#106 Never underestimate the power of your mind

Rachel Denning (00:01.226)
Hey my friends, welcome to another episode of the Extraordinary Family Life Podcast. I want to share an idea that for some of you will be a little bit familiar and for some might be a totally new idea. And if it's new to you, I want to invite you not to dismiss it because at first it may sound a little strange. So I want you to just be open to it. Just consider it. Just roll with me on this. And it's the idea that...

We should never underestimate the power of our thoughts and of our brain or our mind. And I'll share a couple stories. So I've been doing this for years and I did it again last night where as I'm going to sleep, I choose a time to wake up and I tell myself that and I repeat it to myself. At first when I started doing this years ago, I'd heard about it and I was like, I want to try it. And so I'd have to say it to myself multiple times as I was falling asleep. And then

I would wake up just before that time. Now I can do it where I just set the intention, I lay down and I said I'm going to wake up at this time. That's all I have to do. It's amazing. Already, I know some of you are like, what? If you've never done that before, please try it. Just give it a try. It may not come right away, but just do it for a consecutive time. Pick a week or two.

Whatever and just tell yourself as you're going to sleep that you wake up at a specific time. Just watch what happens I don't know how this works, but it is Unreal so I've been sick for weeks. Just I don't know what I've got something just Dragging along it's so annoying and so I've been I've been having a hard time Getting getting going in the morning. In fact, it's I don't remember a Time where like I literally don't remember even before my teens

a time where it was this hard to get going in the mornings. It's unreal. So I'd set an alarm to let me know what time it was in the morning to get going. But during the night, a couple of our little kiddos have had coughs and so our three year old came in and was coughing and crying and so I took her back to her bed and I lay down in her bed with her to just crash, right, to let Rachel sleep. And so I fall asleep in Sanji's room.

Rachel Denning (02:22.186)
And I'm laying down, I'm like, oh no, I love my alarm in there. It's going to go off at 530. I need to wake up. My body needs to wake up in here so I can go back in there and turn the alarm off before it wakes up, Rachel. And so that's all I did. I just thought, OK, I'm going to wake up right before my alarm. And I laid down, and I was out cold, gone. Well, then all of a sudden, I pop up, just wide awake. And I just sit right up, like completely awake and alert.

And I look around, I realize I'm in San Javier, I'm like, oh, I need to go check my alarm. I walk in there, I click my alarm, and it was 529. And I just slid the alarm off. And I was like, oh man, there it is again. This is so incredible. And I wanna share that, and I'm gonna share another thing here in just a second, just to remind us, you guys, we know this already, that our thoughts, our thoughts are things.

And our thoughts are powerful. They literally are creating the emotions we have. And they're generating our worldview, our perspective, our paradigm, our attitude, our actions, habits and character. But it's even more than that. There's a power there to be creative.

I believe and I've experienced it and others have experienced it where you give your mind a task. Give it some kind of job. Give it something to think about. Give it a creative problem to solve or get it generating some kind of creativity and watch. Watch what can happen as you give it a task to work on. It is unreal. It's so powerful.

I believe we can get to the space where we're actually manifesting things, we're actually drawing things into our attention and even into our lives. And I know this is where some of you are like, what? And I get it, I just want you to hear me out, like don't dismiss it right away, just hear me out. I'm not going to go foo la on you here. But I believe there's greater power there, I really do.

Rachel Denning (04:40.766)
And I believe there's some spiritual power connected to it and that it's somehow connected to a power and energy that's on the earth and in all things and through all things and governing all things. And I believe there's a connection there. And I believe it's a very spiritual thing that we can connect with God. And there's a lot there. But I don't want to get into all that. And I don't even understand it all. But I just.

I want to just introduce the idea to you, something that you want to think about, is that we actually have far more power to be creative and controlling and directing in our lives than we often think we do. Now, I want to share something else that's totally physiological, right?

but also in the realm of quantum physics. And I think quantum physics is something we all ought to understand more and use in our lives. But let's take this just straight physiology.

So we all know that, I mean, years ago, decades ago, they started taking human cells and putting them in a lab. They'd take the cell out and they'd put it in a Petri dish and they'd watch the cell multiply. And our cells are doing that all the time. We have billions and billions and hundreds of billions of cells in our bodies.

And they're constantly renewing. So the cells are splitting, and they keep splitting, and splitting, and splitting, and they're multiplying. And so they're renewing. And so our bodies are literally renewing all the time. And even during the time of this podcast, millions of cells will die and be replaced, right? From skin cells and hair cells and those kind of things. So it's just constantly, our body's just renewing.

Rachel Denning (06:26.49)
And they saw in labs, they noticed that the quality of the fluid that the cells were in really determined, and by quality, it was the chemistry, right? It was the chemistry of the fluid determined how healthy the cells were. That just makes sense, right? I mean, look at your garden. I'm gardening right now, and the plants, the vegetables that I planted at the same time that I planted in a healthier ground and healthier dirt and soil are literally

four or five times bigger already than the ones that aren't in as healthy of soil. It just makes sense we get that. And so, and he said, he said this biologist was like, look, the fluids, of course, is your blood.

and the quality of the fluid, the quality of your blood where the cells are is determined by the chemistry. If the chemicals in the blood are good, then it makes sense that the cells will be healthier. Our cells are living off the quality of our blood. That makes sense. We all get that. Then he went on to demonstrate this.

I love it. I love it. You guys, I really wanted to be a physician years ago. And so I went through all the pre-med stuff. I did the anatomy and physiology and I love it. I came in EMT later on. I just love the human body. The guy who did our physiology and anatomy class, he taught at the medical school. So it was thorough. It was wonderful. I loved studying all of that, the miracle of the human body.

But then we go to this next level. And so you say, well, actually, your body is this giant Petri dish, so to speak. It's this capsule filled with hundreds of billions of cells. And they're in this fluid that has a chemical makeup, which is your blood. And so then he poses this question. His biologist poses this question,

Rachel Denning (08:36.13)
What is in charge of the chemical makeup of those fluids of your blood? What's your brain? Your brain is in charge, right? Your brain is this command center, the control center for all of your body. And so it is literally in charge of the chemical makeup. Obviously our food is affecting that big time and like it obviously has a part. Like some of us are way acidic.

In fact, here's a little side note here, a little physical side note. If your body is acidic, right, that's where, and it's off, if it's kind of toxic, that's where disease thrives and grows. And so we want to bring back our balances and get our chemistry right in our bodies.

And if our gut bacteria is off, right, we have good bacteria in there. If that's off, if our food's off, if our balances are off and then our balance is off, then it's a lot easier to have disease thrive in us, right? So anyways, we get back to the brain being the command center, and then we go here again to the brain, and this purely physiological, right, so beautiful, but it's also quantum physics. It's amazing.

He says, well, what is it that determines which chemicals the brain releases into the blood? Right? And here's where things get awesome. Because we all, I think, know and understand this, right? That the brain releases certain chemicals into our body. He says, so the brain is in charge of releasing chemicals. What is it that determines what chemicals the brain releases? It's our thoughts. Whoa.

And so he stated boldly that our thoughts determine which chemicals are being released into our bodies. Those chemicals of course affect the quality and the chemistry of the fluids in which our cells are existing and growing and thriving, and thereby determine the health of those cells.

Rachel Denning (10:51.39)
And he says if any he walked through it, he says, if you think happy, jovial thoughts.

with laughter and he says, being in love is like the best positive mental state because you're just releasing all kinds of really good happiness chemicals you're literally your brain is literally releasing chemicals into your body. He's like that is the best state to be in just to be in love. Ah, so a lot of us need to be more in love my friends, be more in love it's a choice just ramp that up grab your love, your love knob and turn it up just love your spouse.

Be in love and love on your kids too and love on puppies and kittens and flowers. Just feel that but it's interesting Well, so we'll get in good positive relationships and good positive thoughts, right even being optimistic Enthusiastic right positive it releases in all those things. We're getting Dopamines and serotonin and endorphins, you know from touch and love and thinking all those good things

And it's interesting that fear specifically releases some other chemicals. And, um, I can't think of the name right now. The fear releases. Uh, uh, oh, come on. I just, I share this all the time. It releases. The, I can't think of the name. Oh man. You'll have to look it up. You probably already know it, but fear releases.

another one. And that actually like it releases it into our body and the body can kind of even become addicted to that chemical, right? And it can be kind of toxic.

Rachel Denning (12:38.93)
And he specifically mentioned that. He's like, here we are sitting around and we're thinking fearful thoughts, scary thoughts, depressing thoughts, negative thoughts, pessimistic. You know, I think I said pessimistic, but I'm going to share it again. And we're feeling all these feelings and these thoughts, and our brains are releasing those chemicals.

Right? And so it's changing the chemistry of our bodies and affecting our overall makeup. Isn't that fascinating? So I just wanted to share those thoughts and share this idea of like our thoughts are producing chemical reactions in our bodies. And our thoughts.

can bring about results like waking up at a certain time. I don't understand that, but it works. And I want to invite you to put your brain to work in other ways too, to come up with solutions and ideas and creative things, ways to solve some of your challenges. Maybe you're struggling with your marriage or parenting or health or finances or you just want to make some changes or you just want to level up or skill up.

Put your mind to work and tap into the spiritual piece that's there too. I think it's kind of interrelated. But again, this is all just kind of a different, it's all a different topic here. And all I wanted to do was just introduce the idea and invite you to consider it, to think about it and say, I wonder, I wonder if we. Well, not I wonder, I know we can all use our brains more.

and put them to work more in our favor both for our physiology, but for our lives, for our creativity, for the things we want to create and do and become.

Rachel Denning (14:35.974)
Never underestimate the power of your mind, my friends. It's a beautiful, wonderful, and inspiring thing. I'm so grateful for it. And I wanna tap into it more. And I wanna put our minds and our brains more to use and more to work to bring about solutions to all the world's problems. And bring about more giddy happiness. One of my coaching clients the other day said, he said, I wanna be happy, not just like happy, but like sound of music.

happy, or I'm dancing around and twirling and singing. That's the kind of happiness that I want. Yes, that's a perfect way to describe it. And we can choose some of that, and we can create some of that, and we can get it to work in our favor. So never underestimate the power of your mind and your brain, and let's put them to work to do so much good in our own lives and in the world. Love you guys. Reach upper.