Change Your Brain Every Day - Are You Always Getting What You Don’t Want?

Episode Date: September 7, 2017

It’s no secret that visualization can be a powerful tool for motivating and inspiring us to achieve our dreams. Your brain makes happen what it sees, whether that vision is what we want or what we don’t want. Therefore it’s important to pay attention to what we think about, and to spin negative thoughts into empowering, positive ones.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. So we are back and today we're going to talk about getting what you don't want. Are you getting what you don't want? How often have you said something like, I can't get sick before my trip. I can't oversleep. I'm not going to eat donuts tomorrow, or I'm not going to lose my temper with my kids. And then you do exactly the thing that you say you're not going

to do. Don't you see people do this all the time? All the time. Because the brain doesn't hear the negative. It doesn't hear the negative. And what's really interesting is that in order to have a thought, any thought, like, I'm not going to eat donuts tomorrow. In order to have the thought, I'm not going to eat donuts tomorrow, your brain first has to see you eating donuts tomorrow, right? So in order for you to have the thought, I'm not going to eat donuts tomorrow, you first have to create the picture of I'm not going, like of you eating donuts tomorrow. So you just created a vision of you eating donuts. And then you're trying to like constantly not think about that vision you created. So that's part of why people don't get what they want. So I'll give you a real life example.

So here's one that I had and I didn't even realize. So we work on this all the time, but they creep in these little thoughts, like your aunts that you talk about creep in insidiously here. I pride myself on trying to like be strong and like do all these good things and be very healthy. And all of a sudden I found myself subconsciously, not even consciously having this thought and being anxious about it. Um, I can't get sick again because if anything happens to me,

I would leave my daughter Chloe without a mother and then her life would be a mess. I didn't even realize that that thought had sort of crept in and it was so negative. It was totally like in the negative. So if you think about that, I first have to visualize myself getting sick and then I have to visualize me leaving Chloe without a mother And then I have to visualize, visualize me leaving Chloe without a mother. And then I have to visualize her life being a mess. And then I was wondering, you know, no wonder I was totally anxious. Cause your brain makes happen what it sees. Right. So no doubt it like motivated me to try to live healthier, but at the same time, I'm creating this like massive anxiety. But then if you're more anxious, then you're going to want to have more wine. And I mean, you'll do things to try and calm the anxiety that may not be as healthy for you.

Well, but even more than that, just mentally, we will make happen what we see, right? We will make happen what we see in our head. You know, there's actually a medical example of this. If a woman believes she's pregnant, even though she's not pregnant, her body will actually begin to take on the shape of a pregnant woman. I've seen it a number of times in my practice. It's called pseudociesis. Yeah, we treated that. It was weird. I had one woman go to nine months and she actually started lactating or producing milk from her breasts. She didn't have periods.

Her belly was really big. And when her husband and family found out that it was a psychological condition, they banished her. They got mad, right. It was crazy because she wanted to be pregnant so badly. She actually manifested it. So your brain is incredibly powerful. So it's one of the reasons your brain is so powerful. It's one of the reasons that, um, in the Olympics, Olympic athletes use, they actually have coaches for visualization, guided imagery visualization, and they don't allow it because your brain is the only place that you can actually practice perfection, right? So they don't allow them to practice their techniques mentally with any mistakes. And if they make a mistake mentally, they have them rewind, back it up and

keep doing it until they do it perfectly. They don't just like redo that. They don't just like start the image over again. They literally make them rewind it, go all the way back through the mistake and then redo it until it's perfect. You don't ever want to practice visualization with mistakes. And that's how important it is. And they have found that doing visualization without any physical training is almost equally effective to the physical training. So imagine if you're doing the physical training

along with the visualization, you don't then have to overtrain. It's super powerful. So you can do that with your relationships with your children. Anything. With your spouse. Your physical health.

Right, so what I did, so let me give you an example. So I turned this around to, my original thought was I can't get sick if anything happens to me because I'd leave Chloe without a mother and then her life would be a mess. I mean, total disaster thought, right? So I changed it. My new thought, if you change it, always put it in the positive. I am vibrant, healthy. I'm a warrior. I've raised a strong, competent daughter who is a leader

and a warrior also. And that's way truer than the first thought. And more empowering. Right. And now in order to have that thought, I'm only visualizing positive. Think I'm only visualizing the positive. I'm only visualizing what I want to have happen. So I don't have to see all those other horrible things in order to get to what I want. I'm actually only seeing the positive. I'm only seeing the powerful. So that's an example of how that works. So that's why take your thought, do this exercise, take your negative thought, and you got to be really careful because they creep in just like an ant infestation, like you talk about. Automatic negative thoughts. Right. They creep in insidiously. I didn't even realize the thought had sort of crept back in.

And so pay attention. If you're having these negative thoughts, write them down, then do a turnaround, flip it to its opposite, turn it around to its positive, and then come up with an empowering turnaround like what I just did, the example I gave you. So where are you stressed today? Are you stressed in your relationships? Are you stressed in your money? Are you stressed in work or your health? And see what thoughts you have. Write them down, as you said, and then visualize you solving the issue in a perfect way. That'll help you so much.

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