How Positive Thinking Rewires Your Brain
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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another episode. I put out episodes four times a week to help you learn and grow yourself so that you can improve your life. And if you're out there and you want to dominate your 2025 goals and New Year's resolutions,

I just created a brand new short ebook for you on how to plan, set, and achieve your goals. It's absolutely free if you go to goals2025.com. Once again, goals with an S, 2025.com. Today, I'm gonna be talking about how positive thinking

actually rewires and changes the structure of your brain, and then in turn changes the way that your brain functions. And I'm not gonna talk to you about some like woo-woo-y stuff or like, hey, this is a guess, or like I think this might be, or anecdotal evidence. I'm gonna actually slam you with scientific proof today to show you that the way that you think, whether it's positive or negative, actually changes the structure of your brain.

and I'm not gonna come at you like some motivational speaker, like, hey, you can do this, I believe in you, you will change your brain. No, I'm gonna prove it to you, and I hope that you hold me to that standard as I prove it to you. Because research has shown that positive thoughts have a massive, massive impact on the structure of your brain. In fact, it's very similar to how physical exercise

gradually changes your body over time. Like you can't just work out one time and think your body's going to be different. But if you continuously, continually work out, I don't know what the right one is. I don't, does anybody actually know continuously or continually which one the right one is? I do not, which is funny because I speak for a living. But

If you do that over and over and over again, we'll put it that way. If you work out over and over and over again, you will gradually start to have change in your body. The exact same thing happens right now where if you positively think, positively think, positively think over and over and over again, it will start to make different changes in your body. It will change the neural pathways,

that are in your brain, and it will also start to disrupt the negative thinking patterns. And over time, if you do it over and over and over again, it will lead to lasting changes in your cognitive function. And so...

To understand how this whole thing works, let's take a quick look at how the brain works, right? Your brain, at its simplest form, is made up of billions of neurons, which are cells that transmit information throughout the brain and the nervous system. And these neurons are connected by these things called synapses, and they allow them to communicate with one another. And when you think a thought or perform a certain action,

Your neurons fire in a particular pattern that corresponds with that thought or that action. Neurons that fire together, wire together is the famous phrase that a neurologist came up with. Neurons that fire together, wire together. What that means, neurons that fire means that there's an electrical signal sent between them start to wire together. And the more that they fire, the stronger that connection gets.

And so over time, the repeated patterns of thoughts and repeated patterns of behavior can actually change the structure of your brain. And this is known as basically neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to change itself. It allows your brain to change and adapt and learn throughout your entire lifetime. So for example,

If you practice playing the piano every single day, the brain, the parts of your brain that's responsible for processing music will become more developed and more efficient over time.

The same thing is true for positive thoughts. When you consciously focus on positive thoughts and positive thinking, and I don't mean that you just don't pay attention to any bad things and you just act like your life is positive when shit's hitting the fan, but I mean like when you consciously try to find the good in what used to be the bad for you, you activate certain neural pathways in your brain that correspond with those thoughts.

And so over time, when you do it over and over and over and over and over again, those pathways become stronger and much more efficient the more that you do it. And as it becomes more efficient, it actually makes it easier for you to access that positive thinking pattern and those emotions in the future.

And so just like physical exercise strengthens your muscles, positive thinking tends to strengthen your brain. And so this is why you can meet someone that's like always happy. And it's almost annoying because you're like, how the hell are you so happy all the time? How the hell are you so positive?

It's probably because they've just been wiring themselves, whether consciously or unconsciously that way for a long time. This is also the exact same thing. Like the same thing can be said for someone who's always sad or always negative or can find the negative in anything. Positive thinking is a habit. Negative thinking is a habit.

So if it's true for positive thinking, opposite thinking must be true as well. Negative thoughts can also have a profound impact on your brain, right? When you consistently think negative thoughts, you activate neural pathways that correspond with those thoughts. And over time, those pathways become stronger and more efficient, which makes it easier for you to access negative thoughts and emotions in the future. And this is why negative thinking patterns can be so hard to break.

Because they have become, for a lot of people, deeply ingrained into the structure of somebody's brain. Me, I was a very negative thinker for like the first half of my life. I could find the negative in anything. I could find excuses for everything. That's why I've really focused on myself for 19 years now, making myself think differently and think differently and think differently. Like I feel like naturally I am just more of a

melancholy type of person. When you look at like the history of men in my life, my father was an alcoholic who ended up dying from being an alcoholic. My grandfather, his father was an alcoholic who killed himself. And so it seems like depressive thoughts can kind of run through my family.

For me, when I was younger, I was the type of person when I played basketball, my favorite sport. And every time I would shoot, it would be like, I hope I don't miss versus I hope I make it. And so for me, at one point in time, when I woke up and I realized I could start to change the way that I think, I really put a lot of time into like, I'm going to rewire myself. And that's the good news about this.

this is that we can rewire ourselves. You can disrupt these negative thinking patterns by consciously making yourself think positive thoughts. And when it goes negative, finding the positive, if there is any, in any negative situation. Or when you're thinking negative about something that you shouldn't be thinking negative about, switching it to positive. So when you intentionally choose to think positively, you activate different neural pathways in your brain that correspond with those thoughts.

over time, those pathways become stronger and more efficient and eventually disrupt the negative thinking patterns, which makes it easier for you to access positive thoughts and emotions. And so all this sounds neat, but hey, hippie, is there any science that this is rooted in? Yes. And I'm going to just give you so much science today because I just want to cite as much as I can to prove it because I really want to, I want to bring many, many studies.

so that you can go, shit, I guess this might be true. And maybe you start trying to think positive, right? So let's just, I'm just going to fire through some of them with you. Ready? One study that was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research found that practicing positive affirmations, speaking to yourself positively for just four weeks, led to significant changes in brain activity in the areas that were associated with self-related processing and emotional regulation.

So speaking to yourself positively changes your brain and your emotional regulation. So they had participants in a study and all of them reported, not all of them, excuse me, but a large portion of them reported feeling less anxious and more self-confident after practicing positive affirmations for four weeks. And these changes were reflected in the brain's activity when they looked at the brain.

Another study that was published in the Journal of Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience found that when participants train to focus on positive images in their heads instead of negative ones, they experience changes in the brain activity that were associated with emotional regulation,

as I just said a second ago, and attention control. So these changes, what's crazy about it is when they were focusing on it, it changed the way that they felt in the moment, but these changes were still present six months after their training ended, which shows that these effects of positive thinking can actually be long-lasting.

Do we have any more? Yes, we do. Neuroimaging studies have shown that positive thinking can increase activity in your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain responsible for executive functioning and decision-making, planning, impulse control, all of those things. And so it made massive changes in people's brains in the prefrontal cortex part of their brain. That's what the neuroimaging showed.

Another study showed that positive thinking can decrease activity in your amygdala, which is the part of your brain that's responsible for processing fear and other negative emotions. So by thinking positively, there is less activity over time in the amygdala, which is what's responsible for processing your fear. Another study was published in the Journal of Cerebral Cortex Studies.

found that people who practice mindfulness meditation and positive thinking had greater gray matter density in their prefrontal cortex, which is associated with cognitive control. And I've said it now, this is three times emotional regulation.

Also, research has shown that positive thinking can increase the production of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin. And dopamine and serotonin are the neurotransmitters that are associated with feelings of happiness and well-being and gratitude. Neat. Studies have also shown that positive thinking can improve cognitive performance in tasks such as problem solving and decision making and your working memory as well.

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And now back to the show. Another study published in the Journal of Psychoneuroendocrinology found that people who wrote about positive experiences and thought about positive experience had lower levels of stress hormone cortisol than those who wrote about negative experiences. So when they think about negative experiences, they have more of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood. When they think about positive experiences and consciously think about it, they have less of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood.

Research has also shown that positive thinking can improve physical health outcomes, such as reducing inflammation and actually improving cardiovascular health.

Neuroplasticity studies have shown that the brain is capable of changing and adapting throughout your entire lifetime, and positive experiences and thoughts that are positive shape the process as well. A study that was published in the Journal of Nature Neuroscience found that people who received positive feedback during learning a task had increased activity in the striatum, which is associated with rewarding processing and reinforcement of learning.

So of course, it's important to note that positive thinking alone is not some magic cure-all for mental health illnesses. That's not what I'm trying to say. For people who have something like clinical depression or anxiety or bipolar or any of those types of things, positive thinking probably isn't going to be enough to alleviate those. But for everyone else, practicing positive thinking can be super helpful for

as well as therapy, as well as hiring a coach, as well as meditation, all of that stuff. And so how do we start incorporating positive thinking into your daily routine? Let me give you a few tips.

The first thing that I can think about is this, is the thing I've been saying for a couple of years now, is from the moment that you wake up in the morning, set your internal GPS. The same way that you get in a car, you set your GPS for where you want to go. When you get into your day, the very first thing I want you to do when you wake up, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, is set your internal GPS. Decide how you want to feel for the day. Decide how you want to act, what you want your day to feel like, how you want to act throughout the day.

I want to wake up and I want to be more grateful and happy throughout my day. I want to be less stressed throughout my day. So set your internal GPS. I'm going to find the good in everything. I'm going to find the good in everyone.

That's the first tip that I'll give you. The next tip I'll give you is get better at practicing gratitude. I'll admit, years ago, I used to think that practicing gratitude was nice, but kind of like a corny, woo-woo, kumbaya thing to do. What I have found is the past couple of years, when I wake up and I actually make myself focus

on what I'm grateful for. When I go to my backyard and I drink my coffee and I think about, oh my God, how blessed am I to have this life and everything that I have. And I have my health and my heart is beating and I have my family and I have everything that I have. When I feel that way, when I set my internal GPS and then when I focus on gratitude, I feel way better throughout the entire day. So that's the next thing I'll say is practice gratitude. Find anything, small little things to be grateful for. Next thing is try to start using positive affirmations.

Start paying attention to how you talk to yourself. Write down a few positive affirmations that you feel that you need. I'm capable and confident. I'm worthy of love and respect. I love myself. I believe in myself. Whatever it is you need to say to yourself. And say it more often to yourself. Make it become like the playlist that's playing in the background of your head, like the song that just continues to keep going.

We have a song that we play that's called the happy song for our son and it just calms him down and he falls asleep. And two hours later, I'm stuck singing that damn song in my head. I can't get out of my head. What if my positive affirmations could be as stuck in my head as that song?

You can write it on sticky notes and you can place them around your home, your workspace, your car, the background of your phone, your computer, so that even just going through your daily life, you run into these things that remind you to start thinking and speaking to yourself differently.

Next thing I would recommend is try to start surrounding yourself with positivity. Start to find more people who lift you up, who make you feel good about yourself. Avoid the people that have negative influences. Start to watch more comedy. Start to surround yourself with, instead of watching, you know,

true crime and people that murder each other all the time. Think about what you're consuming in your brain. When I turn on Netflix now, I don't know what happens, but it's like murder mystery and true crime and who killed this person. I'm like, no, I don't want any of that to come into my brain. I want to focus and be in control of everything that comes into your brain is brainwashing in some sort of way. I'm going to be in control and intentional about my brainwashing. That's one thing that's really big. And then

The last thing that I would recommend is to start trying to get better at being more mindful, being more here in this moment. Mindfulness and meditation sounds good and can feel very like kumbaya as well. But I have found that the more that I work on breathwork and meditation and mindfulness, which really just means like being here in this moment, being in my body, because normally when you're in your head, you're thinking about

the future and what you're worrying about and what you need to anticipate and any things that could possibly come up. And when you think about the past, you're thinking about things that make you mad or sad or whatever it might be. When you're in your head, you're almost always somewhere else. When you're in your body and you're focusing on being mindful of being here, your body is always in the present moment. And when you're in the present moment and you get good at calming yourself down, at being here, naturally what I have found is just a byproduct of that is just more positive emotions.

And so I want you to understand that practicing positive thinking is a process. It won't happen overnight. Like you can't go to the gym one time and then just think that somehow you're going to wake up and you're going to have abs. We all know that that's impossible and that's never going to happen. Well, the exact same thing is for you trying to think positively.

If you think positive one time, I promise you, your life is not going to change. But if you consciously wake up and try to set your internal GPS and try to find more good, and when you notice yourself being negative, consciously switching it and cognitive, it's called cognitive reframing and changing your thoughts. Over time, you're going to notice that your brain is going to start to change, which will make it easier to start thinking more positive.

So it's not just a one-time thing. It's a process. It's not going to happen overnight. But if you put consistent effort and practice, you can develop a more positive mindset. I can promise you, I am 100% proof of this.

from the way I used to be to the way I am now. I'm not perfect in any sort of way, I promise you that, but I am much better than I was 19 years ago. And when you do that, you'll start to see lasting change in your brain and your cognitive function. And over time, it will become easier for you to think positive and easier for you to stop thinking so negative. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode,

please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in it, Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from each and every one of you sharing this in some sort of way. So if you got value from this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it so that more people can find this and hopefully we can help more people think more positive and stop being so negative as well. And with that, I'm gonna leave it the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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