What this means in practice is that if you have spent years carefully curating these solid and strong neuronal connections, you cannot just flip a switch and alter what is happening.

Anyone telling you, the alternative might as well be saying you can flick your house and it will fall down. You might, break of a tiny bit of brick, but your house is still going to stand strong... Well... I hope it does...

Anyway, back to understanding how we work as humans, a subject I'm much more comfortable in explaining than housebuilding.

So, these neuronal connections which fire together, when we are based in fear, which are often termed things like stress, anxiety or depression. All happen to concentrate within the frontal lobe area of our brain.

The frontal lobe is the pink area of the brain, shown in the image.

The frontal lobe is the powerhouse of our mind and is responsible for pretty much everything that is important, when it comes to us making life affirming decisions. It's responsible for 'higher order cognitive function,' which is things like, decision making, processing information, planning ahead, motivation, judgement, impulse control, memory, learning, personality traits, rewards, attention and social behaviours.

When the neuronal connections in the frontal lobe have been created from a place of fear, all these really important tasks are hampered.

It's like, trying to cross over a ravine on a rope bridge, but someone has stolen all of the little bits of wood which makes the bridge and all you're left with is the ropes.

Which, I think paints a pretty apt picture of what is going on, when we try to change our lives, after years of developing unhelpful persistent patterns of behaviour.

The only way, to cross the bridge is by grabbing hold of the rope, praying loudly, whether you believe in God or not, and taking a giant leap of faith that somehow, you will make it to the other side. The same is true with regards to altering your future.

So, now that we know, our 'mental illness' is simply persistent behaviour patterns we've developed as a method of coping in the outside world AND how that shows up, time to move onto the second important part of creating a life which is happy, worthwhile and truly satisfying, the power of repetition.

I want you to think about the first time you rode a bike.

How you probably had stabilisers and still managed to ride into a couple of hedges or two, until you'd mastered the idea of breaking with your hands, rather than putting your feet to the ground and ruining your brand new shoes.

Then once you were released from the stabilisers, how you probably struggled to keep it upright until you had a little more practice under your belt.

Then, once you've been messing around in your little cul-de-sac enough, you're suddenly riding around with no hands on the handlebars and have lost all recollection of the struggles it took to get to this point.

That, is the power of repetition.

We take a single skill and do it over and over and over until the neurons have fired together enough that we no longer need to be consciously aware of what we are doing, yet still manage to do the thing we set out to do.

Did you know, they estimate that it takes 10,000 hours of learning something before you develop mastery?

Now think about all the times you've tried to change things in the past. Be honest. Did you dedicate 10,000 hours to doing this? Or did you maybe give it a go for a few hours, a couple of weeks or maybe even a month or so?

Time to do a little maths, and it really is a little because I have real issues with maths... I want you to calculate, just quickly, how many thousands of hours have you spent harnessing all your unhelpful persistent habits.

There are 8,760 hours in a year (24 (hours in a day) * 365 (days in a year) = 8,760 (hours in a year)).

If we say that on average, people sleep for 8 hours a night, that leaves us with 5,840 waking hours per year (24 (hours in a day) - 8 (hours asleep) = 16 (hours remaining/waking hours), 16 (waking hours) * 365 (number of days in a year) = 5,840 (hours awake in a year))

Now, take the number of waking hours per year (5,840) and multiply it by the number of years, you have been alive so far.

If you are able to pinpoint a specific moment in your past, which accounts for the beginning of the development of your unhelpful persistent patterns, use this date, rather than the entirety of your lifespan.

For me, I started to develop unhelpful persistent patterns of behaviour after an incident when I was aged 7 and finally let go of everything major in my life, when I was 34, so I'd spent 27 years, or 157,680 waking hours developing those solid and strong connections in my frontal lobe, all designed to force me to repeat my negative life experiences over and over again...

Realistically, is it any wonder you've failed to alter your life trajectory so far?

Okay, now that we know, our 'mental illness' is simply persistent behaviour patterns we've developed as a method of coping in the outside world, plus how that shows up, AND we also know, we've spent tens, if not thousands of hours developing these unhelpful persistent behaviour patterns, plus what that actually means for our reality, time to move onto the third and final, important part of creating a life which is happy, worthwhile and truly satisfying, the strength of our free will.

One of the things, that people get really, really, angry about when it comes to healing from persistent unhelpful patterns is the idea of choice, as in, there are some people who choose to change and others who are choosing not to change.

Those who have been desperately trying to change their lives, find themselves screaming at the TV, the social media platform or even the AI driven technology which is the humble messenger of the podcast into their home.

Those who have never faced a day of adversity in their lives, look at those trapped in the darkness with contempt, and state unashamedly things like, 'you obviously don't want to change,' or even 'they're clearly doing it for attention.'

The reality, neither of those positions are helpful.

The truth is, it really is a choice. However, that choice is one which is build upon tens, if not thousands of hours worth of solid and strong habitual patterns which run counter to the choice you want to make.

Your free will to take your life by the reins, is hampered because the mental processes for changing behaviour have been wired to not change your behaviour.

You may find yourself waking up in the morning, determined that this be the day, things change for you, but by the time you've been to the loo, brushed your teeth and made your bed, you've slipped back onto autopilot and it's not until lunchtime do you realise, you haven't done that thing you wanted and now there is no time because you've got kids to feed, a house to clean, a job to go to... You console yourself with the knowledge that there is tomorrow, you'll definitely start tomorrow off right.

Three years later, you realise nothing has changed and your life is still the same old shit-storm you desperately want to escape.

I hate to break it to you, but the only different between people who change and those who spend their days wanting to change is the simple act of actually doing something different.

The person who takes the time to disrupt their autopilot, even just marginally in the beginning, is the person who's life will become one which is happy, worthwhile and satisfying.

Simply doing one small thing different each day, cascades into a plethora of differences over time and within months, your entire world can be monumentally different from where you started.

It doesn't take, giant transformations from day 1, it just takes a transformation from day 1, which is followed by another one on day 2, and another one on day 3...