How to Trick Your Brain into Positive Thinking
How Do You Rewire Your Brain for Happiness and Positivity?
Is it possible to trick your brain? If so how can you trick your brain into positive thinking? The brain is a complex organ in the body that controls our thoughts and our behaviours. This amazingly intricate organ gives us the power to speak, think, imagine, create and solve problems.
As well as all of the cognitive power that we have, it also controls the temperature of our body, our heart function and our breathing. It controls all of our movement and every action that our bodies perform. Simply put, without our brains working properly we would not be able to function on a cognitive or physical level.
You would therefore reason, that your brain is only ever going to be on your side, putting your best interests first and making sure that it serves you in only positive and beneficial ways.
Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Many times our brains are our own worst enemies. It feeds us false information, makes us believe things that we don’t want to believe and controls many people’s lives by holding onto self-limiting beliefs and harmful thoughts.
But here is the thing, we can retrain our brains to work for us, to be real team players and only have our best interests at heart. Having a basic understanding of how the brain works will help us to get to work on rewiring our brains for positivity and happiness.
The brain is divided into 3 main parts; the cerebrum, the outer part of the brain, the cerebellum located in the back of your head, and the brain stem, located beneath the cerebrum and in front of the cerebellum. These three parts control movement, memory and thinking.
The cerebrum is the central part of the brain that develops thinking. This part of the brain is split into two hemispheres, left and right and each hemisphere is split into four lobes; frontal, parietal, occipital and temporal. The frontal lobe controls the majority of thinking-related functions. The temporal lobe is in control of learning and memory.
Underneath the cerebral cortex, you will find the limbic system. This is the part of the brain responsible for our emotions and behaviours, especially in survival mode. The hypothalamus and thalamus,(where the production of hormones that regulate emotions, hunger and thirst are found) and basal ganglia (where habits, movement, reward processing and learning are controlled) are in the limbic system as are the hippocampus and amygdala.
The Hippocampus is the memory centre of the brain. Long-term memories are stored here as well as association memories, such as certain smells with situations.
The amygdala is the home of our emotional responses, such as anxiety, fear and pleasure. The amygdala attaches emotional responses and content to our memories.
The brain is programmed to think negatively. This is a result of our brain being developed many thousands of years ago when we were fighting for survival. Then, this aspect of our brain keeps us safe, now this overreaction from our brains in situations which aren’t physically harmful to us does not serve us at all.
The brain can be rewired to think positively, it is a question of noticing old thought patterns stored in the brain and mapping out or rewiring our brains and putting new thoughts in there instead.
How to train your subconscious mind to be positive
The subconscious mind works on learned behaviour. It will go about having thoughts that have been developed over many years regardless of whether they are positive or negative.
Your life works on reinforcement and regulation. This is what the brain is good at. To save time and energy, it will always go back to what it knows best. It is designed to look for confirmation bias to affirm beliefs that it has.
There are ways that you can retrain your subconscious mind to be more positive such as;
Become more willing to believe that change is possible in your life
Look for positive reinforcement everywhere you go and make sure you surround yourself with it
Don’t let others influence your thinking
Speak in the present tense about everything that you want
Don’t worry about HOW change is going to happen
How to think positively when depressed
“If you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy”
“Oh just cheer up!” How many people know the feeling of just wanting to scream when somebody says that to them when they are suffering from depression? Surely they understand that it’s not like you want to be feeling this way, and yet people don’t seem to realise that you can’t just magically become happy and positive when you are feeling depressed.
There are different tools and techniques that you can use to trick your brain into feeling happy which can then lead to you developing more positive thoughts and feelings.
Notice when you start to have negative thoughts
Start noticing when you first begin to ruminate on negative thinking.
Be aware of the situation that you are in and the environment around you. Look for the why’s in the situation you are in and start asking yourself questions.
You can then start to notice a pattern developing.
Become more mindful
This is identifying with the thoughts and feelings when they come into your body and acknowledging them.
Don’t try to bury them or push them away, but sit with these thoughts and feelings for a while until you start to feel more comfortable with the emotions and then let them pass.
Whilst you are sitting with these thoughts and emotions, remind yourself that you are not your thoughts and you are not your emotions.
Begin to challenge negative interpretations
Many will find themselves slipping into depression because a thought triggers a feeling in the body. Start to challenge these negative interpretations of situations.
Negative thoughts can become a habit, remember the amygdala is designed to produce more fearful negative thoughts easier than positive thoughts, so learning to break away from this habitual pattern of thinking by challenging your thoughts is important.
Smile
As strange as this sounds, when you are feeling depressed force yourself to smile. How many times when you have been feeling depressed will someone have told you to “cheer up and smile” As annoying as this advice may sound it is scientifically correct.
Smiling releases a chemical reaction in the brain, meaning the brain starts releasing the chemicals dopamine and serotonin. Having low levels of these mood-enhancing chemicals causes stress and depression so start tricking your brain into believing that you are happy by smiling. It can lift your mood even when you are feeling depressed.
Get some exercise
When you are feeling depressed one of the simplest tricks is to get some exercise. When we exercise, the body is flooded with feel-good chemicals called endorphins. Endorphins produce a positive feeling in the body, hence terms such as “runners high”.
The feelings that you get from exercise are almost the same as taking certain drugs but without the addictive side effects. The positive and energizing side effects can last a while and can start to change your outlook with continued exercise.
3 Great positive thinking techniques
1. Writing your thoughts down on paper
Writing your thoughts down is one of the easiest and most effective ways to start rewiring the thought system in your brain. There is something incredibly cathartic about getting everything out of your head and down on paper. Once you have written down your thoughts, it is easier to analyse them and then look for any patterns that may emerge.
This is where you can spot any negativity bias, self-limiting beliefs or negative thoughts that are not serving you. It can make it easier to start laying out a plan to change your negative thoughts into positive ones by addressing these thoughts and turning them on their heads.
2. Use meditation and affirmations to help you think positively
The practice of meditation and positive affirmations are two highly effective ways of changing thought patterns in the mind.
Meditation -Meditation is all about creating stillness within the body. It is a way of giving you balance, a sense of calm and well-being which is of benefit to you physically and emotionally.
It helps you to stay centred and can help you to relax and learn to cope better with stress and anxiety.
So much of modern-day living is centred around overthinking and analysing which can bring about negative thoughts in the mind. Learning to switch off from these thoughts can help us to recentre our minds and can bring about more positive thoughts.
Affirmations- Positive affirmations are one of the simplest and most effective ways of changing negative thought patterns. Think of how many times in a day you may tell yourself something negative such as, “I am a bad cook” or “ I am no good at my job” if something goes wrong or “ I am a bad Mother” if you are having an off day with your children. Many times you will not even be aware that you are having these destructive thoughts and yet they can do so much damage.
Instead of negative thoughts, even when you are having an off day, tell yourself something positive. Make a list of twenty positive affirmations to start with and say them out loud every morning and evening. At first, you may not notice any difference, but very quickly your mind will start to believe them and will start to look around for evidence to reaffirm them.
3. Banish negative thoughts with the power of gratitude
When you are feeling good about your life, you are far less likely to be having bad thoughts. Good feelings come from good thoughts, in the same way, negative feelings will arise from negative thoughts. To keep the good feelings going, think about everything that you are grateful for. This may seem very simplistic, and in many ways it is, but it also works. Acknowledge all of the things that you have in your life that you are grateful for such as;
your health
your family and friends
the home that you live in
the money you earn
the food that you eat
the car that you drive
the in-home entertainment that you have
holidays
days out
hot water
a warm home.
There are so many things that you can add to your gratitude list, and each one is something to be happy about. This is an easy way to uplift the spirits and banish negative thoughts that are invading the mind.
“Deal with your negative patterns before they become habits because habits are hard to break.”
Persevere with your positive thinking techniques
There will be many times when you don’t feel that you are progressing in the way that you want when it comes to switching your mindset. This is totally understandable.
Many of the self-limiting beliefs and negative thoughts will have been in your brain for many years, often since childhood and therefore, learning a whole new set of thoughts and believing them takes time.
The brain always likes to take the easy route, which is always going to be your old memories and so it will put up some resistance to having to learn new memories.
The trick is to persevere and it will happen. Acknowledge when you are having troubles, admit it is normal and that everyone will go through the same feelings and then carry on. Don’t give in to your brain and it will in return learn the new thoughts that will serve you far better.
“Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.”
Final thoughts
The question of how to trick your brain into positive thinking can be answered in several ways. Making sure that you start to break the bad, negative thinking habits is essential. Replacing negative thoughts with positive ones will take some time but with perseverance, it can be accomplished.
Being mindful of what you are thinking in different situations can help you to conquer your negative thoughts. Practising gratitude is one of the most beneficial ways of erasing negative chatter from your mind.
When you are feeling overwhelmed taking some time to sit in a quiet meditative state can do wonders. Whatever way you choose to retrain your mind just remember that it will take time and patience but with practice and determination, you can trick your brain into thinking positively.
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