welcome today I'm going to be talking with scientific proof of ways to actually change your brain to be more positive let's dive in this is not going to be anything that's weird and out there I'm going to slam you with scientific proof today to the point where you're going to be like is he still telling me more studies and the answer is yes cuz I really want to hammer in home that actually thinking positive can change the structure and function of your brain and I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it I'm going
to not just going to sit here and be like a motivational speaker that can't root anything back in science no no no we're proving it today because research has shown over and over and over again that positive thoughts have a massive impact on the structure of your brain and when the structure of your brain changes the function of your brain longterm will change as well in fact it's very similar to how um physical exercise gradually changes the body if you do it over and over and over again positive brain workouts help form new neural Pathways
that can disrupt your negative thinking patterns leading to long lasting changes in your cognitive function which help you think better and actually help your brain work better and so to understand how this works let's first take a look at just the brain itself your brain is basically this little this little mushy thing that's made up of billion ions and billions of neurons which are specialized cells that transmit information throughout the brain and the nervous system and these neurons are connected through things called synapses which help them communicate with one another and when you think a
thought or you perform a certain action or task in some sort of way your neurons are going to fire in a particular pattern that corresponds with that thought or with that action and there's a real famous phrase the most famous phrase around neurology is neur NE that fire together wire together fire together basically just means an electrical signal and then they wire together which means they create an electrical connection and over time repeated patterns of thought or behavior positive negative whatever it might be just repeated patterns of thought and behavior can actually change the structure
of your brain and this is known as neuroplasticity this is what allows your brain to adapt and learn new things throughout your entire life so we've all heard the phrase you can't teach an old dog new tricks completely false you definitely can it's just as you get older it becomes a little bit harder to learn things or to change but it does not mean that you cannot change so for example you know if you if you sit and you decide I've never played the piano before but I'm going to sit down for an hour a
day and I'm going to practice the piano every single day the areas of your brain responsible for processing music become more developed and more efficient I have an entire EP not an episode I have entire chapter in my book my book level up that is specifically around neuroplasticity and it is so fascinating to me how we can change our brains whenever we put dedicated practice into something and how people who have the P who play the piano their brains end up changing and being different people who drive taxis in London their their brains end up
being different because they have to memorize every single Road that's in uh that's in London and so the same is positive for I'm sorry the same is the same is true for positive thoughts so the same way that if I decide to learn piano my brain is going to change if I decide that I'm no longer going to be negative my brain is going to change it's not going to change overnight but it's going to change if I continue to keep being very intentional and when you consciously focus on positive thoughts you activate certain neural
Pathways in the brain that correspond with those thoughts and over time those Pathways become stronger and stronger and stronger and as they become stronger they become more efficient and as they become more efficient it actually makes it easier for you to access positive thoughts and emotions in the future that's what's crazy you could be negative as hell right now but decide I'm no longer going to be negative I'm going to find the good in everything I'm going to be positive and as you do it over and over and over those neural Pathways become stronger and
stronger and stronger and as they become stronger they become more efficient which makes it easier for you to access positive thoughts and emotions wow that's pretty damn crazy right this is why positive thinking is often referred to as a brain workout it's just like an a real workout like physical exercise strengthens your muscles positive thinking actually strengthens your brain once again I'm going to give you science don't you worry I'm not just saying this as some like rah rah high five motivational speaker because that's not what I want to be and this is why you
can meet somebody who's always happy and you're like what the how are you always so happy right like I like how do you do it right like I've thought them you're so happy all the time you're so positive all the time right but you also can meet somebody and they're always always sad all the time they're always negative all the time and you're like this person's not fun to be around all of that whether it's the sadness whether it's the happiness when there's a positive all of it is just a habit it's just a habitual
way of thinking and if this is true for positive thinking then the opposite must also be true negative thinking can also have a really huge impact on your brain as well when you consistently think negative thoughts you activate neural Pathways that correspond with those thoughts same way that you do with positive they're just ones and over time those Pathways become stronger and more efficient making it easier for you to access negative thoughts and emotions in the future and this is why negative thought like negative thought patterns negative thinking being a little Negative Nancy can be
so hard to break you can see someone and it's just like they they're so miserable and even if they don't want to be miserable anymore they it's so hard for them to stop being miserable it's hard to break because as you continue to keep doing them over and over and over again it becomes easier to do and they become deeply ingrained in the structure of your brain but the good news is is that with with a lot of time well well first off with awareness of what you are thinking how you're acting in time and
attention and intention you can disrupt these negative thinking patterns and consciously start focusing on thoughts that are more positive when you intentionally choose to think positively you activate different neural Pathways in your brain that correspond to those thoughts you activate different neural Pathways than the negative thoughts and neurons that fire together wire together and over time these Pathways become stronger and more efficient and eventually they disrupt the negative patterns making it easier for you to access positive thoughts and emotions and recently I told you guys about like I used to be such a Negative person
I used to be such a pessimistic person I was such a Negative Nancy and over time I was like I don't want to be this way anymore this is not who I want to be in the future like just just a negative little person nobody want I don't want to be that and so I started changing the way that I thought every time I thought negative I'd force myself to find the positive every time I thought negative I forced myself to find a positive over and over and over again the same way that you train
a dog if it goes potty inside you take it outside it goes potty inside You Take It Outside over and over and over again eventually the dog just goes oh I I go potty outside right it's the same way that you train your brain I was negative I'm going to be positive I was negative I'm going to be positive over and over and over again eventually your brain just starts neing neing learning new neural Pathways and so really that's what it comes down to and you might be like all right cool hippie but is there
real science can we root this in real science or you just saying rahah high five go do it be positive it changes your brain and there's no studies behind it oh ready there are many many studies I've researched the hell out of this just to make sure that the most pessimistic person that's out there the most analytical person and and the most skeptical person allinone would go well damn yeah this actually seems to hold it seems to hold water I'm guessing this that this is the truth okay so I'm going to give you a bunch
of different studies you ready one study published in the Journal of psychiatric research found that practicing positive affirmations for just four weeks led to significant changes in the brain in areas that were associated with self-related processing and emotional regulation participants in the study reported feeling less anxious and more self-confident after practicing positive affirmations and these changes were reflected in their brain activity want another study let's keep going another study published in the Journal of social cognitive and effective Neuroscience found that when participants were trained to focus on positive images instead of negative ones they experienced
changes in the brain activity in areas associated with emotional regulation and intentional control these changes were still present 6 months after the training ended suggesting that the effects of positive thinking are actually longlasting there was another study neuroimaging Studies have shown that positive thinking can increase activity in the prefrontal cortex of your brain which is the part of the brain that's responsible for executive functions such as decision-making planning and impulse control another study that came out have shown or many Studies have shown that positive thinking can actually decrease activity in the amydala which is the
part of the brain that's responsible for fear and other negative emotions so positive thinking actually decreases the blood flow in the amydala which means less fear is going to pop up a study that was in the Journal of cerebral cortex I don't even know that was a journal the cerebral cortex Journal found that people who practiced mindfulness meditation had greater gray matter gray matter density in the the prefrontal cortex of their brain which is associated with cognitive control and emotional regulation research has also shown that positive thinking can increase the production of neurotransmitters such as
dopamine and serotonin which are both associated with feelings of happiness and well-being and being more motivated Studies have also found that positive thinking can improve cognitive performance in tasks such as problem solving decision-making and working memory a study that was published in the Journal of oh God let me try my best psychon neuro endrocrinology that might be the longest word I've ever seen psycho that's one word everybody psychon neuro endrocrinology found that people who wrote about positive experiences had lower levels of stress hormone cortisol than those who wrote about negative experiences research has also shown
that positive thinking can improve physical health outcomes such as reducing inflammation and improving cardiovascular house that's a crazy to think about positive thinking reduces inflammation in your body and improves cardiovascular health so it's not just your brain that that changes your body also changes all right we're almost done we got a couple more okay neuroplasticity Studies have shown that the brain is capable of changing and adapting throughout our lifetime and that positive experiences and thoughts help shape the processes and the efficiency of the brain uh a study that was published in the Journal of Nature
Neuroscience found that people who receive positive feedback during a learning task had increased activity in striatum which is associated with reward processing and reinforcement learning so does positive thinking actually change your brain scientifically the answer is yes that is the most studies I've ever put into one podcast episode of course it's important to note that positive thinking alone is not some like magic cure all for all mental health issues I'm not saying that when something comes up and you know you're feeling like complete that you're just like hey everything's going to be okay everything's going
to be okay everything's going to be okay that's not what I'm saying what I'm saying is is there a way for us to try to start searching for a little bit more positivity when something happens can we look at it through a positive light if something negative happens in our life can we look it through a positive light so that not not so that we ignore the negative but so that we can actually take on the negative in a more of a positive way so it's not a cure all for mental health issues for instance
for people that have like clinical depression positive thinking exercises might not be enough to alleviate their symptoms but there's many stes that show just practicing positive thinking can be helpful as a a complement to forms of therapy that they might have or medication that they might be using and so how do we start actually taking this and now that you've realized that it works how do we take this positive thinking and we put it into your daily routine well let's let's dive in I'm going to give you a few different techniques and some tips to
help you the first thing as corny as it sounds is to practice gratitude right take a few minutes a day to just write down three things that you're grateful for all too often our brain goes to negative it looks for what is wrong in our environment and it does that as a as a way to keep us safe it searches for what is wrong and so what we need to do if that's the case is we need to search for what is right we need to search for what we can be grateful for and so
what we need to do is we need to find three things that we're grateful for early in the morning not late at night but early in the morning when your brain is still kind of waking up it's still kind of in Theta State because Theta is the most programmable state that you can be in and so uh a simple exercise like this can just help shift your focus from what's wrong in your life to what's going right or what you can be proud of or what you can find that's good and it doesn't have to
be huge things doesn't be like oh my God I bought a new house it could be like hey it's a beautiful sunny day outside um I get to go have dinner with a friend tonight could be something like that right that's the first thing practice gratitude next thing is use positive affirmations I gave you multiple studies that show that positive affirmations actually start to change the way that you view yourself and so instead of saying you know don't lie to yourself but if you say I am capable and I am confident or if you feel
like you're unlovable I am worthy of love I'm worthy of respect and repeat them to yourself all throughout the day because all too often we have a narrative that's going on in our heads and it's not really a story that's uh helping us and so really what it comes down to is how can I change the narrative that's going on in my head you can also write them down uh on sticky notes you can place them all around your house your workspace everything next thing is how can you try to surround yourself with more positivity
can you start spending can you can be more intentional with who you spend your time with right the people that you spend your time with you have really negative people around you they're going to you know change your mental health so can you spend more time with people who lift you up who make you feel good about yourself avoid negative people and start to to get into the the energy of more positive people another thing is to practice mindfulness sit down be quiet and become aware of your thoughts you know a lot of people think
that sitting down and meditating is about trying to turn your brain off it's really not what it's about is to take out all the the the things that you're seeing all the things that you're doing and to take a moment just to be with yourself and it's not about getting rid of your thoughts it's about observing your thoughts so when you sit down and you meditate you start to become more aware of your thoughts you start to become more aware of your emotions you're just trying to be with yourself a little bit more which can
help you develop much more of a positive mindset oh man I'm noticing that when I sit down and meditate I'm immediately going to anxious thoughts anxious feelings okay what do I need to do to change that another thing you can do that really helps is to start getting better with your your selft talk uh a lot of times most people that I come in contact with are not really the nicest they're kind of shitty to them M themselves and so when you catch yourself with negative thinking and and and having negative thoughts challenge yourself to
change them with with positive thoughts that immediately come back so if you you say something negatively about yourself and you notice it become aware of it immediately replace that with three positive things that you like about yourself right and that's slowly how you start repatterning yourself so if you start thinking you find yourself thinking I'm not good enough well counter that with I'm capable I'm deserving of success what else that you that you need to here how do you need to be your best friend how do you need to be the person that's in your
corner that's building yourself up instead of breaking yourself down remember practicing positive thinking it's a process it's not going to happen overnight you're not going to be positive today and wake up tomorrow and just immediately be like oh my God I'm so positive but when you're really consistent consistent with it when you practice it all the time you can actually change your mindset you can actually change the structure of your brain through those long lasting changes and when you change the structure of your brain the function of your brain changes and the cognitive function that
happens inside of your brain actually starts to change and adjust as well so hope I prove to you that there's scientific proof that positive thinking actually changes your brain for the better so with that I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode make get your mission make somebody else's day better I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day
