Jerseygirl, JESUS
I know a secret about The Secret — remember that book / movie from a few years ago that promised you can think your way into whatever you want in life? A lot of people thought that was a little woo-woo, and maybe a bunch of hoo-ha. A lot of Christians thought it was the equivalent of devil worship. Well, I’m here to tell you that the Law of Attraction is a very real thing, and there’s nothing spiritual about it.
It’s not devil worship, and it’s not hoo-ha or woo woo. It’s neuro-biology.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a spiritual person and I believe prayer works. I believe in powers and principalities, and I believe in the Holy Spirit. I’ve felt her gentle touch; I’ve walked with Jesus through good times and bad. I’m all about the spiritual.
But the mind is different terrain, and no less powerful. As a coach, I’ve been trained to understand that thoughts actually do produce real things: proteins, to be exact. Every time you think a thought, your brain cells produce little proteins. Now, I don’t get how it all works because I’m not a brain scientist or a doctor, but essentially the more thought-proteins you have, the deeper the ditch your brain will dig into your brain. Those ditches become electrical pathways that connect thought, emotion, body response, etc. Think of it this way — the more you think a thought, the more your brain goes into infrastructure overdrive and will build a highway in your brain so that thought doesn’t have to travel the back roads anymore.
Got a habit you love to hate? It’s probably got an 8-lane highway in your brain, leading to all the physical, emotional, and thought patterns you recognize as a craving or a compulsion.
There’s also this thing called the reticular activator, a bundle of nerves at the base of your skull that decides what gets into your conscious mind, and what doesn’t. (If everything got in to your consciousness you would not be able to function.) Unfortunately, in our earliest childhood, we’re often programmed with certain beliefs that don’t serve us as an adult, and the reticular activator will use these beliefs to filter what we notice in our adult lives.
For example, if we were brought up to believe, through subtle, often indirect or non-verbal messaging, that all rich people are orange evil-doers, we could be standing in front of twenty rich people, nineteen of whom are wonderful philanthropists with decidedly multi-cultural, non-tangerine hues. But you’ll only notice the mean orange dude. That’s all the reticular activator will let you see.
The good news? It is possible to build new highways that lead to different results, and to reprogram your reticular activator to see the philanthropists you’re missing. To do so, we must take control of our thoughts, and tame those suckers to focus on what’s good, and noble, and true (see what I did there?).
Scripture supports this idea — as in the Philippians scripture I just quoted, or in the mandate to renew our minds, the Bible often tells us to tame our thoughts and think on things that are good, and to speak out faith and belief. While I don’t want to go all Joel Osteen on everyone, nor do I practice a Health & Wealth theology, there is something to be said about how our thoughts can make life more aligned with how we’d love to experience it.
At The Whole Woman Summit (eeek! It’s just a few weeks away!) Catrice Jackson is going to talk about how we can go from victim of our thoughts to hero of our destiny — and it all starts with our thoughts. Catrice is a speaker, author, and mental wellness mentor, and in her session at the Summit, she’ll teach you how to thoughtfully eliminate the misery and suffering in your life by maximizing metacognition to create mental wellness. Discover how to use your thoughts to Think Well, Be Well and Live Well. Any woman who struggles with her circumstances and wants to feel more empowered to create a life that feels magical will benefit from this session. Attendees will feel equipped to make a different, more powerful choice to create the life of their dreams.
See you at the Summit!
Each Friday for the next few months, I’ll be writing about one of the amazing women who are speaking at The Whole Woman Summit in March. These are women who are movers and shakers, Christian and not, who are doing very cool things in the world. The summit is all about the things that matter — MIND. BODY. SPIRIT. WORK. RELATIONSHIPS. JUSTICE. The summit is entirely online, and all registrants will receive video recordings of all sessions, so no worries if you miss any.
See you at the summit!
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