“Worrying is praying for what you don’t want.”

How much of your day do you spend worrying?

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (Matt. 6:34, NIV)

Over the past couple of years I (Jerry) have been spending quite a bit of time learning about how our mind works, the power of our thoughts, the importance of focus, and various and sundry related ideas. I found myself fascinated with the notion that while the one thing we have been given the power to control is our thoughts (see the command in Phil 4:8 for just one example), that is also the one thing that most of us just leave to seemingly random chance.

That’s kind of like choosing to walk when you have just been given a brand new Ferrari…or choosing to row when your boat when it has a perfectly good motor.

The above quote about worrying being a form of prayer seems almost sacrilegious, until you link it with the easily observable phenomenon that what we focus on seems to expand, grow stronger, come closer, etc.

Should it be any surprise that a good God, Who loves us unconditionally, would admonish us to “Do not be anxious about anything?” Could it be that He is not only reminding us that it is a colossal waste of time, but that it actually produces the undesired effect? Hmmm…I don’t remember reading that in the owner’s manual anywhere, do you?

This is a very interesting realization to be coming from a recovering “worry-wart.” I actually found myself worried because I couldn’t find the source of the quote I used. But, I’ve come a long way. As Andrew Wommack so quaintly says, “I haven’t arrived yet, but I’ve left.” How about you?

Prayer Power
Lord please help us all understand at the heart-level that You really don’t want us to worry about anything. Help us to see that even in this high-stress world that we live in that Your command to not worry is no less significant or less doable than it was when Paul penned those famous words. Show us that we really can be the master of our own thoughts.

Link of the Day
Problem of Worry

Blessings as you purpose to become more and more aware of what you are thinking about.

Photo by JustUptown

“Do something every day to improve your mind — learn a new word, do an anagram puzzle, sudoku your mind, read a book, read a stimulating blog post, anything that will help your mind just a little. Just a little turns into something huge.”  Steven Aitchison

When’s the last time you did a little calisthenics for your brain?

From a wise mind comes wise speech; the words of the wise are persuasive.  (Prov. 16:23; NLV)

It’s been almost two whole weeks since I’ve posted something about the brain or the mind.  As you know this is one of my favorite topics.  (It would be an interesting study to analyze why this is so, wouldn’t it?)  Two weeks ago I posted “Brain Maintenance Program” in which I referenced a great blog post that listed 47 ways to tune up your brain.  (If you missed that article, I encourage you to click the link and check it out.)

Onward and upward — this week, the Link of the Day lists no less than “100 Ways to Develop Your Mind.”  (Actually, there are 101 as the author’s last item suggests that you always over deliver on your promises.)  Again, the list is quite long, and there are some real surprises in it, but it does cause you to stop and realize that our brain is just like any other muscle and needs purposeful exercise in order to stay strong, healthy, and agile.  “Use it or lose it” applies to our minds just as much as it does with any other muscle group.

I don’t recommend that you try everything on the list, nor even a majority.  I propose that you use the list to generate some new ideas on ways to develop your mind.  After all, it’s the only one you’ll ever have.  You can’t go down to the brain store and get a replacement when the one you’ve got now fails because of misuse or lack or use.  God gave you your mind for a purpose, and at the risk of repeating myself, it wasn’t to “zone out” watching TV or reading the newspaper.  I’m a little disappointed that the list of 101 doesn’t include my favorite from the list of 47, i.e., Eat Dark Chocolate.  So while there is some redundancy, the two lists are different in many respects.

Interestingly enough, neither list includes one of the best ways I know of to develop your brain (and spirit, for that matter), and that’s journaling.  Dr. Randy Peck, whom you’ll recognize as one of the co-authors of our UNCOMMON Wellness Coaching audio series and ebook, will be starting a 4-week webinar series on journaling early next month.  Keep your eye on his blog, http://journaling777.com for details or let me know that you’re interested and I’ll make sure you receive the registration details as soon as they become available.

Choose to have a magnificent week!

Prayer Power
Father, again we thank You for the purpose or call you have on our life, and we especially thank You that You have given us the talents, skills, and mind to be able to carry out that purpose.

Link of the Day
100 Ways To Develop Your Mind

Blessings on you as you take your brain for a walk (or a jog?) today.

Photo by Mykl Roventine

“Yes, eating dark chocolate has been shown to be beneficial for releasing an important brain chemical called dopamine. Dopamine aids in learning and memory.”  Steven Aitchison  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist using that quote.)

What kind of brain maintenance program do you have?

Alcohol and prostitution have robbed my people of their brains.  (Hosea 4:11; NLT)

Those of you who have been around awhile know that I have this fascination with all that has been discovered and written about with that last couple of decades about the human brain.  As I mature, I am determined to do all I can do to prevent the onset of “Senior Moments.”  Last week I ran across an incredible list of brain maintenance suggestions on a blog post which I am including as today’s link.

Actually, it’s a fairly long list of activities, but the whole list can be read in just a few minutes.  The Idea is not to do them them all, but to pick out a few of your favorites and do them with a measure of consistency.  But you will note that veggin’ in front of the household Cyclops did not make the list.

It’s a fun list to read, and there are some pleasant surprises on it.  So, even if you’re not facing senior momentitis in the near future, it will be a very good investment of your time to look over the list.  I predict you’ll be glad you did.

Prayer Power
Father, we are so grateful for our incredible brains — and even more grateful that You are revealing ways that we can keep it at peak performance.

Link of the Day
47 Ways to Fine Tune Your Brain

Blessings on you as you begin your brain maintenance program today!

Photo by The B-roll

“The human brain is a wonderful organ. It starts to work as soon as you are born and doesn’t stop until you get up to deliver a speech.”  George Jessel

 What does wellness have to do with the brain?

Alcohol and prostitution have robbed my people of their brains.  (Hosea 4:11; NLT)

Those DG subscribers who have been with us for a while know that I really enjoy reading and writing about the amazing power of the human brain.  I think part of this is because the brain has been largely misunderstood and underestimated and is a lot like unexplored space in terms of how rapidly modern science is beginning to explore the inner workings.  It is truly one of the most amazing features of our body, and I’m sure we’re not even scratched the surface with our knowledge and new understanding.

All that aside, I’ve been focused on wellness for the last couple of months as Sharon, Randy, and I have labored to put together our UNCOMMON Wellness Coaching e-book.  In fact, some may be wondering if I have “wellness” on my brain?  Well, I confess that I probably have been pretty single minded of late.  Interestingly enough, I ran across a blog post by Jeff Nickles titled “20 Ways To Train Your Brain for Peak Performance.”  In his post (today’s link), Jeff offers a number of interesting ideas for keeping our brain “young,” a topic that is of great interest to me — for obvious reasons. 

I was struck by how many of the 20 ways that Jeff mentioned were congruent with the things we were stressing in our wellness book.  Here’s a short list of overlaps that I found:

• We have a chapter on exercise and Jeff’s way #5 points out that one study shows that physical activity increases the volume of the brain.  See you at the gym tomorrow?
• Another chapter in our book is on rest.  Jeff’s post offers way #4 suggesting that things are clearer and brighter after a good night’s sleep.
• A number of his other ways speak to stress issues that we address in our chapter on stress.  Jeff suggests meditation, positive thinking, reducing TV watching, reminiscing old memories,  et al. as ways to reduce stress and thereby train your brain for peak performance.
• One of his ways even overlaps with our chapter on nutrition as he points out that protein rather than carbohydrates is the better way to feed your brain.

So, it almost looks like we could adopt a subtitle for our book…something like UNCOMMON Wellness Coaching to Train Your Brain for Peak Performance.  Thanks for the idea, Jeff.

Prayer Power
Father, we continue to marvel at Your incredible design for the human body.  Grant us the grace and understanding of how to properly care for such an amazing machine.

Link of the Day
20 Ways To Train Your Brain for Peak Performance

Blessings on you as you outline a regimen of brain training this weekend.

“A new study carried out at Wake Forest University and published in the medical journal Neurology has found that HRT drugs literally shrink women’s brains.”

How aware are you of the side effects of the drugs you’re taking?

Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured. (Jer. 46:11; KJV)

Mike Adams recently wrote about a new study that revealed that the use of HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy) drugs is actually shrinking a woman’s brain.  “Subjects who took HRT drugs for an extended period of time showed a loss of 2.37 cubic centimeters in the frontal lobe of the brain.”  I don’t know about you, but I want to keep ALL of my brain that God gave me.  The thought of a drug actually shrinking my brain…well, causes my hair to stand on end.  (Enjoy the pun.)

I recall from my anatomy and physiology days that the frontal lobe of the brain is responsible for our thinking ability and our memory skills.  Hmmmm…could there be a correlation between women who use HRT and the increased incidence of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in these women?  The study suggests as much.

Mike Adams writes, “Are HRT drugs part of a campaign to keep the women in society barefoot, pregnant, and stupid? It just so happens that these drugs — which are mostly pushed by men — keep women in a state of cognitive impairment in which their thinking skills are suppressed. (It turns smart women into stupid women.) The shrinkage of their frontal lobe also causes them to be unable to make good decisions about getting OFF the medications, and that plays right into the hands of Big Pharma’s profit schemes.”  Ouch!  Pretty direct, Mike.

Apparently, HRT drugs aren’t the only drugs with this shrinking side effect.  ADHD drugs have also been proven to cause stunted growth and brain shrinkage in children and teens.  So, at least for the ladies among us, there are alternatives to HRT.  Become informed about what these drugs could be doing to you and begin the quest for natural answers.  They are readily available.  Feel free to write to me if you need some help.

Keep all the brain you’ve got!

Prayer Power
Father, thank You for our bodies and our brains.  May we seek You to do all that we can to take proper care of them and bring glory to You in all we say and do.

Link of the Day
More Bad News For HRT Users

Blessings on you as you learn about the side effects of drugs that you or your family may be taking.

“Research once again confirms that exercise can help heal and prevent neurological disorders.”  Get Active Magazine

How pleased are you with your memory?

The memory of the righteous will be a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.  (Prov. 10:7; NIV)

Many people make comments about their memory.  “Oh, my memory is terrible!”  Or, “I can’t remember anything these days.”  Have you heard or even said comments like that yourself?  Or….can’t you remember?

Our readers know how much “brain info” Jerry writes and talks about.  He’s always feeding his brain with information and knowledge and learning more about how our brains work.  Jerry also flexes his muscles at the gym with a daily work-out.  Today’s post is talking about “flexing your brain.”  Exercise boosts brain power and recent research has confirmed that exercise can actually help rewire the brain to work more efficiently to stave off age-related memory loss!   How’s that for incentive to exercise?  Where’s that treadmill?

The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported on a study done with people 50 years old and older.  The people were divided into two groups: exercisers and non-exercisers.  After 18 months, those who exercised had improved their scores on two key cognitive tests.  One was the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale and the other was the Clinical Dementia Rating.  Walking was the most common form of exercise in this group.

Another recent study determined that stroke survivors who regularly walked on treadmills significantly improved brain function and their ability to walk normally.  Improvement can occur months and even years after the stroke originally happened.   You’ve heard me say that exercise can benefit our lives in so many ways but improving brain function and memory isn’t usually in the common categories with preventing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and cancer.  So, the next time you wonder what you can do to improve your memory, work up a sweat!

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for our brains and how You so intricately designed us.  May we do all that we can do to have the best memory possible.

Link of the Day
Get Fit, Improve Memory?

Blessings on you as you purpose to “feed” your brain with exercise.

“No matter how far we travel, the memories will follow in the baggage car.”  August Strindberg

How would you rate your memory capacity?

We all have happy memories of the godly, but the name of a wicked person rots away.  (Prov. 10:7, NLT)

I certainly don’t want to “beat a dead horse,” but since this is the last DG this week, let’s spend one more day looking at the brain and it’s significance in actually creating our circumstances.

Did you know that our brain performs somewhere around 400 billion (yes, the “b” is intentional) actions a second?  (I wonder who counted them.)  That’s a pretty high-powered computer we’re all walking around with.  But, did you also know that we’re only conscious of about 2,000 of those actions.  That should give you some clue as to the significance of our subconscious or unconscious mind.  You may remember that back in late October, I wrote in my DG that more than 95% of our behavior comes from our subconscious mind (click here to read that DG).

Now here’s the deal.  Our brain, which is about the size of our two fists, contains 100 trillion nerve cells.  All these nerve cells are like little trees that are growing branches populated with either leaves or thorns.  These little trees have been growing branches your entire life.  Those branches are the memories of every event that you have ever experienced.  It is estimated that we have the storage capacity for somewhere around 3 million years worth of memories…so the likelihood of running out is pretty slim.  Catch this now, you are who you are because of all the memories that are in your head from birth to death.

Every memory has an emotional component contained within the chemicals that are bonded to the memory.  Activating any particular memory starts the chemicals bonded to that memory to start to flow.  Now, every thing that we detect with our senses, or every event that we experience, enters the brain as incoming information.  One of the first things the brain does is scan for an existing memory that is similar.  If the memory it finds is fear-based, the event or information causes the brain to secrete the toxic chemicals associated with that memory.  Fortunately, the same is true of a positive or faith-based memory.

Now, the final thing I want to say about all this is that according to Dr. Caroline Leaf, there is a physical area located at the front of our brain where we can actually choose to accept or reject a thought.  If you choose to accept it, it goes in and triggers the aforementioned chemical release based on whether the matching memory is positive or toxic.  So, you see, we have a choice.  If we accept the thought, it reinforces the matching memory and strengthens it.  If we reject it, it passes with a minimum of effect.  So we do have a very significant role to play in which chemicals get released in our bodies.

Does all that responsibility bum you out?  I pray not.  I pray that this information excites you as it shows that you are capable of significantly reducing the flow of those toxic chemicals in your body that create so much stress and illness.  We do not have to be victims.

OK, thanks for your patience.  I promise no more about the brain next week.  Make it a magnificent weekend.  It’s truly your choice.  Blessings.

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for our magnificent brains.  We thank You that we live in a time when we’re beginning to appreciate just how magnificently designed our brain really is.

Link of the Day
Who Switched off My Brain?: Controlling Toxic Thoughts and Emotions

Make yourself a better than fantastic weekend filled with delightful memories.

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“Yeah, stinking thinking, I’m letting you go. Because of you I had nothing to show. You’ve never done a blinking, stinking, positive thing for me.”  Tony Brigmon

In what ways has stinking thinking served you?  Why do you continue to allow it?

And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.  (Phil. 4:8; NLT)

As a follow up to Monday’s DG reporting on some of the content of Dr. Caroline Leaf’s discussion of the brain on Joyce Meyer’s TV show, I would like to share with you some of the bits and pieces that I found most fascinating.

First of all, thoughts are real things.  They now have instrumentation that can “see” thoughts as they develop in a person’s brain.  Every thought builds memories.  These thoughts in the human brain look like trees,  In fact, if you follow the link in the comment Robert Hartzell left on Monday’s DG you will see reference to a book named, “Magic Trees of the Mind.”  The most fascinating thing to me was that positive, faith-based thoughts look different than do negative, fear-based, or toxic thoughts.  Obviously, a thought is a thought, so the process is the same, but the chemicals involved are very different causing the negative thoughts to look like a thorn bush rather than a tree with leaves.

Apparently the toxic thoughts have little pockets of poisonous chemicals that look like thorns.  Every time you revisit that negative thought it causes those little thorns to squeeze out those chemicals into the body and ultimately make it sick.  Every thought you think has an immense chemical effect on your body.  Every thorn tree puts your body into stress.  Stress is simply the body’s reaction to a toxic thorn tree.  Put another way, stress is a chemical reaction in your body to whatever you’re thinking.  And get this…according to Dr. Leaf, 87% of all current illness today comes from your thought life.  Note that even if you get medical help to reduce or eliminate the symptoms of that stress, but don’t deal with the negative thought pattern, the stress will simply manifest in some other form somewhere else in your body.

Dr. Leaf and Joyce Meyer did discuss ways to renew your mind (sound familiar?) on a daily basis.  If done consistently, research has established that as little as four days of consistent renewing the mind results in some of the thorns falling away and being replaced with healed memories.  This is certainly not to say that a lifetime of negative thinking can be resolved in only four days, but it is saying that progress can be seen and documented in very short order.

If you find this as interesting as I do, I invite you once again to click on the links below and download the mp3 audio file of the two Joyce Meyer shows that featured Dr. Leaf.  Listening to these two half-hour shows should convince you beyond a shadow of a doubt that your emotions, your relationships, your self-perception, and even your physical health is totally in your control.  Just take the effort to control what you allow yourself to think about.  Choose to “think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.”

Prayer Power
Lord, I thank You that You have outlined a clear path to manage our thought life.  I pray that more and more people will wake up to the incredible power they have to control their very circumstances.

Links of the day
Your Brain and You – Pt 1
Your Brain and You – Pt 2

Blessings on you as you purpose to reject those thoughts that are not “excellent and worthy of praise.”

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“We all need a daily check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin ‘thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.”  Zig Ziglar

How would you feel if you were in the presence of someone who could read your thoughts?

We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.  (2 Cor. 10:5; NIV)

Last Tuesday while we were working out at the gym, Sharon was on the treadmill with her headset plugged into the TV and was watching the Joyce Meyer broadcast.  When she got off, she came to me and asked if I had ever heard of a Dr. Caroline Leaf.  I said, “Of course…she wrote the book ‘Who Switched Off My Brain?’”  “Well,” Sharon said, “she was just on the Joyce Meyer show and you really need to hear it as she was saying some of the same things you’ve been writing about.”

Some of you may remember that I mentioned Dr. Leaf’s book in the lead DG of the eight-part series I did on the brain back in October and November (click here).  So I came home and looked up Joyce Meyer Ministries on the Internet and downloaded the podcasts for the two shows she did with Joyce (today’s links).  I’ve listened to them three or four times now and I’m even more “blown away” with the discoveries that are being made about the human brain.  Remember, Dr. Leaf is a brain researcher from South Africa with over 25 years in this field.  She’s also a strong Christian and does a magnificent job of explaining this research from a biblical perspective.

Through the course of the interview it becomes clear that the biblical admonition that we should control our thoughts (see above) is not just some spiritual cliche, but is an absolute necessity since it directly impacts our emotions, our relationships, our self-perception, and even our physical health.  Even more significantly, Dr. Leaf explains that recent research has actually identified  that our free will is a specific area in the brain, and further that it is completely under our control.  Nothing occurs in our body without going through that area of our brain.  Therefore we were designed to have the power to overcome those negative, toxic thoughts.

This means that we can no longer hide behind the “I just can’t do that” excuse.  Joyce summed it up when she said, “You can do anything if you really want to bad enough.”  (Deut. 11:30 reads, “Now what I am commanding you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach.”)  Folks, you can literally change your life by changing how you think and how you look at things.  Admittedly, it is difficult in the beginning, like changing any habit would be.  But I don’t believe there is any habit that you could change that would have more of an impact on your life than becoming aware of and taking command of your thoughts.

As you can tell, I’m a bit wound up about this and will likely continue this line of thought (pun?) on Wednesday’s DG.  BTW, you’re reading this on our blog.  Comments are welcome and easy to make.  Let’s hear from some of you.  Agree, disagree, share stories, etc.  It will make this experience richer for all of us if you participate.

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank you for the amazing powers you have given us by design.  Forgive us for those many times when we choose to operate at less than our full potential.

Links of the Day
Your Brain and You – Pt 1 (1/5/09)

Your Brain and You – Pt 2 (1/6/09)

Blessings on you as you choose to just think about what you are thinking about.

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“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here”  Unknown

How do you respond to doubt, fear, and anxiety?

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18; NKJ)

Three weeks ago now I said that I was going to do an extended series of DGs on the human brain.  Right now, I’m thinking that this will be the last in the series–at least for a while.  If you missed the introduction to this little series, I encourage you to take a couple of minutes and go back and read that introductory material. (Access “Your Amazing Brain” by clicking here.)

The amygdala is “an almond-shaped mass of gray matter in the front part of the temporal lobe of the cerebrum that is part of the limbic system and is involved in the processing and expression of emotions, especially anger and fear,” according to the American Heritage Science Dictionary.  I don’t want to get too technical with this series on the brain, but there is this one part of the brain, that has a Latin name, but which you must understand to be able to avoid the kind of thinking traps we’ve been warning you about throughout this series.  (BTW, amygdala is simply a Latin word based on Greek that means “almond.”  As you might suspect, the amygdala is shaped like an almond.)

This paranoid little guy has awesome power over your perceptions and actions because it senses real and potential stress and causes the release of chemicals into your system triggering feelings of doubt, fear, and anxiety.  The amygdala stores the emotional perceptions that occur each time a memory is built.  Memory and emotions are inseparable.  The amazing thing is that the amygdala stores all the emotional perceptions you have developed while building memory from the time in the womb until today as you read this DG.

Now, anytime you grow and move to another level in anything in life, you are obviously stepping outside of your comfort zone.  The doubt, fear, and anxiety that the amygdala triggers because of real or potential stress is perfectly normal.  When you understand that this is absolutely the way it’s supposed to work, and that the brain is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing, you can use that understanding to make rational decisions, rather than misinterpret the feelings to mean that you should stop the activity. 

Even the most successful people you can name have those same feelings of doubt and anxiety, but they make the choice to push on through rather than bow to them.  This understanding of how the brain is supposed to work puts a whole new perspective on doubt and fear.  Now you can see that the absence of doubt and fear is a warning signal of status quo, i.e., there’s no growth going on.  That’s OK for a season, but should not be what we strive for on a steady basis.

Prayer Power
Lord, we thank You for this understanding of what the signals of doubt, fear, and anxiety really mean.  We ask for the courage to step through that False Evidence that Appears Real.

Link of the Day
Emotions and the Brain: Fear

Blessings on you as you face your fears and step out of your comfort zone.

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