What do you typically do or what ritual have you experienced or seen someone else do to quiet their inner voice? Why do you think this helps?
In a society that trains us to believe that our happiness and success depend on everything, placebos remind us how much power exists within us. In fact, our brain has a power all its own that can have amazing effects. It is a prediction machine that is constantly trying to help us navigate the world. It also anticipates outcomes, and anticipation produces those outcomes.
The placebo effect is more than positive thinking, it is a kind of mental magic trick and the phenomenon of our expectations resulting in real physical and mental changes. It follows the patterns you'd predict if the brain were, indeed, producing its own desired outcomes.
Simply put, believing in a placebo can cause healing or improvement all based on our expectations.
Below are some strategies you can use to trick your brain into calming its inner voice:
• Create a placebo (it could be drinking from a lucky glass, eating a certain thing each day, or something else) and mentally convince yourself that it works. Basically, train yourself into unconscious associations through classical conditioning.
• Think of a challenge you typically face. Now create a habit that helps you get in the proper mindset to tackle that challenge.
• If you need to quiet the inner voice, it may mean you need to change your culture. Look for ways to surround yourself with the kind of people who help you quiet the voice in your head and increase your belief.
• While it’s important to acknowledge and address our negative feelings, it’s also incredibly easy to dwell on what’s going wrong. Just by deliberately shifting our attention to the positive, we can build on what’s working.
Today, I invite you to think about a problem or challenge you are facing. Now think about ways you use the placebo effect to quiet the inner voice and solve that problem. After all, if no trickery is required for placebos to do their magic, why not find ways to placebo ourselves?
Would love to hear from you.
Wishing you continued growth and success.
Sincerely,
Nora Paxton.