How Your Mindset Impacts The Body. Change The Mindset! Be Healthy!

Positive thoughts will influence your body! Here is the science.

One of these days I was in the car with my daughter taking her to school. At some point, there was a small traffic quarrel between two other cars in front of me. After they settled we stopped at an intersection. While in the intersection my mind started exploding with thoughts about the quarrel.

What if the guy that was cut of would come outside of the car with a gun and started killing people because he has a bad morning? What if he gets to our car and something bad would happen to my daughter?

I know! That is a crazy thought. And I should look into why I had it in the first place. 😁

What was crazier was my physical reaction to it. Immediately my puls started skyrocketing, I started to breathe heavily, started to clench my fists on the streaming wheal. That impressed me a lot. I started feeling like I would if what I thought would actually happen. Without it happening! That is amazing.

How powerful can thoughts actually be?

After a few minutes, I became conscious about my physical reaction and stoped the thought process.

I also, started to ask how far can all this go? And in what direction?

Can I use positive thoughts to change my body, physically, as well? I don't see why not! 😆

I started searching on the internet. If you search the power of positive thinking on the internet you will end up in a black hole of confirmation. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of articles and videos and people talking about how powerful positive thinking is. After trying to be thankful and writing down things that I am thankful about it’s hard for me not to be biased towards confirmation. You can read that part in Be well with gratefulness.

I went online to search for something that would give me a hint about its limits. And I got to this video Change the mindset, change the game, a TED talk held by Dr. Alia Crum about changing your mindset and what experiments have been done over this idea.

In the video, some experiments are presented that bring to light the fact that people are affected physically by their thoughts. And that seems awesome. A very cool video, please watch it.

The physical effect of mindsets

It seems that if you expect a specific result your mind will set your body towards that result.

You take treatment and you expect it to work, it will work better than when you would not be aware of it or if you would be aware but would expect it not to work.

Something similar happens with sport and workouts.

Let's say, for instance, that you have a job that involves a lot of physical activity, like being a nurse. You have to walk a lot and go up and down a lot of stairs. That is a lot of physical activity.

You could not know that your activity is actually very physically intense and you could presume that, because you do not go to the gym, you actually do no physical activity at all. In this case, your body would actually act as if you do not do any activity at all. But, your body will be healthier if you know that your activity is physically intense and your body should be healthier just because of your daily job.

The effect that astonished me most was the one that resulted from the experiment with milkshakes. Measuring ghrelin, the hormone that tells your body how hungry you are, scientists at Yale, discovered that if you know that what you eat is healthy, your body will create more ghrelin, signaling that you have not eaten enough. At the same time, if you know that what you eat is not healthy, or rich in calories, your body will create less ghrelin signaling that you are full.

In the experiment, the participants thought, at first, that they are eating a “sensi-shake”, a milkshake with no sugar, no fat, and a few calories. This resulted in an elevation of ghrelin levels signaling that the person is full, but not very much. The second time the participants were given the “indulgence” milkshake. This shake contained a lot of fat, sugar, and 620 calories. After this shake participants had a bigger increase of ghrelin. This signaled the body that they are full. The catch was that, in fact, the shakes were identical 😲. So the participant’s physical reactions were solely on the mindset that they had about what they have eaten.

Similar results were discovered in studies about stress. If you know that stress is bad for you if you know that it is destroying your life then that is what it will do. Because that is what your mindset is dictating your body to do. If you know that stress is good for your adaptation, or for your focus then that is what will happen. You will become more adapted, more focused because of your mindset on the stress.

The same idea is presented by Joe Dispenza in an episode of Gaia original Series, Rewired. I watched it presented by Afterskool at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtimAuhyP-M

He also agrees that the physical state of the body can be influenced by our thoughts.

Joe Dispenza starts from the fact that the body goes into the flight-or-fight state to escape imminent danger. This state is beneficial for us because it helps us tighten our senses and our reactions. It does that by increasing the heart rate and the respiratory rate, redirecting blood to our extremities, and shutting down internal organs. This is good because it helps us escape or fight the danger. It is also ok because after getting to safety we have the possibility to rest, recover, and re-balance our system.

In our days we get into this state because of our day-to-day life and the stress that we see in it. The traffic, the job, the noise, we find stress everywhere. This puts our body in the “survival state” daily and it does not let it recover.

The thing is that if we look deeper, we realize that the stress comes from the way we are looking at the world.

The danger is not real!

In reality, it is just our mindset. We manage to invent danger and thus with it spend most of our life in the survival state. This way our body is under constant stress. Our immune system is deteriorating and we are more prone to illness. Our mindset influences our body’s health.

Joe Dispenza says that through meditation and a positive mindset our body can be healthier and stronger.

Of course, this does not mean that if you believe that you are active, you can be healthy without any physical activity, or you don’t need to eat because you believe that is enough for you.

All this is about how your mind and body can work together for the best results.

What did I do with this information?

When I learned about the impact of my mind on my body I was very skeptical. I knew about the placebo effect but that was just something that happens with the body. Did not pay too much attention to it.

This all changed when I started my mind training sessions. When I started doing gratitude lists, cause and effect corrections, and meditation.

One consequence of these exercises where that my mindset changed with them. I no longer believed the worst in me and in the world.

The consequences of these new mindsets are pretty amazing.

• It is a lot easier for me to be fit because I know that I am strong. Also, I can eat anything because I know that I can come back after a week of workouts.
• I don’t get down from failures. I am trying to start a company for about 5 years now. Not manage to do it, but I learn from every mistake and I bounced back.
• I always thought that I am as far away from a creative aspect as anyone can be, now I started writing and reading and I feel that my imagination is on like sparklers at the new year’s eve celebration.
• I am not afraid of the future. I know that I can make it in any condition.
• I know that I am more athletic and because of that my instincts and reaction times and speeds have risen up. I am able to play football and basketball way better than I could 15 years ago, given that in high school I did this all day long, and now is a once or twice a month event.
• I cannot remember the last time I saw a bad driver on the street.

When I learned about the impact of mindset I became conscious of the effects I feel because I changed my mindset.

I am continuing to be positive, to have a positive view of the world, and also to have a positive view of myself. I know that my body will be healthier and I will be more energized because of this.

What should you do with this information?

Have faith!

Have faith that what you think will have an effect on your body. Have faith that thinking positive, being grateful, accepting, and loving yourself will have a physical impact on your body. Have faith that the people around you are good and want to help you.

Be positive

Do you have a thought? Analyze it! Ask yourself 3 questions:

• Is it true?
• Does it help?
• Is it kind?

If you answer yes to all of these questions then that thought is positive, it is helpful, and you should nurture it.

Be gratefull

Practice gratefulness! Every day remind yourself of what you are grateful for, what is beautiful in your life, what brightens your day.

You can do this in any way it is good for you. You can either pick a moment in the day and write down what you are grateful for or in the evening, make it part of your bedtime routine and say what you are grateful for. Or even with your children before bed, after a story do a family moment where everyone says what happened nicely during the day. Anyway, it is comfortable for you.

If you want to know more about being grateful check out this article from Sorina Raluca Băbău :

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