You have a pharmacy between your two ears. And a miracle drug you can manufacture within your own biology everyday.

The human brain contains systems regulating stress, motivation, reward, attention, pain and emotion. What we repeatedly notice, expect and think about can influence how we experience life.

The interesting question is therefore:

What are you repeatedly asking your brain to notice?

Or the blessings too?

The brain notices danger

The human mind is exceptionally good at detecting what is wrong.

That makes evolutionary sense.

A threatening sound deserves immediate attention. A dangerous face matters. Pain teaches avoidance. Something going wrong can demand more attention than ten things going right.

But there is a problem.

If we continually feed the mind danger, outrage, comparison and catastrophe, the exceptional can begin to feel normal.

The same can happen to societies.

Like for every human being, genuine issues exist in every society

These things must never be hidden beneath artificial positivity.

But something else is simultaneously true.

Someone recovered today.

Someone fed a hungry person.

Someone held their newborn child.

Someone was forgiven.

Someone received good news.

Your heart continued beating.

Perhaps the problem is not that blessings disappeared.

We stopped noticing them.

The Qur’anic equation

The Qur’an gives an extraordinary principle:

“If you are grateful, I will certainly give you more.” — Qur’an 14:7⁠

This is first a theological statement, not a neuroscience experiment. Allah promises increase for shukr—gratitude.

But psychologically, gratitude does something fascinating.

It redirects attention.

Instead of continuously asking:

What have I already been given?

The house you once desperately wanted eventually becomes simply “the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)