So I'm touting positivity all the time, I'm the positivity shrink. Today we're
going to figure out what negative thinking does to your brain.
We have a choice
after all, positive or negative? Where's our thinking? In the first video
that I released when we started doing daily content at Live On Purpose TV,
I talked about how to stay positive no matter what. You might remember from that
video that you can link to right up here that there are two processes in our
brain. I've got a little card here that that brings the graphic back into
perspective, there's evaluation and creation that our
mind is constantly doing as we evaluate our current situation or our what it is,
we generate either a positive or a negative kind of an emotion or feeling.
That emotion or feeling sets us up for what we're going to do up here in creation
mode where we move forward and create what is to be. Review the video and
you'll get a good sense of what the model is all about. Here's why I've
referred back to that. What we do in our own thinking as we evaluate our life, so
here's the short version, is my life good or is my life bad? Now that's
oversimplified and nobody really thinks in those terms or do we? Sometimes. Either
way, it's going to create some kind of a feeling. The reason for this has to do
with chemistry, appearance simple, it's brain chemistry. My buddy, Scott Halford,
who is an amazing speaker and trainer and who wrote this book, Activate
Your Brain. Scott drilled it down to two basic chemicals that symbolise what it
is that's going on in our brain. Now there's more than two, okay, and he had
acknowledged that too but if you'll just think of these two, it'll help you to remember it.
Negative thinking triggers a little bump of cortisol into your central nervous
system and your bloodstream. Now cortisol is a stress chemical, cortisol is what is
released to help prepare your body for the fight-or-flight response and then
there's other things too like adrenaline and other chemicals that contribute but
cortisol gets triggered by our thoughts. What does negative thinking have to do
with our brain health? Well, everything because if we're
triggering cortisol into our central nervous system, we're going to have a
very different experience than if we trigger a different chemical. Cortisol
has the effect of shutting down some of the higher cognitive parts of our brain
like our prefrontal cortex which is in charge of thinking, logic, problem-solving,
also some cool things like empathy, compassion, forgiveness, shuts it down.
It's not even available to us, we are deactivating that part of our brain. Why?
Because we've got to redirect our resources down to a more primitive part
of our brain that we might call the survival brain, the limbic system, the
fight-or-flight part of our brain that basically just empowers us to do one of
those two things, either put up our dukes in fight or get the heck out of there
because we're not safe, alright. So notice that you can trigger those
chemicals by your thoughts, that's pretty important. What if we were to think
something positive about our life? So I gave you the extreme example of my life
as bad cortisol, fight-or-flight or my life is good. That feels different, right? Why
does it feel different? Chemistry. Going back to the brain,
Scott pointed out, when you think in those terms, you get a little bump of
dopamine. Now dopamine is a totally different
chemical, it tends to give you feelings of peace and
contentment and good feelings, right? Pleasant feelings but it also has an
effect on your brain and the effect is that it redirects the blood flow from
those lower primitive areas of your brain up to the prefrontal or higher
cortical areas of your brain the dopamine that we're talking about now is
a completely different chemical from cortisol, it has a completely different
effect in addition to all those pleasant feelings that it gives you, it also
activates the higher cortical areas of your brain allowing you to do some of
those really awesome things like problem solving and conflict resolution and
compassion and empathy and all of that great stuff that you need the higher
parts of your brain to accomplish. You can trigger and activate that by
your thoughts. This is so powerful, so powerful. The chemistry in your brain and
your central nervous system in your body can be triggered and affected by your
very thoughts. It matters what you think.
Here's a little experiment that you can do and I love this one because it gives
you a quick experience with either the cortisol or the dopamine that we we're
talking about. What if you were to ask yourself, am I on schedule? You know, with
your life, with your relationships, with your
business, with whatever it is that's up. Am I on schedule? Now do you know? I mean,
do you know for sure whether you are or aren't like you've got some cosmic
connection to the grand calendar of all things, do you know? No, you don't so you
got to pick a position about that. What you choose to think is going to make a
difference. Now experiment with this, think for just a moment,
I'm behind, I'm behind, I'm not up-to-date here, I'm not on schedule.
Oh, I don't even like this part of the experience because it makes me feel
nervous and upset and kind of like something's wrong.
Notice that, those feelings are because of chemistry, the chemistry is because of
the thought that I'm not on schedule and I don't know so that's a position that I
can choose. Now switch it over in fact, just do this, okay. Humor me. Get a
little smile on your face, okay, goofy little smile like I've got, raise your
eyebrows just to touch. A little lilt to your voice as you say, I'm right on
schedule. Just try that. How was that? I'm right on schedule.
Oh, you know what? It's a totally different feeling, isn't it? Do you know?
No, you don't. We already established that but what if you were to take that
position? I'm right on schedule and notice how that feels. How would it
feel if you really believed it? Okay, yeah. See, now we have just activated the brain
with a whole different chemical. It's not like it solves anything, what it does is
it put you in position to solve anything. Do your thoughts matter? Oh yeah and you
get to choose what they are, negative thinking has a very different effect on
your brain chemistry then positive thinking does. Notice that, experiment
with it, have some fun with it and let's see if we can activate our brain to work
for us instead of against us. Big shout-out to my buddy, Scott Halford, who
helped us to learn how to activate our brain. You're going to want to share this
with somebody.