Rewiring Your Brain

Samantha Bauer(00:01.526)
Welcome back everybody to Sisters-in-Law of Attraction. I'm Sam.

Christine Goforth(00:06.053)
And I'm Christine.

Samantha Bauer(00:07.936)
And we're so thrilled you're back with us, whether this is your first time or your second time or you've been with us this whole journey. We're so thrilled you're back. And we know that you found us for a reason. We're building a community of people who just want to live in the lane of joy and gratitude and putting the work in to make some adjustments in our own thinking so we can make some real changes in our own life. Today, we're going to talk a little bit more about the science.

Samantha Bauer(00:07.936)
behind rewiring your brain and adjusting your thoughts and some of the neuro pathways. So Christine, you actually started talking about this very early on in the podcast. Certainly, you know, with your own journey, understanding that there really is a science behind, you know, rewiring your brain and retraining your thoughts.

Christine Goforth(01:01.574)
Yes, there really is. I had kind of, like you said, had dipped my toe in research and just kind of hearing a professional that had come into our lives talking about how it was the first time I had heard about how you can quote unquote rewire your brain. And quite literally, she described it as breaking down

Christine Goforth(01:01.574)
pathways and creating new thinking pathways, if you will. And I thought, wow, okay, so how do you do that? Right? What do you do? And where does that come from? Like, why do some people kind of go straight to the negative thinking, the negativity bias, if you will, where it's

Christine Goforth(01:01.574)
you jump into worst case scenario at the first, you know, uncomfortable conversation or situation. It is, it's your brain literally floods with negativity. And, and in my research, it's, is an adaptive trait. So it is something that was wired in us long ago, obviously to protect us and,

Samantha Bauer(02:22.381)
Right.

Christine Goforth(02:27.762)
So some of us never grew out of that. We still have that trait. And so we have to work very hard to rewire it.

Samantha Bauer(02:32.27)
Yes. Well, and it's learned, right? Because as babies and little innocent children, we weren't negative, right? I mean, we were happy little people skipping around. that's the joy of young children. And it's their innocence. And John Genshincero talks a little bit about this in helping us understand how we create the ego.

Christine Goforth(02:37.842)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Bauer(03:01.384)
and how we build information in our brain and store it and create this sort of this negative, know, sort of, it's a set, right? Where we are, there's a negative set to, and like you said, it probably is a form of survival, right? I mean, we have to be critical of it. We have to say, well, you know, what about,

Christine Goforth(03:17.512)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Goforth(03:25.374)
Absolutely.

Samantha Bauer(03:31.008)
know, this negative thing's gonna happen and it, because I have to be prepared. I have to protect myself.

Christine Goforth(03:35.046)
Right. Right. But, but these days it's like, okay, we're not about to be attacked by an animal that's going to eat us alive. Like this is just an email that I'm uncomfortable receiving. I don't need to go into survival mode for said email, right? Or I'm going to get a medical checkup. This it's going to be okay. Right? Like it doesn't have to be worst case scenario.

Samantha Bauer(03:44.248)
Yeah.

Samantha Bauer(03:49.644)
Right.

Samantha Bauer(03:54.967)
Right.

Samantha Bauer(04:00.535)
Yeah, right.

Christine Goforth(04:04.413)
Right.

Samantha Bauer(04:04.808)
Exactly. Well, and to that point, you know, I took my cute little mama up to the Bay Area in Northern California to meet with a breast surgeon for her surgery, as we've talked about before on the podcast, she's battling breast cancer for the third time. And again, if anyone should just be kind of negative about this process, it's her. But you know, as we were talking in the car in the three hours up north,

Samantha Bauer(04:04.808)
You know, she said, I just gave it up to God. I just said, God, I need a miracle. I can't control the outcome of this, but I'm going to be open to whatever the surgeon's going to tell me. And, you know, they didn't know that they can move forward with surgery because, you know, the breast cancer was, you know, close to the skin, inflammatory, and they had to reduce that cancer, you know, with medication before they can move forward with surgery. And

Samantha Bauer(04:04.808)
This breast surgeon comes in and she is darling. Beautiful energy comes over to my mom and says, Oh my gosh, you look so amazing. Look at you, look at you. And, and she just, she went right in. She gave us a plan. We felt so good. And walking out of there, my mom said, Oh my gosh, like the weight of the world just came off my shoulders. She had complete trust in this surgeon. And I, was very interesting because you know, high energy, obviously this breast surgeon is very

Samantha Bauer(04:04.808)
busy. She's, know, in and out of surgery all day. And she actually, you know, she kind of sandwiches in and in her lunch hour. And, but she slowed down when my mom said, you know, this is my third time. And I watched her grab my mom's hand and look at her with compassion. And she just completely stopped, right? She got out, got all out of that. So, but my point is it was such a, it was such a beautiful moment walking out and

Christine Goforth(05:33.118)
Sure. Yeah.

Samantha Bauer(06:01.76)
my mom saying, you know, I gave it up to the Lord, I can't control the outcome. And I'm so grateful that I have this professional, this medical professional in my life that is going to help me journey through this. And so if my mom was, you know, in that negative, my gosh, death due to obstruction, they're not gonna be able to do surgery, I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not gonna find my way through this.

Christine Goforth(06:17.192)
Right, right.

Samantha Bauer(06:31.362)
you know, it would have had a different impact on her, clearly, and certainly an impact on me because, you you're trying to prop somebody up that's going through something very, very difficult. And it just shows the power of positive thinking and hope through something that's so difficult.

Christine Goforth(06:37.14)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christine Goforth(06:50.108)
Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, and going back to what I said and maybe too flippantly of, you have a medical appointment and you go and it's all going to be fine. Okay. So maybe, maybe fine is relative, right? Fine is relative. Fine doesn't mean you're going to get the answer that you want, but it's going to be what you need to

Samantha Bauer(07:09.708)
Right? Right.

Samantha Bauer(07:14.539)
Exactly.

Christine Goforth(07:18.588)
learn or to collect tools for something that might you might go through later on in life or whatever that is. So I just the power of the mind is.

Christine Goforth(07:18.588)
I hope that people can just really believe and trust and go through the things that I all talk about in terms of changing the way that they think because.

Samantha Bauer(07:39.362)
Right? Yes.

Samantha Bauer(07:49.294)
Right, and the physical impact, right? And so there was, when we talk about breath work, right? I mean, there's science about changing, actually change the chemicals in the brain. It changes, calms, it goes into that parasympathetic, where you can kind of relax and rest and be, bring down that cortisol.

Christine Goforth(08:04.329)
Right?

Samantha Bauer(08:16.108)
level the stress and all of that. So if you think about, like for instance, in my mom's case, she could have gotten herself so jacked up on that three hour car ride, like, my God, death, human destruction and da da. Her stress level would have gone through the roof. Stress is not good when you're battling cancer, right?

Christine Goforth(08:26.451)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Goforth(08:35.464)
That's what I was, stress is the impact that stress has on the body on a healthy person, let alone somebody who is battling something is, it's not, it's not good.

Samantha Bauer(08:50.39)
Right, right. And so, you know, the physicality of positive thinking, right? I mean, there's a physical side to that. You you've experienced it, I've experienced it. And that's why they, you know, there's a study that UC Davis did a couple of decades ago. You know, when we talk about gratitude, and it really showed that experiencing gratitude, which is a positive emotion,

Christine Goforth(08:58.8)
Mm-hmm. Right. yeah.

Samantha Bauer(09:20.818)
means that you are just thankful for what's in your life, but you also recognize that there's something larger than yourself. And again, we've talked about it. It's God, higher power, source energy, whatever you call it. But having that faith in something else and giving that up has a physical impact on your body.

Christine Goforth(09:42.836)
Right. Yeah.

Samantha Bauer(09:44.43)
and therefore your health, right?

Christine Goforth(09:46.751)
Because here, if you think about it, when you go into survival mode or that initial flood of negativity in the brain, it's the pit in the stomach. It's the racing heart. It's the sweaty palms. It's the stomach ache. So if we have all of that with a stress response, we can also have the opposite of that when

Christine Goforth(09:46.751)
we kind of give it up and just have faith and choose peace and yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Samantha Bauer(10:21.474)
Yeah. And no, mean, and I think, you know, the breathing is, is, is such an interesting, you know, it's, it's why meditation is, you know, quiet time or whatever, where you're really focused on that breath and calming the nervous system down and just feeding your body with, with, the oxygen and really being mindful and just bringing all of that physical

Christine Goforth(10:33.62)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Bauer(10:50.338)
you know, the physical stress down in your body really, you know, it's kind of hard to describe. It's like, you know, when you get bad news, Christine, it's sort of like, okay, I'm gonna take a deep breath, right? I'm gonna catch myself and I'm not going to go, my God, you know, this bad thing and that bad thing. I'm just like, no, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna take a deep breath. And I think really when we're talking to our audience about, you know,

Christine Goforth(11:06.888)
Yep, reset.

Samantha Bauer(11:20.718)
we're really practitioners. I mean, we're really trying to drill down. Yeah, you know, people say, oh, you know, be grateful, joy and gratitude and positivity, you know, I mean, it's easier said than done. And that's why I think that you and I continue to grow, you know, dig a little deeper in this and like, you sought out, you know, some more science and studies and saying like, okay, what exactly is going on?

Christine Goforth(11:35.016)
Right.

Christine Goforth(11:49.598)
Mm-hmm.

Samantha Bauer(11:49.684)
in when we're trying to rewire that brain. what are some of the things that you have seen in this, the science behind how do you do this work in retraining your brain?

Christine Goforth(12:04.656)
Yes. So it is, I know we've said it a million times, but it is the hardest, most simple thing to do because it requires you to slow down and it requires you to have patience and it requires you to reflect internally. All easy things to do. But I think that in this time of

Samantha Bauer(12:14.956)
Yeah.

Christine Goforth(12:34.212)
rushing and instant gratification and wanting the outcome now. That's very hard for people to slow down. one of the, couple of really interesting things that I learned before I get into the three-step kind of process. We love a process. Yes. So one of the things that I learned was that

Samantha Bauer(12:52.91)
Okay. Yay. We love a good process.

Christine Goforth(13:02.642)
Bad things actually stick like Velcro in your brain, whereas good things tend to act, it's like Teflon, non-stick, doesn't stick. You have to work really hard to remember and hold the good. Whereas bad experiences will stick and it's very, very hard to get rid of or change course, if you will.

Samantha Bauer(13:30.466)
Right, unstick them.

Christine Goforth(13:31.815)
Unstick them. Exactly. That's the technical term. And the other thing that I learned, and I'm going to have to look at my notes for this one because it talks about different parts of the brain. So neuroreflective thinking is basically what I just talked about, slowing down, thinking about what you're thinking, how you can retrain it and try again. But this happens in the limbic part of the brain.

Samantha Bauer(14:00.887)
Okay.

Christine Goforth(14:01.08)
And that also reacts to everything around you subconsciously, all of it. So by becoming aware of our thoughts in the moment to retrain our brains, we're also kind of retraining our subconscious and just the underlying mood, the underlying mindset. So you're really working on two things at the same time, which I had not.

Samantha Bauer(14:18.946)
Yes.

Samantha Bauer(14:30.638)
Yeah, no, I love that. Yep.

Christine Goforth(14:31.068)
I didn't know. So, and obviously it's stress management so helpful, just slowing down, being aware. It's being able to have a clear head to make better decisions in the moment. what we all have been waiting for is the how, right? And it's the three step process.

Samantha Bauer(14:47.704)
Yep. Yep.

Samantha Bauer(14:53.294)
Here comes the process.

Christine Goforth(15:00.948)
And it's funny because I think I had sent in my research I got ahead of myself and I had sent you see I'm a message and I was like Yeah, I'm gonna come up with this three-step thing notice shift rewire or awareness reflection Reverse I think was mine awareness reflection reverse

Samantha Bauer(15:20.814)
I'm feeling like a little song coming on. Do it like a little jingle.

Christine Goforth(15:29.652)
So here I am thinking I'm so smart this three-step process it turns out somebody much smarter than I did this before. So Donald Hebb is a neuroscientist and he came up with notice shift rewire. So his phrase was neurons that fire together wire together and so it reminds us right like

Samantha Bauer(15:37.07)
You

Samantha Bauer(15:43.65)
Okay.

Samantha Bauer(15:48.812)
Okay.

Samantha Bauer(15:56.153)
I love that.

Christine Goforth(15:58.867)
So it tells us that the brain is not fixed. It's not cement. It's more like plastic where it's pliable and you can rewire it and you can.

Christine Goforth(15:58.867)
what do I want to say? You can, we can cut this part, right? Nope. Okay. Neurons that fire together wire together. Yes. And so I love it because again, it's that it's not fixed. It's pliable. You can rework it. You can retrain it at any time. so, go ahead.

Samantha Bauer(16:16.654)
So repeat again, neurons that fire together, wire together. Love it.

Samantha Bauer(16:31.597)
Yep.

Samantha Bauer(16:37.58)
And to go back really quick, Christine, to that concept of bad thoughts that stick like Velcro, right? And so that's where the work comes in. You have to work. You have to work to unstick that negative thought on repeat in your head and continue to be intentional about replacing it with the positive. And when you're doing that, the very act of doing that, to that neuroscientist

Christine Goforth(16:44.765)
Yes.

Christine Goforth(16:48.635)
Exactly.

Samantha Bauer(17:07.022)
point, you're creating new neurons, neuro pathways, because again, neurons who fire together, wire together. And so being intentional with building that in your brain, those are positive thoughts and positive action that you can take.

Christine Goforth(17:15.612)
wire together. Yeah.

Christine Goforth(17:28.126)
So one other thing that I personally never really, I hadn't really thought about and now it makes so much sense. So I will definitely be incorporating this is when you're noticing it and aware of whatever negative thought pattern or that initial pit in the stomach in a situation, you notice it and you kind of sit with it for a second.

Christine Goforth(17:28.126)
And the second step is to shift or ref the reflection of it is, okay, where am I feeling this? Why am I, what am I afraid of? And how can I reword this in a positive way? Right? Like, no, I, I don't want to have to pay thousands of dollars to fix the hole in my ceiling. What do I want? So instead of saying what I don't want, what do I want?

Samantha Bauer(18:23.48)
Yep. Yep.

Christine Goforth(18:24.782)
I want someone to come out and fix my ceiling for an affordable price and never have another leak again. Right? That's the, that's the positive shift. And not only do you, at that time, when you're rethinking it and you're reflecting, you sit with that for a moment to let that positivity sink in.

Samantha Bauer(18:31.704)
Right. Right.

Samantha Bauer(18:36.653)
Yes.

Samantha Bauer(18:53.037)
Mm-hmm.

Christine Goforth(18:53.17)
which is the step that I haven't done where it's kind of helping it marinate. That's kind of how I think of it is like, okay, we're just gonna let the positivity sit in there before we move to the next step, you know? So, which is reverse, right? And then you say that out loud, whatever it is that you were thinking, reverse course and say the positive side of it instead.

Samantha Bauer(18:55.916)
Right.

Samantha Bauer(19:20.62)
Right. Right. And again, this is where the practice comes in. This is where the discipline, the practice, and this example comes to mind. we've got, you and I have someone special in our lives that we share, and she's your actual sister. She's my sister-in-law. And you know, I had a great conversation with her last week. You she's had some challenges personally.

Samantha Bauer(19:20.62)
medical or whatever. And she called me and so she had an exciting opportunity to do something fun or whatever. But you know, she was nervous about her or whatever. And she says, all right, Sam, I need some high vibey advice here. You know, and I said, okay, you have a choice. You can choose to live in fear in the what ifs, or you can just choose to enjoy.

Christine Goforth(20:03.26)
yes, I got this. I got that phone call too.

Samantha Bauer(20:18.688)
and live your life and whatever's gonna be is gonna be, right? I mean, it's really just that simple. And so again, in this work, it's making that choice, being aware of that thought, the negative thought, I'm scared of X, Y, and Z, I'm scared that this might happen, da-da-da-da. I'm like, no, I'm gonna shift. I can't care about that. I can't care about every potential problem that's gonna happen.

Christine Goforth(20:18.696)
Right?

Christine Goforth(20:22.31)
Exactly.

Christine Goforth(20:22.31)
Yeah.

Christine Goforth(20:48.008)
Right? Yes.

Samantha Bauer(20:48.394)
I want to live like this. This is how this is, I actually want to enjoy my life. I want to do this. Okay. You know, and then again, it's, it's about sitting in that positive thought. What does that mean? What does it mean that I want to enjoy my life? What? Well, you know, and you sit with it and you just, and, and, and so I love that whole idea of marinating in that positive, positive thought, because that's how you build those neuro pathways.

Christine Goforth(20:53.608)
Right?

Christine Goforth(21:15.934)
That's exactly it. That's exactly it. Yep. So while the three steps are, you know, very easy, notice, and then let's see here, notice, and then reflect, and then reverse. Very easy, but you have to slow down to do it.

Samantha Bauer(21:19.222)
Yes.

Samantha Bauer(21:30.976)
Uh-huh. And reverse. It's all very, you got to do the work. here we are. again, Christine, we could go on forever. I'm so, so happy and thrilled. It's been a minute and I just, absolutely adore our time together. And I love the fact that we're getting just more granular with this work and helping our community, you know, get the tools, recognize.

Christine Goforth(21:39.175)
It's worth it.

Christine Goforth(21:43.08)
forever, I know.

Christine Goforth(21:50.152)
Me too.

Samantha Bauer(22:00.108)
you know, really just small adjustments that you can do to make some huge change in your life. So we're going to leave it here for now. And so great to see you. And thank you so much to all of our listeners. Thank you for joining us today. This is Sisters-in-Law of Attraction. I'm Sam. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

Christine Goforth(22:19.633)
And I'm Christine.

Christine Goforth(22:19.633)
Bye.