The Truth About The Secret: Brain science proves that your thoughts literally create your life experience

Last week on a special edition of CNN’s Larry King Live, Mr. King interviewed a panel of “mind experts” about how the thoughts you think literally turn into the events you experience, the material things you possess… AND even the health of your body.

For years, “positive thinking” and goal-setting were often lumped by critics into a category of “new age” or “pollyana” fluff.

Panel experts Bob Proctor, John Assaraf and others explained that recent breakthroughs in neuroscience and brain research now reveal why goal setting, the “law of attraction” and “positive thinking” all work.

Scientists have even identified specific parts of the brain, such as the reticular activating system (RAS), which works with the visual parts of our brain to call to our conscious attention things that are important to reaching our goals and to filter out those things that are unimportant. The RAS is activated by “programming” goals into our non-conscious minds

We are discovering that our brain is cybernetic in nature, which means that it is literally like a computer, waiting for a program to be installed, and it will carry out all programming we give it.

Here’s the kicker - this mechanism is completely netural and impartial - it will carry out any instructions you give it. Your mind is like the soil - it will grow whatever is planted in it - a bountiful harvest or poisonous weeds.

Unfortunately, many of us are still running programs we picked up from others as children when our non-conscious minds were totally open and impressionable, or which we developed over the years as a result of repetition of our own negative thinking.

As it turns out, our own thoughts, repeated daily, are one of the primary ways that our “mental computer” is programmed on a sub-conscious level, which is the level of identify, beliefs, habits and automatic behavior.

To change your results, you must literally overwrite old negative programming and install positive new programming.

This can be achived through such techniques as written goal setting, positive self-talk (affirmations), and mental imagery (visualization).

In the 1970’s the Soviets and East Germans were the first to formally use structured mental rehearsal and at that time, they dominated in several olympic sports. Today, virtually all elite athletes use visualization extensively, as we now know that the brain cannot differentiate between real practice and practice that is vividly imagined.

If you are getting more of the same negative results in your life - such as the same health problems, or the same body fat continues to return even after you lose it, then you can rest assured that it is because you are non-consciously running old negative programs and re-inforcing them with negative thought patterns.

You can begin the positive mental reprogramming process by writing down your goals, changing your internal dialogue and taking a few minutes to relax, quiet your mind and perform a session of visualization or mental rehearsal every day.

These methods, repeated often enough, will begin to program the non- conscious portion of the mind, which is the same part of the mind that controls your heart beat, digestion and new cell production, all without you having to think about it consciously.

In the last decade, neuroscientists discovered you have the capacity to create an almost infinite number of new neural connections in your brain when you run new thought patterns.

The Old neural pathways are like the grooves in a record, and if you are struggling with your health related behaviors or behaviors in any other area of your life, you have been playing the “old records” over and over again.

If you were to carve a new groove into that record, it would never play the same way again. the old pattern would weaken and the new one would take over.

Psychologists estimate that it takes 21 to 30 days to establish a new pattern in your brain. During this time, the focus on sticking with your practice and repeating your new thought patterns is critical.

Is this easy? For most people, no it’s not. In fact, controlling your thinking and keeping it constructive may be one of the most difficult challenges you have ever faced. Fortunately, writing goals and reading affirmations can help get you started.

You can also make it easier on yourself by simply accepting that negative thoughts and self criticisms will pop up from time to time. Just observe them, without mulling over them or adding to them, and change the polarity of the thought by quickly repeating one of your positive affirmations. This begins to cut the new “groove” in your mental records.

So is there something to this whole “positive thinking” thing?

The philosophers and theologians have been saying yes for the entire span of recorded history: “As you think, so shall you be.” Variations on this proverb can be found in every spiritual and philosophical tradition.

But… if you are the left-brained, “prove-it-to-me” type, you dont have to go on faith anymore. Scientists are beginning to prove more and more convincingly that thoughts are powerful things. (Even Larry King seemed impressed with what his panel of “mind mentors” had to say last night).

Your mind is a powerful force.

How soon are you going to begin your mental training right alongside your physical training? When are you going to learn how to harness this power that you already posess?

Guess what? You are already using this force every day because you cannot turn it off. Whatever you are thinking and picturing in your mind repeatedly on a daily basis is on it’s way to you already, so it’s simply a matter of HOW you are using it, not WHETHER you are using it.

What do you say to yourself every day? Do you say, “I am becoming leaner, healthier and more muscular every day?”… or do you say “I am a fat person - ‘Ive tried everything, nothing ever works?”

Most remarkable is the fact that you can think yourself thin and healthy or you can think yourself obese and ill. Not necessarily in the literal sense that you can think and do nothing else and expect results, but in the sense that those new neural pathways that you create in your brain by changing your thoughts, will in turn create new behaviors that will move you physically toward whatever you have been thinking about and focusing on.

Train hard and expect success,

Tom Venuto

PS This process of ***scientific*** goal setting and mental reconditioning through emotionally charged mental imagery (visualization) and internal mental dialogue (affirmations) is the very first thing I have always taught my clients and the first thing I wrote about in my book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle (www.burnthefat.com). Why? Because you have to change on the inside (the mind) before you can change on the outside (the body)

Inside the Inner Circle, there have been many discussions about the incredible power of the mind to change your body and your health. One of our Inner Circle moderators and contributors has burned more than 100 pounds of fat using these methods.

You can become a part of our community, join the discussions and learn more at www.burnthefatinnercircle.com

06 November, 2006 posted in Mind & Motivation