The Power of the Mind

This is a topic I’ve wanted to share since the very beginning. In this episode, I dive into how our expectations, beliefs, and thoughts can influence our physical and emotional experiences—sometimes more than we realize.

Drawing from research discussed in Hidden Brain episodes A Dramatic Cure and Reframing Your Reality (Part 2), I explore the placebo and nocebo effects, and studies showing how what we believe—about our bodies, our abilities, even our genetics—can shape the way we feel and function.

The question becomes: if our minds are already influencing our reality, what are our current thoughts creating?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Playful Philosopher. This is a space devoted to exploring the endless but oh so interesting philosophical rabbit holes. It's a place of open curiosity and childlike wonder. I'm your host, Sabrine Zayed. Join me as I share an opening idea or a question, along with my perspectives and lived experiences. My hope is that you find the reflections interesting enough to spark your own conclusions, which I'm sure will be different than my own. So let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. Marcus Aurelius. It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters. Epictetus. A man is what he thinks about all day long. Ralph, Waldo, Emerson. Each of these great individuals recognized one important thing, the power of the mind. Hey everyone, I'm Sabrine Zaid, and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. A topic that I am super passionate about. Have you ever wondered, can your thoughts shape your reality? Do we have any evidence that negative thoughts can lead to negative outcomes? Can positive thoughts help us to have more positive outcomes in our life? Great questions. As I was thinking about this topic, I was reminded of some really interesting podcasts I had heard. If you're not familiar with the Hidden Brain series, that's another really fantastic podcast to listen to if you're interested in these kinds of topics. The first one that I want to bring your attention to is called the Dramatic Cure. This is where they studied or they summarized the effects of like placebo or nocebo effect. So if you're not familiar, placebo effect is where somebody gives you a pill for an ailment that you have and says this should help heal your dizziness or whatever it is, when in reality it's just a sugar pill, it has nothing in it. But because you've been given a pill by somebody who's a medical professional wearing a lab coat, there's a significant uh you know minority of people who in fact do feel better. The nocebo effect is where you are um warned that you may experience some negative side effects, and then you do, in fact, experience those negative side effects. So they've done all kinds of studies. There was one in particular that had to do with people who were um known to have um respiratory sensitivities, and they were exposed to a saline solution, like a saline gas, completely neutral, benign, that would not impact anybody. But there was a substantial minority of people who did, in fact, experience um a tightness in their chest, shortness of breath, coughing, measurable, they actually couldn't measure um changes in their airway function. Um it's really interesting. They go down all of the reasons for why the brain responds and then the hormones in your body responds in order to create this outcome where literally just being told something that's not true by somebody you believe causes those reactions in your brain or in your body to then manifest. Pretty wild. Um, I don't like to go into like the the science mumbo jumbo stuff, so that's why I reference the podcast. You are more than welcome to listen to those details or look them up. They're interesting, it's just not the rabbit hole that I'm going down. There's a second episode that I was also reminded of. It um was called Reframing Your Reality, also by the Hidden Brain series. So the researcher is uh Alicia Crumb. She's a Stanford psychologist, and she was studying about how um mindsets and beliefs affect um physiology. She was studying two genes in particular. Uh, one that had to do, there was a gene that has to do, um, it's linked with feeling full, and there's another gene that's linked with how the body responds to exercise, uh, specifically fatigue. And um, some people get a second wind where others do not. And I believe that she recalled being disappointed when she didn't have the gene that she wanted, and it caused her to want to experiment to decide is it more important that you have the gene, or is it more important that you believe that you have the gene? And so they did these uh controlled studies where people knew which gene they had and you know they could determine the outcomes. But they also had people where they told them the opposite of what was true. And what they found was that even when people were given the wrong information, those that were told they had the bad exercise gene, they got tired faster and they showed reduced endurance. Whereas people who were incorrectly told they had the protective gene performed better and experienced a stronger second win. The same thing happened with the food gene, the ones that were told they they had the gene that helps them to get full more quickly, their gut hormone levels actually changed because of what they believed in their genetics. Um, so that one is a very fascinating one because it really pinpointed to the fact that people's beliefs about their genes influence their bodies more than the actual genes in some cases. And if you want to go deeper down the pseudoscience rabbit hole, which we're not going to do today, you can look up the hidden messages in water, where this individual um took two groups of water, and in one group of water, he spoke very positive affirmations about the water and kept saying nice things to the water, and in the other one, um, they were put like as many negative thoughts and you know bad intentions towards the other water, and then they froze the water and looked at it under a microscope and had some really interesting results. That's not really a controlled study, uh, but it still is a really interesting idea about how we're mostly made of water and how words could significantly influence what we believe and how we move forward. And for me, the punchline, what I want to take to this audience for you to reflect, because for me it's always about reflection. What is it that you are saying to yourself? What is it that others are mirroring or reflecting to you in your surroundings that you are picking out and believing as yourself? Which of your beliefs are helpful in propelling you forward? Which beliefs do you have that are holding you back? Are they even true? What beliefs are keeping you stuck in old stories are keeping you in the past? Keeping you looking in the rearview mirror instead of looking ahead. You don't have to spend tons of time on this, but I do think it's important for us to stop every now and then, just from time to time, and notice what have I been thinking about today? Like, where have I been in a loop? Am I even focusing on something that I have control over right now? Or am I thinking I'm overwhelmed because I'm thinking 20 steps ahead, or I'm worried about something I don't even have any control over anyway. A couple of other great quotes because I love a good quote. Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Henry Ford. Last but not least, beware of your thoughts, for they become your words. Beware of your words, for they become your actions. Beware of your actions, for they become your habits. Beware of your habits, for they become your character. Beware your character, for that becomes your destiny. Thanks so much, until next time.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

You're listening to the playful philosopher. Thanks for tuning in, until next time.