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Four Ways to Rewire Your Brain for the Good Life

By Don Joseph Goewey

Do you want to increase the real estate in your brain assigned to making you peaceful, loving healthy and brilliant?  Nature designed a brain that can change its wiring scheme from one that makes you anxious and stressed -- leaving much of your innate potential on the table -- to one that lights up with higher brain function, enabling you to succeed at every level of life that matters to you.  Change can happen at any point along the life span.  Ninety is not too old. 

The process of change is called neuroplasticity.  Nature made this process mercifully simple and results build quickly.  Below are four proven approaches to rewiring your brain which, if you put to practice, can lead to meaningful change in a few weeks.

1. Stop Thought Attacks

The first thing you need to do is transcend stress.  Stress hormones cause higher brain networks to shrink.  It leads to heart attacks, immune-deficiency, ulcers, premature aging, and dementia. But take heart, stress is transcend-able. The greater part of stress is happening in you far more than to you. We human beings are capable of generating all sorts of stressful events purely in our heads, exciting negative emotions and producing a chronic sense of threat that floods the brain with stress hormones.  Most of these reactions are tied to mere thought. Thus, transcending stress begins with quieting anxious, stressful thinking.  Below are two tools that can help you do this. 

The Clear Button

The Clear Button is a tool that can stop stressful thinking.  Here is how it works:

Step 1 — Push the Clear Button: When fearful thoughts arise, imagine a Clear Button at the center of your palm that, when pressed, sends a signal to calm the part of the primitive brain that
generates anxiety and stress.  Keep pressing the button as you follow through with Step 2.

Step 2 — Count to “3:” The part of your brain that launches stress reactions has the intelligence of a two-year-old, and like a two-year-old, it needs to be distracted.  Counting to three will do the trick.  To further distract your primitive two-year-old from acting out, imagine each number as a color. See 1 as red, 2 as blue, and 3 as green, taking a slow, easy breath with each number you count.

Step 3 — Let Go: On the final breath, let go. Feel your brain relax. Bring your attention to the present moment. Smile from the inside and then go about your business with fearless self-confidence.

The Question That Transcends Stressful Thinking

Another tool that transcends stress involves asking a simple question.  Biologically, stress reactions are triggered by fear. Thus, when you’re stressed the relevant question to ask is: What am I afraid of?  Your first response might be: “I am going to fail.” Write your answer down on a piece of paper, then ask:  If this were to happen (ex: fear of failure), what am I afraid of?  The answer to this might be: I will lose my job.  Again, write your answer down.  Repeat the inquiry in this fashion five or six times, allowing your answers to come straight from the raw emotion the primitive part of the brain generates when you’re stressed. 

Look back over your list and notice the element of mounting catastrophe in your answers.  It is what Mark Twain meant when he said: My life has been a series of terrible calamities, some of which actually happened.  Read your list of fears back to yourself, turning it into a story.  This is the story you are telling yourself at present and it’s largely a mind made exaggeration.  You can’t say with 100% certainty that any it will happen.  The problem is, when you believe this fearful story, your brain floods with stress hormones, knocking-out higher brain function and locking you into emotional negativity.  Ask yourself: Who would I be without these fears? Then go forward and be that person.  

2. Take Spiritual Breaks

Start the day in quiet. Feel appreciation for the gift of another day of life. Set your intention to have a great day, filled with achievement and sustained through an attitude of peace. 

During the day, every two hours, take a “spiritual” break. Step outside or look out the window for a minute.  Let your mind go completely. Watch the sun shine, the sky change or the wind blow. Connect with life.
Once a week, before going to sleep, count your blessings. Name three things that happened in the previous week for which you are grateful.  Then name three things in your life generally that you regard as blessings.

3. Do A Make-Over & Often

Novelty helps the brain stay young.  Break the mold of old routines and the brain grows.  Travel more.  Get out and see the countryside.  It’ll slow age-related mental decline. So will learning a new skill, like gardening, cooking, square dancing or yoga. These simple changes excite brain cells to make new connections with one another.  Your brain wakes up and you feel young at heart.

4. Take Your Brain For A Walk

Walking 30-minutes a day, five days a week flushes stress hormones and oxygenates your brain.  Since it’s not strenuous, leg muscles don't take up extra oxygen and glucose as it does during aerobic exercise. Studies of people who walk regularly show significant improvement in memory skills.  If walking five days a week feels daunting, then start off walking 20-minutes once or twice a week. 

Here’s the way to take your walk: Leave all your troubles behind you.  Quiet your mind as you walk, letting go of thoughts that pull you back into problems.  At the beginning of the walk, imagine each in-breath softens and opens your heart and each exhale expands your mind.  Be present in the moment.  Notice simple things like colors, sounds and smells and feel sensations, such as the wind caressing your cheek.  At the end of the walk, let your mind go completely.

About the author, Don Joseph Goewey

Don Joseph Goewey has worked in some of the most stressful places on Earth - from cancer wards to refugee camps to corporate offices – helping people transcend stress and fear to reach a higher potential. He co-founded a human performance firm, ProAttitude, to end stress in the workplace. His new book, Mystic Cool defines a proven approach that literally rewires the brain to extinguish stress reactions and light up higher brain networks to sustain peak performance and greater well-being. To contact Don, email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Learn more about his book and coaching program at http://mysticcool.com.  For corporate training, visit http://proattitude.com.