Mark Waldman – Words Can Change Your Brain

That fear activates the mechanism in the brain and stays frozen. The problem is that everyday communication is full of more negative than positive words.

I can’t tell you what the most positive word is because it’s highly personal for each individual. But I can guide you through a 2 minute exercise that will help you discover it. I usually practice this with a group of people where the audience is guided through a brief relaxation exercise that involves yawning – which lowers neurological stress – and then they write down the first word that comes to mind when asked “What is your deepest, innermost value?”

Omtimes: So, from another angle, what would be the most important word then?

Mark Waldman: Positive words like “Yes”, “Peace” or “Love” or any word you focus on that gives you a sense of happiness or welfare. These words free, for example, dopamine in the brain, which is a chemical of pleasure. However, with negative words the brain is designed to mark the memory and so it just reacts to negative words, because they are a threat to our person. Often, we grow up being chronically negative in our communication style and we have to retrain our brains to think and feel positively. When we do that, we begin to improve our positive language, and then you can live longer, with less stress and less illness.

Omtimes: So, when you say that “words can change your brain” and that’s not just a metaphor?

Mark Waldman: It’s not a metaphor. All the words we hear are processed in a different part of our brain. For example, a word like “glass” is a concrete noun and this text is located in a specific part of the brain. But if you use a word like “freedom”, which is a very abstract concept, the brain cannot form a picture of that in your parietal lobe. Instead, it forms a very complicated shape in the left frontal lobe. The same pattern is observed by the use of adjectives. Verbs and active verbs, such as “I’m running ‘, are processed in different parts of the brain.