Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (19 page)

To detox your thought life, you need to remember
it’s your

thinking that will actually change your brain
. So you need

to do
consciously
what your brain does on a
nonconscious

level to build a thought. You control your brain; your brain

does not control you.

A Simple Brain Sequence That Makes Things Happen

In order to make this nonconscious to conscious process hap-

pen effectively, what you do each day is my 5-Step Switch

On Your Brain Learning Process. This is a “brain sequence”

based on my Geodesic Information Processing Theory, which

describes the science of thought (see chap. 8). This is a sta-

tistically significant and scientifically proven technique that

I developed many years ago and have continued to develop

and use over the years in my research and clinical experi-

ence to help people think and learn for lasting success. It is

based on complex science that focuses on the dynamics of

the thought process. In this book I will teach you the simple

application, but more thorough details can be found in my

scientific references if you wish to read further.1

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What Is the 21-Day Brain Detox Plan?

The 5-Step Switch On Your Brain Learning Process

The 5-Step Switch On Your Brain Learning Process has at its

heart focused, organized, and disciplined deep intellectual

thinking to break down toxic thoughts and build up healthy

thoughts—and in doing so, change your brain in a positive

direction. This will result in peak thinking, happiness, and

health. When applied daily within the correct time frames, it

becomes a lifestyle of thinking that renews your mind, creates

real change and freedom, and brings you ever closer to God.

I am always excited to share this theory and process with

people because of the joy it brings to see the positive change

it makes in the lives of those who truly apply it.

I demonstrated in my research in the early 1990s that the

nonconscious metacognitive mind is much more powerful

than the conscious cognitive mind. When you engage the non-

conscious mind through deep thinking, you bring memories

into the conscious mind in a vulnerable state, which means

you can change them—or reconceptualize them. I also found

that when the memories go back into the nonconscious mind,

they are more complex. You have not simply added informa-

tion, you have redesigned the memories—and this can go in

a positive or negative direction. Scientifically, this is called

“creative reconceptualization.”2

As an individual, you
are
capable of making mental and

emotional changes in your life. Through your thinking, you

can actively re-create thoughts and, therefore, knowledge in

your mind.

God Is Revealing More Each Day

These research results have been reconfirmed recently, spe-

cifically related to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

trauma. Karim Nader, a professor at McGill University, has

done groundbreaking research on memory that scientifically

proves that we can renew our minds—more evidence of sci-

ence catching up with the Bible. He shows that the emotional

component of memories can be reconsolidated or changed

when recalled into the conscious mind because they become

vulnerable. So as a memory moves from the nonconscious

mind to the conscious mind, it becomes vulnerable and sus-

ceptible to change.3 This is precisely what I proposed and

found in my research.

My Documented Results

Some of my documented results using this deep-thinking,

brain-engaging process were very exciting. My patients with

closed-head injuries showed between 110 to 140 percent

increase in their academic results. This academic increase

started within approximately twenty-one days of starting my

5-Step Switch On Your Brain Learning Process. Furthermore,

not only did it improve academic function, but intellectual,

emotional, and social skills showed dramatic change as well.

One patient in particular showed a better intellectual status,

as evaluated on neuropsychological testing, after the accident

than before. This means she increased her intelligence, ac-

cording to the neuropsychologist, by up to 20 points post-

accident when normally intellectual scores decrease by 20 to

30 points after a traumatic brain injury.

Her memory improvement was almost immediate and con-

tinued to improve dramatically over the twelve months of

therapy. This improvement continued over time with her going

on to further her studies and successfully moving into the

work arena. Clinically, this patient became more organized

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What Is the 21-Day Brain Detox Plan?

and less confused, and she was perceived by her peers as being

no different from them.

This is a major feat because statistical estimates suggest

that only one third of patients who suffer traumatic brain

injury might return to their previous lifestyle and gainful

employment with traditional therapy. In contrast, the 5-Step

Switch On Your Brain Learning Process, my nontraditional

therapeutic approach, works on metacognitive and cogni-

tive mind issues (see chap. 8), and the improvement in the

metacognitive and cognitive mind issues carries over into

intellect, emotions, and psychosocial functioning. Probably

the most impactful is that the improvement carries over into

everyday life and is therefore self-sustaining.

We Can All Get Control of Our Minds

At the same time I was working with traumatic brain injury

(TBI) patients, I also worked with students with learning

problems as well as students who had no learning problems

as such, but who wanted to improve their academic progress.

My work also included adults pursuing further education and

those in corporate life. In my doctoral research, I showed that

significant changes in cognitive, academic, and psychosocial

function happened in teachers and students alike when they

applied my deep-thinking brain technique. Across the board,

I was seeing these same kinds of results. I trained thousands

of teachers and therapists in my 5-Step Switch On Your Brain

Learning Process, and they have, in turn, reached thousands

of students and report great changes.

Put Your Mind to It

I even saw this happening in the most challenging of situ-

ations back in my home country of South Africa. For many

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

years I worked with starving children who had literally not

eaten for many days. In most cases they didn’t have two lov-

ing parents at home because at least one if not both had

either died of AIDS or had been murdered, and they lived

in squalid conditions with more than a 70 percent chance

of having been exposed to some form of physical, sexual,

or mental abuse—yet they could not get enough of learning

how to learn when I ran Switch On Your Brain courses in

their schools.

Even though I was working through the medium of aca-

demics in these schools, the sessions became like church ser-

vices when those brave children recognized that they could

use their minds to rise above their circumstances, and that

they could change their life with this incredible mind and

brain God had given them. They saw learning as an exciting

opportunity and wanted to be at school, despite the fact that

there were often a hundred hungry, dirty, traumatized children

squeezed into a classroom where we would have only one

textbook to work from and one old-fashioned chalkboard.

They were desperate to learn and sat for hours listening raptly

and hardly moving, as though trying to absorb everything I

was teaching into every fiber of their being. It was a privilege

to be there with those magnificent minds dressed in rags,

and this was where I learned some of my greatest lessons

about the power of choice and deep, intellectual thought to

change the mind.

It’s Not a Heavy Burden

Some researchers who visited Soweto, South Africa, where

I worked for years, have compared these amazing children in

Soweto to Harvard students, though you could not have two

more different worlds.4 Their results showed that 95 percent of

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What Is the 21-Day Brain Detox Plan?

the Soweto children said they loved schoolwork and learning;

in comparison, about 80 percent (4 out of 5) of the Harvard

students suffered from depression so debilitating they could

not function.5 This is shocking considering that Harvard has

some of the brightest minds, magnificent facilities, and is

mentioned often as the gold standard of education.

When you see choosing to change your mind and to learn as

a heavy burden, you miss out on the opportunities in front of

you. When you see choosing to change your mind and to learn

as a wonderful privilege, suddenly you see the opportunities.

What I saw in the people I have worked with over the years,

some of whom are described in the studies in earlier chapters

and above, was a mindset that chose to change and excel.

They chose not to allow their difficult life experience to block

them. They
chose to change
. They chose not to succumb to

the pressure nor to get stuck in a neutral position and settle

for the status quo.

Do you want to choose to change? Choosing life is the

mindset that brings renewal and revival. This is what I hope

my 21-Day Brain Detox Plan will help you achieve.

1. You have to
choose
to have a controlled thought life

and to be happy and
healthy. Everyone can learn how

to improve their thinking, learning, and intelligence.

2. We need to wire in positive thought networks that can

fill us with the power to get us back on track (2 Tim.

1:7).

3. Even though the 5 Steps of the Switch on Your Brain

Learning Process that are used daily in the 21-Day Brain

Detox are based on rigorous science and the Word of

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God, they are a simple tool to help bring peak happi-

ness, thinking, and health not only into your life but

also the lives of your loved ones.

4. To detox your thought life, you need to remember
it’s

your thinking that will actually change your brain
.

5. Science is catching up with the Bible daily.

6. If you put your mind to it, you can achieve what God

says you can achieve.

7. You control your brain; your brain does not control

you.

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10

How and Why the 21-Day

Brain Detox Plan Works

The Switch On Your Brain 21-Day Brain Detox Plan

technique is a rigorous, disciplined, daily routine that

becomes a lifestyle of renewing your mind. It is a

lifestyle of neuroplastically rewiring your nerve networks.

It is driven by you, but led by the Holy Spirit. It gets you

into a state of deep, intellectual, introspective self-reflection,

activating all eight keys I described in part 1.

Your Daily Routine

Once you have worked through this book and mastered the

concepts (and take your time with this; it’s worth not rushing

through), your daily routine will take
seven to ten
minutes

minimum, although some like to go longer. During this time

you will be doing 5 steps, daily, for 21 days. These 5 steps

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are based on my research on the science of thought and the

brain (see chapter 8) and are called the 5-Step Switch On

Your Brain Learning Process.

You can do up to
seventeen
21-Day Brain Detox Plan cy-

cles per year.
1
Research shows that deep-thinking exercises

repeated daily over a period of twenty-one days help create

long-lasting change.

Your year can start whenever you want it to, so if you have

picked up this book in September, for example, then you

simply work through the book during September and then

begin your year in October.

Who needs this? Everyone. As you have seen from the eight

keys discussed in part 1, no one is exempt from mind issues.

From the moment God created us with free will, we entered

a realm of creative responsibility for our choices.

It is obviously a highly complex process, but I have sim-