Brain Train: How to Change Your Old Thinking Ways
If there is one obvious truth that mentally strong people don’t do is that they do away with self-limiting beliefs in their heads. Our thoughts dictate how we feel and how we behave. We have various ideas about different subjects across diverse sources—and then, we have thoughts about ourselves.
More often than not, we make self-talk anytime of the day whether in silence or out loud. If this self-conversation is jam-packed with doubt, criticism, fear, and tragic predictions, you will surely find it difficult to hit your goals. But you don’t have to doom yourself to this kind of pessimistic thinking. You have the complete power to alter the way your brain thinks!
Did you know that training your brain to think differently influence physical changes, too? No wonder why therapists make us of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) as a psychotherapeutic treatment to modify dysfunctional thoughts, emotions and behavior to boost positive outlook amongst patients.
CBT on the other hand, is not a quick fix method that provides temporary happiness against negative issues. It is a process that focuses on solutions that encourage and challenge patients to alter destructive patterns of thinking and behavior. Studies reveal that this therapy creates measurable and physical changes in the brain; this is due to the neuroimaging results that identify CBT as modifier of neural circuits in regulating negative feelings.
According to SingHealth.com, the clinical effectiveness of CBT has been revealed in hundreds of studies eve on cases where patients displayed physical pain syndromes such as lower back pain and headaches.
Rooting from the principles CBT teach, here are straightforward means to train your brain to think properly:
Disprove your self-limiting beliefs
Our brain lies to us, sometimes and we have this natural tendency to believe its stories. So, when it tells you that cannot pass the job interview, or that you’ll get rejection from your crush, treat it as a challenge.
This may sound a little tough, but force yourself to take one step closer even when you feel tired to continue. Challenge yourself to persistently apply for that dream job despite the fact that your brain is telling you to give up. Every single time you out win your brain by successfully disproving negative outcomes, you train you brain to realize that your degrading beliefs aren’t true. As you practice doing this, your brain will have more accurate and measurable basis of your capabilities and limitations.
Master a personal maxim
Make an inventory of your negative self-thoughts. Do you insult yourself by using derogatory adjectives? Identify these areas and create an effective rebuttal that will work for you to counterattack these messages by repeatedly saying “I’m so capable of doing this,” or “I can make it happen.” As you think about this often, you will be more inclined to consider these beliefs than those of unpleasant ones.
Build that pleasant thinking
Like learning any new job and skill, brain training is difficult and takes time. But again, just like any new task, the more it is practiced, the more it becomes familiarly easy.