The signature line for the Success and Mindset Group is "Change your thoughts, change your results". This idea has existed for as long as there have been humans and was encapsulated in the quotation from the Roman stoic philosopher Epictetus who said "It is not events that disturb men's minds, but rather their views of them". It is a hallmark concept in modern cognitive neuroscience. One positive aspect of the latest strides in neuroscience is an improved understanding of how thoughts and feelings are made and changed.
This research is good news for anyone wanting to change how they think, feel or behave and experience greater success and happiness. I think that we all have certain thoughts that we either don't enjoy or that don't serve us well in how we show up in our lives. Let me give you an example of one set of thoughts on which I had to work.
Some years ago, my wife and I had been devoting more time and attention to caring for her aging parents: a mother who had suffered a stroke and a father who suffered kidney failure and required dialysis with frequent hospitalizations. Between these two major health challenges, there were times where we were in a state of anxiety. In a state of uncertainty, it was easy for our minds to dwell on the negative possibilities. So how did a knowledge of neuroscience help us navigate these waters and handle the challenges?
I had given attention to anxious thoughts concerning the future of my parents-in-law. My brain had responded by reinforcing a network of neurons around thoughts about them that included many negative possibilities. The more time I spent on these anxious thoughts, the more negative possibilities occurred and the more mental attention and energy was consumed. The more attention a thought receives, the stronger the cluster of neurons become and the more prominent the thought becomes in awareness. Any event which triggers such negative anxious thoughts can transform rapidly into many other negative/anxious thoughts and emotions. The emotions reinforce the thoughts and become a mood. A negative mood can persist long enough to affect your disposition and behavior. I see this pattern replicated numerous times with the depressed patients I see in my clinical office or the challenged business owners and entrepreneurs in my consulting work.
You may not be able to control the initial triggering threat thought. But you can control how much attention you give it. When I chose to take my attention off a negative thought and put it on another thought, say one of acceptance, ("God's will be done."), or gratitude ("I am so grateful for all the time we have had together."-particularly as my own parents died much earlier in my life), I reinforced the new thought. The more attention I gave to the new positive thought, the stronger the neurological association became.
Through repetitive focusing of attention on the new positive thought, it became the most dominant thought associated with my parents-in-law.. The new thought literally became wired in place neurologically. By repeatedly redirecting attention and belief to the new thought, the neurological reinforcement of the new positive thought comes from the brain disconnecting the old negative/anxious thoughts.
You want to keep taking attention off the negative thought and keep putting it on the positive thought. This may have to be done multiple times since the neural connection to the more habitual negative thought frequently is strong. Attention off the negative thought translates into better feelings, better moods, and different behavior. This is not simply "positive thinking", though that's not bad. It also can involve strategies to learn how to identify the negative/anxious thought, how to challenge and dispute it, and how to substitute the more positive and valid thought. Really, are you a complete "failure" because something went wrong in your life or business? I doubt it.
Happiness is not something produced in those brief moments when everything is "perfect" and all upset is momentarily absent. Instead, it is in being constantly present (i.e. - If I am not allowing myself the thought that things need to, must be, or should be different). I watched Joel Osteen this morning as well as a segment of Oprah Winfrey's show, both of which focused on the wisdom of learning to be present and achieve a degree of contentment in your present life circumstances. Who knew that this accords with modern neuroscience and that we actually can change our thoughts and thus change our results?