Over a century ago, Eleanor H. Porter wrote the children’s book entitled “Pollyanna”. That became a classic, and we still refer to someone who is excessively optimistic as being “Pollyannaish”. The term has come to mean someone who is being unrealistically optimistic, but that distorts the original story. Pollyannaish should mean, if it is kept true to the story, someone who looks at the good in everything and refuses to dwell on the negative. If we look deeper at the story, we can find a lesson that will help us enjoy life further and even be healthier in the process.
Glad to be glad
Pollyanna was taught “The Glad Game” by her father when very young. The game was to look at a disappointing situation and find the good in it, then focus on that good. Children love to play games, and this game became a habit. Then, when she was orphaned at eleven years old, her stern and dour aunt took her in. She made many friends in the new town she now lived in, and they appreciated her sympathetic and simultaneously optimistic spirit. She transformed the little town into a better place to live, but her aunt was not accepting her optimism for quite a while. Eventually even she succumbed – Pollyanna’s spirit was undaunted and not even her aunt could resist. Then Pollyanna got hit by a car and lost the use of her legs. This was too much even for her optimism, and she started to despair. The townspeople returned the love and optimism she had shown them, and her spirits were lifted. She got to a hospital that was able to restore her legs over time with therapy, and she was restored both physically and mentally as her spirit revived and she became her old self.
The Glad Game habit that Pollyanna developed became a “groove” in her brain – a habit that became a lifestyle. She didn’t know that was happening – she just played the game. When she came up against challenges in her life or was helping others through their challenges, her attitude shined through and overcame the negative, even in others. When she hit an overwhelming challenge, it wasn’t long before that lifelong habit kicked in again, especially since she had exported that attitude to her friends and it boomeranged back to her.
Why did this little children’s book become a classic? Perhaps it was because the core lesson is something that we all need, and down deep, we all desire. We don’t enjoy being pessimistic, worried, or angry, but we are very adept at doing so. Why are we so adept? Likely because we learned at an early age. It’s also, however, because we practiced and nurtured those thoughts as we grew up and experienced life in this hectic, high pressure world we now live in. We probably start life surrounded by pessimism, and we reinforce it as our thought patterns seem validated by the world around us. We listen to or read negative news, we worry about our medical, financial, and relationship situations, and generally make the pessimism groove deeper.
Research confirms what we instinctively know
This all seems like basic common sense, but it is also being proven through modern research. Positive thoughts increase neurons in your brain that promote more positive thoughts, and negative thoughts also make your brain better at taking in more negativity. Like anything in your body, your brain is responding to its current environment in such a way as to get better at doing more of what that environment is demanding. If you are learning a new complex subject, your brain will grow more neurons to help you with the learning process. Your brain tends to grow the neurons needed to support the thinking you are doing. If you are thinking good thoughts, expect your brain to make room for even more. Same for bad thoughts. This was the subject of an animal study published in Nature, conducted at the Harvard Medical School. In the ventral striatum of the animals’ brains, they identified two classes of striatal medium spiny neurons, labeled as D1 and D2, which were active during decision making, but one had developed during better-than-expected outcomes (positive outcomes), and the other developed when negative outcomes occurred. They were able to inhibit one class or the other, and the animals’ choices changed. They referred to these as “optimistic” and “pessimistic” neurons, both of which contribute to the decision-making process. When the animals had been taught to expect good outcomes, they then made optimistic choices, and likewise bad outcomes led to more cautious, pessimistic choices, unless they inhibited the D1 or D2 optimist/pessimist neurons.
These researchers had no way to tell the animals to concentrate on good or the bad thoughts, so they used external conditioning based upon rewarding or disappointing outcomes. We humans, however, can intentionally focus our thoughts and influence whether our brains develop more D1 or D2 neurons. In other words, we can condition ourselves. Rewarding or disappointing outcomes happen to all of us, but before those make “grooves” in the brain, we can choose to look at the good in the disappointing situations. How we choose to look at something influences how our brains build a level of optimism which we then use in making upcoming decisions, where we assess levels of risk and reward. By building optimism, we influence how we think when the next potentially rewarding or harmful decision comes our way.
Truth is the only stable foundation
In a study published in OxJournal, researchers reviewed three types of optimism, namely dispositional optimism, attributional optimism, and optimism bias (sometimes known as “unrealistic optimism”). “We found that dispositional and attributional optimism are closely related and have very positive effects on psychological health and even, to an extent, physical health. However, while optimism bias was largely found to be beneficial in terms of motivation and self-esteem, it seemed that extreme cases of it could encourage people to be more reckless and not consider the negative consequences of their actions.”
The first type, dispositional optimism, refers to how a person is “disposed” to think. Chemical balance, genetic predisposition, and particularly subconscious thoughts (which can be dealt with through modern therapy) can make a person tend towards a sunny, optimistic disposition. The second, attributional optimism, refers to how a person attributes the causes of an event – when something good happens, they see what caused that event in a positive light. The third is optimism that is not based on truth.
This is key. The study found that those with unrealistic optimism would eventually have a bad outcome which would shatter that optimism. Outlook must be based upon truth if it is to endure. If we believe we are charmed, invincible, too smart or physically endowed to be hurt by circumstances, then we are set up for failure. Riding a motorcycle isn’t a safe transportation mode,, but riding without a helmet is unreasonably optimistic. Eating a bad diet continually and expecting to keep healthy is unrealistic, even if we are getting away with it at present. We can influence dispositional optimism by promoting a healthy body, thus promoting a physically healthy brain. We can choose to look for the good in things and build attributional optimism. We can also be sure that we are basing our beliefs on true, solid foundations so that our optimism is not unrealistic. This makes the search for truth crucial for our health and future risk taking.
Knowing real truth about who you are, that you were created by the one loving Father who created us all, and that you can have security no matter what life throws at you will give you the “the peace that passes all understanding.” There is no better, firmer truth. Knowing the loving Father lets you play The Glad Game earnestly – you can be grateful through trying circumstances. The more you practice, the easier it becomes and the more supporting neurons you develop. Be a Pollyanna – you’ll be happier and healthier.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
That which you feed grows. That which you starve dies. This is the basis of all cellular life, including neurons.
The Harvard research shows that we have optimistic neurons and pessimistic neurons — meaning, if you choose to be optimistic, you grow optimistic neurons; if you choose to be pessimistic, you grow pessimistic neurons. This is basic physiology, but it’s still needs to be pondered and meditated on because of its implication.
How long does it take to make a new neural pathway?
Research has shown anywhere between three months and a year the average being six months.
How do you know when you have a new neural pathway developed?
Just look at Pollyanna. By playing The Glad Game when she was young, somewhere between three months and a year, she had grown optimistic neurons. She had a whole neural pathway that was automatic. She wasn’t trying to be optimistic. She just was — because of her programming in early life.
One of the most important keys in life
If we can program our brain and neural pathways with optimism and truth, then we would be set free from all circumstances, situations, and lies. Since the brain controls every cell in the body, its extremely important what programs are written in the brain that control the body. You can choose happy or sad, good or bad, optimistic or pessimistic truth, or lie in every situation in life. This seems pretty straightforward. All you do is commit yourself to being optimistic, for the next six months to a year, and you’ll rewrite new programs that will benefit you the rest of your life. Is this correct?
Yes, and no. Yes, if you had no early life subconscious programming. But unfortunately, everyone was programmed by their early environment, which 95% of the time is pessimistic and negative with unintentional lies mixed in.
Here’s how it really works
Let’s say you have a food addiction to sugar and sweets and you want to break this. This is pretty straightforward. Just don’t have sugar or sweets for the next three months to a year and it is a rewritten neural program — then you won’t want sweets anymore because you programmed your brain and cells in your body for different food choices: now they are a program. In the ideal world this is correct, because we are writing a new conscious program in the neural programming. The only thing we forgot to consider is the programming that was there before — this is called subconscious programming. This was early in life: from in utero to age six you were programmed by the early environment of mother, father, sister, brother, relatives, friends — everyone in that environment could have contributed to your early subconscious programming.
Subconscious always rules conscious
Let’s go back to the Pollyanna story. Her father taught her The Glad Game, and he probably taught her this game early in life — probably when she was four to six. At this age, it is a base program written in the subconscious mind which supersedes all conscious programming after the age of six.
You see, our early programming is really our lifetime programming and that was our permanent programming up to about 30 years ago. But with new technology available like 3-D brain imaging and advanced treatment protocols developed in the last 30 years we can now completely rewrite neural programs on brain tissue and neural pathways of previous subconscious programming. This is transformational.
You are not who you choose to be. You are who you are programmed to be. Subconscious programming runs 95% of your psychology and physiology.
The most important: subconscious program
In the past 40 years at Revolution Health & Fitness we’ve focused on brain science for one simple reason: the brain controls the entire body. Fix the brain and you fix the body. Fix the brain and you fix the body’s immune system, cardiovascular system, respiratory system, gastrointestinal system, and hormonal system. This is the primary cause of all dysfunction in the body, yet it’s skipped over in almost all analysis and diagnoses.
A patient came to us, shocked that she had developed breast cancer because of her supposedly perfect life. She ate extremely well, took supplements, was at the perfect body weight, exercised every day, was very happy in her life, had a loving husband, great kids, no stressors. They were financially very stable. Her life was perfect in her eyes. That’s why she exclaimed, “How can I get cancer with this kind of life?”
Our response: subconscious programming.
You see, subconscious programming is below conscious awareness: you don’t know the pessimistic, negative lies that are stored in your system from early childhood. Nevertheless, they are stressors that do take their toll on every system of your body, including your immune system.
This patient was able to overcome her cancer because of one reason. We helped her rewrite new subconscious programs, and after that her immune system kicked back on, the tumor began to shrink, and she was eventually completely healed — and not only that, but she was now programmed for balance, for total health of body, brain mind, heart and spirit.
There is no other way to heal.
If you focus on just physical as most everyone does, then you’re only hitting 5 to 10% of the problem. You are only addressing the tip of the iceberg — that’s why most diseases will not resolve because you’re looking at them just through physical eyes. And when looked at through anything else it is general mental-emotional work just to reduce stress in your life. These include things like positive thinking, mindfulness, meditation and other practices, but these are add-ons — they don’t really hit the root cause. It’s like getting a massage to relieve a tightened muscle, when the underlying cause is a dislocated joint causing the muscle to be chronically tight. You can massage the muscle forever and never resolve the issue; but once the joint is realigned, it changes the position and reduces the tension of the muscle, and now no massage is necessary. In everything, you must treat the cause and not the effect. Most everything that’s done in medicine is treating the physical, but not touching into the cause of the subconscious and conscious programming of the nervous system controlling all other systems.
The most important subconscious program of all
In the story, Pollyanna was programmed early in life to be optimistic, meaning she had a subconscious program to be this. She didn’t have to think about it — she was IT. This is such a powerful program in this negative world, but there is another program that supersedes this a hundredfold.
And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free
Truth is the most important subconscious program to be written on the hard drive of the brain and neural tissue. The reason this is so is because truth is foundational: it’s what everything else is built upon. If you build the building on a lie, it is built on sinking sand and eventually will fall. But if you build a foundation on the solid rock of truth, it will withstand every circumstance and situation in your life.
At Revolution Health & Fitness we use advanced 3-D imaging and a very unique protocol we developed over the last 40 years to set people free from faulty subconscious programming based on lies. Once they are programmed with truth, they are truly free, and the beauty of this is it becomes a permanent program that is unshakable. This is the only way you get well and stay well. This is the only way you grow neurons that can never be replaced because they’re always active, always flowing energy of life.
Our programs at Revolution Health & Fitness are not only designed for people with health challenges, but also everyone on the planet who wants to optimize their life and their health and longevity. This starts with the brain and starts with programming the subconscious.
You cannot fix what you cannot see and analyze. Without the tools to analyze faulty subconscious programming you could never correct the problem because you have to be able to analyze the problem before and after the therapy to make sure you have corrected it. This is 40 years and hundreds of thousands of patients in the making — that’s why it works so well.
So, no matter where you are in your life, the most important area to work on is your brain — whether you have a physical health challenge, a mental-emotional stressor or you just want to be all that you can be: it must be programmed subconsciously based in truth, or it will not happen.
