Top Quotes: “Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts” — Jennie Allen

“Did you know that more has been discovered about our minds in the last twenty years than in all the time before that?

Did you know that an estimated 60 to 80 percent of visits to primary care physicians have a stress-related component?”

“Research shows that “75 to 98 percent of mental, physical, and behavioral illness comes from one’s thought life”?”

“When we turn off the constant distractions and sit quietly, really meditating on it, a few things happen:

• Your brain will be physiologically altered. “Scientists have found that the brains of people who spend untold hours in prayer and meditation are different.”
• Your imagination will be rewired. “Inappropriate thoughts can be combatted with positive thoughts, such as thinking of a new hobby, playing music, repeating an inspiring quote, or some other positive activity,” wrote Sam Black from Covenant Eyes.”
• The kind of brain waves present during relaxation increases, and anxiety and depression decrease. “Several studies have demonstrated that subjects who meditated for a short time showed increased alpha waves (the relaxed brain waves) and decreased anxiety and depression.”
• Your brain stays younger longer. “A study from UCLA found that long-term meditators had better-preserved brains than non-meditators as they aged.”
• You’ll have fewer wandering thoughts. “One of the most interesting studies in the last few years, carried out at Yale University, found that mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN), the brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts.”

“We can cognitively reframe our situations with the new pattern looking like this:

[Negative emotion], and [reason], so I will [choice].

• I’m upset, and I was passed over, so I will choose to remember that God has not forgotten me.
• I’m angry, and she was rude, so I will choose to meditate on God’s kindness toward me.
• I’m overwhelmed, and I have too much to do, so I will pause and choose to thank God for existing outside the boundaries of time and for empowering me to accomplish only that which I need to do.
• I’m stressed, and I’m fearful about my finances, so I will choose to pray instead of fear.”