posted August 25, 2012 02:53 PM            

Dr. Daniel Amen (which everybody should read) has a wonderful book "Unchain your Brain."

He speaks of how addictions begin: we experience something pleasurable, dopamine is released, we feel great and the brain remembers what made us feel good. Each time we engage in the feel good activity our brain tells us we need more and more to feel good again.

I was lying in bed the other night listening to nothing but an oscillating fan. I love that sound.

Then I began to reminisce about being a little girl, at my grandparents house on the lake and lying in front of a fan. I realized the "white noise" was soothing and comforting and made me happy as it did when I was so young.

Same for the distant noise of a prop plane, my brain releases dopamine, just like the fan but in the case of the plane, running and playing, riding my horses on the dairy farm I grew up on.

Try it sometime, put yourself in a medative state and replicate something, tangible preferably as opposed to a memory only and let those feel good endorphins go!