 What's up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem, but we focus on the solution. And today we are going to talk about hopelessness. That hopelessness you get when you're feeling depressed, when you feel like life is never going to change, if you struggle with anxiety, if you struggle with PTSD, or any form of mental illness or even addiction, you may have been stuck in a place where you feel absolutely hopeless and you feel as though this is never ever going to change. Many of us we get complacent in that hopelessness thinking this is my fate, this is the way it's going to be. And I can definitely relate to that because a little over five years ago when I was laying in a hospital bed due to the life choices I made and my family was begging me to stop and get help, I had that hopelessness and I told them to just let me die this way. That is the type of hopelessness that I felt. So if you have ever felt hopeless, this video is all about using science and what we know to get through hopelessness and overcome hopelessness and you're not going to want to miss this. I'm going to start this video out by telling you a little story that is absolutely true. There was a young boy who was fun loving, was able to see the world and all of its beautiful colors and was enjoying life until one day he had an accident and that made him go blind. Chemicals splashed up into his eyes, damaged the nerves and he went completely blind. And for you Marvel fans out there, I must apologize because this is not going to be a story about how Matt Murdock turned into the incredible Daredevil. But this young man, after he went blind, he was forced to learn Braille because that was his only way to read and continue his education. So he started learning Braille using his right hand to go over these bumps, becoming proficient in that language. A group of scientists decided that they were going to hook this young man up to a brain scan which is called an fMRI machine and scan his brain to see what was actually happening in his brain. A child who had actually seen before and is now blind, they wanted to see what kind of differences were going on and one thing that they did in this study was they started tapping on his left index finger, the finger that he doesn't use for Braille and the normal brain regions lit up. And when I say normal, these are the same brain regions that light up in your brain when anybody taps on your finger. Now, here's where it got interesting. When they tapped on his right finger, the finger that he uses for Braille, new regions of the brain lit up and they lit up brighter than you can even imagine. You're wondering why are we talking about these brain regions when it comes to hopelessness because what science discovered is something that is now known as neuroplasticity. For many years, many, many, many years, it was thought that by the time that you reached a certain age, your brain just stopped developing. It stopped growing. It stopped changing. And this is still a myth that lingers around today. And that is what promotes this idea of hopelessness. People have this thought or this idea. They believe that anything that has happened to them and the way they function now is what they are doomed to be for the rest of their life. And I am sitting here as living proof that that's not the case. This study that I'm talking about, it has actually been duplicated many a times. And one of the studies that was actually done came from the wonderful college of MIT. Fun fact, this was actually the college I wanted to go to growing up because I was a big technology nerd. Here's what I want you to take away from this. And this comes from the article which is linked in the description below. Studies of plasticity provide key insights into how experience shapes the human brain. This is another main reason why I promote meditation because studies on the brain have shown that monks who meditate actually have more activity in the right prefrontal cortex region which is responsible for happiness. What does this mean to you? This is exactly why I started the depression hack series. This is exactly why I named this the rewired soul because your brain is constantly changing and evolving and you can use this information to your benefit. With the depression hack series, in my introduction I talk about how there are different neurotransmitters that control our depression and we can use those to our advantage to get out of depression. The same thing is true when it comes to anxiety. So this information is meant to provide you with hope that you are not doomed to be the person that you are right now forever. You can change these things. But I do not want to lie to you and say that this is something that happens overnight. It takes work. It takes practice. People ask me all the time, Chris, how did you go from almost dying and killing yourself to one of the most optimistic happy people that I know today and it's because I understood that my brain is not stuck in a certain way and it can change. So even if right now if you are feeling hopeless, believe this. Science has proven that your brain can change. It can evolve. It can help you to lead a better life, to get out of this idea of hopelessness. And if you don't believe, just know that I believe in the fact that you can change. If you know somebody else who is struggling with that feeling of hopelessness, please share this with them. There is no reason why you shouldn't be able to go out there and put in the work to change your brain and improve your life for good. This will help you overcome mental illness, whether it's severe or moderate or even minor. But you can use this information to better your life. So keep checking back in with my channel because I'm always doing videos like this with scientific evidence about how you can use science to change the way your brain works to overcome symptoms of mental illness. So if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you haven't yet, click the little circle below, subscribe to my channel for more videos like this. So thanks again for watching and I'll see you next time.