Most of us are driven in life by a voice in our head that isn’t the real us. What do I mean by that?
You had your beliefs programmed into you from a very young age. What you heard, experienced, saw, and felt growing up became your belief system, your story, and that is the voice in your head that can easily drive you into a stressed state or an exhausted state or keep you awake at night. According to research done by Dr. Marcus Raichle at Harvard, that voice in your head that is always running and never rests.
Based on this programming, you may have all kinds of negative or defeatist thoughts running through your head all day long, but when asked how you are, you may say great, but inside you may not feel that way. Deep down, it turns out that people are much more self-critical, pessimistic, and fearful than they let out in their conscious thoughts or words.
Dr. Raicle’s theory is known as “The Default Mode Network,” and in his study, The Brain’s Default Network: Anatomy, Function and Relevance to Disease, Raichle shares that the constant chatter of subconscious thoughts that are on replay in our minds could lead to disease if they are negative, or success if they are positive.
So, are your thoughts positive or negative? According to the research of Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University, a human being has approximately 60,000 thoughts per day—and 90% of these are the same as yesterday. According to Psychology Today, between 60 and 70% of our thoughts are negative. And according many scientists including Joe Dispenza, DC, your thoughts become your reality. Recent studies in neuroscience have shown you can change your brain just by thinking. So you want to focus on what you do want, not what you don’t want.
Most of us are programmed for the negative because we listen to this voice in our head. That voice is your reptilian brain, your subconscious mind, which is based on what we heard and came to believe during our early years. It is that mental chatter that goes on in your head daily. It might sound like…”Should I do this?” “Should I have done that?” “I am stressed, or I have too much to do and too little time” or “I’m not enough” or ” I don’t feel so good” and so on.
The trick is to learn how to recognize those thoughts or that voice when it shows up so you can quiet it. I teach people to catch it in the act, pretend as if you are physically pulling it out of your head and talk to it and tell it you no longer need it and you aren’t listening. I encourage clients to turn and listen to their heart instead. Your heart is where your intuition lays, and that is the voice you want to listen to. When you listen to your heart, it is the real you. It is your body telling you what is right for you or wrong for you. Your heart will naturally warm when something is right and cool when not.
When you get good at this and tune into the warmth of your heart instead, when asking yes/no questions, you can transform your life to living in a more positive mode. According to Dr. Raichle, when you are focused on the positive, you are more likely to experience what you want in life and have more success. When you are concentrated on the negative and letting your mental chatter drive your experience, you are more like to be unhappy and more susceptible to disease.
It’s a choice! What will your decision be?
