First Change Your Mind, Then Change Your Life

THOMAS WIDEMAN
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Jun, 02 , 21

Have you ever thought of Amazon as a window into our society? We can look at ratings and rankings to determine what’s trending from the latest smart home devices to the safest baby sunscreen.

Want to know what’s on our collective mind? What people are concerned about? What people want to understand? Just take a look at the number of books on the subject! The greater the number of books, the more in demand that topic is.

I did a search on a number of topics, and here’s what I found.

- Self Help for Personal Transformation - over 70,000 titles
- Keto Diet - over 50,000 titles
- Change Your Mind - over 20,000 titles
- The Power of the Brain - over 10,000 titles
- Stop Negative Thoughts - over 8,000 titles
- Productive Living - over 8,000 titles
- Live Longer - over 6,000 titles
- Aging Well - over 5,000 titles

Pretty interesting, huh?

We’re Onto Something

As a society, we’re onto something. We want change in our lives. And my unscientific research bears out that we’re beginning to realize the power for change is in our mind.

If our lives are to be different, we must be different.

If we are to be different, our feelings and behaviors must be different.

If our feelings and behaviors are to be different, our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves must be different.

The Power of Our Brain to Shape Us

Our feelings and behaviors are complex, and we can understand them better by understanding the way the brain works.

Researchers, with the aid of advances in medical technology, now better understand the human brain’s capacity to store information. It is almost unlimited! Our brain has billions of highly-evolved microscopic circuits called neural pathways. Along these pathways, our thoughts and experiences create electrical explosions and the neural pathways store away all our mental data.

In the lifestyle book, Eat Live Thrive Diet, authors Danna Demetre and Robyn Thomson put it this way:

“Some of these pathways can become physically strong and dominant because the thought or experience is frequently repeated. They become like superhighways in our minds, overriding many of the weaker pathways or less dominant thoughts.

Ultimately, we come to believe the strongest messages—those messages that have played the loudest and most frequently throughout our lives.”

And here’s the thing. Our brains make no determination as to whether the information it receives and stores is true.

It just stores it all.

What does that mean for us?

If the strongest, loudest, and most frequent messages we’ve received throughout our lives are false, they become the dominant thoughts. They become the superhighways that program our thinking.

And how we think drives our feelings, choices, and behavior.

Demetre and Thomson go on to say:

“From our simplest habits to our most destructive behaviors, our actions are the direct results of our mental programming…it is almost impossible for individuals to behave inconsistently with what they believe about themselves. Your mind will naturally go in the direction of your most prevalent thoughts.”

What we believe about ourselves we communicate to ourselves continually. So the superhighways with the false information just get bigger, influencing more and more our feelings, choices, and behaviors.

Writing for brain health expert Dr. Daniel Amen’s BrainMD.com, Keith Rowe agrees:

"Habitual, negative self-talk trains the brain to see things pessimistically. Negative thinking can effectively rewrite your neural networks, reinforcing pathways in the brain that make it more likely you’ll continue seeing the glass as half empty.

Additionally, having negative thoughts can reduce activity in the area of the brain involved with self-control, judgment, and planning. This can lead to harmful behaviors and poor decisions.”

As I say in my book, Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar -

“If you watch or listen to anything long enough,

you start to believe those things are true.”

And such is the power of our neural superhighways.

First Change Your Mind, Then Change Your Life

Do you want change in your life?

Do you understand that you must first change your mind?

In my book, Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar and the FREE Companion Guide, I help you:

overcome the false beliefs that sabotage your progress,
quiet the messages that play in your mind and keep you in bondage to fear and low expectations,
stop the negative thoughts that keep you blind to your own gifts, talents, and skills.

So, are you ready?

Ready to replace false beliefs with truth?

Ready to receive the messages that will strip away your fear and give you high expectations for your future?

Ready to see your gifts, talents, and skills and develop them to their highest potential?

I’d love to help you on your journey!

Learn from my story!

I hope you’ll read Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar to realize the truth about yourself and your future, find your inner strength and your unique gifts, and embrace the life you dream of.

PLEASE grab the FREE Companion Guide! I can’t be with you in person, but I can be with you through this guide. We can walk through change together!

Do you have any questions for me? I’d love to hear from you. You can contact me here.

Share my story with someone!

Are you connected to someone who’s at a crossroads? Maybe a high school student in challenging life circumstances. A young adult with decisions to make but no strong support system. A thirty-something who can’t seem to find their way.

You can help them stop listening to the self-defeating thoughts that keep them stuck. You can help them find the truth about themselves.

I hope you’ll read Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar and share it with a young person who needs a way forward!

Grab the FREE Companion Guide for them!

I’d love to hear about your connections to young people who need to hear my story. You can contact me here.

Tell your story!

Perhaps your upbringing is similar to mine. Have you overcome poverty or a family struggling with dysfunction and addiction? Perhaps the challenges and obstacles to your success were entirely different, but I’m sure that part of your journey was to overcome the false beliefs and negatives thoughts about yourself and your future.

The details of your story may be unique, but the overarching story isn’t. There are people you can help to change their minds so they can change their lives!

I hope you’ll read Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar, identify the life lessons we have in common, and begin to tell your own story!

I’d love hear your story. You can contact me here.

“Be careful how you are talking to yourself because you are listening.”

-Lisa M. Hayes-

I hope you’ll visit this site often and share it with others! Together, we can improve society one person at a time!

-Thomas

What readers are saying!

“This book is a devotional to the human spirit that takes their lemons and makes lemon aid. It is not survival at all costs, but survival via personal growth and persistent redirection. Kudos to the author and effort to influence others with this work. There are so many that need to see that there is a glimmer of light in the darkest of nights.” -Karen Gurney

“His stories are engaging! The lessons are concrete and he puts you in the tough situations that he has been in. I felt like I had been kicked in the teeth but then felt lifted and restored by Wideman's ‘I can overcome anything' attitude! If you feel you have had it hard, let this guy tell you how to build yourself up. Have you decided to make a better future for yourself no matter what the cost, no matter what holds you back, or no matter where you are from? I am motivated by reading this book!” -Norris D.

“Whether you are a teenager trying to make sense of the future, a corporate intrapreneur ready to step out and start that business, a mid-career employer stuck in a professional rut, someone trying to reshape their personal life, or want to pay it forward to help others, Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar has something for you! Thomas brings relevant and relatable insight to navigating one's personal and professional life by aligning it to the goal(s) set forth. I bought a book for each of my nieces in college.” -ChiQuita G.

Featured in Chanticleer Book Reviews

“Wideman’s Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar offers hope and realistic, replicable strategies to anyone who, like himself at earlier phases of his life, faces what seems like insurmountable barriers. His general message focuses on positives, do your best, and keep meaningful goals for success always in sight. Highly recommended.”