My Brain Is Changing — One Thought At A Time

We Have More Power Than We Think

How often do you wake up and feel some well, if not dread, at the very least, reluctance to enter the day?

I find for myself, even while living this writer lifestyle — which is pretty fabulous, waking up and being glad for a new day is not my natural response.

In my case, the brain, if not directed by our conscious thoughts, will stray off the reservation into No Man’s Land, or worse, very quickly.

I read something the other day that struck me. It was in one of my many self-improvement/affirmations books, so I’m not sure whether there’s any science backing this up, but it spoke to me loudly.

When we wake up, for less fortunate ones like myself, our unconscious state of mind veers naturally towards the negative. Therefore the sense of ‘Ugh, another day in front of us’ as opposed to — and you can sing along: ‘Oh, What a wonderful morning.’

Exactly. Who wakes up singing? I want to meet them.

Think of that akin to us waking up that proverbial ‘slumbering giant.’ Now, while he was fast asleep we were whispering into his ear about how his day will be horrible, bad things will happen and that life is a struggle.

Not surprisingly he dreads waking up and facing the day. Our voice in his ear was the equivalent of our subconscious when we wake up.

So on waking this grouchy giant, to offset this bad mood we’ve helped create, we spend five minutes saying loving, self-affirming statements to him. The grumbling giant mutates into something more closely resembling an optimist. At the very least his phobia to the day has dissipated.

Some of us need this vigilance and effort to maintain a balanced mood. It doesn’t necessarily come naturally to us.

When we choose to take self-care steps, this can be turned around.

We can pull up some readings that are positive affirmations, combined with some strategic self-talk pieces. Now we are deliberately moving towards a more positive mode. We are in the driver’s seat.

And throughout the day, we can remind ourselves that the day will work out fine, as it seems to. And things that are worrying you can also be countered by thinking:

“How much will this matter in an hour, a day, a week, a year, ten years?”

Most things will disappear over the horizon with that thinking.

And we can continue to do this when we notice we’ve slipped back into that less positive place.

The more we do this, the more we begin to think like this without needing such a concerted effort. Our brain starts to behave this way because this thinking is habit-forming.

It’s taken me a while to think of the brain as a muscle. And our brains can grow, can be reshaped, and essentially taught new skills as to where to send outside stimuli.

Think of it as rerouting these messages we’re receiving.

The messages, instead of going to the ‘Constant Fear’ department, are instead now being rerouted to the ‘Inquisitive and Interested’ upper floor instead.

Just imagine the power of that. Messaging going to another place and in turn us not feeling that old sensation of creeping fear.

Emails are also a pretty good ‘real-world’ example for me.

When I would receive an email from any work boss, my immediate response was some form of dread. This would tend to be followed by a delayed, second reaction with my frontal lobe kicking in and steadying me, reminding me that it was probably nothing bad.

But my default was an immediate wave of fear, up my spine as a red hot flush. This was my very first response — without knowing what the content of the email was, and how it would impact me, but suspecting the very worse.

Such an uncomfortable way to live. Simply waiting on the next external stimulus to send me into a spiral of fear.

I’ve spent a serious amount of time retraining myself so that when perceived ‘bad news’ comes, I use self-talk to go immediately to what used to be my less pessimistic, second response and actually mean it!

In other words, we can push myself to be curious and ignore the negative inclination that used to be the louder response.

After all, we have many years of living proof that my dread is not based in reality, and for me, that’s really great to type down.

To think that our brains can sometimes work against us is a wild concept. I mean, if we can’t trust our own thinking who can we trust?

But in this case, we know we want to change this, for our quality of life. So we take ‘executive action’ and begin forcing this new way of thinking, and because it’s a muscle, this thinking gets stronger as we use it more often.

We can grow into more optimistic and hopeful beings. The first step is simply believing that we can change.

And we can. I’m living proof, that even while not quite believing that this could work, it’s worked for me.

I’m grateful that we’re still teachable for our entire lives — if we choose to be.

Hallelujah!