How to Rewire Your Brain (Caroline Leaf, PhD)
Listen now (41 mins) | "We can't change what's happened, but we can change what it looks like inside of our mind-brain-body network."
You can also listen to this episode on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist, audiologist, and neuroscientist. She has written SO many books. I’ll let Caroline tell you how many in a second. She’s done a ton of research, and has created many mental health resources for people, including her Neurocycle App. But essentially her work is all about helping us to understand how our minds work.
Her new book is called Help in a Hurry: Simple Tips for Finding Peace When You're Overwhelmed, Anxious, or Stressed. It’s more or less an intervention for those moments of overwhelm or crisis in our lives where we’re battling an inner critic, or contending with unleashed anger or rage, and so on. Caroline has some interesting insights as to why conventional wisdom on building in a basic pause to these moments doesn’t really work. And this is why she’s conceived of her 63-second gap recommendation a bit differently.
We talk about this today, and research on change. How long does it actually take to change a thought, a habit, a pattern? How do our stories, narratives, and memories get stored in the mind, the brain, and the body in the first place? How can we influence this process? How can we rewire the mind and brain? What’s even the difference between the mind and the brain?
There’s a lot here to unpack.
MORE FROM CAROLINE LEAF, PhD:
Help in a Hurry: Simple Tips for Finding Peace When You're Overwhelmed, Anxious, or Stressed
Caroline Leaf’s Podcast
Follow Dr. Leaf on Instagram
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
ELISE:
Hi, it's Elise Lunan, host of Pulling the Thread. Today I'm talking to neuroscientist Caroline Leaf, who has done extensive research on how we can change our brains.
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ELISE:
Alright, let's do it. Well, how many books have you written?
CAROLINE:
This is number 19. Geez,
ELISE:
Jesus. Which one is your favorite?
CAROLINE:
It's so hard to say, but I do. I love that last one.
ELISE:
Yeah, so you're incredibly prolific. I think that's a fair assessment. 19 books. You've been doing your podcasts for years, apps and whatnot, and you're essentially your zone of genius. Maybe you have many zones of genius, but is really helping people understand their minds. Is that accurate?
CAROLINE:
Yes, that's a very good summary. Yeah, helping them understand the mind and how the mind works and that you're not your brain and that kind of thing. I still do research. We still have a clinical research team and we just finished a big project. I still publish in scientific journals as well.
ELISE:
Well, that must be an amazing flywheel to go and do research and then translate it for a lay audience and then go back out to the next big unanswered questions. Is that when you set up research, what's the frontier for you? What's the ultimate goal? Or is it all iterative, just getting deeper and deeper into how the brain and the mind work? Yeah,
CAROLINE:
Basically when we do research, I mean I've been researching for 40 years now, so I started literally at the bat with my first degree. It was research based, and so I got into that groove and then practicing clinically, I would obviously then have an opportunity to see what was needed and then apply and do research in that way. And I practiced for 25 years. I don't practice anymore, but I still continued the research because the tools need updating. The systems that I've developed need updating and also I need to know more and more about the mind. I need to keep on finding out. We've just did a massive one. That was a big study looking at the healing journey that people go through over basically what happens daily. Over the 63 days prior to that, we were looking at how long does it actually take to form a habit?
So much speculation out there 21 days and people talk about, so there's a lot of researchers out there that are saying that you can just do little things and those little things build into big things, which they do. But if you don't do it consistently, there's no sustainability in change. So I really wanted to know how, what is the thought, what is the mind? What is the difference between the mind and the brain? How does information get in and out? How does this then apply to all the circumstances of life? Whether it's something that dealing with these narratives, how did they become so entrenched as narratives that they didn't just impact the person they impacted generations and how do you rewire that? That kind of thing. So it's definitely as we work on one project, we see as you write up and analyze, because a scientist creates hypotheses, you have a direction you're going in, you do that research, you find stuff and say, well, I need more here, I need more there and I need more there and that kind of thing. So it's an ongoing, very interesting process. It's amazing. I love the research.
ELISE:
What is the difference between the mind and the brain? I think of one as a subjective way of understanding the world and the brain as maybe a more objective organ, but honestly I have no idea what is the difference.
CAROLINE:
It's probably the most common question I ever get asked because basically the mind is 99% of who you are and the brain and the body are only 1%. The zeitgeist around mind and brain for the last 50 years or the languaging around it has been that they're the same thing and they're not. They are so radically different because your brain is a physical organ and when you die, your brain dies. When you die, your heart stops within 10 to 20 seconds, your brain flat lines and that's it. Your body, immediately, every cell of your body starts disintegrating. So what we see from the actual research, which is really also very ancient philosophy, if you go track back to ancient philosophy and things like that, you'll see that mind was always separate from brain and body. So mind is your spirit and your soul for want of other words, consciousness.
Those are very often the words that are used that are equated with mind as well. So there's a lot of talk currently around, I mean it's always been, but there's a lot of reinterest again in the public sort of eye around the concept of consciousness and what is consciousness and where is it in the brain, but it's not in the brain. It shows up in the brain. The brain hosts the mind or the mind uses the brain and the body. So therefore your mind is your Eunice, the uniqueness of who you are. It's your energy, it's your life force. It's the thing that animates the brain and the body. It's the part that makes the brain work. So the brain's got neurochemistry and it's got proteins that form into structures and it's got all these networks and your body's got all these different systems and everything right now as we are listening, we can put an e, EG on your brain and we'll see a brainwave response.
We can put an e, k, G on your heart and we can see your heart responding. All of that neurophysiology is only occurring because your mind is driving it. So your mind is quite literally this life force that controls your neurophysiology, all the biology stuff, and it also controls your psychology, your psychic part of you, your spirit, soul, part of your consciousness, your eliteness, if there's such a thing, your Caroline and the decisions, your thinking, feeling, choosing, et cetera, et cetera. Mind has got different levels. There's your conscious mind which is awake when you're awake, which is actually quite limited. It's expansive, but limited at the same time. It's kind of slow. So as you're listening to me now, it's your conscious mind that is thinking, feeling and choosing in response to the words and things that I'm saying. And it's only able to process one conversation at a time.
And by one conversation, what I mean is that like you and I talking, but if someone came in your studio and someone came in my studio and two more conversations began, none of us, including the listeners and viewers would know what's going on. And that's because our conscious awareness handles around about two to three words per second, which is about one conversation, and that's what we need in order to think, feel and choose. But there's another level that is unbelievable. It's massive. And that is your non-conscious NON, not unconscious. Unconscious is a brain state. So when you go to sleep, that's unconscious, non-conscious, NON. That is the most intelligent, brilliant, outstanding wise part of us as humans that you could refer to as your spiritual level, whatever language you want to use wisdom. But essentially that operates 24 7. And it's not limited to one conversation.
It's infinite conversations. It's every narrative. You talk about the stories of your life, it's every story you've ever experienced from wherever we start to the point that you're at now and the rest of your life. We have got these stories which are basically our life experiences. So your non-conscious mind receives all of those and stores all of those stories which are made up of memories, clustered into thought patterns. So stories are basically memories that have built into a thought. A thought is a pattern of memories and they can constantly have things added to them and they're driving forces in us. So this unconscious mind that works 24 7 is this infinite part of us that never stops and it can handle an infinite number of conversations, all these memories, all these experiences. It's also absorbing everything I'm saying now plus everything else going on in your environment and filters and it sorts and it neutralizes a lot of stuff that comes in because a lot of it's not great for our functioning, but there's certain things you need that it doesn't neutralize.
And those are the patterns that we've built that have become very established, that have turned into habits. Things that to quote the work that you do, these patterns that have come through generations on how women should be, those are literally toxic wired networks inside the unconscious mind that got there and also came through the generations through what we call epigenetics and they become like magnets. So every time we are in an environment that stimulates that type of thinking, it just makes it stronger. It's like another energy load is added to it and it becomes even stronger. So until we do the work that you suggest we do with the workbook that you've got coming out, which is bring awareness, those thoughts just keep dominating. So until you deconstruct them and reconstruct them, they'll dominate them. So your non-conscious mind will find those and put them into your subconscious.
Your subconscious is a division between the conscious and the non-conscious, and it's like a waiting room. The non-conscious processes about we estimate somewhere at around 400 billion actions per second. There's no way your conscious mind could handle that. You'd explode. Your brain also and body are not designed for that amount of input. So it has to be filtered and it gets filtered through the subconscious and then into the conscious mind. So it slows down the information and chunks it into four to 10 chunks. And it's like a waiting room. So think of four to 10 people sitting in a waiting room, and those that are called first are the ones that are either booked the appointment first, or if it's a medical waiting room, it could be the person who's the sickest. But this massive information is filtered into the subconscious. So at any one moment in time, we'll have four to 10 things.
Somewhere in that region of conversations, experiences, thought patterns, narratives sitting there that we need to work on consciously because the conscious mind is where you do the work because you think you'll choose. You've got to do that changing. So those patterns that have come through from the patriarchy, they have to get identified, which the unconscious will do, put them into the subconscious. And when you do the work that you're talking about in your workbook, you actually are listening to the signals that they generate. And as soon as you respond to the signals, then it pulls that out of the subconscious into the conscious mind. Now neuroscientifically the proteins and the chemicals that this thing is made of in your brain and your body become weakened and the energy cloud that it forms in your mind becomes weakened. So this means that every single concept, like this conversation, I'm speaking words, these auditory sound waves, it's all electromagnetic energy.
Each person listening takes this information into this field in the mind first, not the brain, it goes into the mind first, unconscious grabs it all and starts building these little clusters of energy. So all my words are going into one little cluster of energy, like a little cloud of energy. And then your unconscious as it's doing this really fast puts it into the conscious mind. The conscious mind is always a few seconds behind the unconscious mind and the unconscious mind as it comes in, finds anything else related to this, any experiences, anything you've had that's similar and connects those dots and puts those in the subconscious and then it gets into the conscious mind. So you may have heard of Benjamin Lee Bay, that heated research showing that before you're consciously aware of something, your unconscious is already aware. So our unconscious is brilliant, it's got our back.
It's always finding the most disruptive in the moment. So there's lots of stuff we all need to fix up in any one moment in time, the most disruptive thing in your life at this moment, that's what's going to be popped into the subconscious and it's going to generate signals of emotions like anxiety, depression, frustration, envy, jealousy, whatever. It's going to also generate what that feels like in your body because it's brain and body work together. So the second signal is how are you feeling in your body? How's your body responding? Because memory is not just in the brain, that's a total misunderstanding. Memories in the entire body, it's even in your fingertips, it's everywhere. But the point here is that the 99% of that work has been done in the mind. That's why we need to manage our mind because whatever's in the mind, the conscious mind, as soon as it starts processing, thinking, feeling and choosing makes a copy and pops it into the brain and the body and that stimulates an electrical, chemical, genetic quantum, blah, blah, blah, neurochemical and network is formed literally a network.
Now I'm holding up a wiry looking tree representing something toxic. So in the terms of the work you talk about, there would be something from the patriarchy about how women should behave in one of the seven deadly sins. And it's the narrative that's not true. I'm holding up a green plant now, and this represents something healthy. It's the version of us that you've created now through going through the work that you don't have to submit to. Those are lies that you told yourself and you've done the work to change them. So you've got a healthy thought. This information we are talking about now would build a healthy thought. So in other words, the energy is put into the brain, and I know I'm really emphasizing this, but if people realize it's the power that you have in your mind, which they don't realize that you are able to direct what goes into the brain and the body, and you can also redirect that.
So it goes into the mind, it's put into the brain. The minute that energy hits the physical brain networks form in the brain, they look like these tree things. And in every cell of the body we have 37 to a hundred trillion cells in our body. You're going to also form a tiny little hedge of wiring. So in other words, we wire in the mind, it's a cloud of energy, and then there's this invisible thread and it forms a tree in the brain and then in the body it forms all these hedges. And that combined, that's a network. It's our own internal worldwide web. Very, very, very, very complex, but very dynamic, very malleable. When we talk about network and rewiring, we are talking about changing it from the mind first, then the brain and then the body. The brain can do absolutely nothing on its own because the brain is controlled by the mind.
So we can't say that the amygdala has a fierce circuit and the amygdala is making us fearful, or the frontal lobe is controlling your executive function. That implies that the brain is generating the mind, which no science is actually proven, the science is actually shown. That's not the case, even though it's interpreted differently. What we are seeing is that the mind is the thing that changes the brain, and here's where the hope lies, that even those patterns that have been established for thousands of years from the patriarchal mode of thinking, those can be changed in each individual person. When we stop and we actually say, hang on, why am I behaving like this? Why do I think this? You are actually challenging a network. Your unconscious mind enables you to be this wise observer of yourself and you see, gosh, these are my patterns. This is how I'm thinking, feeling and choosing about this stuff. I no longer want to think like that. And as soon as you start having this conversation that then draws on the wisdom of your unconscious and your unconscious puts another whole load of solutions of how you can move forward out of that way of thinking
ELISE:
Two things that I want to make sure that I'm understanding, and you mentioned the conversation about consciousness. And so there's one school as you mentioned, that argues the brain generates consciousness, which doesn't actually, well, it doesn't really make sense, right? The brain generates consciousness and then we're all having this shared experience somehow where the consciousness that's generated is collective. The other way of seeing it is that the brain is a filter, as you mentioned for the mind and probably for all sorts of energies that we can't necessarily discern or sense using our physical body or our brain, for example, dogs or birds or other creatures hear things that we don't hear or see, things that we don't see or can't apprehend, right? We're somewhat limited in terms of register. Alright, so I just wanted to make sure that that's correct. And then the second thing is when you're talking about these packets of auditory information and how the non-conscious mind is seconds ahead, and obviously there's all sorts of other input coming in, right? Since what we see, is there a working theory for how psychic phenomenon, is that just a different sensory perception apparatus for some people where there's still signal that they can pick up, they can tune into it like a radio frequency or is that way outside of your remit
CAROLINE:
Psychic phenomena? I'm so glad you asked me that. Not many people are scared to talk about that. There's higher probability research showing psychic phenomena and eternal life or life after death or whatever you want to call it, that is more scientifically, statistically accurate than for pure physics or for something like a statin drug. There is scientific evidence. Universities around the world publish papers on the fact that metaphysics, physics, psychic phenomenon, these are real, these exist now the unconscious mind, none of us are isolated. We are all connected. Deep meaningful connection is what we made of, it's our currency. So when we talk about psychic phenomenon, we are talking about getting beyond the limits of the 1% brain and body and the limits of the conscious mind because the conscious mind is limited and getting into the depths of the non-conscious mind where your intuition, your insight, it's that wisdom, just that knowing.
And I mean everyone has that. It's part of who you are as a human personality wise. It depends on whether it's a level that you're very interested in. So some people are just from the get go, are interested in that and they develop that. We don't really know the reason why. Some people are more tuned into being able to detect other frequencies about energy. For example, as Nassar describes, there's a spectrum of electromagnetic energy and light for example is one of the energies that we can actually see, but there's a whole lot of other and also energy radiates, which means it grows. So at our core, we know from physics and Newton's physics plus quantum physics shows us that you can see me and I can see you, but at our core, if we break it down, we are energy vibrations. You've got your own unique ones and I've got my own unique ones, et cetera.
So we operate on these different levels. So when we talk about psychic phenomena, what we are doing is we are tuning into different levels, but it's through the non-conscious level, which is so massive, so expansive and connected to the rest of us and connected to whatever you believe, God, the source, the universe, every culture, every belief system has the own way. But we're all pretty aware that there's something beyond just us, not everyone, but I'd say the majority of people believe that. So when we talk about tuning in, there's a lot of research showing that when you're happy, when you're sad or when you envious those kinds of emotions, they have different frequencies. Now, no emotion is bad and I want you to stress that. I'm not saying that envy is bad. Envy is not bad unless you make it bad, unless you become consumed by it.
Energy, when it's managed correctly becomes data that can help you grow. But envy that's become toxic has a lower frequency, and that's in her, we measure that in her versus something like me celebrating you and being joyful for your success. That has a really high frequency. So what we see from that kind of research shows certain emotions have different frequencies and that there's certain frequencies that can actually activate psychic phenomena, whether it is someone who's intuitive or connection with mediums, we're touching on ground that people are nervous to talk about, but it's very scientific. So I'll tell you how scientific it is. You get a drug, a statin drug is probably the most, it's one of the drugs that is tested that people really are happy that it does what it's supposed to do. So it's got a very good significance level. It's significance level is 0.001.
That means that there's one chance in a hundred that the fact that the drug works is due to chance. There's 99 out of a hundred times when it works, we know it's the drug that's really excellent. Okay, the research on psychic phenomenon showing that as humans we have the ability to tune into these different frequencies and connect with whatever's out there and develop that if we should desire to develop that research showing that that exists is between a 0.001 and even more six zeros and even more eight zeros, 10 zeros. So in other words, there's a one in a million chance that that's all just random actually. So it's more scientifically proven, but it's because we've been so focused in the last 50 years, even 150 years on pure physics, that anything that's metaphysics, even though it's so scientific, it's just hard to put your on it.
We've become a very materialistic, very physicalist society. And it's to our detriment because when we look at a society that's become so neuro centric, which is brain focused, brain is everything. It's first of all, it's inaccurate, it's not correct. It makes us very physicalist or very focused on materialism. In other words, if I can't see it, touch it, feel it, it doesn't mean anything. And that's unfortunate because then that removes from people the ability to really explore me, you, our life, our responses, and it becomes a situation of your narrative of what you grew up with and what I grew up with and the sorts of things that people battle with and our narrative's, life, the things that have happened to us, the things that will happen, the ups and downs, those are individual stories that are unique to each person. And if you don't manage them, they will basically create these toxic networks between the mind, the brain, and the body. And that affects how we function.
ELISE:
I think that where our work, obviously there's a big Venn diagram is when those stories that we tell ourselves become extremely deterministic and where we conflate them with fact or that's how it's always been or that's how it is, or this story is me, rather than recognizing, oh, this was a helpful story to help me get through this period of my life, or I understand why I've been thinking like this. I've been conditioned to believe this based on how our culture operates. But to be able to create any distance is really helpful. So you can see the story and then you can change the story and choose something maybe a little bit more effective. Maybe you're ready for a different story.
CAROLINE:
Exactly. And so that ability to do what you've just described, that is your non-conscious mind working with your conscious mind. So you can almost think of your conscious mind like a toddler and think of a toddler. They'll hurt themselves if you don't guide them as a parent. But if they're so excited about life, they're learning and they're learning words. And that's what our conscious mind is like. It's messy and it should be messy because all this data is coming at us. But now think of it, a toddler without a parent is a problem. So the conscious mind needs a parent and the parent is going to tap into the wisdom of the non-conscious via the subconscious. Let's for a moment say, okay, we leave the toddler just to run and we just focus on this toxic story and we don't control it. And we get ourselves into this intrusive thought sinking pit of I'm shame.
I'm useless, I'm not good enough, I can't do this. I've got to achieve all these things. So we have lots of moments in our life that are just toddler driven and others that are toddler and parent and wisdom driven. And what we want to do is to recognize the purely driven toddler conscious dramas that we are going to create in our life and see them for what they are. So that distancing creating another narrative, what you're doing is you're doing on, Hey, hang on, let's just give you some guidance here. Now let's get more wisdom because now we need to reconceptualize. So this happened. We can't change the stories of our lives. What's happened happened, whatever you've gone through, whatever I've gone through patriarchy, this has happened. We can't change what's happened, but we can change what it looks like inside of our mind, brain, body network.
And when we do that, we change how it plays out into our future. And essentially that's what you doing with this whole concept of the patriarchy and these patterns. You're tapping into this wisdom related to how has patriarchy created patterns that we've just absorbed into these networks that are driving us? How can we change those? And the beauty of neuroplasticity is that you can direct it. So as soon as you do what you described, distance yourself, sit back, observe, you are then redirecting and changing because your brain is organically malleable and your body's organically malleable, and your conscious mind is organically malleable so you can change anything. That's the beauty. Yes, there may be some repercussions in your body. Let's say that you've had years and years of a certain way of thinking that would've been a toxic tree that's in your brain and toxic hedges in your cells and this toxic rain cloud in your mind, that's been a driving force and that would've worn out parts of your brain and body, which is quite interesting.
ELISE:
Yeah, no, it's fascinating.
ELISE:
Upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only speed, slow after 35 gigabytes of networks, busy taxes and fees, extra se mint mobile.com. So you've written 19 books and then your latest help in a hurry. It seems like it's an intervention. It's those moments of crisis or overwhelm or whether you're battling your inner critic or you're contending with unleashed anger or rage, right? Those moments when you need an intervention. Was that the genesis for the book?
CAROLINE:
Yes, spot on. So the idea is that it takes 63 days to change a habit. That's a lot of the research I've done. 63 is a very funny number. It's 21 times three, so it's three sets of 21. So what we found was that in the first 21 days, there's a major lot of deconstruction and reconstruction and reconceptualization and I want to be like this. And the change is there, but then a lot of people stop at 21, and that's because of the myth of the 21 day concept, which came through from plastic surgeon in the sixties entered into the general myth pretty much how the patriarch is. Yeah, how
ELISE:
Everything happens.
CAROLINE:
Yeah, exactly. Okay. So if you look at the science, a lot happens in 21 days, but nothing that's sustainable. So whatever you end off a roundabout three weeks, you're not going to be totally anal about 21 days, but in a roundabout, a three week mark, if you work consistently every day, you have created a pattern that is potentially now like a little seedling that's been planted in the ground and that's where you want to be. But then if you stop, if you don't water that seedling pretty much it will die. Now, energy never is lost, it's always converted. So what generally happens is that people will push through to a certain point and then they'll stop. And so what we found from the research is that somewhere, if you're going to change a pattern, you're going to need somewhere between 59 and 63 days. So it seems to be that these cycles that people go through, and it's two phases.
The first phases is 21 days where it's very, very interactive and constructive. The second part is more of a stabilization and you need to do certain things each day. And I wanted to know what that formula was. What do you do each day to do this? What you describe distance yourself, stand back, observe your pattern, change the story. What do you do each day to change the story? Because it always changes slowly over the 63 days. And if it's a very big traumatic story, you may need multiple cycles. For example, I've had patients that have had very severe sexual trauma. They've had to do multiple cycles over 63 days. Some people that have had such narcissistic parents that have destroyed their relationship and they've taken six cycles a year. But to tell someone who's in a crisis where they're so angry, they want to punch someone in the face or they just see everything in black and white in every moment, or they just feel that they get stuck in a regret cycle that's massive. Just if only I did that, if only I said that. If only I did it this way, only could have should have, would've. Or you find yourself people pleasing to tell someone in that moment of people pleasing or angry outburst or whatever. Okay, you've got to do 63 days to change a habit.
No, they're not going to respond. So what I was doing with my patients and doing with clients over the years was what do I do in the gap? So the research shows that every 10 seconds we are consciously aware of our self-regulating, and if you put six of those together, you actually get a burst of consciousness. So in other words, we have a flow of consciousness. People have heard of streams of consciousness, think of cartoons. When you see a cartoon, you see this animated moving thing. But actually for every one minute or something, there's something like 60 or whatever drawings that have been created to create that flow. That's kind of what's happening to us. We have a lot and then a little bit less, and then it gets grouped into about 10 little conscious bursts of activity. And then every six of those, which is around 60, 63 seconds, we are able to actually catch ourselves and start the process of regulating and start the process of standing back and observing ourself.
But if we don't train ourself to be aware of that, we miss those marks. So then we bypass them and we just become toddler driven as opposed to toddler and parent. So this book is to teach you how to pay attention to the 63 seconds, and obviously I'm playing on the number 63. It's around 60 seconds. Once I can control a minute, I can control the next minute, I can regulate the next hour, the next day, the next week. When I can do that, even within a couple of hours, I can start seeing the patterns in my life or the habits that are driving me, and then I can actually dedicate the time to spending the 63 days. And the system that I've developed is called the neuro cycle formula, and there's an app called the Neuro Cycle. But essentially this book is what do I do in that gap?
Because I found that if I didn't help myself, my patients, the clients over the years, if I didn't know how to create the gap, the pauses, people talk about creating the gap, creating the pauses. Most of the time people use things like breathing meditation and they will work. But what those can do is bring up stuff. If you don't know what to do with what's come up, you can go back into the non-conscious, even stronger than before. So we need to know that if I become aware of this in the moment, I become aware of people pleasing, I become aware of wanting to punch someone in the face. If I can create that gap and I can start training myself to manage that moment, then I can start directing how that lies into my brain. Because that person yelling at you in the meeting who's making you upset?
Well, that family member who said something that's really hurt you, you're still going to remember that because it's a narrative, it's a story. It's still going to go into the mind, all the copies into the brain, all the networks are going to form. But in the 63 seconds, you can then determine how it goes in. So either can go in toxic and think, okay, this relationships are stuff up. That person's always going to be like that. This is always going to be, I can either do that and add more to that, or I can say, okay, this is happening again. This person at work always seems to be hypocritical and upsets me. Every time they're saying that statement again, I can feel myself boiling. I'm going to say something really sarcastic back, this is going to land up being an argument. Or I can say, okay, they're coming with this.
What they're saying is for them, it's their truth, but I don't have to accept that. That's not necessarily my truth. Number one, I honor my reaction. I stop for a moment, and this takes literally, you can do this. There's hundreds of techniques in here for each of these different things. In a short period of time as someone says something to you, the awareness you want to create is first of all an awareness of what that person's saying and how it's making you, your emotions, your body feel, your perspective and your behaviors. Do you want to just be quickly aware how it's making me feel? It's a very quick honoring and analyzing of what is being said. So you're honoring the story. It's so important you don't just shove it down because as soon as you do what I've just described, you weaken the network that it's triggered.
Not only that you have changed how the energy of that story is going to build into your brain. You redirect it. So instead of it going in toxic where it's all just, it's going into the brain, it's not good what they did or said, but it's going in a way that's okay, they did that. That's their problem. It's not mine. It's healthy. And that makes the difference because as you breathe all the time, as we know, oxygen is a molecule, it carries the energy of your mindset into your body. So by me catching this thought, honoring it, acknowledging the feelings, and so on the perspective and then saying, okay, well this is not, I honor that, but that's what can I learn from this? What's the detail in this? What's the facts here? Maybe I don't agree with anything, that's fine, but maybe there's something there that I could learn.
Whatever that kind of shift, a mind shift that changes the kind of energy, that packet that attaches itself to the oxygen. So when you breathe, you don't breathe in more anger, people just say, breathe to calm yourself down. But if you don't actually get the mind stuff right first, you're going to breathe more anger in. So you'll breathe, you'll get a change in your physiology, but you're still going to be mad and you're still going to be wanting to react in a negative way, and that doesn't enable you to grow. You can't grow forward. You're going to always be affected by that person. So if you want to not be affected by that person, you need to watch the mindset that you're attaching to the oxygen. You're breathing in.
ELISE:
You're so prolific, it's so inspiring. Clearly you do not have a toddler mind.
CAROLINE:
I’ve had to work at that. I've had to work to do the opposite, not keep going all the time, to learn to take away things and not keep adding things. So there you
ELISE:
Go. I appreciated that part of the book Boundaries. As Dr. Leaf mentioned, her latest book Help in a Hurry, 19 books. I mean, that's an incredible amount of material, but there's some really helpful techniques in there. For example, she writes about rumination, which is definitely something that catches me, sort of that anxious mind. And one of the solutions she offers, it's slightly more complicated than this, but is to schedule it, is to sort of have a little convening in your mind to say, if you can't solve this right now, let's think about it tonight. Anyway, I'm going to try that because that feels mighty useful. If you like today's episode, there are several ways to support the show. I produce it myself, so this helps me to continue to make it. First, please rate and review the show on the platform where you listen and consider sharing this episode with a friend.
That's how it grows. It is so helpful. Second, please support my sponsors who make this show possible.