With my husband gone on a trip and the kids with my in-laws, I have a rare day to myself. And what do I do with it? Well, besides a good 3-hour deep clean of our house and a workout without a toddler crying to be held the whole time, I am diving into my automatic beliefs and expectations after reading The Expectation Effect by David Robson.
My fascination with how the mind can influence the body and how our beliefs, expectations, and perceptions can shape our experience and reality is what I love to explore in my free time.
And, with my interest in taking this information and making it practical, I decided to take you all behind the scenes showing what I do with all of this insanely interesting information.
What is happening
For the sake of simplicity and keeping it as short as I can, here is a basic breakdown:
Foundational Mind/Body Mind/Life Principles:
Selective attention determines what we notice and focus on: what we expect to see determines what we pay attention to. (read my article on that here)
Confirmation bias: leads us to seek and interpret information that confirms our expectations. Even if there is other information out there, we are often blind to it
Placebo: what you believe a substance will do for you can create the biochemical changes in your body to make that happen
Nocebo: what you are expecting could happen to you can create the biochemical changes in your body to make it so
Our brains are prediction machines: We see what we predict, not what is actually out there. The brain fills in gaps and deletes details that don’t match expectations. The current mental frameworks you have determine how you interpret new information.
Our expectations and beliefs influence how we interpret and respond to events: Your brain asks itself in every moment: ‘the last time I encountered a similar situation, when my body was in a similar state, what did I do next?”
Examples
The evidence base on the power of our minds to quantifiably affect our physical and mental health is so big now that we almost need to stop thinking about the mind-body connection as this magical, mystical thing, and instead, use this fact to our advantage.
The Expectation Effect book alone has over 400 peer-reviewed studies demonstrating the insane impact our mind has on our body. Check out the book for references to the exact studies.
Just a few examples:
Several studies have shown that placebo surgeries—where the patient is cut open but no surgery is performed—are as effective as real surgeries.
In one trial, researchers told patients they were injecting them with a powerful Parkinson’s drug called apomorphine, but instead injected them with saline. Brain scans showed that the saline injections had effects that were indistinguishable from the real drug.
There have been numerous different studies showing the thoughts people think about what they are eating impact how their body processes that food. If you think something is healthy or not, if you think it is filling or not, if it is expensive or ‘hyped up’. All of this changes your body chemistry and how your body reacts to the food you are eating.
There was an example of a drug given to stop nausea, and it did! Only, the drug they gave participants was actually created to induce nausea. When the drug was presented to the patients, paired with the strong suggestion of relief of nausea, by an authority figure, it acted as a (command) message to the brain that triggered a cascade of self-regulatory biochemical responses within the body.
One of the most common nocebo effects you have probably heard about → When patients are given chemotherapy and are told their hair is going to fall out, and it does! But, they were actually just given a placebo. It wasn’t the chemo that made their hair fall out, it was their expectation that it was going to.
All of this suggests that the effects of an intervention—whether it is pharmaceutical, herbal, dietary, or something else—depend in large part on our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about that intervention.
Fear can destroy the most effective protocol and that faith can heal with no protocol at all- research is showing whatever you truly believe and expect has a large determining factor of your outcome.
Perhaps you can try using your mind to make the supplements you are taking more effective by expecting them to target whatever issue you are having. The food you are eating to be digested and absorbed well with gratitude and the belief of it being deeply nourishing. Taking a tea or supplement for relieving anxiety or pain, and it actually does, no matter what the substance you took actually is (I actually do this all of the time).
So, we now know your mind changes your body, for better or worse.
Now we will dive into how your brain creates your experiences. . .
Here is a demonstration that your memory is a critical ingredient in what you see
What do you see in these pictures? Right now, your brain is s searching through a lifetime of past experiences trying to answer the question.
You probably see a bunch of black lines and a couple of blobs. Let’s give your brain some more information. . .
The first image is a ski jump and spectators as seen by the ski jumper, the second is a spider doing a handstand.
Now you see familiar objects instead of lines and blobs. Once you see it, you can’t ‘unsee’ it again.
The lines and blobs haven’t changed. . . you have.
How this applies to you
All good and fascinating Megan, but how does it actually apply to my life?
I like to run everything through this little formula
Find: Regular times of self-reflection are a must for you to become aware of what you are believing and expecting in every area of your life. What areas are not working well?
Assess: What are you focusing on? what are you expecting in that area? What thoughts are you having about that situation?
Retrain: Because your brain constantly anticipates what will happen next based on what you have habitually thought in the past, it is fascinating to interrupt that default pattern and change the thoughts you are having about any area. The more you do it, the more you realize how many negative expectations you have. So what do you want to focus on in a specific area? What do you want to expect? What thoughts do you want to have about it? Only work on one thing at a time. (read→How I brainwash myself in fascinating ways)
Rewire Your Brain, Change Your Experience
“As the owner of a predicting brain, you have more control over your actions and experiences than you might think and more responsibility than you might want.” - Lisa Feldman Barret
Taking a few minutes a day to get off autopilot to question your automatic thoughts, beliefs, and expectations can change how your brain will predict the future. You can learn new ideas, create new experiences, and try new activities. Everything you learn today seeds your brain to predict differently tomorrow.
The classic example is how you interpret anxiety and stress. Is that fast-beating heart and other sensations in your body anxiety that will paralyze you? Or, are those sensations an energy that will help you? Stress is neither good nor bad, but your thoughts around it make it one way or the other.
Whatever unwanted thought or reaction you have, focus on retaining your brain to interpret it differently.
It’s hard to change your behavior in the heat of the moment, but you can change your predictions before the heat of the moment. With repetition, you can make some automatic behaviors more likely than others and have more control over your future experiences than you may think.
I don’t do any kind of networking or marketing so you sharing this newsletter is the only way to spread the word. If anything has been helpful to you, I would be so grateful if you could share this post/newsletter with someone you think would benefit from it <3
Find of the Week
People keep reaching out asking how to buy their supplements for a discount through my fullscript account, here’s how:
Fullscript is an online professional-grade supplement dispensary. Basically, I can use my practitioner account to give you discounts on supplements you are already buying.
create an account if you do not have one
click ‘catalog’ and search for any supplement you need and see if they are cheaper than where you usually buy
This was fascinating!!!