Switch on Your Brain: The Key to Peak Happiness, Thinking, and Health (21 page)

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

At the same time, you will be growing a healthy new thought

to replace the toxic one, so you will be consciously and si-

multaneously building up healthy thoughts and tearing down

toxic thoughts. You work on only
one
thought network each

21-day cycle, breaking down the toxic and simultaneously

building up the healthy.

You Can Repeat the Cycle

You may repeat a cycle if you feel you haven’t fully dealt with

the issue. Many times we start working through something

only to discover the root issue a few days in. That’s fine; just

focus in on the root issue for the rest of the 21 days and then

redo the cycle. Twenty-one days is just the minimum time

needed to build the neural network.2

What this means is that it takes repeated updating or re-

thinking through information in a sequenced way for it to

take root and form a stable memory. If this reinforcement

does not take place over the 21 days, then the newly found

neural network will decay in less than a month. If you don’t

use the memory, the proteins it is made from will denature

and the memory will disassemble. Wherever there is more

thinking activity, there will be more wiring. Whatever you

think about the most will grow, because thinking stimulates

the genetic expression required to make proteins. Every hour

the connections are doubling.3

You may also just feel at the end of the cycle that the toxic

thought was so dominant or strong that it warrants working

on it another 21 days. Sometimes there is a lot of guilt and

condemnation or “I can’t” mindsets that can keep you from

progressing. These mindsets alone require a 21-day brain

detox before the next issue can be tackled.

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How and Why the 21-Day Brain Detox Plan Works

Pay More Attention to the New, Healthy Memory

This is why it is so important to build up the new healthy

memory and pay more attention to it rather than to the toxic

memory you are breaking down: Repeated replaying is cen-

tral to the process of creating durable, long-term memories.

And remember, this works in both the negative and positive

direction.

As you move through the five steps and into deep, focused

reflection, your brain will have moments of insight that are

accompanied by bursts of high frequency gamma waves in

the brain.4 These create an ideal mindset for learning and

integration across the brain. Neurons have their own rhyth-

mic activity, almost like an internal chatter, and changes in

these fluctuations underlie how we perceive things.5 It is our

choice to pay attention that influences this internal chatter

in a positive or negative direction. You want as much of this

happening over the 21 days as possible because it will enhance

your effectiveness. We need to be almost obsessive in our

desire to change, to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly

Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48 NIV).

So Many Good Things Are Happening

The brain is always learning how to learn, always changing.

As you use the 5-Step Switch On Your Brain Learning Process

through the 21 days you are influencing so many good things

to happen. Here are just a few. When you think deeply and

are learning, BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor) is

released to consolidate the connections between neurons to

enhance recall in the future. This BDNF also promotes in-

crease in the fatty substance called myelin, which insulates the

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THE 21-DAY BRAIN DETOX PLAN

nerves. This is a good thing, because increased myelination

means faster thinking and better memory. As you start pay-

ing attention and focusing your thinking, BDNF is released,