Meet the ‘brain coach’ who has found a way to flip negative thoughts and actions and use them for good

We’re all assigned a label at some point in our lives. You might be the smart one, the creative one or the lazy one. But is that designation really an accurate and comprehensive way to describe you?

In her latest book, Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts, and Create Lasting Change, neuroscientist and brain performance coach Nicole Vignola explores the anatomy of the brain, the nuances of identity and self-awareness, and how something as simple as stating your small wins every day can change your entire life.

The stories of our lives
If you wanted to think of your brain as a computer, that wouldn’t be the craziest analogy to make, especially to a neuroscientist. Vignola believes that much of our lives run on programming and automaticity.

“We have this programming that was given to us in our formative years by our peers, religion, culture, socioeconomic status, schooling, and what the kids around us said to us,” says Vignola. “It kind of perpetuates through everything you do, almost like the soundtrack to your life.”

Most of our self-perception comes from the observational knowledge gained by the people around us and the places we live in. If you grew up in a small town where neighbors dropped off milk whenever you needed it, you’d probably go on to think most people were generous. If you grew up with adults telling you how smart you were, you’d most likely tie your sense of self to being smart. Once these perceptions become ingrained in our minds and identities, we run on autopilot, going through life assuming that what we’ve experienced is applicable everywhere.

But what happens when we grow up surrounded by negativity?

Beating our biases
Dealing with negative thoughts is just a part of human nature. The problem, however, arises when these negative thoughts become an everyday way of thinking.

“Those negative stories that we repeat to ourselves also reside within the default mode network,” Vignola explains. “When we are ruminating, we are further reinforcing that story, which then drives us to conduct ourselves in a particular manner in the world.”

This vicious cycle that she describes is a result of two biases: a negativity bias and a confirmation bias. If we go through our lives observing negative self-perceptions from our family or friends, we internalize that. Once we internalize that, our brain reflexively seeks to confirm that assumption any chance they get.

Metacognition & small wins
Although repetitive negative thoughts can make us sick, our brain can also offer a cure.

“As humans, we have something called metacognition,” says Vignola, who has a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Bristol and an MSc in Organizational Psychology from the University of the West of England. “It’s the ability to think about what we’re thinking about, and we can use that tool to leverage this ability to then change our thoughts. We can start to observe and detach and say, ‘Hey, this is the automatic pattern that I normally repeat, but I have the power to change this.”

Vignola goes on to say that labeling a thought as negative causes our rational brain to take over and realize these thoughts are not useful and often untrue. Once our logical brain is back online, we can begin to change our thought patterns into something positive. And thanks to our confirmation bias, once we begin to repeat these positive self-perceptions, our brain will naturally narrativize everything in the world around us to confirm that.

These acknowledgments build more momentum towards your more positive self. Vignola says: “If you continue walking down the less traveled and positive dirt road, it eventually becomes a new, brighter highway in your mind.”

We spoke to Nicole Vignola for The Science of Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. This series dives into the science behind our thought patterns. Watch Vignola’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series.

NICOLE VIGNOLA: Those deep-rooted beliefs about who we are and how we perceive ourselves in the world and where we place ourselves in the world can keep us feeling stuck in this Perception Box about how we see ourselves—

and not only that—how we think other people interpret us as well.

It could be we are a sporty one or a creative one, or that perhaps we want to be someone that's creative, but we're not. And the question is whether that narrative is really yours.

It wasn't until I started studying neuroscience that I realized that we have this ability to change our trajectory, change our thoughts, and we can expand the box that we're in. We can expand our perception of who we are in the world.

I'm Nicole Vignola. I am a neuroscientist and organizational psychologist. I'm the author of "Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts, and Create Lasting Change."

So the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves have been shaped by our environment, our upbringing. We have something called 'observational knowledge,' and that means that we learn about how the world is by observing those around us in our formative years.

You might learn how to cook, how to get to school without your parents having to teach you. You're not having to be told these things, you just kind of know them through nuanced communication whilst you're growing up.

But observational knowledge has a flip side: Sometimes we observe our peers or parents being highly critical of themselves, and so we learn to do that as well. Or perhaps your parents will exacerbate a particular narrative.

And then that boxes us into this kind of fixed mindset in our adult life where we don't want to step outside the realms of what's been defined for us.

So I have two friends, they are both sisters. Samantha was always a good dancer, and her parents always highlighted that about her. She struggled a lot growing up because she wanted to be more than just a ballet dancer. Her sister, Martha was always the more academic one, the higher achiever.

When Martha then went on to the real world, she started to experience failures. She didn't know how to handle it because her entire persona was built on this very smart, high-achieving person who had never really failed.

So within this Perception Box, you have this pre-programming that was given to you by your peers and parents, and it's not really your programming. And for some people, that pre-programming is fine, but for others it isn't.

So as humans, we do have a 'negativity bias.' So we perceive negative information more greatly than positive. And the negativity bias can really highlight those things that we say to ourselves, those negative stories, things like, "I am not good enough. I'm not worthy enough to be loved." Maybe it's the way that you speak to yourself about your body.

Now you add on another layer, you've got this 'confirmation bias' that tells you to go into the world and confirm that you are correct. And so we can stay stuck in this loop of perpetuating these stories that are no longer serving us. If left unchecked, it will basically form a template to how you see the world.

So you will carry that into every aspect of your life, and your brain will perceive that as normal.

So whilst our thoughts are extremely powerful, we can use that to our advantage to really pull out the positive narratives that we want for ourselves.

So sometimes in a social setting, I will start to plant a seed, and I will ask friends, clients, family, what are the small wins or the big wins of your week? And generally speaking, people will start out by saying, "Not that much." And as soon as they start talking, I'll go, "That's a small win." And they're like, "Oh yeah, that is." And then as we go along in the day or the conversation, they start to see more and more small wins than they previously had seen.

By pulling out the small wins, it will start to shine a light on a different outcome, not the one that you have usually perpetuated. And it's not until you bring conscious attention to it that you can start to make a change, because the brain is just doing what it knows best. It's going to optimize energy for other things and just repeat what has been ingrained.

So if you have a pathway that has been ingrained and it's a beautiful tarmac highway, and now you want to change it, you're gonna have to step onto a dirt road. And then you have to pave that dirt road. And then you have to put in some streetlights. And eventually, this path will be a tarmac highway.

As humans, we have something called 'metacognition.' We can watch thoughts come in and exit. And not just that, but name them. When we name our thoughts, we engage the medial prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for higher order thinking, problem solving. And what that does is that it alleviates the pressure from the emotional brain, the limbic system, which usually perpetuates those negative stories even more.

When we break those automatic patterns, we take control of that steering wheel and we start to say, "Hey, this is how things have usually been. This is the box that I put myself in, that parents put me in, but I want to change that." And you start to essentially rewire and reshape your Perception Box and how you conduct yourself in the world.

One of the questions I always get is, you know, 'Can I change?' Whoever you are, if you have a brain, it can change. The brain is capable of change well into old age, and this is true for everybody. Neurotypicals, neurodivergents.

We don't need to stay stuck with the narratives that we have reinforced if it's no longer serving us, because they can absolutely change.