In a new episode of the In Simple Words podcast, therapist Oleh Chaban, MD, tells Mark Livin and Sofiia Terlez how our thoughts affect our emotions and our quality of life. Chaban also explains how to develop flexible and adaptive thinking, how to achieve the goals we set for ourselves, and describes some coping strategies for difficult situations.

In Simple Words’ ‘Science of Resilience’ season is supported by First Lady Olena Zelenska’s Ty Yak? (How Are You?) mental health initiative. The season was made in partnership with the Mental Health Coordination Center of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with the support of the World Health Organization.

Photo: theukrainians

You can listen to the full conversation on all podcast platforms

In a study from Queen’s University in Canada, researchers used MRI imaging while tracking transitions from one thought to the next to determine that the average person thinks around 6,200 thoughts a day.

We don’t pay attention to most of these thoughts because a large share of our thinking occurs in background mode throughout the day. Sometimes, however, our thoughts can negatively affect our mental and emotional state, giving rise to anxiety or preventing us from achieving our goals. Dr Chaban says that developing flexible and adaptive thinking can help us avoid this and offer a path towards overcoming the obstacles we might face.

Habitual ways of thinking are the most traveled paths, neurologically speaking

The more we think about something in a habitual way, the more “well-traveled” our brain’s neural pathways become. That’s why it’s so difficult to look at – or think about – something afresh. Dr Chaban likens this to always taking the same road since childhood, and not realizing there are other roads we could take. This figurative road is shaped by our families, our circumstances, and surroundings.

“If you show someone that there are other paths and other landscapes, if they deviate from their path a bit, they experience freedom of choice and responsibility, which creates anxiety and confusion,” Dr Chaban says.

Tunnel vision and how to avoid it

We are used to paying attention to things we already know, and we interpret information in ways that conform with our existing beliefs. In psychology, this is called confirmation bias, and it’s only one of around 180 cognitive biases that have been identified and studied. These biases speed up our brain’s work and help us form our opinions and make decisions in situations where we don’t have access to complete information or can’t assess every possible scenario. Sometimes, however, cognitive biases might prevent us from realistically assessing a situation at hand.

Tunnel vision is excessive dependence on internal information at the expense of useful external information. To expand our vision, Dr Chaban advises expanding our brain’s capacity through several different tactics.

1. Always keep learning

You can develop more multifaceted thinking through learning and reading. Dr Chaban stresses the importance of lifelong learning. It’s not about taking professional courses or mastering new qualifications, but about learning new skills outside of our main area of employment.

“Do anything that takes you outside of your familiar area of expertise. If you’re a scientist, journalist, doctor, or lawyer, leave your work persona behind when you leave work. Instead, do something that engages your body and your creative side: craft, grow plants, take up woodwork, do anything like that. And vice versa, if your job has you operating machinery, turn to books when you get home,” Dr Chaban says.

Learning new skills – from table tennis to foreign languages – expands our range of thinking and helps us develop cognitive flexibility. For Dr Chaban, the most important thing is to not let these activities become chores, but to ensure they offer you a space to unwind and switch your attention.

Research shows that the brains of people who speak two languages in their domestic environment have higher levels of neural activity and more neural connections. This creates a cognitive reserve of sorts, which helps delay the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms and can compensate for the damage caused by the disease.

2. Spend time with people

Our thought patterns are shaped by and change in response to the people around us. Dr Chaban says that our brains have been shaped by social interactions over the course of 150,000 years. Interactions – even those we engage in online – help us relieve emotional tension and offer a source of new experience and an opportunity to learn new ways of dealing with stressful situations from others.

Dr Chaban particularly stresses the importance of helping others. He recommends finding someone or something you feel attached to and responsible for – a friend in need, or a pet from a shelter. Interacting with and taking care of them can help us transcend our own worries and concerns and broaden our horizons.

Research shows that loneliness and isolation are among common causes of disease and can even result in premature death. Loneliness negatively affects our health just as much as low blood pressure, obesity, and smoking.

A recent review of 28 research papers on different forms of volunteering on physical and mental health has confirmed that helping others positively affects our overall health and quality of life. Volunteering has also been found to be empowering and to reduce depression and improve self-esteem.

3. Treat your failures as adventures

Dr Chaban says that at some point we all encounter difficulties and obstacles we can’t control or avoid. What we can control is the way we process these experiences and what we learn from them. Dr Chaban recommends looking at failures and difficulties as adventures. He shares an example from his own life: “Like most people living in Kyiv, I often use GPS to find my way around unfamiliar areas. Once, my GPS got me to the courtyard of an abandoned factory. I ended up in front of a freshly painted fence. The GPS kept telling me to go straight, but I said ‘You’re wrong, pal’ and turned around.”

There are two ways of looking at this situation. You can complain about how untrustworthy your GPS is and sulk over always ending up somewhere you didn’t mean to go, but this would only exacerbate an already unpleasant situation and reinforce your helplessness. Or you can laugh at the situation, curse your GPS, then turn it off and find some other way of getting around. In this latter case, you’ll be relying on your creativity, regaining a sense of agency and control, and practice overcoming obstacles. All of this will stand you a good stead in countless future scenarios.

Dr Chaban stresses that it’s particularly important to teach kids to look at difficulties this way and to teach them to approach problem-solving in creative and unconventional ways. This will help them become more flexible thinkers and protect them from the damaging effects of stress, which is an inextricable part of our lives.

“Take for example a student who has been set a difficult problem, something that requires them to draw on their knowledge and intuition. They fail to solve it at home, on their own, no matter how hard they try. [In an ideal scenario,] back at school they talk to other students and their teacher, who acts as a moderator rather than a repository of correct answers, and together they find a way to solve the problem. This is an example of a ‘productive failure,’ when failure pushes us to find a better solution,” Dr Chaban says.

The myth that we only use 10% of our brain

It’s a mistake to believe that we only use 10-20% of our brain, Dr Chaban says. Our brain operates at the capacity that it needs at any given moment. The more we develop our brain – through learning new skills and new ways to deal with familiar circumstances – the more pathways in our brain become activated and used in our daily lives.

The myth of the 10% likely arose from misguided interpretation of William James’s 1907 article, in which he wrote: “Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. [...] We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.” James described how routine and social conventions prevent people from utilizing their resources to the fullest, but he never said that we only use 10% of our brain’s capacity.

This is an example of how selective perception can give rise to myths that endure for centuries.

Every thought fuels our lives. Thoughts are what allows us to keep going, to act, to aspire to and achieve goals, Dr Chaban says.

He advises everyone to practice open and creative thinking whenever we have time to ourselves – especially in the mornings, before we get immersed in daily worries or habitual circumstances, or while we’re doing something that doesn’t require our full attention, like walking or running. According to Dr Chaban, in those moments we can figure out how to better structure our days or weeks, and sometimes even come up with major long-term plans and objectives.

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THE SEASON "SCIENCE OF RESILIENCE" OF THE "IN SIMPLE WORDS" PODCAST IS RELEASED AS PART OF THE INITIATIVE OF FIRST LADY OLENA ZELENSKA TO IMPLEMENT THE ALL-UKRAINIAN MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM "HOW ARE YOU?" THE PROJECT WAS IMPLEMENTED IN COOPERATION WITH THE COORDINATION CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH OF THE CABINET OF MINISTERS OF UKRAINE, WITH THE SUPPORT OF WHO.