– 9 min read

This is how you change your life in 30 days and restructure your brain

Here are 5 things you need to learn to change how your brain works and how to rewire it.

1. Don’t underestimate how your brain works

Dr. Iain McGilchrist has worked with cognitive psychology and written the book “The Master and His Emissary”. He explains how the left side of your brain deals with matters of “What”.

• What to eat?

• What to think?

• What to do?

• What to say?

While your right side of the brain deals with matters of “Why”.

• Why do I want to eat this?

• Why do I do these things?

• Why do I say what I say?

• Why do I think this way?

• Why do others behave the way they do?

• Is that person approaching me a friend or a murderer?

While both hemispheres deal with language, the left is explicit and the right reads implicitly between the lines.

When someone says the sentence:

“It is cold in here”

Your left brain interprets that explicitly as

“It is cold in here”

While your right hemisphere reads it Implicitly as:

“We need to turn up the thermostat”

Now you know how your two hemispheres work with spoken and written language.

We also know that the right hemisphere is more receptive to the hormone Testosterone and pharmacological substances. The left hemisphere is more reliant on dopamine produced by cold showers or cold plunges. While the right hemisphere is more receptive to noradrenaline.

So taking a cold shower creates noradrenaline to understand what is happening to you in the shower and the dopamine makes you do things afterwards to stay alive like moving around.

I use the dopamine to write articles on Medium and come up with new ideas.

But the problem with your left hemisphere is that it contains narcissism, manipulation, aggression, and feminism. For you to stop reacting you need to engage the right hemisphere just above your right eye. That part of your brain stops you from reacting and gives you time to think before acting.

But first, you need to see and identify what you need to see before you can stop yourself from doing the negative thing.

2. Identify Your Thought Habits

Up until now, you have let your left brain go on with things without you having a say about it.

That is because the left side of the brain runs on autopilot. Once you create a pattern that your left hemisphere chooses, it continues to do the same thing subconsciously. For example, you do not think about how to brush your teeth every morning and before you go to bed. You do it automatically.

The same thing happens to your thought patterns.

For you to change. You first need to shift your attention to the very thought you are having to be able to observe it. Once you catch yourself thinking you will maybe laugh at yourself as I did. For me, it was a WOW moment.

Now you can start paying attention to what your mind is producing in the form of thoughts and values.

But here is the important bit. Nothing is real to you unless you pay close attention to it.

For example.

A piece of news is not part of your mental model of the world until you

Read about it, Listen to it, or Watch it.

That is when your right hemisphere thinks about it holistically and tells the left hemisphere to write a dogmatic habit for it. Which becomes your mental model of the world.

You did the same thing regarding the ground you were walking on as a child.

When you get up in the morning you don’t stop and think if you can walk on the floor. Because your right hemisphere already constructed that mental model for the left hemisphere to write a habit for. Your left brain hemisphere forces you to believe without a doubt that when you get up in the morning the floor is safe to walk on.

James Clear speaks about Habits in his book “Atomic Habits” which builds on how your brain works.

You first need to give your attention to a particular thing for you to understand it. It will first be processed by your right hemisphere which deals with the togetherness or the stickiness of things. We also call that association or Crystalline IQ. The right hemisphere then instructs the left hemisphere to write a dogmatic way of looking at your world as Iain McGilchrist explains in his book.

But whichever side uses the most signals to make the decision is going to be used next time you are presented with a similar situation.

For example.

Let’s say you meet a new person.

Your brain will process all information about that person in both your right and left hemispheres.

But mainly in the right hemisphere.

Firstly, you observe the person with your left eye which processes the information in the far right side of the brain to interpret if the person is dangerous or friendly.

But at the same time your right eye ads previous experiences about similar people you have met onto this person since it is connected to the left egocentric hemisphere that is never wrong about things. That is also feminism and narcissism.

If your left side uses most signals it wins the argument which it does when the right hemisphere is injured or not used properly.

The infamous first impression.

It is also called priming which is used in politics and advertisement to create a made-up judgment on one particular thing. This is how politicians set the narrative so that next time you do not question them. It becomes your mental model of the world.

The next time you meet this person. You do not process all this information again since your left side of the brain will assume without hesitation whatever it concluded the first time you met.

What you need to do is identify your brain doing so to start using your right hemisphere.

It does that because the right side of the brain uses sugar or glucose to function. Your brain is trying to survive and therefore it saves energy whenever it can.

It is super lazy!

The first time I heard this due to my lack of knowledge I thought.

“Humans have to eat carbs or sugar to be able to think critically“

Now I have critically debunked that left hemisphere way of thinking and critically stated, using my right hemisphere, that I needed to do more research.

I was amazed to learn that your liver produces glucose when needed. It does that so that you can think critically or empathically even when you starve.

You become very clear-headed when fasting for example due to your liver producing glucose.

But the brain is preprogrammed to become more and more efficient even when it is 100% mistaken.

The easiest way to fight this is to stay curious every day and admit to yourself you do not know everything.

That is why I use these value statements every day to remind myself regardless of what others think of me.

• I know nothing and therefore I need to read every day to add knowledge.

• I am always wrong so I have to listen and read carefully or I will miss the important details.

• My memory usually fails me so I have to go and verify my assumption

• My assumption of the world shapes the way I see the world.

But how do you go about changing it?

3. Chasing Happiness Is Bad

Russ Harris describes in his book “The Happiness Trapp” how we as humans chase being happy(dopamine) in life and why that is a bad thing.

Because we value things from the perspective of being happy or not. You start to value yourself and those around you positively or negatively. You do it with your work and your relationships. That is the left hemisphere’s way of forcing you to chase happiness.

But there is an easy way of fixing this.

1. Write down your family members in a list. One name on each row.

2. Then add your closest friends and work colleagues.

Now do the same thing about things in your life. Example:

• The Office

• Your work tasks

• Cleaning your room or apartment

• Paying bills

• Buying food

• Cooking food

• Training

• Instagram

• Facebook

• YouTube

Now write a negative number or a positive number on the right-hand side of each name. If you have a hard time adding a number just write a minus or plus sign next to the name. Just as long as you don’t think about it for more than a few seconds.

When you look at your list of people and things you will see what you deem as negative and positive. Naturally, you will want to avoid the negative since you are chasing happiness and the positive.

Now that you see what the left hemisphere values and opinions of these people and things. Now that you are looking at the words and values you are changing your right hippocampus by paying attention to the values.

But what happens in your body when dealing with negative emotions that come from evaluating people and things negatively?

4. Negative Thoughts Shape Your Breath

Now put your right hand on your chest and the left hand on your stomach.

As you breathe you will see if you breathe with your chest or your gut.

If your chest is moving then your diaphragm is tensed up hindering you from properly ventilating your lungs. As you breathe in air, you extract the oxygen in your lungs and breathe out carbon dioxide.

The problem with breathing shallowly with your chest is that you push carbon dioxide into your extremities. You see this as your need to scratch yourself.

When you value things as good you relax your diaphragm and ventilate your lungs properly. When you deal with the negative you are signaling that you need to be afraid.

That will lead you to tense up and start breathing with your chest. Leading to anxiety and scratching.

When you stop valuing things and other people, you will also stop breathing with your chest and start breathing relaxed with your stomach.

But during the first 30 days, you do the quick double inhale followed by the long exhale to get rid of the anxiety quickly and focus on being curious.

You do 10 breaths at 10 different times every day and every time you catch yourself having negative thoughts or valuing something negatively.

The trick to changing is to be honest about when you add negative value to yourself or others or even things.

That is why you need to actively observe yourself from when you wake up until you go to bed and how you value others and things around you.

When you catch yourself valuing others, stop and praise yourself for catching yourself valuing. Then tell yourself to stop adding value to that thing or person.

I always started laughing when I caught myself valuing things or others. Catching myself doing the very thing I was trying to stop doing makes me transparent towards myself and I found it making me a more honest person towards myself.

Sort of cleaning up my own house before judging others for their dirty laundry.

Now I will tell you how to stop valuing things and how I did it.

5. Become a Critical Thinker

Now that you know what value the left side of the brain forces you to create. You can question that by engaging the right-hand side of your brain.

For example.

“My job is bad for me!”

That statement is a blatant lie. The easiest way to debunk that statement is to say that it pays for your survival since you can buy food from it with a paycheck.

It also pays for the house, apartment, or room that you own or rent so that you can sleep safely at night away from criminals.

By being honest and transparent about everything you have written as negative in your life. You can see what positive value they add to your life.

But the very trick is to let go of the value system.

Things and people exist just like Mount Everest existed before you were born. Mount Everest will continue to exist long after you have departed this world. It does not need your evaluation to exist.

It is your perception and the added evaluation of them that changes how you deal with them. It also shapes your brain and your blood pressure.

I read and did all the exercises in the book “The Happiness Trap” 11 years ago. I live a more fulfilling life today than ever before.

If I can do it!

You can do it!

I know this since many of my clients have read the book based on my recommendations. I have seen them change.

Even the ones stating they had ADHD. Which they did not have.

If you truly want to be happy by producing more dopamine every day. Start taking ice-cold showers or baths.