The Applied Neuroscience Institute

chivalry57 wrote on Tue Apr 24th, 9:09pm:

When I rise in the morning I tell myself “This is my morning to create the
kind of day I want!!”. No CNN. The positive armor I use to start my day are
reading my 5 five year goals aloud with visualization and my life mission statement.
To enhance my day even more, my Lady and I share each nite before
we slumber, 3 positive/ grateful things that happen to us that day…aaah
For us it is great therapy to bring more Up Spiral events into our lives.

I know that by making this decision and taking the time to do these positive choices that we will not be like so many people being in such a hurry to get where they don’t need to be. If we don’t let go of the things we don’t want,  it will only create more bumps and roadblocks on our path to having our
desires.
need to be.

Much Gratitude
CHIVALRY57

Dr.A wrote on Sat Apr 28th, 7:55pm:

Speaking of chaotic attraction!!!  Sounds like the beginning of a stand up comedy act…but it is not comical…really, trust me.  Seems that my month long trip to South America shook things up a bit.  Yes, I was in Chile during two good sized earthquakes, but that’s not it. (smile) Although I was in flow for so much of my experience there, it rattled some ideas and feelings I have had deep inside for a while.  I had felt glimpses of changes I really wanted, but due to fear, and some negative thoughts, it all got pushed back inside.  Some of these changes have to do mostly with my professional life.  For so long I have been doing my work which I love, mostly in a hospital setting.  It is great to see that my holistic point of view and ideas help patients, and also teaches interns, residents and hopefully long term MD’s, the power of the mind and spirit, in conjunction with the importance of a holistic approach towards a healthy body.  Yes, I love my work, but I have been feeling that I need to jump to the next level, to be completely on my own.  Yes, in part it is due to politics and such at the hospital, but mostly because in the course of the month away, I re-evaluated my direction.  There is so much for me to do, so many to help… I need the freedom to make it happen.  It seems difficult to figure out how and when to make a change, but then again if I let go of fear and let VIbe Core take over, then I have nothing to worry about, and nothing to be negative about… the changes that are best for me WILL happen, when they happen.  I am open to it.  Emotional sobriety needs to be in place so that I can better deal with whatever comes my way.  I will look to a greater place, to my higher self so that I can be clearly in VibeCore.  “ I want you to move into this wider dimension where there’s greater and greater novelty, greater and greater differences and much more adaptability to change.”  I can see some of what I am attracting.  Chaotic attraction…yes… here I am, what novelties are you bringing to my life?  I am here. I am ready!

Katherine wrote on Sun Apr 29th, 11:13am:

We are learning that in modern times negative thoughts serve only as a sign to proactively lean back to the positive.  In GTPM, Dr. William Larkin emphasizes the benefits of positive thoughts by stating, “As the brain becomes more positive, we become more intelligent, diverse and creative in our thinking” (p. 43), as opposed to negative thinking that will close off these benefits and leave us emotionally hollow. 

Have you ever made a judgment about another person and found out later you were wrong? Take the following scenario into consideration, “It’s like the woman who was upset at not being invited to her friend’s wedding, and held a grudge for 20 years… until the invitation finally arrived in the mail accompanied by an apology from the Post Office (http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/giving-the-benefit-of-the-doubt/).” How unfortunate that an unfounded (why would this person even think that her friend had not invited her) doubt caused an unhealthy grudge over so many years. 

Reflecting back on the Larkin’s lecture, (14, p. 7) he uses the example to someone cutting you off in traffic.  This is a great example since you would never have the ability to find out what was going on in the person’s life (unlike the friend who thought they did not receive a wedding invitation) who had cut you off.  Giving the benefit of the doubt, in this case, is like receiving a gift. Only both the giver, and the beneficiary of this gift (not assuming negative motives), is YOU. Why think the worse when you will never know the full story.  According to the writings of Buddha, “There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills” which provides a good reason to develop the skill of anti-reactivity response.  In other words, be careful about rushing to conclusions. 

So how do you create an emotional environment conducive to giving the benefit of the doubt as opposed to jumping to faulty conclusions?  One way is by going to the highest thinking and emotional state of mind possible.  Larkin gives credit to this concept to Esther and Jerry Hicks who coined the term “Go to the Highest Place” (GHP), in their book, The Amazing Power of Positive Emotion. Simply put, it is the ability to think and feel the highest possible state at that moment in time. 

Let’s go back to the example of someone cutting you off in traffic.  What if you were able to use a skill like the Simple Elegant Solution (SES) in that brief moment of time to ensure you preserve the positive state of mind (SOM) that you had prior to the event.  SES consists of pulsing a positive emotion (say Gratitude), Engage in a Strength (Forgiveness & Mercy as an example), and Make a Decision and take an action (benefit of the doubt as the offenders motives).  By moving through the SES process you have the ability to “go to the highest place” (GHP). 

Finally, in Lecture 15, Larkin demonstrates another process that will take us to GHP and that is through a meditative process of pulsing Love, Peace, Joy and Gratitude. Larkin instructs you to pulse the positive emotions as they relate to our chakras.  Love is surrounding, peace is coming up through the pelvic area, joy is located around the chest and Gratitude springs up through our scalp.  When I first did this exercise I also saw colors for each emotion.  Love is white, peace – purple, joy – orange and gratitude is yellow.

Chelle wrote on Sun Apr 29th, 5:39pm:

Once again, the context of this ANI work and specifically this blog brings to mind the life my mother lived well and still lives consistently giving every one she knows, without exception, the benefit of doubt. 

For 50 + years I’ve witnessed her graciously leave a group or simply remain pleasantly quiet when the conversation turned negative or mean spirited in gossip. Attempts to goad her into agreeing that someone deserved no benefit, or to participate in negative conversations, she remained steadfast and would simply say, “There is always something we can find good about this person or situation.”  or her favorite phrase “I wonder what good we can find in this”? Even when presented with ‘proof positive’ that someone had said or done something less than kind to or about her, she remained steadfast to ‘giving the benefit and refused to be drawn into the ‘drama’. In all my years, I’ve never heard my mother say a negative statement about anyone, but often she will say, “I’m sure they must be hurting inside to( act, say, be) that way” “I’ll pray for their hurt” and she does!  I wonder how many people have suddenly felt better without knowing why, simply by my mother’s reciprocal causality!

Mother’s persistent positivity, refusal to participate in gossip or even appear ‘down’,  used to either embarrass or irritate my siblings and me to no end, and we’ve all had our regrets remembering times of our outright derision for what we deemed her ‘inability to face reality”. 

What we didn’t notice in the self absorption of being children and even young adults, is that everyone becomes the best version of themselves in my mother’s presence.  It’s as if her giving them the benefit of doubt allows a person to believe and be the best of themselves. People often say, “I feel so good after I’m around your mother”  I’ve observed with interest that we all laugh more, hug more, smile more, are kinder and more gentle with ourselves and with each other after being around mother.  A halo effect of sorts?

At mother’s 90th birthday celebration two years ago, relatives and friends traveled from many states to pay her honor. I remember one cousin drew laughs and nods of recognition when he said, “Even people who can’t stand each other, somehow get along just fine, in Aunt Bertie’s presence”

I’d like to say that I have been as consistent in giving benefit of doubt and always able to reach for the highest, best feeling as mother is, but I’m not. However, her example is the most powerful confirmation I have of the amazing effects of a life well lived,consistently giving the benefit of doubt and by continually reaching for the highest and best feeling possible in any situation life presents. 

After all, nearing the age of 92, mother still lives on her own, spends two hours a day or more on the phone with friends, drives to her ‘work’ volunteering to help ‘the old people who need me”, only takes one medication, rarely is ill, produces intricate, hand stitched tapestries that are works of art, reads voraciously,can beat most anyone in Scrabble, and is always willing to learn something new and does! 

Proof enough for me! 

jillangeldavis wrote on Mon Apr 30th, 10:09am:

    In this lecture, Dr. Larkin shares his observation of the concept of emotional sobriety from various twelve step programs. Lack of emotional sobriety is a symptom of all mal adaptive coping mechanisms that result in addiction, like over eating, drinking, and self medicating with various drugs. Dr. Larkin defines emotional sobriety as a state in which people must ”get sober with their emotions and draw those emotions in to a positive state that is a psychologically normal positive state.” This means that an emotionally sober person can move their emotions to a positive state by using the negative emotion as a cue to go to a positive emotion. This is an UpScale and emotionally healthy form of gratification. When we are in the emotional gym and consciously pulsing the tools of peace, gratitude, love and joy, we are enhancing our biochemical brain state and maximizing our well being. We are emotionally sober. One benefit of emotional sobriety is that we are less reactive, when we have fewer negative reactions, we minimize the opportunity to bio chemically impact our emotional, intellectual and spiritual well being by keeping ourselves from taking a plunge into the down spiral. By minimizing our opportunities to down spiral, we set our selves up to be in an Up Spiral. While in this Up Spiral, we can better plan how to flourish by consciously arranging the ratio of our positive experiences by 5 to 1 or 3 to 1.

  Ancient wisdom revisits us as a useful tool when we do what our grandmother’s call ‘giving people the benefit of the doubt.’ I love what Michelle wrote about her mother and her positive outlook. Dr. Amen spoke the same way of his mother, only he was able to SPECT scan her brain, and he said it was indeed a model brain of full function.
Giving the benefit of the doubt may not be a resource readily available if you are functioning from a down spiral. At the end of the day, making the choice to have emotional sobriety and give people the benefit of the doubt increases our time in the UpSpiral, which increases the amount of time we spend growing the positive brain. When we give people the benefit of the doubt, we are increasing our well being as well as theirs. When we are compassionate with ourselves, we are also giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt and continuing to lean our brain to the positive. Being in your UpSpiral puts you in more of a position to give people the benefit of the doubt and goes hand in hand with emotional sobriety. When you are in an UpSpiral, you are less reactive. You have created a buffer of positivity. In Applied Positive Neuro Psychology, cultivating an awareness of emotional sobriety and giving the benefit of the doubt are practices that will enable you to stay in the UpSpiral and engage in life in a way which enables you to flourish.

Gale STEWART wrote on Sat May 5th, 12:52pm:

1) “Negative visuals from anxiety, fear, and resentment create division and dysynchrony in the brain.  You are not using the whole brain. You are reducing the integrative, creative, large picture, problem solving capacity of the right brain.  The more you do it, the less you can see the truth.”
    Half my life ago I read that very few people use less than 10% of our minds.  I set out on a course of studies to discover why…I wanted to use as much of my mind as possible and I wanted to find out how to do that.  I also wanted to know why we don’t use 100% of our minds.
    Then I discovered that not only do we not use 100% of our minds, but only half our brains!  Katherine says she asks herself why wouldn’t she want an UpSpiral of 100?  Why wouldn’t anyone, if we know what being in an UpSpiral means?  Why wouldn’t we want to use 100% of our minds, and 100% of our brains? 
    Most of us are not aware that negative thinking utilizes only half our brains.  We are not aware that the negative thoughts we have, the negativity we read and hear about…in the desire to be “informed citizens”...have such a dramatic impact on how we feel, how our health is affected.  Nor   do we realize how negativity affects our lives.  I’ve become so sensitive to negativity that just a raised voice affects my nervous system.  And I’m also come to realize that I can befriend that negativity by letting it tell me what I need to do to get back on target.  No longer content with an UpSpiral of 85 or 90, I’m with Katherine…why wouldn’t I want to be at 100 every day?  Since I’ve made that decision, I am recording in my Plans…book, more and more answers!  The Universe is surprising me with so many responses I can’t help but be at 100!  I realize I am building a buffer of positivity by getting into the UpSpiral and staying there.  I am becoming emotionally sober… I am aware of my feelings and know I have a choice….I choose to be happy!      And I’ve discovered why so few of us use only 10% of our minds…we only use half of our brains, because we dwell in the land of negativity!  By moving up the UpSpiral, by becoming more positive, we are building neural pathways that utilize our entire brain, showing us the bigger picture, enabling us to solve problems in a more creative way.  By integrating our brains, we are using our entire brain, our entire mind, which enables us to live more creative, productive, happy lives.