Your thoughts are far more powerful than you think.
Although thoughts seem invisible and weightless, they carry a ton of punch, when it comes to impacting your physical well-being, mental health, emotional vitality and influence on your life.
In fact, in every moment of every day, your body is changing and responding because of the thoughts that run through your head!
This can either put you in the driver’s seat of optimism, confidence, focus, self- expression and well-being, or in the gutter of pessimism, self doubt, worry, procrastination and ill health.
AN INTERESTING WAY TO VIEW YOUR THOUGHTS
You’ve probably never looked at it this way before, but your thoughts can be viewed as “electrochemical events.”
I like this term, because it conveys how powerful and impactful your thinking is!
Thoughts are actions that take place in your brain cells that produce a ripple effect of tangible physiological changes throughout your entire system.
This isn’t random; you are designed this way for a purpose. Therefore, you make decisions and take actions that:
- Keep you safe
- Inspire you to seek pleasure and rewards
- Ensure your genes have a future on the planet
HOW DOES THIS WORK?
Your brain releases neurotransmitters (brain chemicals) which elicit a flow of communication between your brain and nervous system. This controls your body’s functions, ranging from hormones to digestion and to happy, sad, scared, stressed or relaxed feelings.
These neuro chemicals are produced in the limbic system, the emotional cognitive area of your brain that developed early in mammalian evolution. It operates with the primary goal of survival, avoiding pain and threats and seeking pleasure and rewards.
By the way, mammals are warm-blooded vertebrates that nourish their young with milk secreted by mammary glands, and have skin more or less covered with hair. This means YOU are a mammal, too, and it explains why your limbic system is always at the forefront, constantly evaluating everything as favourable or unfavourable.
Once determined, chemical messengers are sent forth eliciting a powerful impact on the higher order thinking of your neo cortex, which is the part of your brain that is uniquely human and where your executive functions reside.
Your neo cortex intercepts a wide range of thoughts and impulses and steers them towards safe and productive outcomes such as self management, planning, problem solving, emotional regulation, creativity and innovation.
While this is impressive and important work, your higher order thinking is greatly affected by the state and reaction of your emotional cognitive brain – for better or for worse.
REAL LIFE EXAMPLES
Your brain is scanning for safety and threats in every environment, with every person and every situation in which you are part.
For Example:
- Someone cuts you off in traffic
- You have an argument with a friend
- Your boss needs to have a meeting with you
- A colleague dismisses your suggestion in a meeting
- Change is happening and you don’t know the outcome
- Finances are tight and you have an unexpected bill
- Too many demands, too little time to fulfill them
- Your child is having struggles at school
- Weather is impeding a special event
None of these situations are actually life threatening, however from a midbrain standpoint, it may be perceived and processed as if it is. This will impact your thoughts and potentially hijack your entire system with a stress-based survival response.
REPITITION SCULPTS YOUR BRAIN
Every thought you have causes neurochemical changes, some short lived and others lasting. When a situation is repeated over time, it will begin to create well- worn pathways that eventually become an automatic habit.
This is because information that travels through your brain causes neurons to fire together in distinctive ways based on the specific information being handled.
Repeated patterns of neural activity change your neural structure.
High use regions of your brain that experience greater activity will start making new connections with each other and existing synapses. Over time, connections will become stronger, increasingly sensitive, and more receptors and new synapses will form.
An example of this is the often cited London cab driver studies which show that the longer someone had been driving a cab, they developed a larger hippocampus, a brain region involved in visual-spatial memory. The cab drivers’ brains actually expanded to accommodate the cognitive demands of navigating London’s plentiful and intricately woven streets.
YOU HAVE THE POWER TO CHOOSE
Thankfully you have more power than you realize to influence your physical and mental realities.
The more you implement self care and self management strategies such as Brain Fitness techniques to calm your body, balance your emotions, and train your mental habits, such as focus and concentrations, the more effectively you will be – in all areas of your life.
You can’t control what has happened in the past, which sculpted your current brain wiring. However, you have power now and going forward to over-ride old patterns, and shift your thoughts, perspective and behavior, which will change your brain and change your results!
To Your Fit Brain and Fit Life,
Jill