Into The Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's True Story Of The Life Changing Magic Of Compassion and Mindfulness

by James R. Doty

Feelings are not right or wrong. They are just feelings.”

Sometimes we need to stop thinking about what we should say and just say what it is we need to.”

“There are a lot of things in life we can’t control. It’s hard, especially when you’re a child, to feel like you have control over anything. Like you can change anything. But you can control your body and you can control your mind. That might not sound like a lot, but it’s very powerful.

If the brain perceives a threat, or is in fear for its survival, that part of the autonomic nervous system called the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and releases epinephrine. The adrenal gland also gets triggered by hormones released by the hypothalamus, and cortisol is produced. I’m sure even at the age of twelve I had elevated cortisol levels. Basically everything in the body not necessary for fighting for your life shuts down. Digestion slows, blood vessels constrict (except for those in your large muscles, which dilate), your hearing lessens, your vision narrows, your heart rate goes up, and your mouth gets dry because the lacrimal gland that regulates salivation immediately gets inhibited. All of this is important if you are in fact fighting for your life, but this acute stress response is meant to be temporary. Living in a state of prolonged stress has all sorts of psychological and physiological repercussions—anger, depression, anxiety, chest pain, headaches, insomnia, and a suppressed immune system.

You are not the voice in your head.

This really hit me hard. I've never tried to "silence" the voices in my head because I genuinely believed them to be my own thoughts. My thinking was that if I don't listen to my thoughts I'd be suppressing my subconscious mind. It was only after reading this part that I realized that these voices are only part of my thought process and not the whole truth. It was my I securities manifesting as "voices" and not the actual circumstances.

“Here’s what I want you to understand. You can’t trust the voice in your head—the one that’s talking to you all the time. It’s more often wrong than right.

It’s like a wound. Now, if I cut open my knee what am I to do? I can give it some attention—clean it off, bandage it up, and make sure it heals properly—or I can ignore it and pretend it’s not there, pretend it doesn’t hurt or sting and just pull my pant leg down over it and hope it goes away. Is that the best way to heal it?”

A very valid point I often make when taking about mental health, especially with people who don't quite understand its importance or impact in their lives. Many people underestimate the significance of mental health and it's quite difficult to make them change their perspective from that of ignorance or stigma to an open minded approach.

“It’s the same with the wounds in our heart. We need to give them our attention so that they can heal. Otherwise the wound continues to cause us pain. Sometimes for a very long time.

We’re all going to get hurt. That’s just the way it is. But here’s the trick about the things that hurt us and cause us pain—they also serve an amazing purpose. When our hearts are wounded that’s when they open. We grow through pain. We grow through difficult situations. That’s why you have to embrace each and every difficult thing in your life.

I could try to create a new reality for myself, but I could not change the people I loved, no matter how much I might have intended it. They had to choose to change their reality

This is something I think a lot about. No matter how much we change, we can't change the people around us; people we love, people we wish would be happy, people we can see indulging in destructive behaviors, people we want to help. As a mental health or medical professional, it can be hard to see your patients or clients have the potential to become healthier but they fail to do so because they don't/can't change certain aspects of themselves, be it their habits, perceptions, or attitude towards themselves or others.

The brain doesn’t distinguish between an experience that is intensely imagined and an experience that is real.

When our brain changes, we change. That is a truth proven by science. But an even greater truth is that when our heart changes, everything changes.

We can die a thousand times in this lifetime, and that is one of the greatest gifts of being alive.

who we are today doesn’t have to be who we are tomorrow

The reality is that each of us in our lives has wronged others. We are frail, fragile beings who at various times in our lives have not lived up to our ideal and have injured or hurt another.

IT CAN HURT to go through life with your heart open but not as much as it does to go through life with your heart closed.