Three Ways to Train Your Brain
Do you need to train your brain to shift your mindset?
by Jessica Sharpenstein, M.S., C.W.C.
3 Ways to Train Your Brain: Make the Good Stuff Stick
More than ever, it feels like we are being faced with disjointed energies in our world, creating the propensity to land in negative thought processes and a glass-half-empty mindset. There is pervasive negativity, antagonism, and uneasiness everywhere we turn. It is in the news, on social media, and in interpersonal interactions.
This can lead to us swimming in mental pond scum like distrust, angst, worry, and lack mindset. This type of mindset is a disservice to our life source and vitality. Swimming in mental pond scum is where our minds tend to rest unless we are consciously filtering the water of our mind.
Positive Experience Counter the Negative Ones
Various data suggests that it can take five-to-ten positive emotional experiences to counterbalance one negative emotional brain experience. The more we allow feel-good sensations to permeate every single cell in our bodies, the more our brain is ready to flex its glass-half-full muscle.
Continuously swimming in mindset pond scum, over time, can lead to ubiquitous negativity, stress, depleted energy stores, and negative health implications. However, when we filter the scummy waste out of our minds, we can boost our immune system, increase the longevity of our lives, and feel unstoppable, inside and out.
Three Tools to Train your Brain, shift your Mindset, Make the Good Brain Stuff Stick
Train Your Brain Tip #1. Make a soundtrack – Personally relevant songs, memories, and emotions can be connected in the brain. Plus, listening to music naturally, releases lots of feel-good body chemicals. You can create a premeditated playlist, or tune into the sounds and songs in your environment.
Perhaps you have an upcoming vacation planned and would like to sop up every feel-good sensation you can possibly devour. To ensure making the good stuff stick, create a premeditated playlist, and play it throughout your vacation.
Further, tune into the music playing in the car, restaurants, and parties. Then suddenly…that new belt-out-loud Rihanna song has even more meaning. It will take you right back to the sweet spot of your personal paradise. Pairing music with your positive moments can take you to those moments of feeling irresistible, swept away, and luscious.
Train Your Brain Tip #2. Snap a picture and write about it. – Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words; however, pairing handwriting your experiences has extra strong brain-adhesive power. Snap some pictures when you feel positive feelings such as excited, invigorated, or carefree. Print your pictures and make a “home” for them in a journal.
Be sure to write down what was special about those moments. Even more, you can strengthen the positivity brain adhesive by creating a photo gratitude journal. For a few days, make a commitment to photograph, print and write about all things bring you appreciation, harmony, or magic.
Take pictures and write about your morning coffee, your cat walking on your computer when you’re working, or a text that made you laugh out loud from a friend. When you’re consciously filtering mind pond scum, you’re always on a feel-good treasure hunt.
How beliefs and language determine our perception of the world
Train Your Brain Tip #3. Stop and smell the roses. – The sense of smell connects immediately with the emotional section of our brains. More than any other senses, our sense of smell encodes, conjures, and cultivates experiences, reminiscence, and recollection most strongly. For example, you may smell chocolate chip cookies and immediately recall your best friend.
Perhaps he always serves chocolate chip cookies when you visit; and, your visits remind you of feeling connected, supported and understood. Try pairing a fragrance with an experience. Throw on a fragrance, carry an essential oil with you and connect with that scent when you feel appreciation, grace, or rupture.
Further, when you notice you’re feeling content, confident, or inspiration simply be cognizant of what you smell in that exact moment to encode your brain with positivity.
Collecting and Appreciating the Good Stuff
Over time, we can train our brains to slip into feeling good more easily. The more we do it, the stronger our base. When you notice a positive feeling such as hope, optimism, or peace stop for 15-30 seconds and be a data collector. What do you hear? What smells do you notice? What is going right for you at this very moment? Allow the moment to permeate every single cell with delight and renewal. Sit in the moment of receiving, allowing the good stuff to stick.
About the Author
Jessica Sharpenstein, M.S., C.W.C., is a wellness visionary, exercise physiologist, Reiki master, psychic, medium, and life transformation coach. Jessica believes accepting and loving yourself is a process in self-discovery that can be metamorphic, compassionate, and FUN. More about Jessica can be found on her website: www.jessicasharpenstein.com
