You need to be aware of the stories you tell yourself.

Why? Because our minds are more powerful than we know.

How do I know? I don’t know, I read an article.

Ten years ago, some scientists studied a bunch of hotel maids. One group of ladies had their work reviewed down to the detail. The researchers told them how many calories they burned every day with every activity, and that they met the surgeon general's definition of an active lifestyle. Wow. Makes your desk job feel a little less appealing, huh?

The other group of maids were told shit, as science goes.

What do you think happened?

Well, one month later, the maids that were told they were active, the maids that were told they were burning calories, they actually did. They lost weight, they dropped their waist-to-hip ratio and their blood pressure decreased by 10 percent.

They didn’t even realize what they were doing. But once they put their mind to it, the body followed.

Scientists are still arguing about what happened here, whether or not this was a placebo at work, but honestly it doesn’t really matter to me. What it shows is we’re a bunch of monkeys that tell stories. A bunch of monkeys telling stories to ourselves and to each other. And those stories have consequences.

Don’t think so? When you watch a movie, do you ever cry? Or jump at a scary bit? Are there really people in front of you making you experience the reality on the screen?

If you think about tigers trying to wear your skin right before you’re going to bed, do you think you’ll fall sleep easy?

Our brains aren’t dumb for thinking these things, they’re more powerful than we know. But we don’t take advantage of it. We worry about getting to the gym and sweating on the treadmill, but we don’t change the bad stories we tell ourselves.

If we knew what was good for us, we’d start thinking about it.

Source: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17792517