Rewiring our brains for positivity does great things for our lives — and our physical and mental health

Certain things are great for our health — peace of mind a good marriage a sense of belonging a supportive network and calm and loving feelings. Medical research over the past decades has linked all of these things with longevity and wellness and their opposites (unhappiness and agitations of all kinds) with serious disease and early death.
Obviously we all want to cultivate the first set of characteristics not only in order to live longer and healthier lives but also in order to feel good for the simple pleasure of that experience. The question of course is how can we do it?
The Starting Point
Hashem starts each of us off with our own peculiar handicaps. We inherit and live among a pool of angry or sad or anxious genes or a bag of mixed-miserable genes — through no fault of our own except perhaps some past-life mischief. Most of us are not born tranquil-to-go.
Yet it does us no good to blame our genes or our upbringing for our disturbed mindset. Hashem wants us to improve this starting point and rewards us for working on ourselves with an influx of joy and physical vitality (not to mention benefits in the World to Come).
What does this work involve? How can we unkink the kinks in our neural wiring and produce a new improved happier brain?
Neural Renovation
Dr. Ronald Potter-Efron a world-renowned anger-management specialist — among many other medical professionals and neuroscientists — explains that due to the wonders of neuroplasticity (the malleability of the brain’s organization and wiring) all of us can fairly easily change our brains. It does however take time. The trick lies in repetition — the slow methodical building of new neural structures.
Our chronic negativity in whatever form it takes is already running faster-than-light circuits in our brain: our background anxiety irritability or pessimism is primed to jump to the fore at the slightest provocation. Moreover our current wiring colors our perceptions distorting them to fit with our current worldview.
In other words our brains lie to us seeing problems where none exist. For instance a woman with a self-critical brain may find it almost impossible to digest a sincere compliment. She’s just saying that she reasons when someone tells her she looks great. Or a chronically angry man may interpret his son’s knock at the door as a rude interruption instead of a simple request to enter.
However the process of distortion can work for us as well as against us. Seeing the world through rose-colored glasses does indeed cause things to look better and if they look better than they really are then guess what? It only benefits us! When weighing the pros and cons of maintaining negative distortions versus positive ones the positive ones make a clear win.
And like it or not there are no “realistic” perceptions as alternative options. We see the world through our shaded glasses and none of us owns clear lenses. Our view of the world is the only one we have. And it is our view that affects our health and wellbeing. “Reality” is for Hashem’s Eyes alone.
A Better View
The goal then is to live in a room with a better view. One way to accomplish this is to begin to tell ourselves good stories. Every night just before going to sleep we can tell ourselves the story of our day. In this story we look for the positive side of every event. “I was stuck in traffic” becomes “Hashem gave me a few minutes of downtime in the car.” “I had an argument with my teenager” becomes “My teen and I are doing the parent-adolescent thing and it’s all good.” “I got a bill for an expensive repair” becomes “Baruch Hashem I have money to pay for it” or “May it atone for my sins.”
Similarly begin to tell new and better stories about your childhood and your past — even write a short autobiography that highlights your victories and happy times. Tell a good story about your current health your current relationships and your current situation in life. Tell a good story about the possibilities for your future.
As you tell these good stories you will begin to notice that everything improves and instead of just telling a wonderful tale you begin to live in one. Health and happiness grow and bloom in the soil of good stories.