Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (3 page)

heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7).

• Good thinking = good choices = healthy thoughts;

toxic thinking = toxic choices = toxic thoughts (Deut.

30:19).

• You are designed to stand outside yourself and observe

your own thinking
and change it
(Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 10:5;

Phil. 3:13–14).

• You are designed to recognize and choose the right things

to think about (Josh. 24:15; Eccles. 7:29; Isa. 30:2).

• Each morning when you wake up, you have new baby

nerve cells born inside your brain to use wisely as you

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remove bad thoughts and wire in new ones (Lam. 3:23).

This is called neurogenesis.

• You have been designed for deep, intellectual thought

(Ps. 139:14).

• You are wired for love, and fear is a learned and not a

natural response (2 Tim. 1:7).

• You have the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16).

• You are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27).

All this knowledge will help you realize these truths:

• Happiness comes from within and success follows—not

the other way around.

• You can learn how to learn and deepen your intellect.

• You can overcome those learning issues.

• You can get the chaos in your mind under control.

• You don’t have to walk around in guilt and condemnation.

• If you wired those toxic thoughts in, you can wire them

out.

• You don’t have to get stuck in bad habits; you can change

them.

• You can overcome feelings of rejection and hurt.

• Forgiveness is not the battle you think it is.

• You don’t have to worry about things that are out of

your control.

• You are not a victim of the things you shouldn’t be

doing.

• You don’t have to fear that if a condition runs in your

family that you are going to get it (for example, Alzheim-

er’s, Parkinson’s, or depression).

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• You can balance your over-thinking and over-analyzing

mind.

• You can overcome and control depression and anxiety—

some scientists are showing you can even control and

overcome schizophrenia and OCD.

• You don’t have to keep digging into the past to get free

from it.

• You can be happy and filled with peace regardless of

your circumstances.

If you have nodded your head at even one of these, it is

time for you to be set free in your mind to pursue all God

has for you. Read on. It is time for you to Switch On Your

Brain and find the keys to peak happiness, thinking, and

health.

In part 1, I explain through science and Scripture how the

concepts described above come together.

In part 2, you will find my 21-Day Brain Detox Plan, which

incorporates my scientifically proven 5-Step Switch On Your

Brain technique based on my research, my years in clinical

practice, and doing seminars and conferences around the

world. This section is practical and filled with key, proven

strategies that will help you develop a lifestyle of renewing

your mind and aligning it with God’s will so your divine sense

of purpose can be released (Eccles. 3:11).

You are truly designed for peak happiness, thinking, and

health.

1. It was only a few decades ago that scientists considered

the brain to be a fixed and hardwired machine. This

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view saw the damaged brain as incurable and the focus

was
compensation
, not restoration of function.

2. We can change the physical nature of our brain through

our thinking and choosing.

3. As we consciously direct our thinking, we can wire

out toxic patterns of thinking and replace them with

healthy thoughts. New thought networks grow. We in-

crease our intelligence and bring healing to our minds

and physical bodies.

4. It
all
starts in the realm of the mind, with our ability

to think and choose—the most powerful thing in the

universe after God.

5. Neuroplasticity by definition means the brain is mal-

leable and adaptable, changing moment by moment of

every day.

6. Scientists are finally beginning to see the brain as having

renewable characteristics (as in Rom. 12:2).

7. Science is hovering on a precipice as we recognize the

responsibility and impact of our thinking and the re-

sultant choices we make, which have ramifications right

down to the ways in which the genes of our bodies

express themselves.

8. Neurogenesis is the birth of new baby nerve cells.

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How to Switch On Your Brain

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1

Mind Controls Matter

Main Scripture: God has not given us a spirit of

fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

2 Timothy 1:7

Linked Science Concept: Science shows we are

wired for love with a natural optimism bias. This

means exactly what the Scripture says above.

The debate in science is between the mind being what

the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of

the mind. The position you adopt will impact how

you view free will and choice.

The Mind Is What the Brain Does

The first argument proposes that thoughts come from your

brain as though your brain is generating all aspects of your

mental experience. People who hold this view are called the

materialists
. They believe that it is the chemicals and neurons

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

that create the mind and that the relationships between your

thoughts and what you do can just be ignored.

So essentially, their perspective is that the brain creates

what you are doing and what you are thinking. The mind is

what the brain does, they believe, and the ramifications are

significant. Take, for example, the treatment of depression.

In this reductionist view depression is a chemical imbalance

problem of a machinelike brain; therefore, the treatment is

to add in the missing chemicals.

This view is biblically and scientifically incorrect.

The Brain Does the Bidding of the Mind

Let’s look at this from the other angle of the argument: The

brain is what the mind does.

You are a thinking being. You think all day long, and at

night as you sleep, you sort out your thinking. As you think,

you choose, and as you choose, you cause genetic expression

to happen in your brain. This means you make proteins, and

these proteins form your thoughts. Thoughts are real, phys-

ical things that occupy mental real estate.

Eric R. Kandel, a Nobel Prize–winning neuropsychiatrist

for his work on memory, shows how our thoughts, even our

imaginations, get “under the skin” of our DNA and can turn

certain genes on and certain genes off, changing the structure

of the neurons in the brain.1 So as we think and imagine, we

change the structure and function of our brains. Even Freud

speculated back in the 1800s that thought leads to changes in

the brain.2 In recent years, leading neuroscientists like Marion

Diamond, Norman Doidge, Joe Dispenza, Jeffrey Schwartz,

Henry Markram, Bruce Lipton, and Allan Jones, to name

just a few, have shown how our thoughts have remarkable

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Mind Controls Matter

power to change the brain.3 Our brain is changing moment

by moment as we are thinking. By our thinking and choosing,

we are redesigning the landscape of our brain.

Our mind is designed to control the body, of which the

brain is a part, not the other way around. Matter does not

control us; we control matter through our thinking and choos-

ing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life

but we can control our reactions. In fact, we can control our

reactions to anything, and in doing so, we change our brains.

It’s not easy; it is hard work, but it can be done through our

thoughts and choices. This is what I focus on in the second

half of the book with my 21-Day Brain Detox Plan.

For now, rest in the assurance that what God has empow-

ered you to do with your mind is more powerful and effec-

tive than any medication, any threat, any sickness, or any

neurological challenge. The Scripture is clear on this: You do

not have a spirit of fear but of love, power, and a sound mind

(2 Tim. 1:7). We are not bound by the physical; we control

the physical. You just have to look at the many inspirational

survival stories of those who have overcome impossible odds

throughout history and in the current day to know this is truth.

Choices Are Real

You are free to make choices about how you focus your at-

tention, and this affects how the chemicals and proteins and

wiring of your brain change and function. Scientists are prov-

ing that the relationship between what you think and how

you understand yourself—your beliefs, dreams, hopes, and

thoughts—has a huge impact on how your brain works.

Research shows that 75 to 98 percent of mental, phys-

ical, and behavioral illness comes from one’s thought life.
4

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

This staggering and eye-opening statistic means only 2 to

25 percent of mental and physical illnesses come from the

environment and genes.

Thinking Activates Genes

Every day scientists are discovering the precise pathways by

which changes in human consciousness produce changes in

our brain and bodies. Our consciousness—this phenomenal

gift from God to be able to think—activates our genes and

changes our brain. Science shows that our thoughts, with their

embedded feelings, turn sets of genes on and off in complex

relationships. We take facts, experiences, and the events of

life, and assign meaning to them with our thinking.

We may have a fixed set of genes in our chromosomes, but

which of those genes are active and
how
they are active has

a great deal to do with how we think and process our expe-

riences. Our thoughts produce words and behaviors, which

in turn stimulate more thinking and choices that build more

thoughts in an endless cycle.

Our Brains Are Shaped by Our Reactions

We are constantly reacting to circumstances and events, and

as this cycle goes on, our brains become shaped by the process

in either a positive, good-quality-of-life direction or a nega-

tive, toxic, poor-quality-of-life direction. So it is the quality

of our thinking and choices (consciousness) and our reac-

tions that determine our “brain architecture”—the shape or

design of the brain and
resultant
quality of the health of our