You Can Change Your Brain: Neuroscientist Explains How to Rewire Your Mind & Stop Negative Thoughts

(instrumental music plays) This brain does absolutely nothing except what you tell it to do with your mind.

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a world-renowned researcher and a psychoneurobiologist. Since the early 1980s, she has been researching the mind-brain connection, the formation of memory, and she is also one of the original pioneering researchers to figure out that your brain can change. She is also the author of 18 best-selling books that have been translated into 24 languages.

You can't change your story, but you can change what it looks like inside of you, and therefore, how it plays out into the future. The mind is 99% of who you are. It's fundamental-

Okay, now hold on. I'm wiggling my toes right now thinking my mind is in my toes right now. This is so crazy. I've never heard anybody explain it like that. I just think I got it.

The mind and the brain, the words are used interchangeably as though they're the same thing. And the research shows that 95% of lifestyle diseases come from our thought life. So what the truth is, Mel, is that...

Dr. Caroline Leaf. It is such an honor to have you here in our studios in Boston. It's a pleasure to meet you in person since I've been admiring your work from afar and watching your videos online. Thank you, thank you, thank you for hopping on a plane and being here with us.

Oh, Mel, it's an honor and a privilege. I'm one of your biggest fans and really love what you do. Thank you. It's so great to be here. I'm so excited.

Well, I'm excited to dig into your more than 35 years of research and the tools that you're going to share with us today that come from being a world-renowned psychoneurobiologist. But the way that I want to start is I would love for you to speak directly to the person who is listening to us right now who feels trapped in negative thoughts. You know, like, that their mind is just a complete mess. What would you tell that person who's listening to us right now that feels that way?

95% of people, according to research, actually battle with negative thinking. So it's very common. It's much more common than we realize. But people are, people get stuck there because they're drawn to the imbalance that it creates. You can- you can actually, as soon as you're aware of that, you can change it. And some of the typical things that people get stuck with are things like, they feel under pressure. That they, that- that's such a, I'm so, "I feel so pressurized, I just can't do it." Black-and-white thinking is another huge one. It's this or that. Nothing's ever, life's a spectrum, nothing's ever black and white, but it really gets people stuck. Things like, "My brain won't shut up." You know, that's something that people will often say to me. "How do I switch my brain off?" That's a common statement that people make. A couple of others are things like, um, "My- my past is haunting me. How do I deal with it?" It's coming right into, it haunts, it's there, it's over me all the time.