Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (4 page)

minds and bodies.

Science and Scripture both show that we are wired for love

and optimism5 and so when we react by thinking negatively

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Mind Controls Matter

and making negative choices, the quality of our thinking suf-

fers, which means the quality of our brain architecture suffers.

It is comforting—and challenging—to know that negative

thinking is not the norm.

Thinking Changes Our DNA

Taking this to a deeper level, research shows that
DNA actually

changes shape according to our thoughts.
As you think those

negative thoughts about the future—the week ahead, what a

person might say or do, even in the absence of the concrete

stimulus—that toxic thinking will change your brain wiring in

a negative direction and throw your mind and body into stress.6

According to Dr. Herbert Benson, MD, president of Harvard

Medical School’s Mind-Body Institute, negative thinking leads

to stress, which affects our body’s natural healing capacities.7

Toxic thinking wears down the brain.

The Institute of HeartMath, an internationally recognized,

nonprofit research organization that helps people reduce

stress, discusses an experiment titled “Local and Nonlocal

Effects of Coherent Heart Frequencies on Conformational

Changes of DNA.” This study showed that thinking and feel-

ing anger, fear, and frustration caused DNA to change shape

according to thoughts and feelings. The DNA responded

by tightening up and becoming shorter, switching off many

DNA codes, which reduced quality expression. So we feel shut

down by negative emotions, and our body feels this too. But

here’s the great part: the negative shutdown or poor quality

of the DNA codes was
reversed
by feelings of love, joy, ap-

preciation, and gratitude! The researchers also found that

HIV positive patients who had positive thoughts and feelings

had 300,000 times more resistance to the disease than those

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

without positive feelings.8 So the takeaway here is that when

we operate in our normal love design—which is being made

in God’s image (Gen. 1:26)—we are able to change the shape

of our DNA for the better.

So when we make a poor-quality decision—when we choose

to engage toxic thoughts (for example, unforgiveness, bitter-

ness, irritation, or feelings of not coping)—we change the

DNA and subsequent genetic expression, which then changes

the shape of our brain wiring in a negative direction. This im-

mediately puts the brain into protection mode, and the brain

translates these poor-quality, toxic thoughts as negative stress.

This stress then manifests in our bodies. But the most exciting

part of this study was the hope it demonstrated because the

positive attitude, the good choice, rewired everything back to

the original healthy positive state. These scientists basically

proved we can renew our minds.

Stress

Stress stage one is normal. This is our alert state that keeps us

focused and conscious and is the state we are in when we are

thinking in alignment with God. Stress stage two and stage

three, however, are our mind and body’s response to toxic

thinking—normal stress gone wrong. Even a little bit of these

negative levels of stress from a little bit of toxic thinking has

far-reaching consequences for mental and physical health.

The dictionary
defines
stress
as “a condition typically char-

acterized by symptoms of mental and physical tension or strain,

as depression or hypertension, that can result from a
reaction
to

a situation in which a person feels threatened, pressured, etc.”9

Synonyms for stress include anxiety, nervousness, fearfulness,

apprehensiveness, impatience, fear, tenseness, and restlessness.

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Mind Controls Matter

Reaction
is the key word here.
You cannot control the

events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your

reactions.
And controlling those reactions is the difference

between healthy minds and bodies and sick minds and bodies.

Here are just a few statistics confirming that 75 to 98 percent

of mental and physical illness comes from one’s thought life:

• A study by the American Medical Association found that

stress is a factor in 75 percent of all illnesses and diseases

that people suffer from today.
10

• The association between stress and disease is a colossal

85 percent.
11

• The International Agency for Research on Cancer and

the World Health Organization
12
have concluded that 80

percent of cancers are due to lifestyle and not genetics,

and this is a conservative number.

• According to Dr. Bruce Lipton, a scientist who has made

great strides in understanding the effect of our thinking on

our brain,
13
gene disorders like Huntington’s chorea, beta

thalassemia, and cystic fibrosis, to name a few, affect less

than 2 percent of the population. This means the vast ma-

jority of the world’s population comes into this world with

genes that should enable them to live happy and healthy

lives. Lipton says a staggering 98 percent of diseases are

related to lifestyle choices—in other words, our thinking.

• According to Dr. H. F. Nijhout,
14
genes control biology

and not the other way around.

• According to W. C. Willett,
15
only 5 percent of cancer

and cardiovascular patients can attribute their disease

to hereditary factors.

• The American Institute of Health estimates that 75–90

percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

stress-related problems.
16
Some of the latest negative

stress statistics causing illness as a result of toxic think-

ing are eye-opening.

The main point of this chapter is that mind controls matter.

If we get this right, we have enormous potential to reach peak

health. If we get it wrong, we will be our own worst enemies.

1. The debate in science is between the mind being what

the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of

the mind.

2. The correct view is that the mind is designed to control

the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way

around.

3. Our brain does not control us; we control our brain

through our thinking and choosing.

4. We can control our reactions to anything.

5. Choices are real. You are free to make choices about

how you focus your attention, and this affects how the

chemicals, proteins, and wiring of your brain change

and function.

6. Research shows that
DNA actually changes shape in

response to our thoughts
.

7. Stress stage one is normal. Stress stage two and stage three,

on the other hand, are our mind and body’s response to

toxic thinking—basically normal stress gone wrong.

8.
Reaction
is the key word here. You cannot control the

events or circumstances of your life, but you can control

your reactions.

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2

Choice and Your

Multiple-Perspective

Advantage

Main Scripture: Let the peace (soul harmony which

comes) from Christ rule (act as umpire continually) in

your hearts [deciding and settling with finality all ques-

tions that arise in your minds, in that peaceful state]

to which as [members of Christ’s] one body you were

also called [to live]. And be thankful (appreciative),

[giving praise to God always]. Colossians 3:15 AMP

Linked Science Concept: Choice is real, and free

will exists. You are able to stand outside of your-

self, observe your own thinking, consult with God,

and change the negative, toxic thought or grow the

healthy, positive thought. When you do this, your brain

responds with a positive neurochemical rush and

structural changes that will improve your intellect,

health, and peace. You will experience soul harmony.

These are obvious statements; however, many of us walk

through life as though we are victims of the events

and circumstances of life and biology and whatever

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

or whomever else we can think of to blame. As a therapist for

nearly twenty-two years and having reached millions of people

through my seminars, books, and media appearances, the state-

ments I make more than any others are these: “You are not a

victim. You can control your reactions. You do have a choice.”

Free Will Is Not an Illusion

All of us, including God-fearing Christians, fall prey to media

proclamations by neuroscientists and researchers who make

the news with such leading questions as, “Is free will an illu-

sion?” The problem, however, is that this point of view can-

not be reconciled with what we know about the human brain

and what Scripture says about us as humans. In a
New York

Times
article, a legal analyst even asked, “Because our brains

cause all behavior, could all behavior be potentially excused?”1

This is dangerous thinking. They are basically saying that

we are not responsible for our actions, which provides an

excuse to do whatever we want to do with no consequences.

We must always remember that scientists are not God—

though they sometimes act like they are. I am a scientist,

and if I can’t back up a scientific “fact” with Scripture, I

question its validity.

Philosophers and scientists have long debated whether we

have free will. Some argue free will is a quaint, old-fashioned

idea. Of course, the mere fact that people debate this issue

means they are using their free will to formulate their opin-

ions and choose their answers. So they quite literally destroy

their own argument.

A typical neuroscientist might argue that free decisions are

determined ahead of time by brain activity. This argument says

the brain is like a machine that has all these programs running,

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Choice and Your Multiple-Perspective Advantage

over which we have no control. This machine produces the

mind, and we go through life helplessly at the will and mercy

of these programs. Then neuroscientists use brain imaging and

fancy terminology to argue that free will is just an illusion.

We Can Choose to Think the Way God Wants Us

to Think

As a communication pathologist specializing in the field of

cognitive neuroscience, my research is concerned mainly with

how humans think and the impact of this thinking on what

they say and do, and I have come to a very different conclusion

from those who think free will is just an illusion. I’m con-

vinced beyond all doubt that our God-given ability to think

and choose means that our free will influences our thinking,

which produces our state of mind. This is so important to

human behavior and potential that I have dedicated my life to

understanding the process of thought and how we can choose

to think the way God wants us to think. Far from explaining

away free will, the neuroscientific evidence actually explains

how free will works.

Molecular biologist Francis Crick, who won a Nobel Prize

in 1962 with James Watson for their discovery of DNA in 1953,

said free will is “a simple-minded bit of confabulation” and

dismissed it as “an exercise in self-delusion.”2 In making this

statement, Crick overlooked something important:
He
chose

with his free will
to formulate that thought and express it.

Proving Free Will

Brain activity can be identified in the prefrontal cortex (just

above the eyebrows) and parietal cortex (top side of your

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HOW TO SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN

head) seven to ten seconds before an actual decision is verbal-

ized or enacted. Many scientists use this fact to argue that

the decision was already encoded.3 I see it differently, and I

am in good company with scientists like Jeffrey Schwartz,

Norman Doidge, and others.

My argument is that this brain activity is the processing

activity we do unconsciously, on the very real and active

nonconscious level (see chap. 8), which is flavored by the

thoughts—memories—we have implanted into our noncon-

scious minds over time. In this phase we choose to add our