We LOVE familiarity.  If we're familiar with it, it feels safe, right?  Rest assured; advertisers know this, and use it to sell us brands that we will perceive as safe.   "Safe and Effective.  As seen on TV".   And there you have it.

We're drawn to patterns or habits, even if they don't serve us well.  Our brains are are one huge network of neurons that communicate with each other via neurotransmitter.  So one thought goes this direction using this neurotransmitter; another goes that way with THAT neurotransmitter.  Neurotransmitters are chemicals that affect our feeling.  If we have the same thought over and over, we reinforce a neural pathway, and evenutally create a default thought and therefore a chronic feeling.  Thoughts create feelings due to the chemistry involved.   Doesn't make it any truer if we think it 100,000 times; just makes it more and more familiar, and therefore, perceived as real or safe or effective at meeting our needs.   We  have likely been telling ourselves some stories -- and believing them -- since childhood!  Superstitions are a good example.  "I have to obsess on the worst case so it won't happen".   So, we fire off cortisol based worry like an Austrian bobsledder.  The cortisol makes us feel bad, and eventually creates health problems, and for what?  Familiarity?  "As seen on TV~"!

If you could objectively take stock of what thoughts and behaviors are truly working to make your life better, and what is not working, what would you toss out if you could?

What we focus on is what we grow.  Would you agree?  If we focus on what is "wrong", or what we don't want, or that which brings us worry, doubt, anxiety, or perpetuates hate or misery or mistrust, then guess what we experience and re-experience and again and again?  If, however, you could change that thought (which is in your control, by the way) to what is right, to what you do want, or that which brings you joy and peace, or perpetuates love and happiness and trust, wouldn't that be far more desirable?  What if you could practice this until you re-routed your bobsled track in your brain, and you eventually defaulted to expecting more -- and therefore seeing more -- of what you do want!  Serotonin replaces cortisol and boom; you feel better.  Serotonin good feeling; cortisol bad feeling. You have more energy, optimism and capacity to experince peace, love and happiness.

Watch your thoughts; watch your behaviors.  Notice which ones make you feel good; which one make you feel bad.  Try re-directing to think about and behave toward what you do want.  Then see if you can practice until you begin to feel GOOD.  Try it for three weeks minimum and see how you feel.