“Hope is like a path on the hillside. Once there was no path, but as villagers traveled that place, a way appeared.” Those beautiful words by Lin Yutang were written well before our current understanding of neuropaths and neuroreceptors. And yet they perfectly describe what happens in the brain and on the surface of the cells, as we open ourselves more and more to hope, or any emotion. Here’s how it works.

The more we feel any emotion, the more the brain responds by strengthening the “path” (called a neuropath) supporting that particular feeling. Since there’s limited space in the brain, the more we feel one emotion and the more space is taken up in the brain by the neuropath supporting that emotion, the less space there is for neuropaths supporting other emotions.

So if I feel hope a lot, eventually there will be less space for neuropaths supporting fear or sadness or anger. This isn’t an evaluation of emotions.  It’s just how the brain works. Fear and sadness and anger are all important signposts guiding us on our life journeys.  If we only read the signs that say hope, we will get lost.

If you’re on a journey beyond some kind of hardship like unemployment or infidelity or a natural disaster or death of a loved one, you will, of course, feel all kinds of emotions, and some will be really tough to experience.  The best way to get beyond those tough feelings is through, not around.

But eventually you may tire of going through the tough feelings. If and when that time comes, you can begin to introduce yourself to feelings that are more comfortable as a way to get beyond the painful emotions. Hope may be one of those emotions you’d like to feel. The way to do that is lean in a little and let go. Motorcycles taught me this.

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Lean in a little means pointing your heart in the direction of what you want: more joy, more love, more success. By leaning in a little, you set an intention to bring more of that particular emotion into your life: “I’m gonna pay more attention to what brings me joy.”

Letting go means not leaning in too much. If you lean in too much with the weight of your expectation, you become over-attached to what you hope for, and the related fear then throws you off course. This is what happens when you lean too much into a corner on a motorcycle.

But if you lean in and let go, you point yourself in the right direction, then trust the rest.  Makes for a nice ride.

Not only does the practice of leaning in and letting go strengthen the neuropaths for hope in the brain. It also changes the surface of each cell in your body. Fundamentally, each emotion has a hormone that is released in the body when we experience that particular emotion. These hormones flow through the body in the form of neuropeptides. The emotions affect us when the related neuropeptides are received by the cells through neuroreceptor sites.

Like the brain, if we have been feeling a lot of hope, the cells make biological space for more hope by booting off neuroreceptor sites for other emotions like sadness, fear or anger. Nothing wrong with those emotions. But if we’re feeling anger a lot, the surface of the cells have less space to receive joy or hope. As a result, we may find it harder to feel joyful or hopeful.

In the end, our emotional state eventually becomes a choice, and that is really good news.  It’s empowering. How’s your hillside looking?