I’m constantly amazed at the emphasis we place on the food we put into our bodies. You can't turn on the TV or pick up a magazine without seeing a commercial/article for a diet. There's tons of information available. TONS! Please don’t get me wrong; it’s important that we feed our bodies well, but what about what we feed our brains?
There’s not much emphasis placed on what we feed our brains and how that can be just as damaging to our bodies and our minds. Similar to feeding our bodies chemicals, loads of sugar, and preservatives, if we’re feeding our brains “junk” (a.k.a negative words, gossip, etc.) we're doing damage, plain and simple.
As a matter of fact, I used to feed my brain no end of crap on a regular basis (meaning multiple times a day, every day). It was no wonder I was tired and miserable. Not to mention, I suffered from high blood pressure and regular headaches.
In the blog post “Words Can Change Your Brain” by Therese J. Borchard, Borchard states, “Humans are hardwired to worry — part of our primal brains protecting us from threats to our survival — so our thoughts naturally go here first. However, a single negative word can increase the activity in our amygdala (the fear center of the brain). This releases dozens of stress-producing hormones and neurotransmitters, which in turn interrupts our brains’ functioning. (This is especially with regard to logic, reason, and language.)”
Have you ever found yourself feeling really good until you heard something or read something negative?
Good feelings turn to negative ones and those negative feelings don’t just impact how we feel, but they impact how we see things, how we respond, and in turn they impact the chemicals produced in our body, as well as our blood pressure.
If words can change water, they can change us
I remember many years ago watching the movie “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” and featured in the movie was a rather cool water experiment conducted by Dr. Masaru Emoto. (To read more about his experiment, click here)
In short Dr. Emoto placed water in vials and on the outside of the vials he wrote words like, “I hate you”, “fear”, “I love you” and “peace”. Then he froze the water. The vials with the negative words formed grey, misshaped clumps. While the vials with the positive words formed beautifully shaped ice crystals, similar to snowflakes. In essence, his study demonstrated the power that negative and positive words have on an object.
As human beings we are made up of about 50-65% water so can you imagine the impact words have on our bodies knowing that?
Here’s the thing, our brains don’t know what’s real versus what’s not. It relies on us to tell it what's so. If our brains' diet is one of negative words, complaining, gossip, hurtful comments from others, and negative news our brains are going to respond in kind. They're going to produce negative evidence to support what they're being fed. Which in turn impacts not only the way we feel physically and mentally, but how we show up.
How to change the brain’s diet
Want to hear something really cool? We can rewire our brains by putting it on a healthy diet! And to do just that I'd like to offer some ideas....
What are some ways in which you ensure that your brain is being fed the good stuff? We'd love to hear!!