The Power of Your Thoughts

Grace Moy O’Brien

Do you know you perform alchemy via your thoughts  on a daily basis?

The Oxford Living Dictionaries define alchemy as “A seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination.”

World renowned neuropsychologist Donald Hebb identified, "nerve cells that fire together, wire together”.

When we think, our brains fire electrical impulses and  form neurological connections and pathways that reflect our thoughts. This process gives rise to emotions corresponding to those thoughts, and our bodies undergo a physiological and chemical change as a result. In other words, angry thoughts evoke emotions of anger, and the internal laboratory of our bodies produce the corresponding hormones and chemicals that match that emotion. If we keep thinking the same thoughts, and feeling angry, we will trigger a repetitive loop that ultimately hardwires our brains and we end up being an angry person. The opposite is also true. If we no longer think those thoughts, the nerve cells will stop firing and the hardwiring will be disconnected.

Neuroscience has proven that we can change our behaviour and our beliefs by changing our thinking.

 As neuroscientist Dr. Joe Dispenza puts it in his book,  Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself, “If we repeatedly think about something to the exclusion of everything else, we encounter a moment when the thought becomes the experience. When this occurs, the neural hardwire is rewired to reflect the thought as the experience. This is the moment that our thinking  changes our brains, and thus, our minds.”

Therefore, whether we are aware of it or not, we are constantly entering our inner laboratory, to create and mix chemical and hormonal concoctions, thus, performing alchemy.