top of each other, creating your core beliefs, which are then mirrored back to you in your life. “I’m poor.” “I’m not lucky.” “I’m not good enough.” “I can’t change.” “I don’t deserve happiness.” “People are selfish.” “It never works out for me.” “I’m just not wired that way.”
Life reflects what you hold to be true about yourself and the world. Want to know your beliefs about money? Look at your bank account. About love? Look at your relationships. About your worth? Look at your life.
This understanding is incredibly empowering. Every experience is an opportunity to reprogram your thinking, to let go of beliefs that no longer serve you.
Even if you think this is nonsense, if there’s a tiny spark of curiosity, try it. What do you lose if nothing changes? What do you gain if it does? You can continue living in the reality you’ve already created in your mind, or you can start creating a new reality.
The choice is yours.