Episode 2: The Power of Your Thoughts

Podcast Notes:

In this podcast, Body and Mind Life Coach Betsy Jensen talks about how to understand more about your thoughts, and how they create the results in your life.

Podcast Transcript:

This is Betsy Jensen and you are listening to Unstoppable Body and Mind- Episode 2- The Power of your Thoughts.

In this podcast, we learned to upgrade our brain and understand the power of our thoughts, to feel and to create the results we want in our life.  Become the person in control of your healing and make peace with your life.  Become Unstoppable, Body and Mind.

Hello, today I want to talk about the power that thoughts have in our life. Yes, the thoughts that

we think in our brain are very, very powerful.

Thoughts are sentences that happen in our brain. And as you may remember, we have about 60 to 70,000 thoughts per day, at a rate of 300 to 1000 words per minute.  These sentences just constantly go on in our brain. 

So examples of thoughts might be “it’s hot outside today”. That’s not a fact. Because there might be different people that have different ideas of what’s hot. Definitely I know that that’s true. Because what my kids think is hot is maybe in the 70s, or something hot to me would be in the 100s.

Another thought might be “he or she or it, or we or I shouldn’t do that.” So we have a lot of these kinds of thoughts about all of those people, right? And if we think about why our brains work this way, it makes sense for survival.  That we would have some judgments about what people should or shouldn’t do to stay safe, or to be part of our tribe. 

We do have oxytocin, which is a hormone that makes us want to fit in or be part of a group. It’s part of social bonding. And if you think about that, again, in this survival setting, it might mean that we have a better chance of survival if we fit into a group and are accepted. 

So We have a lot of thoughts surrounding acceptance of ourselves and others.  Another thought might be, “he is a toxic person.” So this cannot be proved in a court of law. Although maybe several people agree and use the same word that he is toxic. It could mean different things to different people. And maybe not everyone agrees. So, “he is a toxic person” is a sentence in your brain that you may be choosing to think. And you may be choosing to think it over and over. 

So really, most of what goes on in our brain are just interpretations of reality we see through like a filter or a lens. As we start to question the thoughts we think, and the beliefs we have (which our thoughts we think over and over again), we start to be able to question whether our thoughts and beliefs are serving us and if we want to keep thinking them.

Thoughts are sentences in our brain.  Thoughts are also things.

You might have heard this phrase before in metaphysics or quantum mechanics, but basically the power of thoughts and intention can be shown. And I have a few experiments that I want to tell you about that I find fascinating, that demonstrate the power of intention.

The first of these series of experiments started in the 1800s with the double slit experiments to determine if light was a particle or a wave.  So basically, they set up different scenarios where they tested light to show that for sure, it was 100% wave, and it was.

And then when they reset the experiment to show for certain that light was a particle, it also 100% showed that light was a particle. So why couldn’t it just be both? It’s basically like going north and south at the same time. There’s no way from what we know about waves and particles that it could be both. 

But what they came to from this conclusion was not necessarily the nature of light. It’s still mysterious. But they did come up with the term “observer effect.” It simply means that by observing or measuring something, we influence or change its behavior. So when they were setting up those experiments, observing light different ways, they were actually changing the behavior of the light molecules. 

It makes me laugh because I think of this observer effect with my kids and my pets. There’s something about going to take a picture. And it’s like, even my animals know if I’m trying to take a cute picture or video of them, they automatically move. They stop what they’re doing. So I know it’s just a silly analogy, but I think of that with the observer effect. My trying to measure them/ take a picture of them, changes their behavior. 

The next researcher I want to talk about is Cleve Baxter. In the 1960s, he was interrogation specialist for the CIA. He was an expert with a lie detector. And he decided one day to put electrical sensors, the lie detector sensors on the stem of a plant. The lie detector in humans uses electrophysiology to measure the fight or flight response that humans have. 

So he put it on the plant and he thought about watering the plant and the plant didn’t have any kind of reaction. And then he thought maybe I’ll try to see if I can get some kind of signal elicited from the plant. 

He thought about getting some matches and burning the leaves. What he noticed was immediately when he thought the thought about getting the matches and burning the leaves, the plant registered a response. And continued to respond as he went and got the matches and burned the leaves. But the amazing thing about it was, the response from the plant was initiated with his thought. 

In the 1990s, there was a French researcher, Rene’ Peoc’h, who did experiments with newly hatched chicks.

When baby chicks are born, they imprint on the first moving object that they see. So if it happens to be the mother bird, they imprint on the mother bird, if it’s a human, or even they’ve seen experiments with a balloon where the baby chicks would imprint. 

They made this little robot that had random number generators. So it would have a random number generator to see how far it would go. And then another number to see how far it would turn and then how far it would go again. And it was kind of like I imagine like a Roomba but even more random, I guess.

And when the robot is in the room, it shows a picture of where the robot goes. And it’s just randomly all around in different directions. The chicks that were just hatched, watch the robot and imprinted on the robot. But he didn’t want the chicks following the robot around, he put them in a cage. And notice then that the robot started hovering more around the cage. 

So somehow chicks that had this intention where they wanted to be next to the robot seemed to influence the random number generator, so that the robot not only was more on the side of the room of the chicks, but even tended to hover closer towards the cage. That was the heaviest pattern. 

Now he tried the same experiment with chicks that had not imprinted onto the robot. And the robot just did the normal random movements including both sides of the room, as If there were no chicks there at all. 

And then in the 2000s, Dr. Masaru Emoto, did experiments on water to show how thoughts and intentions impact the physical world. He wrote a book called “The Hidden Message in Water.” And he used Magnetic Resonance analysis and high speed photographs to see the crystal structure of water. He found that water that was exposed to the thoughts of love or compassion, or kind intention made these beautiful crystal molecule formations, and the water that was exposed to fear or negative intent produced formations that were disconnected and disfigured. 

He tried looking and analyzing the water, listening to different music. The water exposed to classical music had these beautiful crystal formations and heavy metal music had that more disjointed effect where it didn’t seem to be a solid formation and didn’t have the fluidity in crystal form. 

He tried experiments just putting words or pictures on bottles of water. The words “love” and “gratitude” and “thank you” produced beautiful crystal formations. But negative words like “evil”, or the phrase “You disgust me” produced those unstructured, disconnected crystal like shards. 

He found even that toxic water that was preyed on would transform into beautiful geometric crystals like that of clean healthy water. 

Now think about the fact that we are mostly water- 50 to 75%. So if changing words that we’re thinking or intent that we’re having, or even words we’re writing onto water in a bottle could change the structure and coherence of that water. Just think about how that could impact packed our body in the water in our body by changing our thoughts.

One example is the self talk that we have to ourselves. And even the words we say out loud might be negative sometimes. I know that definitely for me, I was a very negative person towards myself. And I thought it kind of lighten the mood a little to say, “that was so stupid of me.” Or “I can’t believe I did this”,” I’m such an idiot”, or “I’m just a wreck, I’m a mess.” And I would say this out loud to people. And I would think that 100 times over in my head.

And one thing I did for myself when I was doing this thought work and noticing my thoughts was that I decided to not speak to myself in a negative way again.  So it was a process. I first started by resolving not to say anything derogatory or negative about myself out loud anymore, and I would catch myself sometimes because I’d want to keep going back to that habit, but I resolved to just not say anything out loud that was negative about myself anymore. Sounds easy, but for me, it was hard. 

And then I really worked on just not even having those thoughts in my head.  When I did have them, I would notice them I would move on. But I wouldn’t condemn myself or get mad at myself for having those thoughts. I would just observe that they were there. And as time went on, I got less and less negative about myself, because I wasn’t talking that way. And I wasn’t thinking that way about myself. 

The third interesting fact about thoughts is that thoughts create feelings or vibrations in our body. So in the book, “The Molecules of Emotion” by Dr. Candace Pert, you can read about her discovery of the opiate receptor in the brain. In the 1970s. She goes into a lot more detail and the book about neurochemistry and neurobiology. But I’m going to give you a very generalized overview of how our thoughts create our feelings. 

So when the brain has a thought, there’s an electrical impulse, and the current travels to other nerves, or to other parts of the body through the central nervous system. Now initially, scientists only had tools to measure the electrical signals that nerves produced. So they only studied how the brain worked electrically through the nervous system. 

Neurons or nerve cells connect to each other by having a space called a synaptic cleft that’s between the dendrites or extensions of the neuron. And neurotransmitters are what are released that bridge the gap and relay the nervous signal to the next nerve

cell. 

One example of a neurotransmitter is dopamine. Candice Pert was very influential in discovery and measuring the peptide system, which she called the “second nervous system” and the “chemical brain”. She said this works on a longer timescale, and over a greater distance than the neurological system, and that it’s more ancient and basic to organisms. 

She talks about peptides, these chemicals, as being like “keys.” And on the surface of cells, there are “locks” or the cell receptors. She said cells can have up to 70 receptor molecules. And then that receptor transmits a message into the cell, and then a chain reaction of chemical channels that basically change our mood, our physical activity or behavior. 

One thing I really liked in the molecules of emotion was Candace Pert’s description of the receptor cells. She said they are “keyholes, but constantly moving in a rhythmic vibration. Swaying, dancing and vibrating, waiting to pick up messages carried by other vibrating little creatures also made out of amino acids that come cruising along. They wiggle, shimmy and even hum as they bend and change from one shape to another, often moving back and forth between two or three favorite shapes or confirmations.” 

When the right chemical keys are released from the neurons into the extracellular fluid, they bind, which she calls, “sex on a molecular level”.  This causes the receptors to, “dance and sway.” 

I think what I like a lot about her description is how the molecules of emotion involve a lot of vibration and movement. 

In the book, “Letting Go” by Dr David Hawkins, he measures the vibrational energy in a person’s electromagnetic field when they’re feeling an emotion. It’s called the “Hawkins Scale of Consciousness Levels.”

So he can measure the frequency when we have emotions or even the energy of inanimate objects like books, or art or types of clothing. This emotion scale really helps me understand the physical aspect of my emotions. 

He classifies each emotion by the vibration or frequency. So, 200 is the frequency of “courage,” which is where the vibration turns positive or is more creative rather than destructive. 

The lower vibration emotions are below 200.  So “pride” is 175, “anger” 150, “desire” 125, “fear” 100, “grief” 75.  The lowest vibration levels are “apathy” 50, “guilt” 30 and “shame” 20 So, the lower the vibration of the emotion, the more the body needs to get energy from somewhere.  Either from other people, or taking your own energy in the form of making yourself more tired or creating disease.  

The vibrations under 200 are destructive. Your growth is constricted, or they’re considered emotions of “force” rather than emotions of “power.” He talks specifically in the book about how when operating primarily out of guilt, you could actually have frequent accidents or frequent diseases. 

I know that I was definitely a person that operated out of guilt. I actually almost thought that guilting myself and shaming myself made me a better person. And I definitely had feelings that I was not worthy enough or not good enough or that I needed to be more perfect. I do think the low vibrational energy that I was feeling over and over is what led to my autoimmune disorder, ulcerative colitis. 

So at the vibration of 200, that’s the level of “courage.” And that’s where the frequency becomes “creative” or “expansive.” It involves giving power to ourselves and others, rather than taking it away.

Level 250 is “neutral.” I think that’s interesting, that even neutrality is above some of those negative emotions. But the energy here is more positive. And there’s the beginning of inner confidence. “Acceptance” is at 350, “love” at 500, and “peace” at 600. 

The higher the energy level, the greater your contribution to the world, and the more synchronicity in your life. 

So think about the emotions that you feel regularly. Maybe even start taking some notes over the next few days to see what you’re feeling over and over and maybe what your top three emotions are. And then because we know that our thoughts create our feelings, we can start to analyze the feelings that we’re having over and over what those thoughts might be that are causing them. And we can even think about what feelings we want to have and work backwards, what are the thoughts that we would have to think in order to have the feelings that we want to feel?

So it’s very important to emphasize that our thoughts are the only thing that creates our feelings. We are not taught this. In fact, we are taught the opposite. We are taught that you are able to “hurt my feelings”, that my child can “make me angry”, or that maybe “we shouldn’t do something that would upset someone else.” 

In fact, I went to therapy where they told my husband and I to each make a list of things that we would like the other person to do for each of us to be happy. Now ultimately, I’m the only person who could make myself happy, because my happiness is a feeling that comes from my thoughts. Now someone could have hurt you physically. Or you could have a physical sensation which arises from your body that’s different than a feeling or an emotion. 

So a physical sensation could be something like hunger or fatigue. But again, those could also be emotions that you’re feeling you could feel hunger when you’re bored or you could feel fatigue because you’re thinking a thought about not getting enough sleep, but generally, physical sensations arise from the body, and emotions or feelings come from your thoughts. Now thoughts also can cause pain. So body sensations can cause pain. For example, the nerve endings in your fingertip could react if you got a paper cut, and you do have a lot of nerve endings in your fingertip. 

The pain signal goes from the nerve to the spinal cord. At the spinal cord, there’s a gate control action, where the nerve signal either could be amplified or dampened or completely blocked. If the pain signal does continue to go up the spinal cord, then one of the places it can go is the thalamus in the brain. 

The thalamus is where we process and perceive pain. And it sends signals to several other parts of the brain, including touch, emotion, physical reaction or memory. So the pain we feel can be modified by chemical signals in the spinal cord or brain. 

I can remember a distinct example of a pain signal being modified by external circumstances that were going on. I was having some knee pain when I was in high school and playing

Soccer.  And I remember thinking how cool it was that when I was actually playing and I was intense, and I was in the game probably had a lot of adrenaline and endorphins going on, and I did not even feel my knee pain at all. And then as soon as my name got called for me to come on The field and I started walking off the field no longer running and in the game and my mind switched, I immediately felt the pain in my knee return. 

Now a lot of times people who have chronic pain will also have anxiety about their pain, they might worry that something will hurt if they do it. They might worry about the future, what it will look like when they will get better?  Or if they will get better? 

Anxiety can amplify the pain. So those with higher levels of anxiety are more likely to have chronic pain.  Anxiety about the future can trigger the fight or flight response. 

Our brain has a difficult time distinguishing between something that we’re just thinking of, and actually doing it as an action. There was a study about this in Cincinnati where they had some people going to the gym to work on increasing their bicep strength, and the other group of people just sat on the couch. Imagine themselves doing bicep curl exercises for the same amount of time. So the people who went to the gym increase their bicep strength by 30%. But the people who just sat and envisioned themselves activating their muscles and didn’t actually go to the gym still increase their bicep strength by 15%. 

So again, our thoughts are very powerful in creating our reality in a chemical physical way. Thoughts can influence pain levels. dr. John Sarno says in Divided Mind that many of his patients had increased pain levels that they reported after receiving a diagnosis

In Letting Go, Dr. David Hawkins talks about schizo phrenic patients of his that had different physical ailments depending on the personality that they were projecting. Sometimes allergies or nearsightedness would be in only one of the personalities Pain is generally considered a dangerous signal to our body. 

It may be our brain trying to protect ourselves from a perceived threat, or when something is healing. I also want to teach you how pain can be a signal to check in mentally, and how cleaning up our thinking can start healing our pain. 

The last very important fact about thoughts is that ultimately they create our results. 

I had this quote written down from Buddha. Hopefully it’s really from him, I might have gotten the quote from the internet. But,”all that we are is a result of what we have thought,”- Buddha. 

And I like this quote too, from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “We become what we think about all day long.” 

So we’ve talked about how our thoughts create our emotions which are vibrations, and then what these emotions do is cause us to act. I may see a commercial of an icy cold drink and think “I want that” or “I’m thirsty.” And then I take the action of going to get a drink. 

When I’m feeling the feeling of shame, I may want to hide from people and not engage. So sometimes it’s more of an inaction instead of an action. 

And then the actions that we take are what determine our results. 

So keep in mind that the brain, the reticular, activating system, always wants to prove itself, right. So let’s take the example of being invited to a party where I don’t know many people. And my thought is that if I act weird, then people won’t like me. And the feeling that that creates with me is worry. 

So if I’m going to that party thinking that thought, having the feeling of worry, then the actions that I might take might be more quiet. I might not talk to people as much as I normally would. Or maybe I would even try to draw more attention to myself, or say things that I think people want to hear or not act like myself. 

The result is I end up acting weird or not like myself, because I was worried that people wouldn’t like me. And then I end up acting in a way that’s not really in character with myself anyway. So I’ve kind of set myself up to fail. If they do like me, it’s not even the real version of me that they’re liking. And if they don’t like this weird acting version of me, then I can validate that belief that if I act weird, people won’t like me. 

So overall, I hope that this shows to you a little bit more through the research and examples of how powerful our thoughts can be. And what I want to challenge you to do is to stop any kind of the self talk that’s negative, whether you’re saying it out loud about yourself or whether you’re saying it to yourself in your head. There’s really no upside to the negative self talk. And all it does is create negative feelings and they create negative actions and results.

Thank you so much for listening.  I hope you learned a little bit about your brain today that helps you in your life like it helped me.  Please be sure and subscribe, and leave a review. And of course, be sure and share this podcast with someone you know that wants an Unstoppable Body and Mind.