Neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, create and reflect your feelings moods, thoughts and behaviors. They are a powerful group of chemicals in the brain that result in physiological and psychological changes in how we experience our lives. All behavior has a corresponding chemical pattern in the brain.

Your behaviors and your experience affect your biochemical profile and your biochemical profile affects your behaviors and your experience. By picking up on the yellow flags that tell you when your brain chemistry is out of balance you can take specific steps to put your self back "at choice" and in charge again.

Here is how you will know that an out of balance brain chemistry is driving your behaviors.

1. You are not happy.

Contentment, happiness, appreciation are emotions not readily available to an out of balanced brain. Practicing appreciation, gratitude and forgiveness can promote optimal brain chemistry.

2. You are stressed.

A neurochemically imbalanced body is stressed ? it is tired and listless, its mind is dull and foggy, it is weak, and it suffers more than it needs to.

3. You do not have insight.

An out of balance brain misperceives. And it misperceives in the direction of the imbalance. It does not have access to accurate perceptions. Because an out of balance brain misperceives it does not have access to insight.

4. You are driven to certain behaviors.

When your brain chemistry is out of balance, you are driven into unhealthy lifestyles and behaviors. You unwittingly begin to engage in activities, behaviors, and lifestyles that create neurochemical chaos in your body. You are not "at choice" - you are not choosing deliberate considered action.

5. You do things that you do not want to do but feel good to you in the short term.

When your brain is out of balance it drives you to behaviors that will keep it out of balance. It seeks its own imbalanced baseline.

6. It feels good to continue doing the same old things that you want to change.

When you seek to establish a new baseline brain chemistry that supports a change you want to make, there are numerous physiological feedback loops that act to keep it at the old baseline. It will feel uncomfortable to change these physiological feedback loops.

The behaviors that keep you out of balance will feel good in the moment even though you may not want to be doing them.

7. You rely on what "feels good" to you as your guide to behavior.

When you have out of balance brain chemistry you can not rely on what feels good to you as your guide for what you should be doing, feeling, thinking, experiencing. You must take deliberate conscious actions that are designed specifically to bring your brain chemistry back into balance.

8. You do not recognize the need to choose a deliberate action designed to balance your brain chemistry.

When you are driven to a behavior, thought, feeling or experience, that is exactly the time that you need not to do it because it will drive you further out of balance. An out of balance brain drives your behaviors and experience in the direction of the imbalance.

9. You believe that you can override your biology.

You alter your brain chemistry, manipulate your neurochemical profile and affect your body's physiology every day by what you do and don't eat or think, and how and where you spend your time.

Through your daily behaviors and the environments you create your biochemical profile and this is reflected in the emotions, energy, thoughts, actions, and psychological states that either bring you to peak performance or that block your best functioning. Neurochemicals are not the essence of who we are but they are the physiological brakes or fuel for the fullest expression of the essence of who you are.

10. You think that you cannot change.

You need 3-6 weeks of consistent action to begin to see some noticeable results in your behavior changes. However, the brain seeks to return to the old baseline for about 3-6 months. So when you do not follow through with your changed behavior, the brain will gravitate back to the original unbalanced baseline.

It takes 6-12 months of compliance with the new behavior to affect the enzymatic changes that change the brain chemistry baseline. When the baseline brain chemistry changes you are less subject to day to day drastic swings. The new behaviors that keep an optimal brain chemistry for you then become part of what you naturally do.

You can develop the knowledge, power, and technology to craft your inner and outer worlds in order to overcome the stress, resistance, and friction in them. Through your daily behaviors and the environments in which you spend your time you can create the emotions, energy, thoughts, actions, and psychological states that you want.

You can promote clarity, focus, peace, excitement or you can contribute to confusion, depression, anxiety, and conflict within yourself. The degree to which you have one or the other of these experiences is the degree to which you are in harmony with your body's physiology or in conflict with it. How close are you to a balanced neurochemistry is the degree to which you will experience peak performance.

Take the time and effort to design and live a life that fosters your optimal brain chemistry. Open the way for optimal development of your personal resources, talents, and dreams.

Optimizing you brain chemistry and neurotransmitter profile can produce phenomenal results in improving your well-being, achieving your dreams, and living the successful, healthy and integrated life of your choice.

Copyright (c) 2007 Mary Ann Copson