Your Brain And You Pt. 2Show Video Details ↓ Joyce Meyer: You can change your whole life by changing how you look at things. And we're not just talking some kind of mind control thing. This is a principle in the word of God. There will be a battle in the beginning and I'd like us to talk about that a little bit when we come back. Why is it so hard, then, because people want to do the right thing, why is it so hard? But they can do it. We can't make excuses, we have to believe that we can do it and if we'll do that... The Bible says nothing is too hard. Nothing is impossible with God. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And so this thing about free will. You know, we can say well I can't help it. Dr. Caroline Leaf: It's a choice. Joyce Meyer: It's a choice. And so when we say well I just can't exercise or I just can't stay away from sugar or I just can't keep my house clean, or whatever it is. Really, I mean honestly, I found out even more so in the last year than at any other time in my life. You can do anything if you really want to enough. Anything that the Bible tells us to do... Dr. Caroline Leaf: You can do it. Joyce Meyer: We can do it if we really, really want too. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back. Stay with us, we'll be right back. [music] [music] … Narrator: Today get Joyce's book, Battlefield of the Mind along with a four part audio teaching packaged together with a donation of only $40 or more. And for a limited time, we'll also include Dr. Caroline Leaf's book, Who Switched Off My Brain as a free bonus gift. Call 1-800-727-9673 or click joycemeyer.org [silence] Coming up Tuesday. Dr. Caroline Leaf: So every memory you build from birth till death has an emotional component. In fact you cannot hold a thought, or participate without the emotions involved and the emotions are inside the chemicals. So emotions are contained in the chemicals and the chemicals form the memories. So they are completely intertwine and you cannot separate the two. Joyce Meyer: Well welcome back to the program. Today we're discussing one of my very favorite subjects it's the power of our thoughts. Take a look at this testimony of a family whose lives completely changed when they began to change their thinking. [music] Narrator 2: Like many young couples, Jeff and Karen Newton entered marriage eager to start a family together. Unfortunately this did not happen easily and led to years of anguish. Several difficult failed pregnancies and invasive medical treatments brought no children and the tormenting thoughts were debilitating. Karen Newton: You're just on a journey with infertility, it's heart breaking and it can get pretty sad and very isolating. People don't talk about it so then you feel like you're just in this hole by yourself. You're just this terrible lady and doing these terrible things to yourself and look at what you're doing to your marriage and look at what you're doing to your family and you're so hateful. And then once you get pregnant you hear you're going to lose the baby and it's going to be awful and you're never going to have this family and you know, all the bad horrible thoughts. So it was a pretty dark time. Narrator 2: In Karen's diligent search for answers, she came across the Joyce Meyer book, Battlefield of the Mind. Karen Newton: When I came to the part about how we can choose our thoughts, I literally went what? Are you serious? I can actually do that? Wow that's amazing. So I started climbing up out of that hole. You know, one thought at a time and one word at a time and realizing that I can speak things and that changes my thoughts. And then you start speaking God's word which is the truth and that just brings you up even higher. Jeff Newton: Of course with our infertility challenges you've got all this energy and all this negativity and you don't really know what to do with it. So, you know, Karen really dug into the word and pulled out scriptures that really applied to our situation. Narrator 2: As the Newtons continued building their trust in the Lord, God opened doors which allowed them to adopt two baby girls. Once again, fears and negative thoughts tried to strangle their faith. But this time, Karen was prepared to see through the lies. Karen Newton: The thoughts were at that time, you know you're not the real mom and you could never love this baby like you're own baby and you know, the fear factor of, oh, they're going to come and steal your baby from you. None of that came true. Narrator 2: Danielle and Rebecca were a joy to their parents but more challenges occurred when there was a health scare with Rebecca early on. Karen Newton: We had had to take her to the hospital because she was sick and they thought she was having delusions and they thought she had meningitis. Narrator 2: Rebecca was having night terrors, unaware of her surroundings or actions and unable to wake up. Rebecca Newton: Praise Jesus, amen. Karen Newton: The family began praying the word of God together and teaching the girls to speak out God's promises during those episodes. Jeff Newton: We'd do the morning lessons, you know, breakfast and prayers at night and when the night terrors and bad dreams happen, we always tell them to call on God to get through that, you know to lean on God, to trust God. Narrator 2: By speaking aloud Psalm 91 and Bible scriptures for sweet sleep, both girls rest peacefully now. The whole family has learned to apply the word of God to whatever challenges arise and watch God transform the situations. Karen Newton: There is no magic to it, you have to just keep choosing to step up and keep choosing to think positive. And keep choosing to speak God's word, and just let go of those negative thoughts because they can bring you down and they just, you know, you don't want to go there. So I'm not going there anymore. [laughter] Joyce Meyer: Well Dr. Leaf, I'm sure that you're just like me, you've dealt with lots of people just like this family whose whole lives have changed because they finally realized they had stinking thinking that was making their lives stink. So, you're actually a researcher? Dr. Caroline Leaf: That's right. Joyce Meyer: You talk about how your brain chemicals affect your body and how those chemicals are affected by your thoughts. And so I think a lot of times we think the mind and the brain are the same thing, but they're actually not. How do people start turning this around and why is it such a battle to turn your thoughts around? Dr. Caroline Leaf: Well maybe if I explain it like this, there are two types of emotions, you get your fear-based emotions and your faith-based emotions. Out of your fear-based emotions comes all the negative stuff, the unforgiveness, doubts, anxiety, all that kind of thing. Now out of those fear-based emotions, they'll go in your brain in the same way as faith-based emotions. A faith-based emotion is the good one, whatever. Our body's designed for faith. Our bodies have been chemically and neurologically and electrically designed for the faith emotions, not the fear emotions. Joyce Meyer: Right. Dr. Caroline Leaf: So all the chemicals... For emotional experience you have an electrical, chemical combination that responds to that. So certain chemicals are released if you're joyous or you're happy. That's what you were designed for. But if you have a fear-based emotion, fear enforces virtual forces as you know, and they are opposite. So either you're receiving on a fear or faith wavelength. And then you process that into your brain and processes through your 5 senses basically. Your 5 senses are the contact between the external world and the internal world of your mind. And those 5 senses all go up through the doorway of the brain, which is an area of the brain and pass into like a central relay station and that relay station literally sends, I call it a chemical factory, because that's where all the chemicals are stored. And it shoots up this waft of information into the existing network. So if you could imagine the outside of your brain, all the outside I'm pointing too now. The brain is about the size of your two fists, so the outer section of your brain, on the left and the right side, contain all these trees and they look like forests. In fact the scientists call them the magic trees of the mind because that's literally what they are. Now as you're listening to me now, you're literally taking in this information through your doorway and it shoots up into this area of your brain and you go through a process and actually grow branches to accommodate every word that you select from what I'm saying. The other half of your brain performs 400 billion actions per second... Joyce Meyer: 400 billion per second? Dr. Caroline Leaf: Per second. And we're conscious of 2000. So there is a huge amount of work going on underneath that we don't even see. And that's where the battle rages. Because this battle, that breeze that's shot from chemical factory up into this existing network. Everything from conception, from conception right to when you die, to who you are today is stored in those trees of the brain. So you've got all these huge amounts of memories in your brain. Joyce Meyer: That's why that gives you these weird things. Sometimes it's kinda like, where did that come from? Dr. Caroline Leaf: Exactly, as though something flowed through there. So as your listening information flows through and activates. So that's why you can listen to something and you get this reminder because the existing, the incoming information is looking for an existing memory that's similar. And if it happens to land, if it's information about something negative, something that stimulates a toxic information because it's a fear-based, fear-driven input it will then go and land on a similar toxic memory and just put more branches, make it bigger, then it can take up. I always use the example of sleeping beauty and that big winding thorn tree around her. The more attention that you pay to that memory, the bigger it gets. So if you haven't taken account that it's gone in and made that thorn as it goes through into the brain will activate that memory. Now that existing toxic memory will then cause the brain to secrete the wrong amount of chemicals. The easiest way to understand this is that, you have to have a chemical secreted for the memory to build. You can't build... The chemical is like a glue. The chemical however, this will be interesting for you because you like the emotional side, those chemicals don't just help build the memory, but they carry the emotion. So they're physically inside that little bubble carrying that emotion. So what every emotion is activated, if it's anxiety or whatever, that message is sent back to the chemical factory and the wrong, if it's fear-based, the wrong amount of chemical is secreted. So if you're making a curry dish for example, if you put the right amount then it's great, but if you put the wrong amount in, same stuff, but the wrong amount, it destroys the whole dish. Now that's what's happening with fear-based memories. If you're putting a fear-driven one in, the chemical will be released in the wrong quantity and that excess chemical will then go back into the brain, the branch will grow and the excess chemical shoots out as a thorn. |