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Research shows that what you believe about yourself, your brain tends to make true.

Growing up emotionally neglected installs a belief about your worth that no one said out loud.

Your brain acts on whatever it is given, and you can start giving it something else.

Between psychology, medical science, and neuroscience, we have never known so much about the human mind. Recently, I've been amazed at the number and quality of studies that are showing us the amount of pure power our brains have—powers that are truly amazing. Powers that change the meaning of the old phrase, "Put your mind to it."

In my psychology practice, I spent years with one particular group of people, and I always read these studies with them in mind. If you grew up with childhood emotional neglect, you may know in your head that you matter and still not believe it deep down, and I want to tell you that here is a reason for that.

3 Amazing Brain Discoveries

1. Your body responds to what you expect. In a study by Ranganathan and colleagues (2004), a group of people who listened to guided imagery of themselves going through a strength training workout gained real strength without ever lifting a weight. Their muscles stayed nearly inactive while they trained. The gain came from the brain, which learned to send a stronger signal to the muscle.

It’s not only imagination that does this, but expectation does it too. Reviewing 20 experiments with athletes and exercisers, Chhabra and Szabo (2024) found that people who were told they had been given something to boost their performance, and were given nothing at all, still did better. In a smaller set of those studies, the reverse ran even stronger. People who expected to do worse did.

The Takeaway: Your brain is far more powerful........

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