You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter
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| The Placebo Anatomy of a Thought If the placebo effect is a function of how a thought can change physiology—we could call it mind over matter—then perhaps we should examine our thoughts and how they interact with our brains and our bodies. Let’s begin with our own personal daily thoughts. We are creatures of habit. We think somewhere between 60,000 to thoughts in one day and 90 percent of those thoughts are exactly the same ones we had the day before. We getup on the same side of the bed, go through the same routine in the bathroom, comb our hair in the same way, sit in the same chair as we eat the same breakfast and hold our mug in the same hand, drive the same route to the same job, and do the same things we know how to do so well with the same people (who push the same emotional buttons) everyday. And then we hurry up and go home so that we can hurry up and check our email so that we can hurry up and eat dinner so that we can hurry up and watch our favorite TV shows so that we can hurry up and brush our teeth in the same bedtime routine so that we can hurry up and go to bed at the same time so that we can hurry up and do it allover again the next day. If it sounds as though I’m saying that we live a huge part of our lives on autopilot, that’s exactly right. Thinking the same thoughts leads us to make the same choices. Making the same choices leads to demonstrating the same behaviors. Demonstrating the same behaviors leads us to create the same experiences. Creating the same experiences leads us to produce the same emotions. And those same emotions then drive the same thoughts. Take a look at Figure 3.2 and follow the sequence of how our same thoughts create the same reality as usual. 73 How we create the same reality by thought alone. As a result of this conscious or unconscious process, your biology stays the same. Neither your brain nor your body changes at all, because you’re thinking the same thoughts, performing the same actions, and living by the same emotions—even though you maybe secretly hoping your life will change. You create the same brain activity, which activates the same brain circuits and reproduces the same brain chemistry, which affects your body chemistry in the same way. And that same chemistry signals the same genes in the same ways. And the same gene expression creates the 74 same proteins, the building blocks of cells, which keep the body the same (I’ll go into more on proteins later. And since the expression of proteins is the expression of life or health, your life and your health stay the same. Now take a look at your life fora moment. What does this mean for you? If you’re thinking the same thoughts as yesterday, more than likely, you’re making the same choices today. Those same choices today are leading to the same behaviors tomorrow. The same habitual behaviors tomorrow are producing the same experiences in your future. The same events in your future reality are creating the same predictable emotions for you all the time. And as a result, you’re feeling the same every day. Your yesterday becomes your tomorrow—so in truth, your past is your future. If you agree with me up to this point, then we could say that the familiar feeling I just described is “you”—your identity or your personality. It’s your state of being. And it’s comfortable, effortless, and automatic. It’s the known you who, quite frankly, is living in the past. When you keep this redundant process going on a daily basis (because you wake up in the morning and anticipate and remember the feeling of “you” everyday, in time that known state of being can drive only the same thoughts that will influence you to crave the same automatic cycle of choices, behaviors, and experiences in order to arrive back at that familiar feeling that you think of as you So everything stays the same about your personality. If this is your personality, then your personality creates your personal Download 5.46 Mb. Share with your friends:
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