You are driving home from a long day at work, and as usual, traffic is a bit heavy. But you are getting close to home: once you pass the hospital entrance traffic light, you’ve only got a few blocks to go. You imagine how nice it will be to just get home and relax. Suddenly, a car flies around your blind spot at twice your speed, jumps in front of your car where there is barely enough space to maneuver, then hits the brakes. You are forced to hit yours as well, barely in time to avoid a collision.
You sense the anger rise in you at being cut off in such a rude and dangerous fashion. You hit the horn in protest and start looking for a way to pass this maniac driver. Your frustration level, which was rather high anyway, has melded with anger and you are at your limit. Then something happens…
That car jumps another lane, again narrowly avoiding an accident, and then zips into the hospital entrance. You can see that the car pulls right up to the emergency entrance where a stretcher team emerges. Your anger melts away and is replaced with concern: “Are they going to be OK?” Thankfully that’s not you, who just has to get home and unwind. The traffic is not so bad, you’re fine, and your day is really OK. Maybe you say a quick prayer for whoever needed the hospital that badly.
What just happened here? You went from feeling like you wanted give that driver a piece of your mind to hoping everything will be OK. Instead of trying to squeeze every additional second out of this trip home, you slow down and ponder how great it is to feel OK and have home to look forward to. You realize that most things in life are not as the appear.
Your perception completely changes in a matter of seconds, all because of what your eyes were telling you. Or rather, how you interpreted what your eyes told you. Your heart is still racing but is calming down quickly as the shot of adrenaline wears off. Had you not noticed that car pull into the hospital, you might still be fuming when you got home. Here’s a question: how do you think you will react the next time you get near that hospital and notice someone driving wildly?
We get angry, happy, or sad when watching a screen full of shifting pixels which we call TV. Our pulse rates go up, we may get hungry from the food images, and we may feel an emotional attachment to the image of a person who is, and always will remain, a total stranger with no impact on our lives. We even get addicted to the feeling: we watch more romance or scary movies when we know we should be doing something more useful. News media is perhaps the worst: long gone are the days when reporters unemotionally just gave us facts — now we get bombarded constantly with partial truths and out-of-context remarks meant merely to get us wound up. Then we come back for more.
We admire people with resolve, who despite their feelings get going to work, exercise, take care of the kids, and just make their days productive. We also admire those who, despite plenty of reasons to get mad or discouraged, keep up a good attitude and even make others feel good around them. We appreciate others who make something of their lives, as we fall into unproductive, discouraged patterns.
Exercise your brain
We frequently compare the brain with muscles, because exercising aspects of our brains makes them better just like physical exercise makes us stronger. When we set out to learn something new, even in older age, we get better at learning. People who suffer from strokes, who have brain damage, can sometimes learn enough to return to almost normal life by exercising their brains.
What we know from practical experience, but are getting confirmed with research, is that habits, either good or bad, can be self-reinforcing. That is, as you do something regularly, it becomes habit. That habit makes doing the activity easier. Use your brain, and it gets better. But the brain is made up of multiple components, so really we should say: use a component of your brain, and that component gets better. Play memory games to improve your memory. Practice balance and fine motor skills, and coordination will get better. This can also be said of noble behavior and vices: practice patience, and your ability to be patient improves; giving into anger, fear, or anxiety will make you more proficient in giving in tomorrow.
Reframe it
The key is perception. Just saying “I have decided not to get angry when cut off in traffic” won’t work very well — you’ll get angry anyway if you perceive the cut off as a careless act, perhaps even done maliciously. Only believing something different, something better, will stop the anger. When you “reframe” the situation in a better light, you perceive it differently. And your perception is your reality.
Gymnasts are coached to fix their eyes, not on where they are at present, but where they intend to be next. Their bodies will follow where they cast their vision. Our minds produce our perceptions, then our brains, and our whole bodies follow.
Is that just fanciful thinking? No, it’s scientifically demonstrated in many research studies. What research has given us is a better understanding of just how the brain reacts chemically and signals differently with different thoughts. In a study of studies published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from Dartmouth College took data from 36 other studies to determine what happens when participants “reappraise” normally negative images in a less threatening or more positive manner. The classical view of brain response to emotional images or events has been that the amygdala is solely responsible for emotion. But this study showed that it is the information fed to the amygdala by the prefrontal cortex that determined the emotional reaction in the amygdala. Thus, reframing thoughts changed the information that the amygdala received, creating a different emotional response. Then, neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin changed with the perception and signaled the entire brain differently. It all started with the prefrontal cortex, the “reasoning” portion of the brain. Perception changed the entire brain’s response, showing that we can change our reactions by thinking and perceiving better.
This study also noted an important point about drugs: they can take over receptors meant for the neurotransmitters, blunting or blocking the input from the prefrontal cortex. Simply put, drugs, including some prescription drugs, can make reframing useless and leave you exposed to the full emotional impact of an image or event. They can make you a less rational, more primitive, highly emotional being.
Stress is the constant companion of all of us. It nibbles away at our mental and physical health. Unless stress is physical — heat, noise, or pain for instance — it is first perceived and then presented to the brain as stress. That stress changes the nervous system, of which the brain is a part. Published in Nature Neuroscience, researchers from Stanford University, Stanford, CA reviewed the plasticity, or adaptability, of the brain. They started with the demonstrated ability of the nervous system to be reshaped by experience. They noted that severe and/or prolonged (chronic) stress can impair the brain’s hippocampus learning capacity — essentially making it more rigid with less plasticity, while mild and short-term stress enhances plasticity. So we become numb to chronic stress, but we learn from stressful events that come and go. Since the stress had to first be perceived, this means we are learning from what we perceive, whether or not that perception is valid. So it is important to reframe as many perceptions in a good light, as often as possible, if we are to incorporate good thought patterns into our lives.
Perception becomes physical reality
This is a key to physical health as well. If we perceive pushing the mower across the grass, or mopping the floor, as tasks that we wish we did not have to do, then we will gain little benefit from them, and in fact may be resentful of having to do the tasks. But if we see a physical task as a strengthening exercise, suddenly it becomes an acceptable, even welcome, activity. Conversely, if we perceive a sugar cookie as poison, something that will be harmful, we may avoid it entirely without having to exert willpower. It’s the difference between “no, I really shouldn’t, but maybe just this time” and “I really don’t want that in my body — thanks anyway.”
C. S. Lewis explained this principle in a simple way. “Very often the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already.” He wasn’t backing this with science, but it is a scientific principle of our biology. Do you want to change? Pretend. “Fake it ’til you make it” is the modern expression. Maybe you don’t feel you have control over your emotions. Change your perception, even if you have to fake it. Maybe that person that cut you off wasn’t on a critical mission, but you can at least ponder that possibility. Try it and see how your anger and frustration fade. Next time you will find it easier to reframe your perception.
Do you want to be the person that you want to be? Just do it, and it will get easier. Or, give into your no-purpose passions, and they more easily take control next time. Your brain is the servant of your mind, not the other way around. Cast your vision; set your perception; experience the new reality.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Perception is everything. It is the glasses you see the world through. If you put on red-tinted glasses right now, everything in the world is red. Yet, if you take those off and put blue glasses on, then everything in the world is blue. Those glasses are your perception and your perception controls your life and your health.
Where did perceptions come from? Who gave you the glasses in the first place?
They came through the early environment you developed in.
From the time you were in your mother’s uterus to approximately the age of six, you had no conscious filter, so you were basically a sponge for the environment. As you developed neurologically you took in all the information from the surroundings. And this was the basis of your perception. If those surroundings were of love, acceptance, and encouragement, if those surroundings told you that you could do all things, then that is the perception glasses you developed. We will call these the white glasses. You would call this an extremely positive perception that sees the good in everything, in every situation.
Now on the other hand, if that early environment was very negative, toxic, and fear based then you would’ve developed a very different set of glasses. We will call these glasses the black glasses because they show the world through fear, negativity and deficiency.
So your perceptions are product of your early environment — simple as that. Well, maybe not so simple. What if you have black glasses — are you doomed to a negative fear-driven perception of the world?
Absolutely not: this is the concept of plasticity. The brain is plastic, meaning it’s moldable and changeable, depending on the environment it is in, the stimulus it receives, the information it receives. It will change when the information that’s coming into it changes. Everything in life is changeable — not static, not fixed.
Where do you begin?
At the beginning, of course. At Revolution New Medicine our treatment and teaching protocol system uses 3-D brain imaging and Heart Brain Entrainment therapy developed over 40 years. This is an absolutely revolutionary therapy: not only does it release old subconscious stress programming of old subconscious programs of fear and negativity — it then reprograms the subconscious mind with truth and true identity. Then we make sure the new programs are truly established and the neural pathways have grown and developed so this is not a temporary improvement, but a permanent lifelong correction. This is done by our follow-up testing, including our 3-D brain imaging measuring all the brain waves in every area of the brain, which are going to every organ, gland, and tissue.
Remember brain rules everything in the body. The consciousness, and most importantly the subconsciousness, rules the brain. The subconsciousness controls up to 95% of all physiology in the body.
Basically your subconscious mind is your life and your health. It makes your perceptions. it gives you the pair of glasses that you wear.
So if you don’t like the glasses you’re wearing because they’re black glasses, then they can be removed and you can be programmed with white glasses instead. All starts at the subconscious level.
How do you start changing your perception right now?
As the Dartmouth research confirmed, the prefrontal cortex rules over the amygdala, meaning your subconscious and conscious mind can make a conscious decision not to go into fear: it can override the fear response in the amygdala.
The imagination Game
See your world as if you need nothing from it, but come to give it something. We know this will be hard for you, but again, it’s an imagination, so play the imagination game. To start, do it for one day — one complete day. For this day, see everything through the purist white glasses.
This is too hard to do, you say: my glasses are way too black. Remember this is an imagination game.
Two imaginations: one is with the black glasses from early childhood:
…everything they think or imagine is bent toward negativity from childhood
The other is given by God our Father:
He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
You get to choose which glasses you’re going to put on and keep on: it’s all up to you.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Revolution New Medicine but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Revolution New Medicine along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
