Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (27 page)

toxic the thought is and then retranscribing it to be a healthy

and strong part of your memory library.

By consciously becoming aware of your thought life you

are retranscribing and changing your underlying neuronal

networks. You need to uncover the toxic thoughts that create

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

such powerful internal conflicts in your mind and that are

capable of causing such radical electrochemical imbalances

that, when taken to the extreme, cause parts of yourself to be

cut off from the rest of you. While gather, focused reflection,

and writing are hugely instrumental in this retranscribing

and rewiring process, revisiting is a self-reflective process

(see chap. 5) that has the purpose of getting free from the

internal conflicts with positive planning of the way out. It

is a constructive step that takes you through the problem,

and it is cumulative. This means you need to think deeply

and apply all the keys, which takes twenty-one days for the

kind of depth in thinking that results in change. So you don’t

have to solve everything on day one—in fact, that would

not be wise.

QUESTION: What is the main purpose of this

self-reflection?

In revisiting, you are not only looking at how you go about

dealing with your circumstances, but you are also thinking

through your reactions again, evaluating the toxicity levels,

and retranscribing them. This is a positive, looking-for-the-

solution step. It feels safe because you are working out the

way forward.

This is where the Bible is so perfect as a guide, because it

lays out all the correct management principles for toxicity.

At this revisit stage, if you discover you are a worrier, the

Scripture in Matthew 6:25, which instructs us to not worry

about tomorrow, is a good verse for you to apply.

So, if you line up your revisit with the principles outlined

in God’s Word instead of worldly psychology, you have a

foolproof method for doing the right thing.

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Revisit

1. The revisit step is a moving-forward step during which

you are working out solutions and ways to overcome.

2. This is when you evaluate where you have come from

and where you are going.

3. You also have the opportunity to think through your

reactions again, evaluating the toxicity levels, and re-

organizing, redesigning, and retranscribing.

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15

Active Reach

Step 5

Active reaches are the challenging but fun part of this

plan because they are actions and exercises you say

and/or do during the course of the day and evening.

You in essence practice using the new healthy thought until

it becomes automatized like a good habit (see chap. 8). You

decide what these active reaches will be in steps 4 and 5 each

day and then you monitor, evaluate, and change them each

subsequent day of the 21-Day Brain Detox Plan.

The Doing Gets the Results

It is the
doing
nature of the active reaches that results in

ungluing
the branches from your thought trees. Steps 1–4

have loosened and weakened the branches, but step 5 literally

destroys the branches. Here is how this works, and why the

active reaches are so important.

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

Inside the Brain

sight

hear

smell

touch

taste

The branches with all the memories and emotions are at-

tached to a cell body with a type of protein that is like glue—

like branches attached to a tree trunk. There is more glue on

the branches that are used the most, so when you shift your

attention from the negative, toxic thought to the positive,

healthy, new replacement thought, three things happen.

1. The electromagnetic and quantum signals from your

decision to change attack the branches of the toxic

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Active Reach

thoughts, weakening them because the signals are more

powerful than the negative thoughts.

2. This causes neurochemicals to flow like oxytocin, which

remolds; dopamine, which increases motivation and

focus; and serotonin, which makes you feel good. These

chemicals also weaken the toxic branches.

3. The “glue” starts moving away from the toxic tree to

the healthy tree.

QUESTION: What is the power of the doing na-

ture of this active reach step?

Your Faith Manifests

The active reach is the stage in which you reach out beyond

toxic thinking by applying the principle, “Faith without works

is dead” (James 2:20). This is where your faith manifests and you

actually do something with the detoxing that has been going

on until now—you reach further. It is the final step to switch-

ing on the brain and detoxing. But you can’t reach with success

without the foundation created in the previous steps. Only when

you have been through all of those steps and completed the

process can you move forward, changed in a positive direction.

An active reach is not just the decision to forgive; it is the

actual forgiving. It is not just the decision to believe that God

heals; it is the actual believing. It is not just the decision to

stop worrying about your children and trust they will make

the right decisions because God is watching over them; it is

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actually stopping the worrying. It is not just confessing God

will meet your needs; it is the actual believing. It is not just

the decision to lose weight; it is the actual lifestyle change to

lose the weight. It is not just the decision to stop dwelling on

the past; it is the actual stopping the dwelling on the past. It

is not just the decision not to talk negatively; it is the actual

not talking negatively no matter how tempting it is to do so.

This is when you reach beyond where you are.

Moving through the Sequence

When you have moved through the 5-Step sequence—gather,

reflect, write, revisit, active reach—to detox your thoughts

and simultaneously build the healthy thought, you will have

built a secure foundation for change, health, and wholeness.

It will not work, however, if you just mouth a positive confes-

sion without a solid foundation. This creates what science

calls “cognitive dissonance.”

Building a structure for change on a faulty foundation

will never create persistent patterns in your brain to bring

you peace. Instead, it will fall down when the proverbial wolf

(trouble) blows down your house of sticks (confessions with-

out foundation).

Integrity in the Brain

In the brain, building a foundation is called having integrity,

which means you are using your words and actions to line up

the thought with its beliefs and feelings. Neuroscientifically,

the progression goes like this:

• the amygdala provides input to the mind about the

emotions—
gather
;

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Active Reach

• the thalamus and hypothalamus provide input on moti-

vation;
and
the memory networks provide information

on the
existing memories
—
reflect
;

• the central hub in the brain mixes and integrates this all

together—
write
; and

• the heart acts as the checking station, and you make the

decision—
revisit
.

You can be presented with all the reason, logic, scientific

evidence, and just plain common sense in the world, but you

won’t believe something is true unless your brain’s limbic

system—the central location of your emotions—allows you

to feel that it is true. So you can’t imagine and feel—change

your brain structurally—one way and speak something dif-

ferent, because if you do, there will be a lack of integrity

operating in your brain, which will leave an overwhelming

feeling of being out of control.

Active Reaching Helps You Feel Truth

The active reach helps you feel whether or not something is

true. It helps you line up the thought (imagination) with the

confession (words coming out of your mouth) and action.

Clearly, then, “Confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus
and

believe in your heart” (Rom. 10:9, emphasis mine) becomes

the principle operating here.

Here is an example of active reach: You are working on

the toxic thought of saying—out loud or in your mind—a

lot of could-have, would-have, should-have, if-only state-

ments. Your active reach step is saying, “I will not say this, I

am putting the past behind me”; or visualizing the situation,

event, or issue disappearing in a puff of smoke; or quoting a

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

verse that’s applicable; or doing something fun like smiling,

yawning, or tapping your foot.

A second example: If the toxic thought is that you keep try-

ing to change the past by playing movies in your mind, thinking

that if you did
that
then
this
would have happened, and then

this
should have happened, and then you wouldn’t have . . .

active reach is to say, “I choose to stop playing this movie” or

“I am switching that movie off,” quoting a Bible verse that

applies, or praying a prayer you have created for that situation.

A third example: The toxic thought is that you find it

hard to accept that something is over, done, and in the past,

and you won’t let it go. The active reach is to visualize the

walls of Jericho falling down and see those walls as this past

experience; telling yourself “I can’t” is a decision, but so is