Changing Your Thoughts Changes Your Life
Research has shown that optimism not only increases your quality of life but can actually help you live longer. Which is all fine and well, if you’re naturally an optimist. But what if you’re a glass-half-empty kind of person? Good news: you can change your mindset.
In an article in Stanford Report, Dr. Jacob Towery, adjunct clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry, discussed how shifting your mindset can improve your physical health, decrease stress, and help you become more resilient in the face of challenges.
Mindsets simplify our thoughts
Mindsets are a set of assumptions we make about a topic which we then use to guide our behavior. For example, you may believe being diagnosed with cancer is catastrophic or starting a diet will be an exercise in deprivation and unhappiness.
While mindsets can be helpful for sifting through information so you can manage expectations, they can also be maladaptive, getting in the way of relationships and growth. If you grow up in an unstable home, you may develop the mindset that people cannot be trusted. While this view may help you survive a challenging, neglectful situation in childhood, it can outlive its usefulness, getting in the way of forging relationships later in life.
“The good news is mindsets are highly changeable,” says Dr. Towery, “and if you are willing to learn the technology of changing your mindset and defeating your distorted thoughts, you can have significantly more happiness.”
Your worldview is shaped by either a fixed or growth mindset
Stanford researcher and professor Carol Dweck, Ph.D., coined the terms “fixed” and “growth” mindsets to describe our beliefs about our ability to change. If you are convinced your strengths and weaknesses are fixed, you may avoid areas of weakness, believing it is fruitless to try to change them. Hopelessness can lead to avoidance.
In her book, Mindset, Dweck explains how our thoughts shape our actions, either expanding or limiting our possibilities: “…as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another — how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.”
Mindsets affect our physical reality
Our minds and our bodies affect one another in ways we are only beginning to understand. We are physiologically affected by how we think and what we feel about our circumstances.
In the world of medicine, Dr. Towery explains, “There is a powerful phenomenon in medicine known as the placebo effect, in which if someone believes they are going to derive benefits from taking a particular medication, they often do. In fact, regardless of the disease or condition, about 30-40% of people can have significant improvement in their symptoms even when taking a placebo (sugar) pill, if they believe that the pill is going to be helpful.”
“Equally fascinating,” he adds, “is the ‘nocebo-effect,’ a psychological response based on a person’s expectations around side effects. When a physician emphasizes the potential side effects of a medicine, and the patient believes they will develop those symptoms, even if given a sugar pill, these patients can develop the adverse side effects, just based on what their mind expects.”
Our mindset can dramatically impact our experience of life.
Mindsets are changeable
Far from being static, our brains are neuroplastic – meaning neural networks can grow and change your whole life long. Just as the physical brain itself can change, our thoughts need not be set in stone.
By trying new things and adopting new perspectives, we can form new neural connections – or mindsets – any day we choose.
“The exciting news about mindsets is that they are absolutely changeable,” says Dr. Towery. “The entire field of cognitive therapy is based on the idea that thoughts determine feelings and that you can learn powerful techniques to modify distorted thoughts and self-defeating beliefs.”
He recommends reading the book Feeling Great by David Burns, MD, and doing all the writing sections. And “a competent cognitive therapist can also teach you how to change your mindset, even in a small number of sessions,” he adds.
In his work as a psychiatrist, Dr. Towery enjoys helping people transform thoughts like “I’m a failure” to more realistic ones like “I didn’t perform well, but I can better prepare next time and it will probably go much better.”
It’s good news indeed that any day of our lives, we have the capacity to change our thoughts, which in turn, changes our experience as we face challenges and setbacks in life.
Read the full article here.
Photo by Joseph Greve on Unsplash