What If Life Is More Beautiful Than I Can Imagine?

March 6, 2025 - Season 1, Episode 35

Where to Listen:

What if life is already more beautiful, easier, or more abundant than you’ve allowed yourself to see? I came across a simple but powerful question that made me rethink how we experience the world, and I want to share it with you today. In this episode, I’ll talk about how your brain filters reality, why you might not be seeing the joy or calm that’s already present, and how a small shift in perspective can change the way you experience life. If you’ve ever felt stuck in the belief that things have to change before you can be happy, this episode is for you.<

Topics:

The power of shifting from “What if life could be better?” to “What if life already is better?”
How your brain filters reality based on your beliefs (Reticular Activating System)
Why you might be missing the joy, peace, or abundance that’s already present
How to train your brain to notice more of what you want in life
Simple ways to start seeing more of the good that already exists

Episode Resources:

Click here for a raw, unedited episode transcript

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:00.622)
Hey, and welcome to Calmer Conversations. I’m Cecilia, your host. Let’s get started today. Okay, so today I’m going to talk about this line that I read that kind of inspired this, and I switched it around. I’m going to talk about it from a more energetic perspective, but also from a brain perspective. And I’ll be honest that I’m getting a little bit more into talking about the energetics of things because it’s been coming up more and more in the groups that I lead. And honestly, the work that we’re doing here on this podcast, but also

in the groups that I run and the coaching that I do with people and in my social media is figuring out how to work with the equipment you have with your brain and nervous system so that you can change your lived experience. And that means also shifting the energy you have in a moment to moment basis. So it’s getting into quantum physics or metaphysics if you want to look at it from that perspective. I also aim to keep it really grounded and accessible for people who aren’t maybe there yet or struggle to maybe think about it from that perspective.

But if you are curious, which I’m assuming you are a little bit curious because you’re listening to this, we’re gonna dive into that a little bit today. Okay, so the line I read, I’m gonna read you the question that I read or heard actually, and then how I switched around. So the question that I heard was, What if life is more beautiful than I can imagine? Right, so it’s kind of entertaining this idea of what if life can be more beautiful than I imagined? And you can change beautiful to what if life can be more love-filled than I’ve imagined? What if life can feel easier than I’ve imagined? What if life can be calmer than I’ve imagined? What if life can be more abundant?

whatever word you want to put in there, right? The title of this podcast is Calmer Conversation, so we might say, if life can be calmer than I’ve allowed myself to imagine? And then how I switched it around, or what my brain kind of naturally switched it around to, which was really interesting for me to look at it from this perspective, is what if life is more beautiful than I’ve allowed myself to see?

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:23.574)
What if life is more beautiful than I’ve allowed myself to see? So the original question was, what if life is more beautiful than I can imagine? What if life could be more beautiful than I imagine? And then what is, what if life already is more beautiful than I can see? And the reason why I love this shift and the reason why I think it’s so important is because so often when

We think about feeling calmer or having a more beautiful life or an easier life or a more joyful life. We think it’s something outside of us that something outside of us needs to change and then life can be more beautiful. We think that people need to behave a certain way and then I can be calmer. And sometimes when we get into this imagining space, somebody in a group mentioned the term maladaptive imagination.

it can be maladaptive, right? We can get into this like kind of fantasy land of like everything working out and Uncle Joe not being Uncle Joe and like my boss changing into this different person or maybe don’t even have that job and I’ve suddenly won the lottery and on and on and on. And that is imagining a life that life could be beautiful but that might in fact my life right now is not beautiful. And why I wanted to switch it around is because the work that I do with people is figuring out how to create

life, the life that you dream of, living the life of your dreams by working with what you already have. And that means noticing that life is already more beautiful than perhaps you can see. Life is perhaps already calmer than you can see. Okay, so let’s get into some of the cognitive science behind this. So you have this part of your brain, your particular activating system, and

Well, I’ve already mentioned many times in this pod, in different episodes, that your brain filters all the information that you get, right? You receive a massive amount of sensory information every single minute, every single second. And your brain can’t possibly process all of it, so it filters it. So we have all these different filters, and we filter oftentimes based on our thoughts, based on our beliefs, based on what we expect to see. I’m just going to bounce a little bit, so apologies if the noise gets a little bit weird. We have a slightly sleeping baby here if you’re not.

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (04:32.982)
watching this. Okay, so our brain filters all this information. Our reticular activating system is the part of your brain that starts to see things once you’ve noticed them. So I’ve given this example, I think, on other episodes, but one of my kids is really into trucks. And it’s waning a little bit, but for a while they’ve been interested in trucks. So interested that when we drive around in the car, they point out all the trucks that they can see, including school buses and flatbed trucks and dump trucks.

and they were really into dump trucks for a while. Well, I’ve been driving around for a while now. I’m 40 years old and I started driving when I was 16 with some brief breaks, I’m cycling and with pedestrian life, but I’ve been driving for a while or at least like out in the world for a while and I’ve never really noticed trucks. It’s not something I’ve ever really been into. I just haven’t really paid attention to them. So.

If we wanted to switch that question around for the truck thing, it’s like, if there are more trucks in the world than I’ve allowed myself to see? What if the world is already more truck-filled than I’ve allowed myself to see? And I know that this sounds a little silly, but please play along with me for a minute because I think it’s helpful to go to this point to kind of make a point for your cognitive brain. So what if the world is already more truck-filled than I’ve allowed myself to see? Okay, so that means that there might already be more trucks in the world

than I’m seeing right now. And the reason why I’m not seeing them is because I haven’t been paying attention to them. I don’t necessarily have a negative belief about trucks. Like, I don’t really believe that there are not trucks out in the world. I’ve just honestly never really thought about trucks. So I’ve never considered the number of trucks in the world. Like, for instance, somebody might not consider that their life could be easy or beautiful, right? They might have the opposite belief, which is the negative one of my life is hard, or

I have it harder than most or I don’t have enough or I’m not good enough. Oftentimes many of us, and I’ll even raise my hand here, have beliefs like that. So in our truck example, that means that when I’m driving around before my two-year-old got really into trucks, I didn’t really notice trucks. I didn’t see them. I didn’t see them because my brain is processing so much information when I’m driving, including

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (06:49.442)
talking to my kids in the car, including paying attention to, and even if I’m just a passenger, right, like let’s take the driving thing out of it. Even if I’m just a passenger, there’s so much information coming in and I haven’t trained my brain to see trucks, it doesn’t really expect to see them, so it doesn’t see them. It doesn’t point them out to me. It doesn’t note them at all, which means that I go through days, weeks, years of my life, not really noticing the trucks. The world is much more truck-filled than I’ve allowed myself to see.

All of the sudden, I have a little person in my life who’s really into trucks, who wants to talk about trucks and read about trucks, and wants to point out every single truck on the road, which means that I’m suddenly interested in trucks, which means that suddenly I’ve told the part of my brain, the reticular activating system, to filter a different way. I want it to filter my reality differently. Now I want it to see trucks. I want it to see dump trucks and school buses and flatbed trucks. I want it to see tractors and diggers on the side of the road.

I wanted to see all of these things because it’s a way to connect with my kid and it’s something that they are interested in. And so now all of sudden I am interested in it. All of a sudden I’ve told my brain that trucks are important. And you know what I see all of the time now? I’ve mentioned this I think before. I know I’ve done it in my group coaching. I see so many trucks. There are so many dumb trucks on the roads, you guys. There so many trucks.

There are diggers everywhere, there are cranes everywhere, there are flatbed trucks and box trucks and school buses and delivery trucks. There are so many different trucks, all these trucks that I never saw because I never told my brain to look at them, to look for them. So the world has been more truck-filled than I’ve allowed myself to see. Okay, but this podcast really isn’t about trucks, right? Like honestly…

Other than connecting with my kid, I don’t really care that much about the trucks on the road unless I’m waiting for a delivery of gravel or mulch or I’m building something, right? Then I don’t really have a particular interest in trucks myself. But I might be more interested in how the world is more joyful than I’ve allowed myself to see. I might be more interested in how the world is more easeful than I’ve allowed myself to see.

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (09:01.068)
I might be more interested in seeing how the world is abundant or I have enough each day than I’ve allowed myself to see. And if I’ve been focusing on how I don’t have enough each day, that is what my brain shows me. It will never show me where I have more than enough if I’m focused on the fact that I do not have enough. It will never show me where I’m in abundance if I keep asking it to show me where there is lack. It will never show me

where there is calm if I keep asking it to show me where there is anxiety and overwhelm and worry. And while this sounds like a trick and it kind of is a trick, this is how something like a gratitude practice works, right? It actually teaches your brain to look for and at something different. It says that the world is already full of trucks. All I have to do is start seeing them. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t want

circumstances in your life to change, or you might not desire change, or they might not change. But it’s saying that in fact what you need to do is you need to start looking for how it is already that way for it to start to come in your life. Because your brain will not see trucks until you tell it to see trucks. I had to tell my brain to see trucks in order to see them. You have to see ease in your life before you can start feeling ease.

This is so, this seems so simple and trivial, this is like, it’s honestly where it’s at. And this is also where noticing the thoughts that you currently have that are telling you not to look for trucks or not to look for ease really come into play. Noticing how your current beliefs really play an impact in what you see in your life, right? So again, not my belief that there was a lack of trucks, but let’s just say for,

for the sake of the exercise that I believe that there weren’t trucks on the road. Or you know what, I actually did think that when he wanted to start looking for trucks, I actually had this belief that there wouldn’t be that many trucks. And I kind of was like, I looked for them even more intently because I kind of, I wanted him to see them and I thought, they’re probably not that many. But then I saw two and I was like, there are plenty of trucks, right? In the first morning, in the first couple of minutes when we see four school buses, I think there’s plenty, right? There are so many trucks that we’re gonna see today. And so this,

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (11:22.642)
art of working with your brain is starting to notice what you’re currently telling your reticular activating system, what you’re currently telling that part of your brain to filter for. What lenses or what filters or what sieves are you using to filter your experience? And you might, you very likely might be using a sieve of, don’t have enough, life is hard, people need to act differently for me to be calm, I’m not a calm person.

on and on and on, so noticing what filters you’re currently using, and then asking yourself, how can I start to change them so that I can start to see different things, so that I can start to bring those feelings and that reality into my life. It’s so powerful to work with your brain this way, because then you’re no longer working against your brain. You’re not asking it to see one thing and expecting something different. You’re starting to go with the flow. So what if the world is already more truck-filled?

then you’ve allowed yourself to see. What if it’s already there? What if all you need to do is start to see it so that you can start to bring it into your life so that you can start to feel it in a different way? What if that’s what’s there and that’s what’s available to you? So ask yourself right now if you want to do this work, what if the world is already more and then insert whatever word you’d like to feel more of? What if it’s already more love-filled?

What if I’m already more worthy than I’ve allowed myself to see? What if I’m already more successful than I’ve allowed myself to see? What if it’s more possible than I’ve allowed myself to see? And know that when you start to see it, this is a Wayne Dyer-ism, what if you start to believe it, then you’ll start to see it, right? We have this, if you see it, then you’ll believe it. But what if we switch it around? This is Wayne Dyer, Dr. Wayne Dyer said this, whatever you believe, you’ll start to see, right? When you start to believe it, you’ll start to see it. And so believing that the world is already more full of it right now,

will allow you to start to see it. Okay, that’s where I wanna leave it today. A little bit of science, a little bit of energetics, a little bit of figuring out how to work with your brain, making brain base change accessible to you so that you can feel differently and be different in your life. So lovely to be here with you today. Can’t wait to see you again next week. Join me in the Life Lab if you wanna do this work more closely and I’ll see you next time, bye.

About Your Host

I’m Cecelia, and I am passionate about helping people live the life they want to live and feel how they want to feel in their life. We do this together using mindset tools, nervous system regulation, and curious inquiry. I know that enjoying your life, feeling calm and even joyful is available to you.

If you’re ready to start right now, grab a recent workshop replay here on creating momentum.

Personally, I manifest in many ways- partner, mother, coach, sister, friend, daughter, citizen, feminist. I live with my husband and children way downeast Maine on a little bridge-connected island (after spending my first 35 years in cities). It’s beautiful here with the ocean and the wind.

I help my clients make big and small changes in life one step at a time.

No matter what’s happening in your life right now, I know you can feel different. I know that by working with your brain and nervous system, you can feel calm, content, joyful, AND you can still go after the big and small goals in your life (getting there will just feel different).

This process is simple and approachable.

You’re probably thinking- but it won’t work for me. I’ve tried it all or I was recently diagnosed with ADHD or I’m too old. But I promise, if you’re open to it, this work is not only transformative but suited for so many different kinds of people and brains.