Rewire Your Brain: The Secrets of Neuroplasticity for Personal Development How to Overcome Anxiety, Depression, Panic, Fear of Failure, Overthinking and ADHD Change Your Mind and Achieve Your Goals: Master Your Mind

By Madeline Holden

Do you know how to activate the brain's natural neuroplasticity to achieve your goals?

Mastering your mind, body, and soul can rest the effects of stress, anxiety, and even the ego to achieve optimal health and desired success in anything you face

In this incredible collection, Madeline Holden will show you how to use the secrets of science to activate the superpower of your mind in a few simple steps and achieve the goals you've always dreamed of.

 

You'll find:

BOOK #1: Rewire Your Brain

• How to connect the brain and soul to gain mastery over emotional regulation
• Two brain detoxes to regain your attention for healthy living
• A list of advanced mindfulness and meditation techniques

BOOK #2: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 4 Weeks

• Rewire your brain for success with simple life-changing exercises
• Easily tackle every obstacle life puts in your way with mindfulness strategies
• Overcome negative thinking, anxiety, depression, fear, worry

BOOK #3: ADHD: Inside The Distracted Mind

• Wandering mind, the DMN and TPN mode and how to switch
• Deep look into the ADHD brain in children and adults
• Brain exercises to improve focus and mental flexibility

BOOK #4: Healing After Loss

Inside this book, you will gain a new understanding of the stages of grief and how your recovery will improve with each passing phase

Life doesn't have to rule you.

As a consultant with 10 years of experience who collaborates with scientists and dieticians, I can guarantee that you'll gain something from this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Madeline Holden
• Release date: Jan 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201646356

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© Copyright 2021 - by Madeline Holden.

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The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher. Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book, either directly or indirectly.

Legal Notice:

This book is copyright protected. It is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher.

Disclaimer Notice:

Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up to date, reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaged in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. The content within this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BOOK #1: Rewire Your Anxious Brain

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Mysterious Brain Unraveled

Chapter 2: Understand Emotional Rollercoasters

Chapter 3: Detox and Rewire Your Brain

Chapter 4: Promote Your Soul

Chapter 5: Enhance Your Body

Bonus Chapter: Master Your Brain and Memory!

Conclusion

References

BOOK #2: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 4 Weeks

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY: THE TOOL YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEEDED

HOMEWORK - WEEK ONE

CHAPTER 2: ROTTEN FROM THE INSIDE OUT: HOW COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS PLAGUE YOUR ACTIONS

HOMEWORK-WEEK TWO

CHAPTER 3: TAKING BACK YOUR POWER: PROBLEM-SOLVING AND DECISION-MAKING

CHAPTER 4: AN IDLE MIND IS A DANGEROUS MIND: MASTERING DISTRACTION & REFOCUSING

HOMEWORK - WEEK THREE

CHAPTER 5: PEACE COMES FROM WITHIN

HOMEWORK - WEEK FOUR

CHAPTER 6: YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT: MENTAL HEALTH & BRAIN FOODS

FINAL WORDS

REFERENCES

BOOK #3: ADHD: Inside The Distracted Mind

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: UNDERSTANDING THE ADHD BRAIN IN ACTION IN BOTH CHILDREN & ADULTS.

CHAPTER 2: THE WANDERING MIND, DMN AND TPN AND HOW TO SWITCH.

CHAPTER 3: LEARNING HOW TO ORGANIZE AND PLAN FOR YOUR ADHD CHILD.

CHAPTER 4: LEARNING HOW TO ORGANIZE AND PLAN AS AN ADULT WITH ADHD.

CHAPTER 5: ADHD’S EFFECT ON MARRIAGE AND COMMUNICATION.

CHAPTER 6: MINDFULNESS, HOW TO TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE BY TAKING CONTROL OF YOUR BREATH.

CHAPTER 7: ADHD TREATMENT OPTIONS.

CHAPTER 8: BRAIN FOODS AND HOW THEY MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

CHAPTER 9: ADHD LIFESTYLE.

Final Words

Resources

BOOK #4: Healing After Loss

INTRODUCTION

Chapter One: The Journey into Grief

Chapter Two: You are the Best Person to Cope with Your Own Grief

Chapter Three: Understanding Grief and Recovery

Chapter Four:  Stages of Grief

Chapter Five:  Is My Heart Really Breaking?

Chapter Six: The Journey from Self-Doubt to Self-Love

Chapter Seven: Help Yourself: Start Your Journey

Chapter Eight: Self-Exploration

Chapter Nine:  Managing Stress, Anxiety, and Insomnia

Chapter Ten:  Handling Money and Finances after the Loss of a Family Member

Chapter Eleven:  Managing Your Family after the Loss of a Loved One

Chapter Twelve: What to Do When Your Friends and Family are Grieving

Chapter Thirteen:  Supporting a Grieving Spouse or Life Partner

Chapter Fourteen:  Supporting Grieving Children

Final Words

Resources

REWIRE YOUR ANXIOUS BRAIN

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The Truth About the Brain and Soul Connection

How to Change Your Mind, Master Your Emotions, Heal Your Life & Create a New You

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by

MADELINE HOLDEN

Introduction

Marianne Williamson once said, "You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be."

Thoughts seem insignificant when you see them as passing notions. After all, is there ever a time you’re not thinking, and are you always aware of the way your mind makes sense of the world? The world, on the other hand, has become something unknown with days unfolding as you never imagined. Sometimes, it feels like your thoughts have multiplied and been amplified. There’s so much to think about, once the world shows its teeth. Life has never been simple, and there have always been reasons to think in ways that didn’t enhance your mind, body, or soul. No one foresaw the troubles 2019 would bring though. No one could predict the crumbling of life as you know it. Amid the challenges of everyday life, came about a disease that had the world on its knees. The SARS-CoV-2 virus, or COVID-19 disease, bore a face like no other challenge you embraced before.

From ruminating thoughts about regrets you may have, or opportunities you didn’t take, to the fears of what tomorrow will bring, your mind may be swamped with more questions than answers. Will you get that promotion you worked so hard for? Will you master your mind? Will you become the best version of yourself while maintaining optimal health and a great quality of life? These thoughts seemed overbearing before the world was turned upside down. Once the pandemic shut down our borders, trapped us at home, and prevented everyone from living normally, the thoughts you had before didn’t seem as overwhelming anymore. That’s not to say that you never had overwhelming thoughts stopping you from being your best self or preventing you from being in tip-top shape. The current state of the world has just added about 100 times the weight to the normal pressures you carried before the pandemic struck. From economic failure, to uncertainties about your job and losing your home, the pandemic brought a time that tests everything you have.

How much grit you have is the question. In the face of fears about losing loved ones to the monstrous disease, you have many new thoughts and emotions interfering with your mind, body, and brain connections. You’ve probably noticed some interference by now. Everyone is suffering to some extent. The world is in a collective hell. Vaccines have started rolling out, but even after so many months since the start of the pandemic, there’s still no sight of when things will return to normal. Will things ever be the same? That’s just one more uncertainty you get to ponder. Meanwhile, you are presented with conspiracy theorists and so-called medical professionals with no degrees who want to saturate your thoughts with more fears. The truth is that you can’t master a new way to be unless you take charge of the thoughts and fears that are running amok in your mind.

A constant flow of negative thoughts causes emotional, mental, and consequently physical setbacks, which are well understood by science and philosophy. Humans have approximately 85% negative thoughts daily while 95% of them are repetitive (Verma, 2019). Of the many thousands of thoughts you have daily, you constantly focus on the negative ones, repeating them until you’re overwhelmed. It’s human nature to do so. The problem with negative thinking is that it affects more than your happiness and mental performance. According to the University of Minnesota, negative thinking patterns are correlated with numerous diseases, including ones that age your brain (Lawson, 2012). Some other related diseases include depression, anxiety, heart disease, learning disabilities, and stroke. Your thoughts directly affect your brain.

The effects of negative thinking cascade through your brain, body, and soul, preventing you from achieving the ultimate mastery you deserve. Only with mastery can you avoid the risks involved with not controlling your thoughts and emotions. Some people are turning to addictive behaviors to cope with the uncertainty in the world. Addiction has always been a problem, but now that people are stuck in their homes, restricted from traveling and meeting others, they often turn to something that eases the fallout. Alcohol, drugs, and even addictions like gambling and sex, are becoming more prevalent after such a huge shift in the world. However, these vices are anything but healthy. They won’t help you master any part of your health, happiness, or success. Quite the opposite—they’ll make things seem a lot worse when you wake up with a hangover or lose your remaining investments. Ask yourself: do you wish you could forget your problems?

Forgetting is an art, and it’s possible to transform your thoughts into something else. You won’t live in a fantasy world, but there are ways to forget what you want to and replace it with new, valuable, and self-improving thoughts. This has nothing to do with pseudoscience or spiritual journeys either. This book provides a complete journey to make the brain healthy! You’ll learn strategies designed to change your thoughts and positively influence your emotions to achieve an exceptionally healthy body. Before finding techniques to enhance your self-growth and masterful being, you must learn about the real science behind the soul and the brain. It might seem a little technical at first, but without the science, you won’t understand how each technique provided for the body, brain, and soul can be used to elevate your being. Some evidence about the brain can help you to discover how thoughts are created and how they can be changed.

The soul is an abstract topic, but science has taken great strides in uncovering how consciousness and emotions work. Moreover, it will all come together to make perfect sense, and once that happens, you’ll know exactly how you can forget what needs to go and replace it with something new. Additionally, you’ll understand how to keep the brain from aging and make it exceptional once you dive into the myriad of practical techniques to promote it. Many books discuss the brain, body, and soul, but few of them, if any, cover each part of a whole being in a way that benefits the entire relationship. Whether you’re healthy or not, some secrets will reveal how you can maintain good health. Dedicated chapters focus on each of the body, soul, and brain, giving you numerous ways to promote each one. Even if your goal is to become successful or just find better mental balance, you’ll learn strategies to achieve that.

A bonus chapter is included for you to master your brain, which shows you how to apply simple exercises to increase your memory and attention, the most valuable thing you can do for your health. Empower your brain, attention, creativity, and memory, and everything else follows. Writing this book has allowed me to express everything I’ve learned. I’m a 40-year-old single mother of twins, Charlize and Michael. And let’s not forget about our family dog, as he’s also part of our family. Unfortunately, my family and I went through a daunting period after losing my husband at a young age. Being a single mom certainly has its moments. People who meet me today would never guess my roots though. They see me as a resilient and relentless woman who will grab what she wants by the horns.

My previous job was as a manager at a multinational company, but losing my husband brought about an unimaginable wave of stress that consequently resulted in psychological and physical issues with my health. I was in no state to be the master of anything. The bravest choice I ever made was to quit a job that guaranteed excellent earnings to devote myself to the well-being of my mind and body, becoming a consultant and expert in mindfulness, brain health, and nutrition. I’ve collaborated with scientists, researchers, dieticians, and spiritual masters, allowing me to grow my knowledge base and experience over the last 10 years. I’ve compacted this knowledge and experience into a comprehensive, but practical, toolbox containing evidence-based information and exercises to detox the brain, clear the mind, regulate emotions, and live a healthy and happy life.

Two of my most valuable tools are the three tasks of change and the digital detoxes, one that only takes a day, and the other, a month. If you want to rewire your brain for optimal and masterful use, grab your emotions by the horns like I did, and thrive in your relationships, then you should waste no time. Remember that you have to get your hands a little dirty with science first, but the moment that you feel a nudge reminding you to get started, jump right into the first chapter.

Chapter 1: The Mysterious Brain Unraveled

Mind over matter is a debate we often hear among people looking for self-growth and improvement, but what is the mind, and how does matter relate to the equation? The mind is housed deep within a most complex collection of matter, and one part of that is the brain. You must understand how the brain works and how the mind fits into the puzzle. Recognizing the foundation of how your brain uses predictions to make decisions before you’re aware of the process can help you begin to grasp self-mastery. Being able to control what happens in your brain will come later, but first, you must unravel the mysteries of how your brain and thinking patterns work.

Brain Versus Mind

People love using the terms brain and mind interchangeably, but they refer to two unique pieces of a larger puzzle. The average person talks about the mind because the brain is a complex system to understand. Using the word brain also just doesn’t roll off the tongue as easily. We would rather say our mind is made up or our minds feel tired. However, a neuroscientist doesn’t talk about the mind. They discuss regions inside the brain while looking at images on a screen. They understand how a familiar sight will allow little particles called photons to be collected by the retinas of our eyes. Photons are merely particles of the matter we speak about. They contain energy and are influenced by light. This information is then passed along a complicated network, made up of billions of neurons and trillions of synapses, until it reaches the visual cortex at the back of the head. Then it’s passed through the neurons and synapses back to the prefrontal cortex at the fronts of our heads, which will ignite a thought influenced by underlying memories and beliefs.

If we see something familiar, our brains will become active in specific regions to retrieve relevant or similar memories. The neurons and synapses are the little connections that exist throughout our entire brains. Think of them like cells connected by tunnels. The neurons are cells, and the synapses are tunnels. The point is that this is how the brain is described. It’s a physical construct that can be viewed and even photographed. The mind is a different entity, albeit the two work together. The mind conceptualizes and makes sense of what’s happening in the physical structure of our brains so we can understand it. The brain is a physical piece of your thinking puzzle, but the mind is a piece that helps you understand the physical changes in the brain. Not everyone knows every center in the brain and where certain neurons are collected, so we speak of the mind.

All we know is that we are able to feel, think, believe, and make decisions. Again, we’re not ignorant of the physical changes. We just understand it as a process of the mind. We also talk about the mind because we aren’t neuroscientists who can talk about the true nature of the brain in regular conversations. We say, I remember that woman in the picture. We won’t say, My prefrontal cortex pieced together memory fragments after the photons were sent through my neurons. Only a neuroscientist would speak like this, and they’ll probably get a few weird glances when talking to normal people in this manner.

That’s the difference between the brain and the mind. The brain is only a physical construct, and the mind is the part of us that understands and translates what happens in the brain. For anyone to know how the brain is designed to think the way it does, they have to learn about the physical functions within it. The mind is a beautifully complex entity, but the brain is where action takes place. The mind only translates the actions.

The Complex Brain Made Simple

We now understand that the brain and mind work together, but the brain functions below the mind, and sometimes, we don’t even realize what’s happening. We mainly become aware of what’s happening after our brains make a decision. Quite simply, your brain already actions a response to something when the thought pops into your mind. It’s not impossible to change this, but you have to understand how thoughts and decisions come to your mind from the brain.

Let’s take a simple example where a fly zooms around your face. If your brain only processes the information by the time the thought of swatting the fly comes to your mind, it would probably land right on your nose. However, your brain has already decided to strike a course of action by swatting at the fly when the thought flows through your mind. It may seem complicated, but if your brain wasn’t working to create a thought for the mind to become aware of while already instigating a physical reaction, you’d never hit the fly.

Your brain works on two systems; namely, inference and prediction. Inference is the process where the brain fills in gaps, and prediction is the way the brain designs reality so that you can respond to situations in time. According to Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University, the brain predicts our reality because it takes 50 to 100 milliseconds or more to process information from the senses to create a thought (2020). If we waited for the thought or decision, we’d be in trouble, especially if we were driving a car or crossing a road. Visual information is hundreds of milliseconds behind, meaning that we’re not seeing things in real time. Our brains have to design a reality to help us to respond to the information collected. In other words, we’re not always seeing reality unfold, but rather a perception designed by our predictive brains. Inference is merely the brain’s way of sourcing information from our memories, beliefs, and expectations to fill in the blanks or guess what will come next.

The brain can’t always predict accurate responses or realities. It relies on expectations, past experiences, and the fragments of information collected to create a result. A simple way of seeing this in real time is when you’re about to cross the street. Say that you cross the same street every day at the same time. One driver always motors down the road in his red Mustang, with a black stripe down the middle, posing a danger if you don’t wait for them to pass. Your brain will work around the threat to help you respond each day. It predicts that the car takes three seconds to reach you by the time it turns the corner because it has always taken that time to cover that much ground. One morning, another red car comes around the corner, and your brain instantly predicts danger because the information was processed with inference from past experiences. It fills in the blanks to make you think that it’s the Mustang, even though it’s a different car. The red Mustang is also part of our model. The model in our brains is designed by the experiences we have had throughout our lifetimes.

Your experience transforms your information before you have a thought or response, and in this case, the pedestrian’s model of this particular environment triggers inference about the approaching car being dangerous, even though the black stripe isn’t there. The brain has to work at unimaginable speeds, so that it can also design incorrect realities and responses. There has been a lot of research to understand how the brain predicts reality. Optical illusions have allowed neuroscientists to study the neurological design of predictions. One such illusion is called the flash-lag illusion. It’s a simple test on a screen where a red dot moves from the left to the right. As it reaches the center, a green dot appears under it. This happens quite fast, but the strange thing is that people assume the red dot is ahead of the green one when, in reality, they’re perfectly aligned. This classic illusion is one way to see how the brain works at least 50 milliseconds ahead of your mind. Otherwise, the two dots would line up perfectly.

By predicting moving objects to traject yourself ahead of your awareness, the brain can make it seem like the path of motion for any object is not what we’re actually seeing. The brain doesn’t only predict motions and trajectories. It also predicts colors, which helps you to understand the red Mustang incident. A way to understand color predictions is by thinking about the dress fiasco that went viral a few years back. Pascal Wallisch is a neuroscientist at New York University, and he published his research in the Journal of Vision (Wallisch, 2017). A photo taken on a phone in the United Kingdom was shared on the internet to strike a debate in 2015. The picture was of a dress hanging in a store. Arguments erupted as some people claimed the dress was black and blue, but others aggressively argued that it was white and gold. Those are two largely different color groups, but Wallisch was intrigued enough to determine why people’s brains predicted two largely opposing color ranges.

Our brains are constantly collecting sensory information, and in the case of predicting colors, it largely relies on visual information. This is collected through our eyes, but light plays a large role in how the information is collected. It then travels to the visual cortex at the back of the head before it makes its way to the prefrontal cortex behind the forehead. Along the route, it goes through many regions of the brain, which hold information from past experiences. What ends up in the visual cortex is likely the correct information, but on the way to the prefrontal cortex, the fragments become abstract because the information from memories and expectations are also making their way to the front, bending the image according to the individual’s model. The color of the dress in the viral photo was highly influenced by predictions based on light expectations, according to Wallisch’s research. He surveyed more than 13,000 people who had opposing perceptions of the color of the dress.

The most prominent difference Wallisch noted among the surveyed people was that night owls and early risers had varying opinions. Early risers are exposed to better lighting for the majority of their waking hours, so they tend to expect that the photo was taken in better lighting. They agreed that the dress was white and gold. The night owls were better accustomed to poorer lighting for the majority of their waking hours, so they expected the dress to be photographed in a bad light. They thought that the dress was black and blue. Wallisch believes that the night owls versus early risers premise sheds some light on the way our brains predict different results—pun intended. It makes more sense why the pedestrian chose to wait when seeing a red car of a different brand and no black stripe. Their brain relied on past experiences and expectations to predict the response. The fact that the car was set in the same environment as the Mustang made them forgo alternative predictions.

Another famous optical illusion you can find on the internet is called the kanizsa triangle. It looks like a broken triangle in the background with three Pac-Man figures facing each broken wall. The background triangle initiates your brain’s predictions to assume that the three Pac-Man figures are holding another invisible triangle. This illusion proves that the environment surrounding something can also influence our predictions. Honestly, the brain isn’t fond of uncertainty or unknowns. Take the background triangle away, and you might not see the one between the Pac-Man figures. The brain will make you see what seems to fit the information collected, but it will also change, depending on your model. Your model is designed by experiences, and if you’ve been exposed to triangles complementing other ones, you’ll likely see the invisible triangle.

Cognitive biases are also part of your model, and they influence the way your brain predicts decisions and responses. The pedestrian is negatively biased toward red cars, so the brain more readily predicts a cautious response. The night owls are biased about the lighting when a photo is taken, even if they don’t know the store or the time of day, so they predict colors better suited to the lighting they’re familiar with. Uncertainty, new things, and unknown experiences make us nervous, so the brain will predict what must happen by leaning toward the bias created in the model. Understand the model, and you’ll know why you’re thinking the way you do.

Model Imprisonment

When you think about how the brain works, you will also realize that it can either be liberating or encumbering. You can either master your brain, or you can allow it to imprison you, and this will depend on your model. The brain is constantly processing information from the day you’re born and for the rest of your life. The model is like a map of the external environment in relation to your internal environment. Most of your thoughts are merely representations of your model, which will correspond to emotions you experienced internally, the information you collected through your senses, and the responses your brain triggered in the past. The way the brain forms a model relies on patterns and associations. Information is also physical and relational. Auditory information is collected by sound waves in the air, and these create vibrations in your ear that travel across the neurons and synapses to the appropriate regions.

Sounds ignite movement in particular neuron connections, creating a pathway that leads to the auditory and association cortices. Let’s say you hear a gunshot. It’s a loud noise that startles you, so your brain will store this information as an association. The connections between the ears and the regions within the brain will activate and strengthen each time you hear a similar noise. This is how associations are formed. Our brains will always revert to the strongest associations where the connections between certain neurons were enhanced to collect data for predictions in the future. The activation of a collection of neurons is how information takes a physical shape inside the brain. The association designed by the physical activation compared to the incoming external data is what makes information relational. The more the brain associates certain internal changes with external stimuli, the stronger the connections become.

The associations feed fragmented and adapted information back to the prefrontal cortex when you experience something similar. Think about how your thoughts are also influenced by associations. If you’ve always been an anxious person, chances are your thoughts will be anxious when the brain must predict a response. If your associations have mainly been negative, your brain will prefer leaning toward pessimistic thoughts because they’re ingrained in your associations. A simple example would be if you never believed you could amount to anything, your brain would predict failure every time you faced an opportunity. When you allow that association to embed deeper into your mind with consistent reinforcement, it becomes more challenging to think otherwise, even if the information from the external environment tells you differently.

Negative thinking patterns can form associations, and your mind will become a prisoner of your brain. Again, this can be undone, but the way you think, the experiences you encounter, and the way you respond will continue to embed deeper associations in the brain, especially if your mind isn’t consciously aware of changing them. The pedestrian associates red cars with danger. You associate opportunities with perceived failure, which your brain already predicts if you don’t consciously interfere. Your brain biologically relies on staying clear of uncertainties, which is a form of self-preservation. It’s not always a bad thing. It can even help your brain to make positive predictions automatically without you thinking about it. However, negative automatic thoughts or NATs occur when our model becomes tainted with cognitive biases or distortions, which are subjective and unrealistic ways of thinking.

Some of my clients have shown multiple distortions, and it was near impossible for them to recognize the patterns at first. It will always be hard for us to recognize the faults in our own ways of thinking. Some clients blatantly denied having distorted NATs, and it took some patience and determination to help them see how their thoughts weren’t always normal. Keep in mind that my clients didn’t think along these lines with every thought. NATs tend to show up when some pressure is added, so know that your NATs may not appear until you feel the grind of a situation. Anyway, there are many distorted patterns that can imprison you.

The always right fallacy describes a situation when you think that your opinion is the only prominent one. Always thinking you’re right, and failing to look at the facts that may prove otherwise, can prevent you from learning new skills and better ways of handling things. You can already dismiss this fallacy, knowing that everyone’s model is different. However, refusing to see someone else’s model can erase opportunities. Your tasks become more challenging if you aren’t prepared to accept another way of completing them. That’s just one way this distortion can bite you.

Black and white thinking is the term used for being blind to gray shades of thoughts. This distortion dictates that something has to be wrong or right, or it must be good or bad. There can’t be a compromise. If this describes your way of thinking, then you will be imprisoned because you might fail to see a genuine path forward if you can only see two sides of a story.

Blaming is another cognitive distortion, and it prevents you from taking responsibility for your actions. You can’t excel if you won’t recognize your mistakes as your own. Blaming a colleague for messing up a presentation won’t help you realize how you can improve your effort next time.

Catastrophizing is another encumbering distortion. This describes a mindset of you always thinking that the worst outcomes are the only ones that make sense. Maybe you didn’t get a promotion at work last month, so you won’t even try this month, because one failure means that everything is a catastrophe.

The change fallacy distortion describes a thought process that has you believing that other people will change because they prioritize your happiness. Thinking that someone else will change their behavior and opinions because they have to impress you is a recipe for disaster.

The control fallacy is a distorted pattern where you believe you can control everything. There are two kinds; namely, internal and external. The internal control fallacy describes a situation where you think you can always control your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. You set yourself up for failure, and you’ll blame yourself when things out of your control go wrong. The external control fallacy appears when you think you can control things outside of yourself, such as someone else’s happiness. Again, you fall hard into the blame trap when you can’t make them happy.

Emotional reasoning is when you decide a threat exists because you feel emotional about the situation. Your brain automatically believes you’re in danger just because your fear is escalating. Assuming your emotions are reality without questioning them can make you miss opportunities.

Fortune-telling is another distorted pattern, and it’s common if you negatively predict the future. Sure, the brain predicts milliseconds ahead, but you’ll use fortune-telling to predict that your business plan will fail in the coming months or years, so you will never choose to become an entrepreneur.

The heaven’s reward fallacy distortion occurs when you believe your efforts and sacrifices at home and work will bring a reward, but the sad reality is that we always create opportunities to be rewarded, even though we don’t always receive one. This distortion will set you up for disappointment. Life isn’t always fair, and you can do everything right and still not be recognized for it. Mastering your mind will help you to build resilience against things like this.

Labeling is an extreme version of assigning labels to people and situations to generalize them in the same pot, even though your reason for doing so is based on only one experience. You may label someone as incompetent in business, so you never become partners. Years later, they become a huge success in their industry.

Mindreading is a negative thinking pattern where you believe you can read other people’s minds, know their feelings, and predict their thoughts or behaviors. Consider how complicated your mind is, and realize how little chance there is of anyone reading it. This distortion can cause problems in your relationships at work and home. Poor relationships lead to declining well-being for yourself and your closest affiliations.

Minimizing and maximizing are also distorted ways of thinking, and they can prevent self-growth and mastery. Minimizing has you experiencing something positive, yet you don’t focus on any positive details. Maximizing is apparent when you blow the negative part of the experience out of proportion. For example, you don’t recognize the compliment someone pays you if you minimize, or you can only focus on their unruly hair when they’re an incredible person if you’re maximizing. All the distortions can impact your personal and professional life, and they can even change the way you think about yourself, which decreases your confidence and self-esteem.

Self-serving bias is another negative pattern that could prevent mind over matter. If you live to serve only your bias, you’ll find that everything that goes wrong is out of your control and everything that goes right is your intention. This doesn’t seem so bad, but to be the master of your mind, you must take responsibility for mistakes that were in your control. It’s the only way you can improve. You can’t improve something if you don’t recognize the potential flaws in it.

These are some of the negative patterns your model may express. You might exhibit one or more of them, and other than holding you back in your personal and professional life, they can also come with serious consequences.

Consequences of Distorted Models

No one can walk tall with a smile all day long, but having deeply embedded negative thinking patterns and the acceptance of them can lead to physical and mental disorders. Everything you think is what you become because thoughts invoke physical responses in the brain. It can be as simple as thinking you’ll fail at a task and feeling too anxious to complete it. It’s not just sensory information that runs across your neuron connections. It’s also chemicals called neurotransmitters. Some types of neurotransmitters are good for your brain while others can cause problems. This will be covered in the next chapter, but for now, these are some of the proven consequences related to negative thinking patterns.

The first risk NATs pose is a degenerative kind. It can lead to diseases that cause symptoms of irreversible damage. Dementia is a collection of symptoms, such as forgetfulness, an inability to use higher cognitive functions, and a loss of memory. Alzheimer’s disease is the condition that causes dementia symptoms. The disease is a degenerative type where the cells and connections in the brain deteriorate until they’re lost. The lost cells contain memories and associations the brain needs to function as it once did. It’s a gravely heartbreaking condition for the sufferer and their families. The onset is most common in older people, and it can progress slowly, making it seem like a long decline that impairs your brain functions. If anything, Alzheimer’s disease is the definition of people being imprisoned in their minds, and it’s the base of numerous studies to find a way to prevent it. It’s an incurable disease, albeit it can be slowed down once it starts. However, the best way to avoid this distressing disorder is to prevent it.

Research published by the University College London examined whether there’s a connection between negative thinking, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease (2020). Nearly 200 participants over the age of 55 were included in the study. Each participant completed surveys to determine their levels of depression and anxiety, which both have an underlying source of prolonged negative thinking patterns. The participants were further questioned over a two-year period, and 113 of them completed positron emission tomography or PET scans, which is an imaging device often used to look for diseases in the body. The purpose of the scans was to measure the amounts of tau and amyloid in the brains of the participants. The researchers knew that both these proteins are good indicators of cognitive decline. They cause the death of neurons, synapses, and the receptors connected to each neuron. The receptors collect chemicals flowing through the synaptic connections, and they instigate the forward notion to other neurons.

Each participant in the University College London study was also assessed for spatial cognition, attention, memory, and language skills throughout the study. Over another four years, the participants who showed higher repetitive negative thinking patterns had more evidence of the two damaging proteins in their brains. They also showed a significantly faster decline of memory and other symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The two greatest patterns of negative thoughts among the faster-declining participants were rumination and fear of the future. Rumination is closely associated with depression, and worrying about the future is a representation of anxiety. Long before this study, the University of New South Wales confirmed that repetitive negative thinking can lead to late-onset depression (2006). Over 40 people between the ages of 66 and 92 were assessed in Australia, and the study showed that late-onset depression was most common in people who suffered from clinical rumination.

Rumination is just another way of saying that you think negatively. You can’t move past negative thoughts or the memories attached to them. This can lead to depression and other psychological conditions, which may also lead to cognitive decline in your golden years. Prolonged periods of rumination or other distorted patterns can also lead to underestimated symptoms, such as headaches, unexplained fatigue, chest discomfort, panic attacks, insomnia, digestive disorders, and drastic changes in your metabolism. You might start to over or under eat when your mind is focused on the negative model in your brain. You may also withdraw from your friends and family, which is another low blow for brain health. Our brains thrive off social experiences, so we can become depressed or anxious because of losing our social network. You can also suffer from burnout, brain fog, hyperactivity, an inability to focus, and substance abuse. Sex and gambling addictions aren’t uncommon when people suffer from overwhelming NATs.

When you become unable to cope with your overpowering thoughts, you can turn to addictive habits to ease the emotional fallout. Indeed, emotions are also a large part of this relationship between the brain and the mind, which will be reviewed in the next chapter. Anyway, hormonal changes alone can shorten your lifespan. According to the University of Minnesota, evidence shows that the destructive hormones released by leading a prolonged pessimistic life can shorten the telomeres on the ends of your deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA (Lawson, 2012). Shorter telomeres are known to represent a shorter life span. Long telomeres indicate a healthier, longer life. Other than shortening your life, excessive negative thinking can damage your immune system, deplete hormones intended to keep you happy, lead to cardiovascular diseases, and cause hypertension. Who knew the quality of your thoughts and mental model was so influential on your physical health?

It’s easy to connect the dots with mental health, but the physical side requires you to learn about the relationships between all the parts of your whole being. First, you need to know whether you can change what is already modeled in your brain.

Changing the Brain

Once science established that the human brain is the center of how our minds and bodies thrive, it became clear that studies involving whether the brain can be changed should also come to light. The main focus of research turned to a skill the brain already possesses. Children develop throughout their life, and their brains are always making new associations, which means their brains are always learning from the experiences they face. Even though our brains continue to learn as adults, this process slows down, but it doesn’t stop working its magic. Most of the research involving a theory called neuroplasticity is based on how we can instigate the changes at will. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to change, grow, delete irrelevant information, and forge new connections between regions we want to use more often.

The synapses between the neurons can also strengthen, weaken, disappear, or multiply. The word ‘plastic’ refers to something that changes if the right stimulation is applied. One neurotransmitter called activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein or ARC has been associated with the synapses choosing to strengthen or weaken. It’s one protein that causes synaptic improvement in new regions if you introduce new stimulation. Other neurotransmitters