Neurosurgeon explains how to manifest your goals with science

Think happy thoughts!

Stanford neurosurgeon and neuroscientist Dr. Jamey Doty is sharing his complete process for bringing ideas and goals to reality.

Appearing on Mel Robbins’ podcast, Doty explained that taking specific steps toward manifesting can trick the brain into believing that good things are not only possible, but probable—making them more likely to happen. .

Something of a new age buzzword, “manifestation” is the translation of an idea into something tangible using the law of attraction, the belief that positive thoughts give way to positive results and negative thoughts give way to a gloomy state of life.

Acolytes include celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, who claims that being cast in Steven Spielberg’s The Color Purple was a direct result of constantly visualizing herself in the role.and Drake, who credits the power of “repetitive thought” and “extreme manifestation” for his success, including the specific house he lives in and the Rolls Royce he drives.

Psychologically speaking, manifestation is the practice of focusing thoughts, energy and emotions to bring something into existence, from belief to reality and desire to definition.

To some, the concept seems too “woo-woo” — rooted in superstition rather than fact or science. But Doty, an actual brain scientist, insists there is some science to back it up.

However, to make manifesting work for real, you can’t just be content with thinking your hopes and dreams into reality—you need to take specific actions to connect your brain to real-world outcomes.

The first step is to write down what you want to happen in your life.

“If you have a goal, take a pencil, write it down. You’re actually doing something physical, touching,” Doty said.

“Then you read it silently, then you read it out loud. Then you visualize it and do it over and over again.”

According to the document, taking a thought from mind to page to mantra leads to activation and embedding.

“You want to use all of your senses as much as possible to instill this intention. So writing it down, reading it out loud, reading it silently, visualizing it, it creates the process where it gets into your subconscious.

“And what happens is, once you put that in, it activates different parts of your brain.”

As for the specific parts of the brain that are activated by manifestation, Doty cites the default mode network. Responsible for daydreaming, this network is internally focused and self-referential.

“It’s where you create the narrative of who you are or what you want,” he said.

Robbins noted that habitual negative self-talk, limiting narratives, and a lack of belief in the possibility of success can lead to rumination and create a defeatist streak in the default mode network. However, both claimed that we can reprogram that network through the power of the mind.

“It’s available 24/7, and it doesn’t matter what happened to you before. So many people get hung up on ‘well, I don’t deserve this because of’. We all deserve it,” said Doty.

“Once that’s included and you create the narrative of who you want to be or how you see yourself, what you’re doing is you’re creating prominence. And when something is prominent, what you’re essentially saying is, this deserves my attention.”

He compares the relationship between the brain and salience to a filing cabinet and a folder labeled “important stuff.”

“Once it’s defined as something important to you, it activates your attentional network so you can cognitively focus your attention on whatever the goal is,” he said.

Doty uses the analogy of a hunter to paint a picture of the role of the attention network.

“Once that attention is focused, it starts looking around through all the possibilities in your environment. And once you identify one, then your executive control network is activated, which is, in a way, the thing that follows what’s in your subconscious.”

Doty insists that despite the manifesto’s reputation, its efficacy is based on the very real science of brain power.

“There is no magic here. This is basically basic neuroscience, and it’s something we all have the ability to master.”