Rewire Your Brain - Why Positive Thinking Didn't Work

You've probably heard this advice: "Just think positive and you'll rewire your brain."

Well, I tried that. For years.

And every time I told myself "you're awesome," my mind fired back. "No you're not." "You'll never stick with it." "This is never going to work."

One positive thought I couldn't believe, followed by one hundred negative ones ready to bring me back down.

According to neuroscience, the brain really can change. This is called neuroplasticity, and the science on that is real.

But if you've struggled to apply it in your life, I want to share with you my own experience. Not as a doctor or medical expert, just based on my own experience in the hopes it will help you too.

What rewiring your brain actually means

At a simple level, the mind runs on loops. Patterns of thought, layered on top of each other, built up over a lifetime.

When you have a stressful or anxious experience, it's bad enough that it happened, but then you took a picture of it in your mind and you relive it inside there.

Every time you think about it, you're strengthening the neural pathways. And then you have more experiences, and more "evidence" and then it becomes a habit of mind - that's the loop.

The brain doesn't care whether the thought is positive or negative. It just strengthens whatever is repeated.

So if you've spent twenty years thinking "you're not good enough," that path is a freeway. Deep. Fast. Automatic.

And the positive path people tell you to build it like trying to build a cycle path over the top of that freeway... It won't end well for the cyclist.

Why positive thinking made my loops stronger

Here's what happened every time I said an affirmation like "you're awesome".

1. Instantly, the old freeway lit up. "No you're not."

2. My mind pulled up the evidence for why - the failures, embarrassments, criticisms, judgements

3. Which then reinforced the negative idea of myself

I took one step on the new path and my brain snapped back to the old, familiar freeway.

One rep for positivity. A hundred reps for the negative loops.

I wasn't failing to rewire my brain. I was rewiring it in the wrong direction. Every time I didn't believe the positive thought, it gave the old loops more "evidence".

So where did those deep paths come from in the first place?

From the day we're born, the body works like a camera. Everything we see, hear, taste, smell and touch gets recorded. Every experience becomes a picture, stored in the mind, like frames on a film.

Those pictures are what the thoughts, feelings and emotions.

• A moment of shame from childhood, recorded.

• A harsh word from a teacher, recorded.

• A difficult experience with an ex, recorded.

Every time a stored picture replays, the pathway strengthens and gets stronger.

By adulthood, we're not really responding to the world as it is, we're responding to thousands of old pictures, playing on repeat.

Discarding is rewiring in reverse

Therefore, if paths grow stronger with use, and weaker without it, then that rule must work in both directions.

What if, instead of trying to create new thoughts on hostile ground, I stopped feeding the old paths?

Not fight them, cover them, or try to fix or change them - because that's still firing the same neurons.

See them, accept them, then discard them.

That's what discarding meditation is.

A simple, guided meditation method of looking at the stored pictures, the memories and the self-defeating loops, and throwing them away.

Discarding is not the opposite of rewiring your brain. Discarding is rewiring, but it's coming at in reverse. It's like telling the freeway "ok we don't need all these lanes anymore, we need to make space for something else."

In my own experience, that's exactly what it felt like. I didn't need to fight the negative loops anymore - they just became quieter and quieter the more I reflected on myself, and discard the pictures from my mind.

I didn't have to force positivity, it became the natural state of my mind. Furthermore, I have found it much easier now to build positive pathways.

If you've struggled to rewire your brain

Many people who've done this meditation have said the same thing.

That's the part I always felt the "think positive" advice always missed. It never accounted for people like me who were overwhelmed with negativity.

For a mind like mine, letting go and undoing the mess had to come first.

If you're curious what that looks like in practice, come along to a Free Introduction at our centre in Nundah, or join live online.

Your true mind is already there, underneath the pictures.

Let go of what's covering it.

Book Your Free Introduction Now