Caroline Leaf Quotes

Frame your world with your words.

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought. Peace Pilgrim

You are not a victim. You can control your reactions. You do have a choice.

You cannot sit back and wait to be happy and healthy and have a great thought life; you have to make the choice to make this happen. You have to choose to get rid of the toxic and get back in alignment with God. You can be overwhelmed by every small setback in life, or you can be energized by the possibilities they bring.

Our brains are made for love. Not fear. Not performance. Not aggression. But LOVE.

The sins of parents create a predisposition, not a destiny.

God designed humans to observe our own thoughts, catch those that are bad, and get rid of them.

Thoughts are real, physical things that occupy mental real estate. Moment by moment, every day, you are changing the structure of your brain through your thinking. When we hope, it is an activity of the mind that changes the structure of our brain in a positive and normal direction.

We are not victims of our biology. We are co-creators of our destiny alongside God. God leads, but we have to choose to let God lead. We have been designed to create thoughts, and from these we live out our lives (Prov. 23:7).

Multitasking is a persistent myth. Paying deep, focused attention to one task at a time is the correct way.

Because we are made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26) and have the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16), our normal state is one of perfection.

Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44), will come at you with a thousand negative probabilities, but you always need to remember that a probability has no power.

Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (NIV).

Your body is not in control of your mind—your mind is in control of your body, and your mind is stronger than your body. Mind certainly is over matter.

Main Scripture: We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. 2 Corinthians 10:5 ESV Linked Science Concept: When you objectively observe your own thinking with the view to capturing rogue thoughts, you in effect direct your attention to stop the negative impact and rewire healthy new circuits into your brain.

What your mind creates only your mind can take away.

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

How we think not only affects our own spirit, soul, and body but also people around us.

Daytime thinking is a building process, whereas nighttime thinking is a sorting process.

The American Institute of Health estimates that 75–90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress-related problems.

You are wired for love, and fear is a learned and not a natural response (2 Tim. 1:7). You have the

We are not victims of our biology or circumstances. How we react to the events and circumstances of life can have an enormous impact on our mental and even physical health.

Research shows that 75 to 98 percent of mental, physical, and behavioral illness comes from one’s thought life.

Reaction is the key word here. You cannot control the events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your reactions.

As he thinks in his heart, so is he” (Prov. 23:7).

Things are uncertain, but I can handle it. I’ve never experienced this before, but I can handle it. These are uncertain times, but I can handle it. I have no idea what’s going to happen, but I can handle it.

One would have thought that not even Joyce could have maltreated a salad to the point where it became inedible, but one would have been wrong. Abustle with wild life, it was also soaked in a vinegary dressing. Barnaby lifted a soggy lettuce leaf. A small insect emerged, valiantly swimming against the tide.

By the same token, if you choose to add a signal—for example, saying something like, “My mother had depression and that’s why I have depression, and now my daughter is suffering from depression”—then the epigenetic marks are activated. The thinking and speaking out the problem serve as the signal that makes it a reality.

Your brain cannot change until you accept the anxiety or depression as a signal giving you information on its cause, or origin, and in this way you make the anxiety or depression work for you and not against you.

Our choices—the natural consequences of our thoughts and imagination—get “under the skin” of our DNA and can turn certain genes on and off, changing the structure of the neurons in our brains. So our thoughts, imagination, and choices can change the structure and function of our brains on every level:

The process of thinking and choosing is the most powerful thing in the universe after God, and it is a phenomenal gift from God to be treasured and used properly.

If the brain can get worse by constantly focusing on the problem, then the brain can get better by understanding how to eliminate and replace the problem.

New thoughts are formed over twenty-one days, and these new thoughts are formed into habits after sixty-three days.

In fact, when it comes to exercise, your nervous system changes first, followed by your muscles.

When we step out of our Perfect You, we will be in conflict and this will make us frustrated and unhappy, and even temporarily reduce our intelligence and potentially lead to mental ill health.

Many animals are also given growth hormones to further speed up the fattening process.18 These hormones are associated with a number of health risks in both animals and humans, including a possible correlation with cancer, which is why many countries no longer permit the use of hormones in industrial meat production.

Excessive consumption of the high amounts of sodium in processed, salty foods can lead to high blood pressure and heart disease, stroke, kidney damage, cancer, weight gain, osteoporosis, and overeating—this list is equally long and alarming.2

Our mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around. Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we can control our reactions. In fact, we can control our reactions to anything, and in doing so, we change our brains. It’s not easy; it is hard work, but it can be done through our thoughts and choices.

What do corn and soy have to do with meat and dairy? Today, animal feed is made up largely of corn and soy.

Grocery stores, for example, deliberately place candy and chocolate bars by the checkout counter in order to promote “impulse buying.

Faith motivates us to pursue these goals. Hope leads to expectation, which creates peace, excitement, and health in our minds, thus increasing brain and body health.

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

are not a victim. You can control your reactions. You do have a choice.

social media addict? This is a very real problem—so much so that researchers from Norway developed a new instrument to measure Facebook addiction called the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale.[3] Social media has become as ubiquitous as television in our everyday lives, and this research shows that multitasking social media can be as addictive as drugs, alcohol, and chemical substance abuse. A large number of friends on social media networks may appear impressive, but according to a new report, the more social circles a person is linked to, the more likely the social media will be a source of stress.[4] It can also have a detrimental effect on consumer well-being because milkshake-multitasking interferes with clear thinking and decision-making, which lowers self-control and leads to rash, impulsive buying and poor eating decisions. Greater social media use is associated with a higher body mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit card debt for consumers with many close friends in their social network—all caused by a lack of self-control.[5] We Can Become Shallow

Likewise, healthier products are often put close to the bottom on the shelves, while processed, sugary foods with bright packaging are put at eye level, socially conditioning us to buy more of them.48

What you are thinking every moment of every day becomes a physical reality in your brain and body, which affects your optimal mental and physical health. These thoughts collectively form your attitude, which is your state of mind, and it’s your attitude and not your DNA that determines much of the quality of your life.

Reaction is the key word here. You cannot control the events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your reactions. And controlling those reactions is the difference between healthy minds and bodies and sick minds and bodies.

The brain is never the same because it changes with every experience you have, every moment of every day—and you control this with your unique thinking, feeling, and choosing. You use your mind to use your brain. You are the architect of your brain.

Yet the animals are not just fed corn and soy. Expired cookies, candy, and even other animals are often turned into feed, including feed for large-scale dairy operations. We have turned herbivores like cattle into carnivores, often with fatal side effects.

Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we can control our reactions. In fact, we can control our reactions to anything, and in doing so, we change our brains. It’s not easy; it is hard work, but it can be done through our thoughts and choices.

The mind is a key factor throughout this book. Thinking, as you will see, plays a dominant role in eating. Toxic thoughts can negate the positive effects of good nutrition.

The bottom line is this: we cannot improve our lifestyle until we learn how to manage our thinking. This is incredibly empowering.

because whatever you think about the most will grow. This applies to both the positive and negative ends of the spectrum.

Thinking, as you will see, plays a dominant role in eating. Toxic thoughts can negate the positive effects of good nutrition. Healthy

Happiness comes from within and success follows—not the other way around.

Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind

Scientists have found that the amount of time spent milkshake-multitasking among American young people has increased by 120 percent in the last ten years. According to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry, simultaneous exposure to electronic media during the teenage years—such as playing a computer game while watching television—appears to be associated with increased depression and anxiety in young adulthood, especially among men.[1] Considering that teens are exposed to an average of eight and a half hours of multitasking electronic media per day, we need to change something quickly.[2] Social Media Enthusiast or Addict? Another concern this raises is whether you are or your teen is a social media enthusiast or simply a

When you use the 5 Steps, your self-regulation improves and you can start getting a handle on managing your anxiety. This doesn’t mean it will go away entirely; you actually don’t want it to, because anxiety is telling you something about your life that you need to know. It does mean, however, that your anxiety will decrease over time, and you will learn to manage it—it will work for you and not against you. Anxiety is not an illness; it is a warning signal that something needs attention in your life. It is normal to feel periods of anxiety. The Neurocycle method can help you find and manage what needs attention.

Chapter 1 Summary The debate in science is between the mind being what the brain does versus the brain doing the bidding of the mind. The correct view is that the mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around. Our brain does not control us; we control our brain through our thinking and choosing. We can control our reactions to anything. Choices are real. You are free to make choices about how you focus your attention, and this affects how the chemicals, proteins, and wiring of your brain change and function. Research shows that DNA actually changes shape in response to our thoughts. Stress stage one is normal. Stress stage two and stage three, on the other hand, are our mind and body’s response to toxic thinking—basically normal stress gone wrong. Reaction is the key word here. You cannot control the events or circumstances of your life, but you can control your reactions.

Processed, heated, and refined fats, as well as “trans fats” (hydrogenated fats), are the bad fats commonly found in foods such as margarine, shortening, your average American pizza, and the processed cheese so widely available in grocery stores. These bad fats have been linked to a higher risk of heart disease, macular degeneration, multiple sclerosis, certain cancers, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis, infertility and endometriosis, and depression.3 (For more on fats, see chapter 16.)

Quantum physics is creeping into every field, causing confusion among scientists, dealing a deathblow to the Newtonian dream, all because it points directly back to God, “the old man,” who has ultimate control. I love it when his plans come together.

Eric R. Kandel, a Nobel Prize–winning neuropsychiatrist for his work on memory, shows how our thoughts, even our imaginations, get “under the skin” of our DNA and can turn certain genes on and certain genes off, changing the structure of the neurons in the brain.[1] So as we think and imagine, we change the structure and function of our brains. Even Freud speculated back in the 1800s that thought leads to changes in the brain.[2] In recent years, leading neuroscientists like Marion Diamond, Norman Doidge, Joe Dispenza, Jeffrey Schwartz, Henry Markram, Bruce Lipton, and Allan Jones, to name just a few, have shown how our thoughts have remarkable power to change the brain.[3] Our brain is changing moment by moment as we are thinking. By our thinking and choosing, we are redesigning the landscape of our brain.

Step 1 (Gather) involves embracing the toxic thought, habit, or trauma (cutting open with the scalpel). Steps 2 and 3 (Reflect and Write) are the processing steps (performing the surgery). Steps 4 and 5 (Recheck and Active Reach) are the reconceptualizing steps (closing up and healing).

How real, then, is the food in our supermarkets? Real food, again, is fresh and nutritious, predominantly local, seasonal, grass fed, as wild as possible, free of synthetic chemicals, whole or minimally processed, and ecologically diverse. We have seen that in our supermarkets, even the fresh produce isn’t very fresh. Foods are no longer whole, but processed to extend shelf life.

Why the Neurocycle Is the Solution to Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. MARIE CURIE Overview Simple mind-management tools for personal use—to address and ameliorate such warning signals as anxiety, depression, toxic thinking, inability to concentrate, irritability, exhaustion, and burnout before they take over someone’s mind and life—

His gaze fixed on her chest as he rose, and she realized, with mortification, that her dress was askew. She turned her back, but his arms came around her. "Let me." His hands steady again, he ran his palms up her bodice to smooth her gown back into place. He took his time, his cheek against her temple, and Eliza tried not to shake like a leaf when his fingers brushed her nipple one last time before his hands drifted to rest on her hips. He put his mouth next to her ear. "Should I apologize for what happened?" The tiniest shake of her head. His lips touched the sensitive skin behind her ear. "May I call on you- just you, not your father?" Her heart was about to stop. She would faint and slide through his arms to land in a senseless heap on the ground. "Yes," she whispered. "Thank you." Gently, he turned her around. Eliza gazed up at him, wondering if he could tell from looking at her that she was about to fall headlong in love with him. A small smile touched his lips, bemused but reassuring.

Monday 7 May [Halifax] Foolish fancying about Caroline Greenwood, meeting her on Skircoat Moor, taking her into a shed there is there & being connected with her. Supposing myself in men’s clothes & having a penis, tho’ nothing more. All this is very bad. Let me try to make a great exertion & get the better of this lazyness [sic] in a morning – the root of all evil… Now I will try & turn over a new leaf & waste no more time in bed or any way else that I can help. May God’s help attend this resolution.

Healthy thoughts can enhance the effects of good nutrition and mitigate the effects of bad nutrition—to a degree. In fact, healthy thoughts lead to better food choices. Eating and thinking are so intertwined that what you are thinking about before, during, and after eating will impact every single one of the 75–100 trillion cells in your body, including the cells of your digestive system. Your state of mind will have a negative or positive influence on your digestive health, and your digestive health will also have a negative or positive influence on your state of mind.

During a workshop in San Francisco, I’d spent the night at the house of a lawyer named Anne. On her nightstand there was a thin book by a guy named Joel Kramer. Unable to sleep, I picked it up and leafed through the pages. He explained the emotions Caroline and I were feeling best: We have this idea that love is supposed to last forever. But love isn’t like that. It’s a free-flowing energy that comes and goes when it pleases. Sometimes it stays for life; other times it stays for a second, a day, a month, or a year. So don’t fear love when it comes simply because it makes you vulnerable. But don’t be surprised when it leaves, either. Just be glad you had the opportunity to experience it. I’m

The basic ingredients of quantum physics are: paying attention, thinking and choosing, and consequence.

The application is for all walks of life. You won’t forgive that person, get rid of that anxiety or depression, follow that essential preventative healthcare, strive to that intellectual level you know you are capable of, follow that dream, eat that organic food, do that diet, be that great parent or husband or wife or friend, get that promotion, or make other changes to create a quality, positive lifestyle—unless you first choose to get your mind right and switch on your brain. After all, the ability to think and choose and to use your mind correctly is often the hardest step, but it is the first and most powerful step.

Linked Science Concept: Multitasking is a persistent myth. Paying deep, focused attention to one task at a time is the correct way.

Our mind is designed to control the body, of which the brain is a part, not the other way around. Matter does not control us; we control matter through our thinking and choosing. We cannot control the events and circumstances of life but we can control our reactions.

He felt enormously tired, as if he were an autumn leaf and his season were over. He felt ready to fall from the branch.

are not designed to go through life with a “fearful spirit,” not able to cope with or face our problems.

We are not designed to go through life with a “fearful spirit,” not able to cope with or face our problems. We

Play games that are an effective mind sport, such as backgammon, chess, or bridge. If you do not already know how to play one of these games, learn. Strategize and think through the moves as you challenge your opponent. Maybe find a group of people who meet on a regular basis to play these games. Enjoy building your logical/mathematical thinking!

change takes place over time through continual persistence.

Our perception of the environment plus how we manage our environment controls our bodies and lives.

We may have a fixed set of genes in our chromosomes, but which of those genes are active and how they are active has a great deal to do with how we think and process our experiences. Our thoughts produce words and behaviors, which in turn stimulate more thinking and choices that build more thoughts in an endless cycle.

The LORD’s mercies . . . are new every morning” (Lam. 3:23).

An interesting point: A cell in your brain and a cell in your kidney contain the exact same DNA. And while in utero (in the womb), the nascent (emerging, developing) cells differentiate into either a brain cell or a kidney cell only when crucial epigenetic processes turn the right genes on or off. So God has designed perfectly timed epigenetic signals to switch on in the womb as the baby is developing. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer. 1:5). Our

When we gather information like puzzle pieces without putting the puzzle together, intellectual growth is stifled.

God designed cattle as animals that graze over stretches of grass, but these industrial operations work on economies of time and scale: confined cattle eat all day, getting fatter in a much shorter space of time, while a single operation can hold far more cattle in a smaller space.17

In the feces-covered facilities of many industrial operations, these grain-based diets necessitate the large-scale use of antibiotics (80 percent of all antibiotics in the United States alone) to simply prevent the animals from dying. This has significantly contributed to the global antibiotic-resistance crisis.

Perhaps the most infamous example of this is the recent epidemic of mad cow disease, a variant of bovine spongiform encephalopathy that leads to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans.20 In the United Kingdom, cows that were fed the remains of other cows in meat and bone meal contracted this disease, killing over a hundred people in 1996.

Although this major incident shows the dangers of feeding animals to other animals, it is often still considered an economically viable practice for industrial operations. Many feedlots in the United States, for instance, feed their cows chicken meat, while some companies even consider it “sustainable” to feed chicken to farmed fish.21

Perhaps one of the most well-known, and indeed controversial, examples of the global impact of food production is the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). NAFTA opened the trade borders between the United States and Mexico, making American corn, subsidized by the US government, cheaper to purchase. Subsequently, many Mexican farmers lost their farms (since they could not compete with the low price of corn grown in the United States), compelling these individuals to find work elsewhere and contributing to the rise of illegal immigrants in the United States.19 Likewise, labels such as “Fair Trade” or “Whole Trade” on many foods today highlight the fact that what we choose to eat can and does impact the people and communities that produce our foods.

The snare of “long-life” foods can directly affect our health. Take the average loaf of bread available today. To adapt the production of bread to the food industry’s goal of a large market for cheaply and efficiently produced foodstuffs, the wheat germ, which contains the natural oils that give bread its true, wholesome flavor and make it nutritious, has to be removed, since it causes bread to rot within a day. To make up for this loss of flavor and texture, the wheat, after it is heavily processed into white flour, is made into a bread-like product that contains preservatives and additives such as the infamous high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).42 Or, in the case of many organic packaged breads that last for days, organic sugars and other strange-sounding ingredients are added.

There is something you can do that no one else can do, and the world needs you to do it!

Within these operations, it is both cheaper and less time-consuming to feed the animals corn and soy in confined spaces, even though these grain-based, immobile diets are not well adapted to the way God created these animals. For example, cattle have rumens, which are designed to digest various grasses and plants, not massive amounts of grain, and as a result these cattle are more prone to disease and general ill health, such as stomach ulcers, while they are less nutritious to consume.

These preservatives and additives have serious side effects.43 For instance, azodicarbonamide, a synthetic chemical used to manufacture rubber and plastic, is used in the United States as the food additive E927 to bleach flour and condition dough in industrial bread production.

Instead of taking the wheat germ out of the bread for our convenience, we should ask ourselves why God created wheat like that in the first place.

They travel long distances. And synthetic chemicals are used freely.

Population studies indicate that something is going terribly wrong: people ages twenty-four to sixty-five are dying eight to fifteen years younger than previous generations from preventable lifestyle diseases. There’s a pressing need to change the way we approach health care, including mental health. We must shift our focus from a symptom-centered approach to one centered around each person’s complex story and unique experiences. This is the approach I’ve taken in this book. You are uniquely, wonderfully you—your quest for optimal health and well-being should be just as singular as you are.

ourselves. We need a new narrative, one where we listen to each other’s narratives and problem-solve through them together. In fact, I strongly encourage you to seek out a support system for your healing journey. The 5 Steps of the Neurocycle method we are going to learn are how you’ll get through the day, the week, and the rest of your life. Talking to someone about how these steps are helping you in this journey can give you perspective and provide a sounding board. Humans need this—because as we’ll discuss, it’s not about you, it’s about you in the world.

practical mind-management is the first step to getting anything done. Thinking, feeling, and choosing (also known as our mind-in-action) precedes all communication; all we say and do is always preceded by a thought. The process is so logical that we hardly “think” about it, but it’s worth taking the time to do so. It’s so obvious that we miss it because we’re looking for some elusive, complex key. Our mind is staring us in the face, and mind-management is therefore a critical skill we need to learn. As I will show you in this book, if our mind isn’t managed, everything downstream will be chaos—a mental mess produces a messy life. Unfortunately, in our era we have focused so much on the biology of the brain that we have forgotten about the mind. Perhaps you didn’t even know they were two different things. Indeed, if you just read a handful of neuroscientific articles at random, you would think we’re preprogrammed mechanical brains walking around and occasionally malfunctioning.

Quantum physics points at something we all sense intuitively: that our conscious thoughts have the power to affect our actions. This book will teach you the mental precision needed to harness this power. This all sounds nice, but what does quantum physics and all this mind talk have to do with your daily life? Well, have you ever asked yourself, Who is this person I’ve become? or What can I do that could help me change and or manage my problems? Am I actually happy and at peace? How do my thoughts, feelings, and choices impact the world around me? Searching for these answers often goes two ways. Perhaps you believe you’re a prepackaged, preprogrammed genetic avatar. The fates have decided what will happen to you—there’s no fighting it. Or you believe you have some level of influence over the quality of your life, perhaps through that elusive magic elixir, that exercise regimen, that new diet, or that meditation or breathwork you just did. Or maybe you do all these things and just hope for the best—because they’re healthy and good for you and must do something, right? And you may feel good for a few hours, but what happens when things aren’t going so well? What do you do when your spouse walks mud into the carpet, that person you can’t stand at work sends you a nasty email, or your best friend has a breakdown? The 5-Step Neurocycle Good mind-management skills can take you beyond healthy but short-lived mindfulness practices, such as meditation, which help in the moment to calm and prepare the brain but often don’t address the main issues behind your thinking. Meditation may bring awareness, but what do you do with that awareness? Awareness, not managed correctly, can do more harm than good.

First, you prep that amazing brain of yours, and this is where mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, tapping, and so on are essential. You can do some breathwork (my favorite, because of its scientific base and effectiveness, is the Wim Hof method)3 or something similar. This is a simple, mind-driven action that prepares your mind and optimizes your brain and body, allowing you to calm down enough to react in the most favorable way. Next, you go beyond the mindfulness your preparation has created into directed neuroplasticity through the 5 Steps:

When you are young you are too busy with yourself — so Caroline thought — you haven’t time for ordinary little things, but, when you leave youth behind, your eyes open and you see magic and mystery all around you: magic in the flight of a bird, the shape of a leaf, the bold arch of a bridge against the sky, footsteps at night and a voice calling in the darkness, the moment in a theatre before the curtain rises, the wind in the trees, or (in winter) an apple-branch clothed with pure white snow and icicles hanging from a stone and sparkling with rainbow colours.