Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess Chapter One: What Happens When We Don't Use Our Minds Correctly
Sometimes it feels like we live in a world characterized by fear. People are fearful about their health, the economy, their jobs, the future, corruption, crime, and their feelings of powerlessness.
The cost of this fear is toxic thoughts, toxic stress, anxiety, and depression, which in turn increase our vulnerability to disease. The end result of this fear, anxiety, and illness cycle, if we don’t manage it with our minds, is a society dependent on external factors such as painkillers, medications, wellness fads, and skyrocketing health costs to fix us.
But what if there was another way? What if the answer lay inside of you? What if you held the key?
Most people understand the need to live a healthy lifestyle, even if they don’t fully understand the impact of their lifestyle choices on disease processes. What many people don’t recognize is the need for proper mind-management and how it both supports and sustains a healthy lifestyle.
When our thinking is toxic, it can mess up the stress response, which then starts working against us instead of for us. This, in turn, can make us more vulnerable to disease, which is why many researchers now believe that toxic stress is responsible for up to approximately 90 percent of illness, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Only 5–10 percent of disease is said to come from genetic factors alone.
Why? When an individual is in a toxic thinking state, the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and homocysteine can significantly affect the immune system, cardiovascular system, and neurological system. In fact, excessive stress hormones are so effective at compromising the immune system that physicians therapeutically provide recipients of organ transplants with stress hormones to prevent their immune system from rejecting the foreign implant.
Despite a more widespread understanding of the importance of healthy lifestyle choices, and many incredible resources out there on making good lifestyle choices, many people lack the necessary mind-management skills they need to apply this knowledge to everyday life. This isn’t a one-off thing. Mind-management is a skill that needs to be learned; used all day long, every day; and constantly upgraded as we grow from childhood into adulthood. For every new experience, we need a new set of mind-management tools!
Now, before you start panicking and thinking that it’s impossible, stop, breathe, and read on. I don’t want you to get stuck thinking it’s hopeless, that you have caused all your own problems, and that you cannot change. This will only make you feel worse about yourself, and it really isn’t the case. You can’t blame yourself for something you didn’t know—but you can empower yourself and shift into change mode when you learn how to manage your thinking. This is a skill that needs to be learned and constantly upgraded—I do this daily, and will continue to do so until I pass on from this world.
Most of what I share in this book hasn’t been taught to you before because it’s an area that isn’t well understood. We’re only beginning to understand mind and consciousness, which is exciting. If we’ve come this far without good mind-management skills, imagine where we can go when we’ve learned how to control our thinking!
Listen to the full excerpt on my podcast (episode #259). For more information on how mind management is the key to good mental and physical health, preorder my new book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess! If you preorder before March 2nd and register your order, you will get access to exclusive bonus materials, including:
- One month subscription to the NeuroCycle app (available from March 2, 2021).
- Exclusive bonus chapters including one on how to use the 5 step Neurocycle with children, and how to use the Neurocycle to detox trauma!
- Exclusive access to 3-week book club webinar with Dr. Leaf
- Downloadable workbook
- Up to 49% off BiOptimizers Cognibiotic (the most powerful mood booster supplement!) + FREE Biological Optimization Blueprint Book with every purchase!
- 25% off the *Ultimate Plan and DNA Kit and receive a FREE InnerAge ($100 value) fromInsideTracker. *The Ultimate Test & DNA Kit are for USA and Canada orders only
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BiOptimizers’s Leaky Gut Guardian, which is a great way to heal your gut and improve your immune health! Use the code DRLEAF10 for 10% off any order at www.bioptimizers.com/drleaf.
Podcast Highlights
1:08 What happens when we don’t use our minds correctly
1:26 If our minds are messed up, our lifestyles are messed up, which affects our mental and physical health
1:47 Why there is no secret formula for healing or happiness
2:32 Why humans have always battled with mental health issues
2:55 Why we can learn to control our reactions to life
4:10 How proper mind management supports and sustains a healthy lifestyle
4:50 How toxic stress affects our health
5:34 Why mind management is a lifestyle
6:55 You are your mind
8:00 Why no one else has the right to define your purpose
9:30 The importance of the mind-brain connection
14:39 To shape your life, you need to shape your mind
15:15 Why people are sicker and dying younger, despite the advances we have made in technology and medicine
28:46 How the current mental healthcare system has failed us
37:20 Why we need to embrace and reconceptualize our mental distress and trauma
Switch On Your Brain LLC. is providing this podcast as a public service. Reference to any specific viewpoint or entity does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by our organization. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. If you have any questions about this disclaimer, please contact info@drleaf.com.
This podcast and blog is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. We always encourage each person to make the decision that seems best for their situation with the guidance of a medical professional.