Rewiring Your Brain 30 Day Challenge
The Rewiring Your Brain 30 Day Challenge is a method I have used successfully to improve my brain function and overall health. I now sleep better, have improved my memory, reduced my FM symptoms, lost weight, and have a much more positive mindset! This article will explain how the brain works, why the challenge works, and how to do the challenge.
Rewiring your brain is not as difficult as you may think. I’m not referring to making a decision, I mean actually change how your mind works. There are lots of things we may not like about ourselves. We may find ourselves too anxious, too depressed, can’t sleep at night, don’t like our bodies, or maybe a chronic illness is holding us back. Did you know your brain had the power to change all of that while you sleep?
Your mind is made up of neural pathways that store your thoughts and experiences. Whatever you have experienced whether it is through sight, sound, taste, smell, or touch, our brain stores it in the neural pathways of the subconscious. The deeper the pathway, the stronger the belief.
How I Learned About Rewiring Your Brain
I’m part of a group called the College of Confidence. It’s run by Trish Blackwell. She is an amazing woman. She’s my mentor and my friend. She’s changing the lives of so many people by teaching them how to choose the positive over the negative. In my years with her, she recommended a book by Doctor Joseph Murphy called The Power Of The Subconscious Mind.
I had actually come in contact with this information previously through reading Doctor Carolyn Leaf’s book called The Gift In You. It was 15 years ago that I read her book, but I wasn’t ready then to absorb the information that was in it. Now with Doctor Murphy’s information, and the other information I’ve learned from Trish, my mind’s been opened to so many possibilities!
Why Am I Sharing This With You?
In the College of Confidence private Facebook group I commented on one of the other members posts, about the 30 day challenge I did to help restructure my health and my brain. I mentioned how effective it had been for me, and to my surprise there are quite a few members that were really excited about this information and wanted to learn more!
I’m sharing this because I want to help people. That’s the whole goal of Andrea Gamero Coaching and Nopainallgain.ca; to help others improve their health naturally, without medication, so that they can live the best life that they possibly can.
How The Brain Works.
Now, I am not a neuroscientist. I have done some research on this, but I am not a doctor. I do however love to learn, which is something I hope I never lose. Around 15 years ago, I read Dr Leaf’s book and watched some of her interviews on the topic. I was intrigued about how she described the neuroplasticity of the brain.
A lot of people in our culture these days say “I was born this way, I can’t change. That’s simply impossible. This is just the way I am. It’s in my DNA, I can’t change.” Well, that’s not true at all in any sense, because we are created by God with very incredible brains and bodies that are able to heal themselves when given the proper conditions.
What is Neuroplasticity?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557811/
One of the amazing abilities of the brain is called neuroplasticity. It has been defined as “the ability of the nervous system to change its activity in response to intrinsic and external stimuli by reorganizing its structure, functions, or connections after injuries such as a stroke or traumatic brain injury.“
This is really exciting on so many levels! The good news is you don’t have to have a stroke or traumatic brain injury to help restructure your brain. You just need the will to try and do it. So how the brain works is that you’ve got all these little neural pathways that go through it. Every time you have a thought, anytime you smell something, see something, hear something, or experience anything, your brain records it. Each time you go over the same information, or have the same feeling more than once, that groove in your brain, in that little neural pathway, it gets deeper and deeper, and deeper.
What You Feed Will Grow!
As we all know, what you feed will grow. If you’re into gardening, have pets, or have kids; If you feed it, it’s going to grow! If you don’t feed it, it’s going to shrink, shrivel and die. It’s the same thing for the thoughts that go on in our minds. You can choose the thoughts you want to think. For some thoughts you can just say, “yeah, see you later you don’t belong here,” and let them go.
Every time you have a thought you want to save, and say, “yeah, I want to believe that. I want that to become my reality.,” your brain will record it. When you keep thinking that thought, that groove is going to get deeper and deeper. These deepening thought grooves are going to become your default thought. So the thicker that neural pathway, or groove that goes through your brain is, the more it’s going to be that first thought that comes up!
The opposite is true for every time you have a negative thought that you push away. You will start thinking about that other thought less and less. That neural pathway is going to get lighter and lighter, until it’s no longer that default thought that comes into your brain. Eventually is will disappear completely.
The Love Tree and Fear Tree
In Doctor Carolyn Leaf’s book, she describes the love tree or the fear tree. She talks about the roots being like your neural pathways. The more you feed those roots with positive thoughts, the more you’re going to have a brain that’s like a lovely healthy green tree.
If you keep feeding the negative thoughts into your roots, (neural pathways in your brain) you’ll get results that look like a dead tree. Instead of being a thriving, happy person, you’re going to be miserable, sad, fearful, scared of everything, full of anxiety, and depression. I want to emphasize that there is nothing wrong with that. That’s where I came from when I started with Trish Blackwell in the College of Confidence. I’d been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, but through learning new thought patterns and putting them into practice, my depression has been gone for more than two years now. Even my anxiety is controllable, and I can actually talk myself out of it!
My Experience With The Rewiring Your Brain 30 Day Challenge.
During my depression, I was on medication which was very, very damaging. I honestly thought I was going into early onset dementia (in my mid 40’s), because I was forgetting so much. On one occasion when I was driving, I had a mini seizure and it was very scary. I was really worried about what was going on in my brain. Trish recommended the Doctor Joseph Murphy book and told me to just take what I could from it. He’s got some really great concepts about the neural pathways, the subconscious, and how it works. It was the information about what you feed the subconscious while you sleep that really caught my attention. He claimed that you could change what happens during the day, with what you think about at night.
The Importance of Sleep
Your brain’s job at night is to orchestrate the healing processes in your body. That’s why sleep is so incredibly important. If you want to lose weight, decrease your diabetes level, improve many chronic illnesses, you need to get a really good eight hours of sleep. The latest you want to be in bed is 10:00pm. Studies have shown that you get better sleep in those two hours before midnight, than you do from midnight until eight in the morning. So if you can be in bed by nine or ten at night, that’s really optimal, but as long as you’re getting eight hours of uninterrupted sleep, you should see results.
In that eight hours is when your body can start healing damaged cells, and start renewing itself so you can experience optimum health. The last thought, the last thing you watched, or were listening to before you went to sleep is what your subconscious brain is going to work on through the night. If you’ve ever watched a horror movie just before going to bed, and then you dreamt about all night was people chasing you with knives? Well, surprise, surprise, that’s why.
Rewiring Your Brain 30 Day Challenge
To get the most from this 30 day challenge:
- Before you go to bed you’re going to write in your journal (and speak out loud while you’re writing) your paraphrase about what you want to change. You want this to be the last thing you do before you shut off the light.
- As you’re going to sleep, keep letting that thought repeat in your brain so your subconscious can work on making it a reality.
- That’s what God created your brain to do for you. He gave it that much power!
My Big Epiphanies
One of the big epiphanies I had from Doctor Murphy, was that the thoughts you put out towards others comes back to you. Your subconscious brain can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what’s not.
It’s just recording all the information it receives. So if you’re telling your brain “I’m an idiot,” it’s going to start producing those results in your daily conscious life. If you start putting positive things in your subconscious, then it’s going to bring proof of that into your daily life.
For instance, I find it hard to forgive, but in the Bible Jesus tells us we have to forgive if we want to be forgiven. The forgiving is not for the other person. The forgiveness is for you. When you forgive the other person, you stop rehashing what they did to you and you can move on to better thoughts. So forgiveness is beneficial for both of you. Just because you forgave the other person, you don’t have to forget what they did to you or allow them to keep doing it to you. The important thing is for you forgive them so you can move on and have peace.
Rewiring Your Brain Power Phrases
To help myself fall asleep:
I am completely relaxed from head to toe, and I freely forgive everyone.
I wish them success, wealth, joy and good health.
When I wrote/said this at night my subconscious understood that I was actually completely relaxed from head to toe. That was my subconscious clue that it was time to go to bed, so it created the feelings of sleepiness. Great, I can go to sleep now! By wishing those things for other people, it’s like wishing those thoughts on yourself. Over time you actually start to forgive them a little bit more and a little bit more. Before you know it you’ve forgiven them completely. That calm you feel from forgiving them actually helps you fall asleep, because you aren’t thinking about what they did to you anymore.
To help heal my brain I would write and say out loud:
My brain is perfectly and wonderfully made by God. It can heal itself and it’s healing more every day. I can feel it getting stronger and the synapses are connecting better. I will be able to remember things more and more every day, and I will be able to access the information I need when I need it.
For my weight, I would say:
My body is healthy and strong. It is healing itself more and more every day. I will be the example of healing that no one can explain. I lose weight easily, around 2 lbs a week with no effort.
The Results
I would repeat these power phrases every night. What I found really quite amazing is that by saying these and writing this every night for 30 days, I would go to bed with such a feeling of peace and calm, I was able to fall asleep. Every night I’d fall asleep easier and earlier, because every time I would start writing this, my body was like, “oh, okay, it’s time for bed” and I would be able to go to sleep. I also found within a week my memory started to improve. Incredibly my fibromyalgia symptoms, the pain and the different issues I was having with it, was easing off as well.
Did I lose 2 pounds a week? No, not exactly, but I started to get the urge to exercise more. I also got a little bit more picky with what I was eating, and wouldn’t just throw anything into my mouth. My cravings shifted to healthier choices. So the cumulative effects of that was, yes, I did start losing weight. Maybe not 2 pounds a week, but I was losing weight.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
Anytime you hear a negative thought coming through your mind, any anxious or self-deprecating thoughts, you start repeating your power phrases. Do this at least three times a day, and of course every night. The reason you want to write it out and say it at the same time is that it really helps to entrench it in your mind and in your body, into your subconscious. When you write it, you’re using your tactile senses, and you’re using your sight. When you speak it, you’re also using hearing. So the more senses that you can incorporate, (out of the five senses) the more your body and your mind is going to be able to remember it.
Surprisingly, My acting teachers would even say to do it. They said that if you can get on your treadmill while you’re memorizing lines, you’ll learn them faster. The words gets into your body, into your muscle, with the more senses you get involved.
Sounds too good to be true?
I was sceptical at first too. I didn’t see how this could possibly be true, but I decided to do it for 30 days. What could I lose? After 30 days, I was remembering so much more, it was obvious that my brain was truly healing itself. When I fell out of the habit and things started to deteriorate, I would just start doing it again. It would get results faster every time!
So bottom line is this works! It may seem out there, it may seem crazy, but you know what? It works. Our brains were created to be able to fix our bodies, to heal, and to do incredible things beyond what we could possibly imagine! So if you have something you’re dealing with, like anxiety for instance, you could start with something like,
I am fearfully and wonderfully made, so I do not have to worry about tomorrow. I can do more than I possibly believe I’m capable of. With God’s help, everything is going to be fine.
or
I may feel anxious at the moment, but my brain is working on that and I know everything is going to work out. God is protecting me and everything is going to work out.
Tips for Creating Power Statements/Phrases
When you’re coming up with your power statements, you don’t want to use negative talk of any kind. Mentioning anxiety is going to cause you to start feeling anxious. You could try saying, “I feel anxious, but I’m not an anxious person.” If you say I am anxious, your subconscious says, “oh, since I’m anxious. I’ve got to have worried thoughts.”
Now, if you it’s a feeling of being anxious, then your brain says, “oh, well, I don’t need to feel anxious right now. Things are fine. I don’t need to worry about that. It’s being taken care of.” Then your anxious feelings subside. So you need to be careful with your power phrases, you want to keep them as positive as possible.
To learn more, you can watch my video explaining the Rewiring Your Brain 30 Day Challenge. The effects this technique has had on my life are nothing short of amazing. As your thoughts start to change, you can always tweak your power phrases and come up with something completely new. You can also start working on something else you have wanted to change as well. Recently my husband complimented me on how much I’ve changed. I challenge you to give it a try and let me know how it has changed your life!!!
One-on-one coaching is a great way to start building your confidence, and improve your health! I help people with Fibromyalgia and chronic illness manage their symptoms with ease, so they never feel held back again! Click here for an application form and I would be happy to help you in your journey. You can also contact me at andrea@nopainallgain.ca or check out my website: www.nopainallgain.ca
