If you would like to submit a question or make a comment, please email Dr. Taylor at thebrain@arlenetaylor.org.
Yes, some people do, and it can make huge and positive differences in their lives. As a brain-function educator, I find that very rewarding, even exciting! It so happens that I just received an e-mail from a woman who did apply practically what she had learned and this is what she shared:
You recently did a series of presentations at an Elderhostel event at the St. Helena Center for Health that I attended and enjoyed very much. On my journey back to Alaska I had an opportunity to practice some of the techniques that you introduced to the group.
On Thursday I arrived at the Oakland airport around 1:00 p.m. for a 2:30 p.m. flight and discovered that my flight had been cancelled. My reservations now indicated that I was to leave Oakland at 9:00 p.m. with no connections in Seattle. That clearly was not going to work for me. After some searching, the reservation agent found a flight leaving San Jose at 2:15 p.m. with a connecting flight in Seattle.
The shuttle van picked me up and I asked the driver if he could get me to San Jose in time for a 2:15 flight. He said that he would try. So I thought of what I had learned from your presentations: I put on my seatbelt, took a deep breath, got out my Sudoku puzzles and started to work on them. The driver looked at me and in an astonished voice asked, “Why I are you so calm? Most of my passengers would be highly agitated and/or yelling at this point in their travels!”
I explained to him about the 20:80 rule, outlined some of the stress management techniques I had learned, described how cortisol has a deleterious effect on one’s brain and body and thanked him for doing the best he could to get me to the San Jose airport on time. I could not ask for more.
We actually had a very interesting conversation all the way to the airport, and I learned a lot about business enterprises that were previously unknown to me. And I made my flight in San Jose with time to spare. Thank you for your insights and for sharing such applicable information.
By way of explanation, the underlying theory of the 20:80 Rule supposedly this came from Epictetus, a 2nd Century Greek Philosopher. Interestingly enough, so far as is known, Epictetus never wrote anything down. His pupil, Arrian, on the other hand, said he wrote down everything he heard his mentor say. One of Epictetus’ oft repeated philosophies was this:
We are disturbed not by events, but by the views we take of them; not by what happens, but by what we think it means.
Modern philosophers have rephrased these words into what is sometimes called the 20:80 Rule. I’ve found several different versions. Here are a couple of them:
Brian Tracy, best-selling author and speaker, put it this way, “You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you; and, in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you. Circumstances may be out of your control—your response isn’t!”
Affirmation can be defined as a style of communication that utilizes short, positive, present tense, unconditional, and empowering statements. It is the most effective way to communicate with your subconscious mind, program your brain for success; communicate with yourself and others, and positively influence the health of both brain and body.
Since affirmation is so powerful, you would think that everyone would hone a positive mindset and an affirming communication style. Unfortunately, growing up most people heard seven to nine negative comments for each positive. With all that negative input many never learned the art of affirmation. Consequently, it’s no wonder that communication problems abound. Fortunately it’s never too late to hone one’s skill. It just takes knowledge, commitment, and practice.
Your thoughts create your own reality and your reality is reflected in physiological changes throughout the brain and body. The brain thinks in pictures and finds it relatively easy to deal with positives. That’s a one-step process. It finds it more difficult to deal with negatives (the reverse of an idea) because that involves a two-step process. For example, when you are told, Don’t touch the stove, the brain initially pictures touching the stove and then must try to change that internal picture by imagining the opposite. It’s usually more effective to say, Keep your hands away from the stove, and create a picture of the desired behavior initially. In a similar way, negative thinking patterns tend to increase one’s problems in life as the brain mentally pictures (visualizes) negative outcomes.
Some believe that one of the reasons for temporary or short bouts of depression may be to allow the body-mind to conserve energy in times of stress. The truth is that most people who are depressed don’t “feel” like being very active.
You define your depression as “contextual,” which suggests that you are linking it with the business-related problems you mentioned. It will be important to evaluate the event(s) and take steps to resolve or manage the outcomes as effectively as possible.
Dr. Candace Pert, author of Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind, has made some suggestions for dealing with contextual depression. These include:
Along with that, evaluate your habitual mindset. Is it positive, hopeful and empowering, or is it negative, hopeless, and helpless? Learning more about emotions and feelings and about techniques for developing a positive mindset may be helpful.
There is a formula that says, “For every period of exhaustion there will be a corresponding period of depression.” Possible reasons for this include:
When you have thoughts of wanting to harm yourself in any way or to kill yourself, contact your doctor immediately, as your brain may need a different level of medication. As your doctor pointed out, however, it is also important to “change the way you think.” Thoughts are just thoughts. You can choose to hang onto them or to change them, and you can decide whether or not to take any action based upon them.
Some years ago I heard a mother give a brilliant response to her seven-year-old son, who was angry because he had missed some school outing or other. “I’m going to run away from home!” he said, stamping his little foot emphatically. “I am! I am!”
Rather than get upset, his mother had calmly replied, “I understand that is what you think right now. If you still feel the same way tomorrow, you can call your cousin Billy and ask if he wants to run away with you.” Her little boy said, “Okay,” and soon was busy playing with his LEGO® toys.
That type of processing can be helpful in adulthood, as well. When you become aware of thinking you want to harm yourself, try saying: “That’s my thought right now. It’s just a thought. It tells me that my brain wants to feel better. I choose to think of three things for which I am grateful. I’m riding my stationary bicycle for 15 minutes while I think of things for which I am grateful.”
Learning to develop a positive mind set, positive self-talk, and a positive communication style is not a Pollyanna response to life. When something bad happens, acknowledge that it happened, decide if there is anything you need to do to mitigate the situation or repair the damage, and then think of something for which to be grateful. This can result in a number of benefits:
My brain’s opinion is that the employees who are making unkind remarks need to “tend to their own rat-killing,” as my little French grandmother would have put it, or in other words, “shut up.” Differences are what make the world interesting, especially since no one brain has it all or can do it all.
Are the differences pathological? If so, you might want to discuss that with your manager. If they aren’t, look for the positives in the differences. Every brain on the planet is different, you know. We only know our own brains—and often not that well, at that. Comparing our own brains to those of others is a dead-end street. You cannot reliably compare apples, oranges, and bananas. Each is valuable in the right context, although all are very different. Perhaps you could become a committee of one to be pleasant to the new employee. Affirm whatever you can. If you are unable to find anything to affirm, at the very least you could choose to avoid being part of the non-affirming coterie.
You might want to study up on Emotional Intelligence and find a way to encourage the office to raise its collective level of EQ. I started raising mine by catching myself whenever I exhibited a JOT behavior and replacing it with a behavior that was higher up on the EQ continuum. If you are serious about this, it can go quite quickly, and it’s amazing how exhibiting higher levels of EQ behaviors prevents a lot of “messes” that would otherwise need to be cleaned up.
Dump all JOT behaviors:
J – Jumping to conclusions
O – Overreacting
T – Taking things personally
You ask a great question! In thinking about a response, words attributed to one of my favorite “ancient philosophers,” Epictetus, come to mind: “The thing that upsets people is not what happens but what they think it means… It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” Therefore, if I am asked a question outside my area of study, all that means is that I do not know. It in no way demeans me as a person—because I am so clear that no one brain on this planet can or does know everything, so it would be foolish and a lie to pretend I do. My brain’s opinion is that it is important to role-model authenticity. If I think the questions involve brain function and that I may be able to discover information that could address it, I am willing to do the research and get back to the questioner. Otherwise, I have no problem saying that I do not know.
And what is embarrassment anyway? Shame is one synonym for embarrassment. Shame (along with guilt) are emotional interrupters—likely learned reactions that may or may not be valid and healthy. Growing up, human beings “learn” about shame and embarrassment. My definition of embarrassment or shame is that it alerts your brain to the fact that you breached a social or moral guideline or someone else thinks you did. It gives you the opportunity to evaluate the situation and your behavior, knowing that you can learn to exhibit a different behavior if necessary or apologize for a mistake or accident that was unintentional and do what you can to remedy the situation or….
I genuinely appreciate and feel humbled that people give me their time by attending my presentations and I never want to waste their time. My goal is to share information that has certainly changed my life and that can do that for others as they turn the information into knowledge and practically apply it in their own life. It would be disrespectful to the audience to pretend I know something if I don’t. My goal is to share what I have studied and never try to “fake it” because that will always show up in some way or another.
Honing one’s Emotional Intelligence skills can help a person identify whether shame or embarrassment is valid or invalid and choose appropriate behaviors. My brain’s opinion is that hanging onto embarrassment is a choice and—bottom line—I choose to avoid doing that.
According to Dr. Restak in his book Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot, studies have shown that your thoughts can impact your brain’s chemistry. When non-depressed volunteers thought sad or depressing thoughts, brain changes indicative of depression occurred. In initial stages at least, negative thoughts and attitudes alter brain function unfavorably. (As the depression deepens, this sequence may change with the dysfunctional brain producing increasingly depressive thoughts.)
Mental states can alter your brain chemicals. A negative mindset has been associated with neurotransmitter changes and with immune system suppression. When levels of neurotransmitters fall or are out of balance, you can increase your risk for depression. For example:
In some cases, psychological distress may trigger chemical imbalances. This means that your mental attitude is important! And you’re the only one who can actually make the choice to develop and maintain a positive mindset.
Individuals who lack hope can become desperate for answers. Since finding hope is a personal journey and you cannot do it for them, their desperation can be irritating at best and at worst lead you to either try to avoid them or just shut down emotionally.
People who are hopeless often gravitate toward those who have a sense of hope—for a while. Then they get tired of seeing someone else experience hope and either try to sabotage that sense of hope or eventually distance themselves from that hopefulness, much as water seeks its own level. Perhaps the trick, if you will, is to develop skills to recognize when someone genuinely wants some help versus those who want to bathe in the positive atmosphere of encouragement but who either are unwilling to bite the bullet and do the work or who wittingly or unwittingly sabotage the help offered.
My strategy is to write notes to people who ask for help and sometimes talk with them briefly on the telephone. However, it is also my responsibility to protect my brain and body that have been leased to me for use on this planet from over-exposure to negativity and hopelessness.
There could be several things wrong with this picture. Can you identify the underlying reason for your attempts to “serve and care for others”? Remember, the first reason that comes to mind is rarely the real underlying reason. Dig to discover that. If your underlying motive is to feel better about yourself but your own cup is not full (you fail to practice self-care consistently and effectively), eventually you will be trying to give from the well of your own unmet needs. Over time, this means you will be further diminishing the level of your own well. In the process, you will likely try to do for others what they can learn to do and need to do for themselves—my definition of caretaking, as opposed to healthy caring.
Do you consistently and appropriately practice genuine and balanced self-care? If so, you can care for and give to others from a full well. Self-care begins with you and many people misunderstand that concept. I am reminded of it every time I board a plane and hear the attendant say, “In the event of a loss of cabin pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the compartment above you. Put yours on first before you try to help someone else.” A physician said it this way: “We are all here to serve in some capacity—we were never intended to be the main course.” Food for thought…
The author of the book and presenters in the video are addressing a key component of success. An affirmation is a positive statement used to program your subconscious. When repeated aloud, especially in combination with purpose and emotion, the affirmation will influence your intent and result in altered behaviors in your life. When those thoughts are written down and then read aloud, the effect can be compounded.
Every thought you think, every word you say, and every action you take:
The problem is, of course, growing up most people heard 7-9 negative comments for every positive comment, and 18-19 negatives for every positive if they came from a very dysfunctional system. Their memory banks are filled with negative pictures and pejoratives. Most people tend to develop habitual ways of thinking and talking and follow them like a bowling ball follows the gutter. You can only get out of a trap when you recognize you are in one!
Although the importance of “taking action” is alluded to in both the book and the video, it is not particularly emphasized. They are concentrating on the thinking-affirmation step, which could give you a slightly unbalanced view. When you become aware of your thoughts at a conscious level and take responsibility for thinking, writing, and speaking affirming thoughts, life can change.
The electromagnetic energy released by your neurons can be received by other neurons on the same “wave length” if you will. Some researchers describe this as a form of “attraction:” like attracts like. At the very least this may result in you becoming more aware of options that beforehand you had either not perceived, ignored, or decided were unavailable to you. When you become aware of those opportunities you need to take action. Thinking different thoughts does not necessarily create action—but it IS the first step. As Oliver Wendell Holmes put it so elegantly, the ancestor of every action is a thought.
It would be wonderful (my brain’s opinion) if individuals began identifying who they are innately earlier in life rather than later, obtaining vital information from family members and friends before those individuals are gone, deleting, adding, and rewriting parts of the script that was handed to them at birth. Few do, because when you’re young is seems as if there is a very long space of time between birth and death. In reality, it goes by quickly.
You can role-model and encourage them with your story. Realize that it is never too late to do something and that “youth,” as General Douglas MacArthur put it, “is not a time of life but a state of mind…that you are as old as your fear and as young as your hope.”
You can help them realize that hopelessness drains one’s energy and can lead to depression, which is a stressor for the brain. It can even suppress immune system function and increase one’s risk for illness and disease.
According to the dictionary, the word affirm means to validate and to state positively. Practically, this defines a nurturing communications style; one in which you talk to yourself and to others in a positive manner. In general, “positives” are more powerful than “negatives.” Positives are a one-step process that creates a picture that you want the brain to follow. Negatives, on the other hand, require a two-step process. Words such as don’t are meant to convey do the opposite of the picture that was just created in the brain. This is often difficult for a mature brain to figure out and may be virtually impossible for the immature brain to compute.
Some have said that by the time the average child reaches adulthood, most have heard between seven and nine negative comments for every positive. Consequently, it is no wonder that many people have no idea how to practice the art of affirmation successfully. In fact, they tend to reinforce unhelpful behaviors by speaking in a negative style (e.g., don’t, can’t, won’t, shouldn’t).
If your parents and other caregivers learned the art and science of affirmation from their ancestors, they likely would role model to the next generation. If not, they likely did not because you can only teach what you know.
In order to successfully validate and encourage others, you need to begin with you—because people tend to speak to and treat others in the same way they speak to and treat themselves. With some informed effort, you can learn how to speak to yourself confidently in a positive communication style; you can incorporate affirmation into your life on a daily basis; and learn to pass along the gift to others.
My brain’s opinion is that developing and consistently implementing an affirming communication style is absolutely essential. All human beings thrive with encouragement. The consistent use of affirmations is a practical and empowering way to encourage yourself and others.
History on Planet Earth indicates that the prevailing belief for perhaps hundreds of years was that the mind and the body were two distinct entities. Many cultures ascribed thinking to the physical heart. So, what was the brain for? To keep your ears apart and provide a home for the eyes? By the mid-19th century, it is said that some were promoting the idea that both internal and external factors impacted the health of the brain and the body and that, indeed, they worked together. No one knows everything, however, and some of what we take for granted in today’s world was completely unknown until the recent past—especially with the advent of brain imaging research. It is now established, for example, that the heart and the brain communicate continually via an unmediated channel.
The brain and body continually communicate with each other. What happens in the brain affects the body—and vice versa. You can choose to think a specific thought or replace it with a different thought. Peter McWilliams, author of You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Single Negative Thought, wrote that a negative mindset is the precursor of all life-threatening illnesses. Negative thinking (e.g., unresolved anger, fear, sadness) may be a key contributor to one’s level of health and wellness. You have the power to choose the thoughts you hang on to and ponder.
What you think about in your brain (mindset) does impact your body and vice versa. Negative thinking and distress in the brain has been found to impact energy in the body—decreasing it. You know how you feel mentally when your body is in distress. Positive thinking and outlook on life has been found to increase energy in the body. Jon Gordon, author of books such as Energy Addict and The Energy Bus, has pointed out that whenyou think positively about the day ahead, you increase the levels of both your mental and physical energy.
