Thoughts Become Things
The Tenth Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery™
My friend Max Lucado said on my podcast once, “Just because you have a thought, it doesn’t mean you have to think it.”
The reason you should take Max’s advice seriously is that, as we discussed in recent posts, not every thought you think is true, and not everything you feel is a fact. Some of the things you thought were ingrained by genetics or past history are actually just responses you’ve given your brain permission to turn into synapses, so you are no longer required to keep them if they’re not helping you.
But here’s something critical to note: although not every thought or feeling that pops into your head is true or requires a response, every thought you decide to think and act on turns into a real thing in the world.
That’s why our tenth commandment is this:
I must believe that thoughts become things
(The Tenth Commandment of Self-Brain Surgery)
Read it out loud:
I must believe that thoughts become things
II Corinthians 10:5 tells us to “take every thought captive,” and we’re going to learn the self-brain surgery procedure to do this in the coming weeks. The reason scripture gives us this instruction, though, is that once a thought is given life by you choosing to react to it, it becomes something real in the world.
Every potential thought (of the up to 80,000 thoughts that pop into your head every day) that you choose to think about is transformed from a mental event into a physical event in your brain.
The science of how thoughts in your mind turn into neuronal activity in your brain is in its infancy, and is finding its way forward more quickly in quantum physics labs than in neuroscience experiments. This shouldn’t surprise us, since we now know that quantum physics better describes the activity of particles than classical physics does (after all, the brain is made up of cells, which are made of molecules, which are made of particles). Thus, the math that helps us understand how particles behave would naturally also help us understand how brains work.
If mind and brain are different, and I hope that I’ve convinced you that they are, then quantum physics also describes how mental activity (thinking) turns into brain activity.
So, if you’re willing to buy into the idea that your mind is in charge of most of what your brain does, then you need to know a bit of physics to make sense of what’s really happening when you think. Mental activity (energy) turns into an electrical event in your brain (neurons fire impulses down their axons). That energy-to-matter conversion is the same phenomenon Einstein described in his famous E=mc⌃2 equation from the 1905 paper in which he gave us special relativity and undid 300 years of Western thought since Newton all at once.
So, in a physically real sense, when you select a thought to believe and react to, you are allowing a real-world chain of events to begin that results in the following things happening in this example:
Thought (energy) leads to neuronal activity (electrical event)
Neuronal activity leads to neurotransmitter release (chemical event)
Neurotransmitter release leads to hormonal release at the pituitary gland and into the bloodstream, which then stimulates adrenal and other glands to release hormones such as cortisol (biological event)
Cortisol and other hormones act on organs and tissues to cause changes in blood pressure and heart rate, other physical reactions (physiological events)
Physiological changes cause up- or down-regulation of gene expression in your DNA (epigenetic event)
Epigenetic changes affect the baseline cortisol levels and stress responses of offspring, and in living children and others around us via limbic resonance, mirror neurons, and quantum entanglement* (historical events in other lives and generations)
(* We will discuss limbic resonance, mirror neurons, and quantum entanglement in a later post and podcast)
So, in a literal way, every thought you think sets off a chain reaction of:
Energy to matter to neurochemistry to biology to physiology to epigenetics to history.
Does that convince you of the importance of being careful with your thoughts?
I hope so. Next week, we begin learning the self-brain surgery procedures you need to know so that you have a plan for how to deal with the thoughts you do think.
But for today, spend some time realizing how important it is to know this one truth, and say it with me:
I must believe that thoughts become things.
Here’s a whole podcast on this idea.
It’s not just a good idea, it’s the tenth commandment of Self-Brain Surgery™:
I must believe that thoughts become things
Reply to this post and or leave a voicemail and tell me if you’re practicing self-brain surgery, and how it’s helping you.
Be sure to check out last week’s lesson if you missed it.
Announcement: We’re starting The School of Self-Brain Surgery™ soon. We’re testing the school with some volunteers now, and our second training session is soon. Once we work all the tech kinks out we’ll be ready to go live with students from all over the world! If you’re interested in knowing more about The School, click here to be notified when it’s ready to go live.
We’re going all in on believing that we have the tools to change our minds and change our lives. Living from a mind-down perspective changes everything, and it helps us harness the transforming changes to our lives that the Bible promises in Romans 12.
The neuroscience is on your side, my friend.
And the good news is, you can start today.
By the way, if you think these lessons are valuable, please consider sharing this with friends. If you share with three or more people and they sign up, you can get free access to my paid subscriber content!
If you need a treatment plan to help you overcome any kind of trauma, tragedy, or massive thing in your life, check out my latest book, Hope Is the First Dose.
Lisa and I are praying for you.
Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope),
Lee
Psalm 71:14 ("As for me, I will always have hope.")
From the banks of the North Platte river on Moon River Ranch in Nebraska, USA