Rewire Your Brain: Think Your Way to a Better Life

E
in FEED highlights the importance of making a continued 
effort
until you fi nd it effortless. ”
Maria swallowed hard but did volunteer to stay on the committee. 
In fact, she proposed an expansion of the last project. I compli-
mented her on her initiative and suggested that she volunteer to 
chair the subcommittee. She said, “ Are you kidding? ”
“ What do you think? ” I retorted. 
She nodded yes, noting that she got it. 
Maria ’ s newly developed strategy required that she generate a 
moderate degree of stress to promote neuroplastic changes. Later, 
obstacles and unfortunate situations would naturally arise on their 
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own, but she would be prepared for them because she was inoculated 
by a moderate degree of stress through volunteering for projects. 
That challenge came soon enough. One of her subcommittee 
members disagreed with one of her proposals. Although there was no 
way of determining his motivation for the criticism, Maria reacted as 
if he were being critical of her personally. I suggested that she stick 
to the facts and use his critique as an opportunity to examine her 
idea. By shifting to the content of his critique rather than wondering 
about its motives, she activated her left PFC. This allowed her to 
come up with a logical strategy to modify her idea while still retain-
ing a moderate degree of stress. Had she remained in a defensive 
posture and felt overwhelmed by a presumed personal attack, she 
would have pushed her panic button and activated her amygdala. 
The experience with her committee member and several subse-
quent similar experiences provided her with opportunities to rewire 
her brain. Maria became increasingly more resilient. She found 
herself craving new experiences instead of shrinking from them.
Attitude and Resiliency 
Resilient people turn frustrating situations into opportunities 
to learn something new. Although they don ’ t want bad things to 
happen, they adapt to bad circumstances by focusing on hidden 
opportunities. For example, you may run into fi nancial problems 
and have to change your job to one that pays more. You were pretty 
comfortable in the old position, so switching means that you have to 
expand yourself in areas that you had never explored. After pushing 
yourself out of your comfort zone, you may actually fi nd the new 
area to be more rewarding than the old one was. 
Buddhists identify attachment as the root of all suffering. (The 
word
attachment
in this context has nothing to do with bonding.) 
They point out that when you become attached to a very specifi c 
outcome and it doesn ’ t occur, you suffer disappointment. You may 
be lucky enough to have some approximation of your expectations 
occur, but when it does, do you really enjoy it? The chances are that 
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you are too busy anticipating yet another future specifi c expectation. 
Since things generally don ’ t occur in the way that you eagerly antici-
pate, you can either roll with whatever does occur or bemoan the 
fact that what you had expected didn ’ t happen. In each situation, 
you script yourself out of being present and enjoying where you are 
when you are there. 
It ’ s much easier to deal with disappointment if the failed expec-
tation was simple and within normal human experience, but what 
about when truly bad things happen? There are people who have 
experienced great trauma, yet with resiliency they have made new 
lives for themselves. I think of my own Armenian ancestors, who 
survived the genocide perpetrated by the Turks and made new, 
fl ourishing lives for themselves in the United States and France. 
Although they never forgot what they had endured, they didn ’ t sit 
around passively waiting for better things to happen. Instead, they 
made things happen. They became successful in their adopted 
countries by crafting careers and building new families. I continue 
to be inspired by their resiliency. 
Resiliency consists of maintaining hope in the face of adversity 
that things will eventually get better, while doing what it takes to 
make those things happen. This type of optimism forms part of 
what is called emotional intelligence. In fact, optimism is good not 
only for your mental health but also for your physical health. In one 
study, people who were assessed to be either pessimistic or optimis-
tic were assessed again thirty years later for their health. Pessimism 
was found to be a poor risk factor for physical and mental health 
and blunting longevity. 
Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania has suggested 
that pessimism can have a negative effect on your health for the 
following reasons: 
•
You believe that nothing you do makes a difference.
•
You have more negative life events by reacting to neutral events 
negatively and creating more negative events because wasted 
and misdirected efforts.
•
It depresses the immune system.
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Pessimists essentially paint themselves into a depressing corner. 
Their negative thinking allows them no opportunity to feel good 
about anything that happens in their lives. 
If you focus on what something isn ’ t, you block your perception 
of what it is. In such cases, you ’ re hung up on a negative frame of 
reference. Let ’ s say that you expect things to turn out a specifi c way 
and they don ’ t turn out that way. Instead of appreciating how things 
turned out, you ’ re stuck on the fact that they didn ’ t turn out the way 
you hoped. This dilemma is somewhat similar to what psychologists 
call
cognitive dissonance,
which means that once you develop an 
opinion about something, it ’ s diffi cult to hold an opinion contrary 
to it. 
You can break out of these categorical mind-sets. For example, my 
wife and I recently drove through Elko, Nevada, on a long road trip 
and were struck by the number of run - down casinos and businesses 
there. We began to form the opinion that Elko was a sad town, and 
we wondered about continuing the many more miles to our destina-
tion. Then we found an interesting little gem of a restaurant called 
The Flying Fish. The next morning we stopped in a coffeehouse 
called Cowboy Joe ’ s and were captivated by the magnifi cent Ruby 
Mountains. Thus, we experienced Elko as an interesting place not 
because that was obvious but because we looked deeper. If you 
allow yourself to be open to a wider mind-set, any place can be 
interesting and worth your time. 
Optimism is more than just seeing the glass as half full. Cultivating 
an optimistic attitude might seem like a broad jump for you if you 
are experiencing a high degree of stress, because you might think 
that there is nothing to feel optimistic about. However, a sense of 
optimism will emerge if you look past your current situation to focus 
on possibilities and potentialities, thus unlocking yourself from a 
self - limiting attitude. A stressful situation presents an opportunity 
to explore new ways of doing things. By focusing on possibilities, 
you can see more than a potential light at the end of the tunnel. The 
light doesn ’ t have to be at the end of the tunnel; it can illuminate an 
opportunity wherever you are. 
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Shifting Your Affective - Style Set Point 
Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin is a pioneering 
contributor to research on cerebral asymmetry and mood. He has 
shown that people who overactivate one hemisphere tend to have a