Life on All 8-Cylinders – Mental Health
“Hope and optimism are not “soft skills.” They are necessary brain adjustments to allow your brain to navigate the path toward success.”
Srinivasan S. Pillay M.D. –author of Your Brain and Business: The Neuroscience of Great Leaders
Neuroscience is the study of the nervous system, and not to get too technical here, but specifically cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, studies how psychological functions are produced by neural circuitry. In English, what and how we think our thoughts is directly related to how the brain physically does its work. Negative thoughts with negative expectations actually shut down certain brain pathways that limit and restrict the processing of information that could bring about a positive solution to the problem you are worrying about.
Again, in English, when you worry about something, your brain shuts off the information that would solve the issue. The old, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” is actually true. All this attitude stuff isn’t just ethereal, pie-in-the-sky, cheesy, feel-good, motivational speaker crap. There is now science backing it up.
Rebel Brown, in her book, The Influential Leader, shares that our brains take in 11,000,000 bits/second of information. Our brains process all the information and send only 126 bits/second to the conscious mind for action. No wonder your attitude and how you view the world has such a huge impact on where you are in life, and where you’ll end up. The proverbial “self-fulfilling prophecy” is a medical fact. Your brain will give you the exact information your attitude is looking for: positive, negative or evidence based.
I’ve always known Mental Toughness was a game-changer, the answer to living life on all cylinders, now neuroscience proves it, medically. The Mental Health “cylinder”, the thoughts you think and how you think them, and your attitude, dictates the information you have available to solve problems and achieve goals and dreams.
Henry Ford nailed it, when he said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
Boo yah!
[…] Financial Health is more about your relationship, thinking and beliefs about finances than it has do with your net worth or account balance(s). If you think and believe that rich folks are crooked and corrupt, greedy and insincere, and don’t care about people, then your brain will send you the information needed to keep you from becoming an evil rich person. (Click here for a refresher on the medical science backing this up.) […]