Retrain your brain. What you Intentionally Plant in Your Mind Grows.

Don’t underestimate the power of your mind. Even those thoughts that you don’t consciously see are impacting how you feel, what you do, and the results you get in your life. When you understand this, and intentionally take charge of your thoughts, you not only change how you feel, you also change your life. While this sounds simple (and it is), does not mean that it is easy.

You have two parts to your brain. The conscious part, and the unconscious part. What is stored in the unconscious part of your brain matters. This part of your brain is designed to protect you. It keeps track of the things you tell yourself about yourself and the world in general. If you frequently tell yourself that you are “less than _____ (fill in the blank)” or that you are “not enough _____ (fill in the blank), or that you “should _____ (fill in the blank), or that “you will never be successful, happy, or loved”, these thoughts will be stored in your unconscious brain. Your unconscious brain does not know, or care, whether these things are true or false. It just stores them and scans for any evidence that will support them. Once it finds even a tiny piece of evidence to support one of these thoughts, it will store it and magnify the thought even further. That’s not great, right?

What is even less fortunate is that our brains have a “negativity bias”. This means that, left alone, your brain will find and focus on negative things while ignoring or minimizing positive things. It does this because it thinks if it points out all the negative, and potential negative things to you, that you can somehow avoid them or escape from them. That is great for situations when someone is in physical danger, however, it does not serve you when your brain is looking for situations that may cause you to feel uncomfortable or to feel a feeling you don’t like to feel. Not only does it not serve you, it actually backfires and causes you to feel bad when you might not otherwise feel bad if your brain weren’t trying to remind you of all the things you think are negative about yourself, or about all the worst-case scenarios that will likely never happen.

What is played in your mind, or thought about most often will become your unconscious, default thinking. If you tell yourself lots of negative things, your unconscious brain will repeat them over and over, look for evidence to support them, log that new evidence, and create even louder, or more prominent, negative unconscious thoughts. These thoughts create negative feelings that strengthen with new “evidence” to support them, which then impacts the actions you take in your life, and ultimately the results you get in your life.

While this may not sound very promising, what is promising is that you can use the conscious part of your brain to retrain the unconscious part of your brain. Now that you know how your brain works, you have may have guessed that if you change what you intentionally think in your conscious brain, you will change your unconscious brain. When you do this, you can change your negative default thinking patterns to positive ones that cause you to feel better, take different actions, and get different results in your life. Your brain is working non-stop, so you have lots of opportunities to change it. And when I say, “change it”, I do mean that you will actually change it. You will change the wiring and pathways in your brain so that they work for you, not against you.

Remember I said earlier that “it sounds simple”, but “it is not easy”? The reason it is not easy is because it takes work and sustained attention for a period of time. If, however, you can commit to doing the 5 simple strategies below on a consistent basis for six to eight weeks, you will start to change your brain so that it works for you.

Here are 5 simple strategies for doing this:

1. Think about something you wish were different or that you want in your life (better finances, to find love, better health, a better job, to complete a task you have been talking about for a long time, etc.). Constrain to just one thing to start.

2. Every morning, mid-day, and evening before you go to sleep, repeat this thing to yourself in a positive format. What I mean by this is to say, for example, “I have no debt and am in complete control of my finances”, or “I am improving my health and feeling better every day”. When you notice yourself reverting to older patterns of thinking such as, “I will never find true love”, or “I will be stuck in my dead-end job forever”, catch yourself immediately and insert a better thought such as, “true love is out there waiting for me”, or “there are infinite career possibilities available to me”.

3. Be intentional about looking for evidence to support your new thought. Over time your brain will start to find it and log it in your unconscious mind on it’s own, however, when starting out, take time to reflect daily on what evidence (however big or small) there is to support your new thought.

4. Repeat this daily. The challenge is being consistent so try to stack this with something you already do each day. Maybe you intentionally repeat your new thought after you brush your teeth, when you eat lunch, and when your head hits the pillow at night. In the evening, take time to reflect on any evidence that supports your new thought. Remember, your brain works all night long so by doing this before you go to sleep you are telling your brain to focus on it all night long.

5. Have reasonable expectations. Don’t expect to wake up on day two with a million dollars in the bank, with the partner of your dreams, with the health of an Olympic athlete, etc. Remind yourself that science has proven that we can rewire our brains so every time you intentionally think the thoughts that serve you, it is like lifting a weight. You don’t see the progress on day two, or even week 2, however, change is happening until one day you look in the mirror and see a muscle you did not see prior. Similarly, every time you think the new thought, you are strengthening your unconscious mind to work for you, even if you can’t see it happening…until one day you do!

Make a commitment to do this for you. It does not take more than a few minutes per day which is a small price to pay to change how you feel and to change the results you get in your life.

Live your best boss lady life.

~ Karen

Karen Vincent Solutions

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