The Neurocycle
modality by Dr. Caroline Leaf
FIRST THINGS FIRST
Do you know that your mind and brain are different ?
Your mind are the thoughts, either healthy or toxic, that you think about.
Your brain is the organ in your skull that tells your body what to do. It’s been proven that your thinking causes your brain to release neurotransmitters, chemical messengers that allow it to communicate with parts of itself and your nervous system.
Neurotransmitters control virtually all of your body’s functions, from hormones to digestion to feeling happy, sad, or stressed. In other words, of the average 50,000-70,000 thoughts that a human will have each day, none of them are harmless. On a very real and very biological level, the very thing you are thinking about right now is effecting the 75 to 100 trillion cells in your body.
Your mind is shaping your brain and your brain is shaping your life. So over the next 21 days you will need to take around 10 minutes each morning to detox your mind of toxic thoughts and to make a game plan on how you will nurture healthy thinking throughout the day. Every day through Neurogenesis, your brain has birthed new nerve cells and they are ready to receive whatever thoughts and information you give it. So by doing this detox in the morning you are being strategic to use your mind to feed your brain with good thoughts.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so it’s your job to feed your brain a healthy breakfast of quality thinking each morning.
But before we jump in, know that it will take a few 21-day cycles for a new though to fully replace the toxic one. Afer a period of repeated thinking about a new and healthy thought over two to three cycles of twenty-one days, the new thought moves into the non-conscious metacognitive level. Around 95% of everything we do comes from this part of our brain.
This process is called automatization.
Think of how you learned how to ride a bike. At first you wobbled around nervously, thinking about every movement of every pedal stroke.
Left, right, left, right.
Until over time, the skill of riding a bike became so rooted in your brain that you could ride and not even think about it. Why? Because it moved from the conscious mind, to the nonconscious mind.
That is how this detox will work as well. Over the next twenty-one days you will begin to evict a toxic thought and replace it with one that is healthy.
Afer twenty-one days this new thought is like a new plant that needs to be nurtured and your thinking is how you nurture it.
Research has shown that it can take up to 154 days of consciously using and practicing this new thought for a thought to automatize, or to take root, in our non-conscious brains.
So don’t be discouraged if your toxic thought doesn’t disappear quickly. Trust the process. It may sound simple, but it won’t be easy. But remember, your mind shapes your brain and your brain shapes your life. By transforming your thoughts, you are transforming your life