A positive word each day to alter the brain...

According to Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Waldman authors of 'Words Can Change Your Brain', words can literally change your brain:

"A single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress. By holding a positive and optimistic word [such as peace, love, gratitude] in your mind, you stimulate frontal lobe activity. This area includes specific language centers that connect directly to the motor cortex responsible for moving you into action. And as our research has shown, the longer you concentrate on positive words, the more you begin to affect other areas of the brain.

Functions in the parietal lobe start to change, which changes your perception of yourself and the people you interact with. A positive view of yourself will bias you toward seeing the good in others, whereas a negative self-image will include you toward suspicion and doubt. Over time the structure of your thalamus will also change in response to your conscious words, thoughts, and feelings, and we believe that the thalamic changes affect the way in which you perceive reality."

I therefore guess you can choose any type of uplifting word, so it could be a person's name, an action, a town, an event or a feeling, and here's a link to an alphabetical list of positive words https://www.thepositivemom.com/positive-words (List Of Positive Words With Each Letter Of The Alphabet A to Z).

With this in mind, I am going to choose one positive word for every day of 2021:

• To think about and/or meditate on.
  
• To be mindful of as I go about my day.
  
• To Google for more inspiration -- find quotations, poetry, songs etc., about or containing my word of the day.

I thought I'd post about this, just in case anyone else would like to join me in trying this out.

My positive, uplifting word for 1st January 2021 is 'SOAR'...

"Today is your day to

dance lightly with life,

sing wild songs of adventure,

soar your spirit,

unfurl your joy" ~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

 

I love this idea! I'm going to try this as well. Today I'm picking the word "tootings" just so that I can use my favorite poem by Wallace Stevens:

One's grand flights, one's Sunday baths,
One's tootings at the weddings of the soul
Occur as they occur. So bluish clouds
Occurred above the empty house and the leaves
Of the rhododendrons rattled their gold,
As if someone lived there. Such floods of white
Came bursting from the clouds. So the wind
Threw its contorted strength around the sky.

Could you have said the bluejay suddenly
Would swoop to earth? It is a wheel, the rays
Around the sun. The wheel survives the myths.
The fire eye in the clouds survives the gods.
To think of a dove with an eye of grenadine
And pines that are cornets, so it occurs,
And a little island full of geese and stars:
It may be the ignorant man, alone,
Has any chance to mate his life with life
That is the sensual, pearly spouse, the life
That is fluent in even the wintriest bronze.

Thank you for the inspiration!