Life is far too precious and short to muddle through, achieving less than we are capable of and settling for less than we deserve. This fascinating book uses a powerful new approach - neuropsychology - to help you find the freedom to live the life you want. Drawing on the science of the brain and behaviour, it explores how the living brain works, the nature of consciousness and of reality itself. The Thinking Person's Guide to Happiness will help you to harness the power of your mind and brain to identify your true desires for life. By directing your focus, you can make those changes you need to and realize your heartfelt dreams.

The topics covered include:

• understanding how your brain thinks
• identifying your goals and finding your true path
• changing ingrained belief systems and mind blocks
• how to focus and persist
• turning thought into reality
• the power of your subconscious
• staying motivated and coping with setbacks

In this informative and sympathetic guide, scientist and writer Ruth Searle shows how we can find new priorities, make our minds work for us, and live fuller and happier lives.

Contents 

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: the science of the mind 

• About the brain
• Consciousness
• Mind-body connections
• Your brain and behaviour
• Mind blocks - what's stopping you?
• Getting your mind to identify your goals
• Discover your personal thinking style
• Turning thought into reality
• The power of your subconscious mind
• Cherish your dream long term

This book is about finding the freedom to live the life that you want to live. It's about discovering exactly what it is you want from your life and putting together a plan for achieving it using a powerful new approach called neuropsychology.

By studying the science of the brain and mind, I completely changed my perspective on the way we use our minds, the nature of consciousness and of reality itself, giving me an understanding of how to make my mind work for me rather than against me. I found new priorities in life and the courage to make the changes that I needed to make.

Life is too precious and far too short to muddle through, achieving less than we know we are capable of and settling for less than we deserve. This book, I hope, will help you to identify your true desires for your life, realize your heartfelt dreams, and enable you to put together a plan for achieving them using the power of your mind and brain.

The Thinking Person's Guide to Happiness is about changing your life from this moment on. I believe in looking to the future. We can of course gain invaluable insights by understanding the past and unravelling some of our problems, but you can change your life now without having to go through years of psychotherapy or analysis of the past. By understanding how your brain thinks, you can devise a unique plan – a plan that will empower you to move forward with your life and find your true path.

Human beings are capable of the most incredible achievements. They have put man on the moon, produced the most exquisite works of art, discovered quantum particles; the list goes on and on . . . yet all these achievements began with just a thought and an all-consuming dream.

I hope within these pages you too will discover your dreams and your passion, just as I have. Your dreams and aspirations are special and unique to you. Dare to reach up to the heights of achievement and you could find yourself living the most amazing life that you could only barely begin to imagine, even in your wildest dreams.

Despite astonishing advances in the workings of the brain and nervous system, we still have a very shaky understanding of how the brain engenders the mind. Questions about the mind are extremely perplexing and have occupied people since Aristotle's time. Aristotle was of the opinion that the mind was a combination of the functions of the head, the heart and even the blood.

During the Middle Ages, the mind was thought to be a tiny person inside the head of a human called a homunculus. The notion of a 'soul' has complicated the issue considerably, and has generally been outside the realm of scientific investigation. It is only since the late 1980s that questions about the nature of consciousness have been addressed by neuroscience. Prior to this, the study of the nervous system concentrated on the anatomy and physiology of animals, addressing questions such as how signals from the outside world are collected by sensory organs (eyes, ears, touch receptors, etc.) and subsequently processed in the brain, and how movements of the body are elicited by the nervous system. It is this area of investigation that has brought such enormous advances in our understanding of the physical brain.

What we know about the neuron and its connections has been learned in a very short time. In the 1930s, the first studies on the interaction between neurons and other cells were carried out. But it was after the Second World War that the electrical properties of neurons became accessible as a result of electronic equipment originally developed for military purposes. With the advent of the electron microscope during the 1960s, the detailed structure of the neuron could be studied. During the 1970s, it became possible to make electrical recordings from single neurons using anaesthetized animals without invading the skull. By the 1980s, it became possible to study the molecular channels in the cell membrane that regulate the electrical properties and behaviour of the neuron, but it is only recently that scientists have been able to study the activities of the living brain with sophisticated scanning equipment.

It may be too soon to expect an answer to the far-reaching questions we have about the nature of the mind and of consciousness. Indeed, far from answering these questions, studies of physiology, psychology and other specialties have identified more questions than answers. This is not a failing by any means, but an illustration of how our scientific investigation progressively asks deeper questions about the world we live in. It also says much about the human psyche. We are not content with simple explanations, but are curious to achieve an ever-deeper understanding and strive to answer the hard questions such as 'What is consciousness?'

Modern science has amalgamated many areas of study with the realization that the brain and mind are intrinsically interconnected, and names such as 'cognitive neuroscience' and 'behavioural neurobiology' are used to describe these areas. The most successful area of study into the functioning of the brain during the past century has been that of neurons and their interactions with one another. However, given the complexities of the brain, its functioning cannot be predicted from its smallest constituents, the neurons, even in the simplest animal brain. There are many unanswered questions remaining about how a collection of neurons in the brain can trigger complex behavioural responses.

As well as philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, consciousness has also been the subject of study within the diverse fields of mathematics and physics. Since physics is concerned with the study of natural laws, what it has to say about consciousness is no less valid than any other discipline. Its concern for the basic nature of matter within the universe could have important consequences for our understanding of the nature of consciousness. The hard question concerning consciousness is how the subjectivity of consciousness can interact with the physical brain. Physicists argue that the subatomic particles of quantum mechanics are the key to understanding consciousness as a 'state' of matter. The nature of consciousness appears to be a mysterious 'extra' dimension to the physical functioning of the brain, however complex this turns out to be. One thing seems clear, though. An explanation of the mind, or consciousness, must ultimately be an explanation of the way that neurons function, since there is nothing else on which to base a scientific explanation.

With an understanding of how our brains work (given the confines of modern science to date) we can use that knowledge to make our mind work for us rather than against us in order to achieve the success in life that we aspire to. We can appeal directly to our subconscious, bypassing the complex construction of psychological barriers and past conditioning that has built up over our lifetime. We can delve deep into our psyche to discover the dreams we have for our lives without undergoing years of psychoanalysis.

If we can understand how our brains 'think', we can make our minds work for us now.

About the Author
Ruth Searle began her career as a nurse and midwife and although her love of nursing has remained constant, she went on to fulfil her dream of becoming a marine biologist. She completed her PhD on humpback whale behaviour and is continuing with field research that takes her around the world. She is a course writer and tutor and has several current writing projects, including a marine biology textbook and books about the humpback whale. She is passionate about studying and has almost completed a second degree based on Earth sciences, cosmology and particle physics. Her triumphs and struggles to find and live her own personal dreams provided the inspiration for The Thinking Person 's Guide to Happiness.