Create the brain you want! It’s absolutely possible. But you’ve got to be careful.
We know today through the miracle of functional brain scans, such as fMRIs that a state of mind can be created. In fact we can watch a living brain as the state of mind goes. It’s incredible.
The brain is highly plastic – that is, you can change it. You can change it for the better. You can change it for the worse. Your thoughts and emotions determine which way you go. You can create the brain that you want. Don’t believe that?
My definition of stress is very simple: stress is a prolonged state of negative emotional feelings. Stress is the opposite of happiness. It’s that simple.
Stress is bad for you.
There is NO such thing as good stress and bad stress.
Being excited and happy are not stressful – nope. In fact, these are GOOD for you. Stress is inherently bad for you because your nervous systems pours out a lot of stress hormones into your body as well as your brain. It really hurts the brain because it affects the hippocampus part which regulates the emotions, learning, and memory.
The hippocampus is where most of your new brain cells are made – more memories, more brain cells – BUT not when they’re stressful ones! The hippocampus is negatively affected by all those stress hormones. A healthy one tells its neighbour, the hypothalamus, when to stop secreting stress hormones.
But when you feel stressed out, upset on a continual basis, the hippocampus can’t keep up and then it reaches a point when it can NO longer communicate to the hypothalamus to STOP! This is serious, folks! You and your brain get caught up in a lethal cycle. It takes you a long time to recover from each stressful bout you have. You feel – overwhelmed.
Can you create the brain that you want?
When you deliberately live a life where you are conscious about how you want your day to turn out, then you will make the necessary changes to YOURSELF to make those improvements.
Life doesn’t have to be hard.
Life doesn’t have to be complicated.
Will you create the brain that you want?
I’ve learnt the hard way – having a cancer scare in my mid-thirties was a BIG wake up call. Thankfully it was a scare and not reality. I had to make things happen that made me happy, that pleased me. If I wasn’t doing what I’m doing today – call me a Doctor of Optimism – I probably wouldn’t be alive writing this to you.
Don’t ignore the unpleasantness in your life. Do something about it. Take action on it or just let it go. You know you’ve let it go, when you FORGET about it. Memories disappear when the brain prunes away neuronetworks that contain these memories. It’s better to create good happy NEW ones. You’ll grow many more brain cells. Learning and memory are related – more brain cells (sorry to all those educators who do weird things with our children these days. Even sorrier for our children!). So get out there and LIVE your life.
You can create the brain you want. Isn’t your brain worth it?
