The idea of positive thinking and how it affects your brain activity was first fronted by an ex-professor working for the AssignmentMasters writing team. He claimed he had a small statue that he believed was enchanted. He would sit and tell his problems to the statue and that within half a day he would discover an answer. Was it just a big coincidence? Did he “make” the statue enchanted? Was it God or Napoleon Hill’s infinite intelligence that gave him his answers? Or… was he simply being proactive and positive so his brain filled in the gaps? Who knows, maybe it is a combination of these reasons.
As a result, here are a few ways that positive thinking can influence your brain activity and thinking:
The Placebo Effect:
If a person believes something securely enough, there is a chance it will have a physical effect on them. For example, if you are given a medication and told that it will make you feel better, many people will actually begin to feel better once they have taken the medication. This is called a ‘placebo effect’ where something relatively inert is given a quality through sheer suggestion and subsequent belief.
So, how does this relate to positive thinking and brain activity? The fact is that you can make yourself feel better with your own placebos. There is strong evidence to suggest that many addictive substances are not as calming or soothing as they appear, and that it is actually how the placebo effect works. In fact, the work of Lance Dodes M.D. has shown how feelings of stress and cravings subside when a person “decides” to indulge in an addictive act, rather than when the person actually physically indulges.
How Can You Use This For Yourself?
As Dennis Prager once said, you can “decide” to be in a good mood, in the same way you can decide to be scared or not. There is a good argument for putting your mind over matter in such cases. You can decide to think more positively, just like you can decide to be more productive and more efficient.
Self-Hypnosis And Autosuggestion:
This article in no way recommending self-hypnosis. However, there are some principles of self-hypnosis that are still present in autosuggestion, and that alone may help you become a more positive person and help you improve and alter your brain activity.
If a person is told, “You don’t look too well,” then that person will probably reply with “Nah, I’m okay.” If another person says they do not look well later in the day, and then another person says it again, then the person hearing it will actually start to “feel” unwell. This is all due to autosuggestion; in that the more you hear something, especially something that strikes you as being personal, the more you start to believe it on a very basic and primal level.
For example, if a naturally happy person lives with under the same roof as a moody person, the happy person tends to become more moody as a result. This is because the moody one often complains and creates a toxic atmosphere that drowns out the positive person’s happy and pleasant comments and thoughts. After a while, due to being in a negative environment–the positive person becomes more negative.
How Can You Use This For Yourself?
Surround yourself with positive people so that you are not brought down by negative people and thoughts. Of course, you can try and change negative people, but it takes a large emotional investment and a lot of time. At the end of the day, you have to remember that negative people are toxic and will infect you if you expose yourself for too long.
Feeding Your Subconscious:
Speak about the pleasant things that happen in your day, and tomorrow it will seem like yesterday was a pleasant day. On the flip side, if you only speak of your bad luck, then you create memories that are littered with negative thoughts and events. You are in control of some of what your subconscious absorbs. You can decide to create good memories or bad memories, and doing so is as easy as limiting what you talk and write about. Spend the day complaining, and you feed your subconscious mind with a lot of negative material that will turn into unpleasant memories.
You can feed your subconscious on an external level too. Your artwork should be of a positive or inspirational light. You should watch a comedy show before you go to bed, and you should balance the negative things you watch with the good things you watch. It is important that you learn about the horrors of this world, many of which you cannot change or influence on your own, but you also need to remember and embrace the good things in life. You need to remember that it isn’t all bad. To quote Samwise Gamgee from Lord Of The Rings, “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo……..and it’s worth fighting for!”
How Can You Use This For Yourself?
You need to be aware of the amount of positive and negative material you expose yourself to on a daily basis. Ideally, it should be 1/3 negative and 2/3 positive. You would think that fairness means going 50-50, but few people are emotionally mature enough to expose them to equal measures of positive and negative material and still remain impartial. Either way, you are trying to be more positive, so it is only fair that most of the material you expose yourself to is positive.
