Do you know that your mind can either work for you or against you, dependng on how you train it? When it works for you, it helps Youstay positive, reach your goals in life, and think the kinds of thoughts that enable you to enjoy each day. When it works against you, it can make you negative and discouraged, hold you back from accomplishing what you want or need to do, and cause you to think the kinds of thoughts that result in self-sabotage.
As a physical structure and an organ of the human body, your brain engages in many functions that take place without your knowledge, without your help, and outside of you! control. It has all sorts of jobs in your body. Your heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, movement and coordination, balance, body temperature, hunger and thirst, sensory processing, sight and hearing, emo-tions, learning, and memory are all areas with which the brain is involved.
But your brain is also the “home” of your thoughts, your mind. Dr, Caroline Leaf, a leading Neuro-Metacognitive learning special! ist and committed Christian, notes in her teaching on the brain that “The Word and science believe that the mind and the brain are one. The way you think is voluntary, and you can control you! thoughts. I want you to give your brain a new job and begin to teach your mind to work for you instead of against you. One impon tant way to do this is to make the intentional decision that you will begin to think positively. I realize your brain won't be able to fulfill the new role completely overnight. You may be asking it to undergo a radical transformation, and that will take time. So give it a little grace, but determine that with your diligence and God’s help, your, brain will go to work for you instead of against you and becomea powerful, positive force in your life.
I like what Dr. Leaf says-that the human brain takes “eighteen years to grow and a lifetime to mature.” Don’t miss this point. While every other organ in the body is fully formed when a person is born, and simply gets bigger as the body gets bigger, the brain actually takes a full eighteen years to grow. Once it’s fully formed, it continues to mature until the day a person dies. This means, no matter how old you are, your brain is still maturing. This is great news because it means you do not have to be stuck in any old or wrong thought patterns. Your brain is still maturing, so you can still mature in your thinking.
Think about It
What come to mind immediately when I ask: In what way (s) is your mind working against you?
It’ll Help Your Health
Your thinking can have a positive effect on your physical health. People have suspected an interrelationship betWeen the mind and the body for generations, but in recent years, a variety of scientists and researchers from all over the world have studied and proven it. In a 2004 article in USA Today, Carol Ryff of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said, “There is a science that is emerging that says a positive attitude isn’t just a state of mind. It also has linkages to what’s going on in the brain and in the body.” Ryff’s research has proven that people who have higher than normal levels of well- being show “lower cardiovascular risk, lower levels of stress hormones, and lower levels of inflammation, which serves as a marker of the immune system.”1
In addition, a study conducted in the Netherlands in 2004 found that people who are optimistic have healthier hearts than those considered. “grouchy.” Fewer self-described “optimists” died of cardiovascular disease and they had lower death rates overall than those of pessimists.2
Dr. Becca Levy of Yale University led a study that concluded that “a positive attitude towards aging was greater than physiological measures such as low blood pressure and cholesterol, each of which is thought to add a maximum of four years to life.” This study also found that optimistic people live longer than people who worry constantly and that positive attitudes can add more years to a person’s life than exercising or not smoking.3 In some ways, I find this research astounding, but in other ways, I have no trouble embracing these findings because I have learned that the mind is extremely poWerful and I am not surprised by the extent of its influence in our physical lives.
According to the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, thinking positively may also result in the following health benefits:4
• Decreased negative stress.
• Greater resistance to catching the common cold.
• A sense of well-being and improved health.
• Reduced risk of coronary artery disease.
• Easier breathing-if you have certain lung diseases, Such as emphysema.
• Improved coping ability for women with high-risk pregnancies.
• Better coping skills during hardships.
Further affirming the mind-body connection in an interesting way, I was fascinated to see that in 2005, the Associated Pressreleased an article that reported, “New research suggests that once Alzheimer’s disease robs someone of the ability to expect that a proven painkiller will help them, it doesn’t work nearly as well.”5 Isn’t that amazing? As long as people are able to think painkillers work, these medicines seem to help us, but when we st0p thinking they are effective, they actually stop being effective. Our minds are incredible!
We know positive thinking is good for our attitudesand emotions, but the research I have referenced in this section, plus an enormous amount of research available in various forms today, clearly indicates that positive thinking is also extremely beneficial to our physical well-being. If we want to live healthy lives, we have to have healthy minds-and that starts with thinking positively instead of negatively.
