Change Your Thoughts
Are you a leader who spends time on personal growth?
This growing field is so important to leadership and evolution of the human species. Knowing that you have the ability to change your mind’s DNA is a game changer. There are many levels to being able to alter your DNA. The first step to this is recognizing the influence your thoughts have on your life.
I’d like to invite you to make a list of all the thoughts you experience in the next 3 minutes. Go ahead do it, just 3 minutes.
.
.
.
Great! How did you do? Did you have 3, 5, or 25 thoughts? Congratulations on giving this your best shot.
Neuroscience has found that you and I have 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day, and upwards of 90% of your thoughts are in your subconscious. You don’t even realize you are having them. You are being hijacked by these thoughts over and over and are unaware of it.
This article is not about how to uncover these subconscious thoughts. Know that you can peel the layers off these subconscious thoughts like peeling an onion. One approach is with the model of coaching I use, created over 45 years ago. You can ‘get at’ what is driving your actions and reactions each day. This article is about changing your thoughts through repetition and thus changing your DNA, giving you more experiences that you choose.
As the subconscious mind shapes the brain, it changes the DNA. In our culture, we have long felt it’s in our genes. “It’s just the way it is. There’s nothing I can do about it if it’s in my DNA.” Neuroscience has proven that you can reform your DNA through the thoughts that you have.
So you can actually improve it when you notice all the forms of energy you emit. Your thoughts, your words, your feelings and your actions are energy. They express your belief system and create your life. If everything is energy, then your thoughts and emotions permeate the Universe. Your thoughts can be positive or negative all the while changing your brain through neural-plasticity, thus changing your DNA.
You can change your brain through repetition, in other words through repeated positive mental activity. You are creating your life each and every moment of the day. So it is important to notice what you are noticing.
- Are your thoughts expansive, seeing the possibilities?
OR - Are your thoughts contractive, formulated with condition based thinking?
What if the conditions that exist do not have to control the outcome and instead, a passionate vision controls the outcome? See my last blog post from March 2020 about how one person’s passionate vision helped to bring about the Empire State Building during the height of The Great Depression. You can be more interested in your passionate vision than in the stories held in your DNA. You cannot change your past but you can change your DNA going forward.
You’ll begin to notice this information is popping up in all sorts of places in your life. Neuroscientists are studying the brain differently today through MRI machines. People have been talking about this for years and now the data is available.
In the 1800s, the transcendental movement was developed as a reaction to all that was happening with the Civil War and slavery. These Transcendentalists did not want to talk about what was wrong. They wanted to talk about the possibilities. This brought together a group of some of the great brains of that period such as Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott. They got together in Concord, Massachusetts and started the transcendental movement. The purpose of this movement was to use thoughts to shift the DNA, to shift the negative experiences in the world.
Realizing the potential of this information opens up the possibilities and makes people aware that life is a creation. Staying stuck in the programming and paradigms in your life is a choice. You can use thoughts to move out of a negative mindsets and into an expansive view of what’s possible. Staying in an expansive view and repeating this view reforms your DNA, changes your thought patterns and forms new thought patterns that will lead you in the direction of the life you want to live.
What steps can we take to reform our DNA expansively? Do something every single day that scares you and you have not done before.
- It doesn’t have to be big. It could be walking up to someone who was kind to another person and acknowledge them for it.
- Or something like when you are sitting with a group of people listening to a speaker, and the speaker asks, “Are there any questions?” Many people have questions and are afraid to ask them. Sometimes for me, I’ll sit in an audience, have a question and not be willing to step up and ask because it’s scary. What if people think that’s a stupid question? What if people know that the question was already answered when the speaker spoke, and I wasn’t listening? What if I’m putting myself center stage in an audience with all these people and what are they going to think of me? Are they going to judge my hair? What do they think of my clothes?
All of us worry about many things. Go ahead and be willing to step up and do the thing that you’re most afraid of. I guarantee if there’s a group of 50 people, 25 of them have that exact same question. There is a group mind that actually brings those questions about and you can be the person that is willing to take the chance to step up, step out and ask the question.
Being more interested in the leadership can change DNA and change your mindset.
- Go ahead and make a decision.
- Say, “I am doing this thing.”
- Then take action and do it. Move the focus of control to the center of your being.
Repeating successes builds neural pathways in your brain to have more success. Write successes down and then repeat them. Avoid failure by not focusing on it. It is inevitable that you will notice failure. When you do, shift your focus back to the success stories rather than focusing on the failure which builds neural pathways of failure. You want to build neural pathways to success by catching yourself having success. Give yourself a brain boost. It’s the neuroscience of the win-win and moving forward with your life. Repeat your successes.
If you can dream it, you can be it, do it and have it. Not only watch for opportunities to come up, watch for what you’re longing for, what you’re dreaming of. If you see it in your mind’s eye, you can be it, do it, have it. You have so many possibilities for your life. Playing small does not benefit anyone. Your leadership will make a difference as you stay focused on expansion and shift from negative or contractive thoughts that hijack your leadership. Do something you have never done before and “shift from saying I can’t, to saying, I can!”
How will you use your mind to change your experience? How will you use your thoughts to alter your DNA? You have the option to build the life you desire and to build the vision you know you dream of. This is your human right. Use your mind to shape your experience though your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
