Changing Your Mind, Transforming Your Faith
Changing Your Mind, Transforming Your Faith
The Christian faith is as much about actions as it is about belief. You can memorize the Bible and John Calvin’s vast Institutes of the Christian Religion, but if your actions do not follow those beliefs, your faith remains shallow. Daniel Goleman’s book Focus helped me address my actions, so they align with what I believe and how I want to live as a child of God.
Goleman’s third chapter, entitled “Attention Top and Bottom,” helps us learn what motivates our actions and how to address them so they align with our values and beliefs. Golman describes the bottom-up mind as our “involuntary and automatic” thoughts, often unconscious. The bottom-up mind creates our impulsive responses and forms our habits. Without our regular focus, the bottom-up mind will allow our subconscious to rule our mind and actions.
On the flip side of our thought process, we have our top-down mind. Our top-down mind responds more slowly and takes effort to nurture. The top-down response, often referred to as “the seat of self-control,” is more rational than the bottom-up mind. Because the top-down mind requires reflection, it demands more of our energy than acting out of habit or impulse. Time is also an issue for nurturing the top-down mind due to, as Goleman describes, “reflection, deliberation, and planning to our mind’s repertoire.” Top-down thinking encourages us to analyze our thoughts.
At first glance, it appears that we should affirm our top-down mind and squelch our bottom-up reactions. Goleman does not establish one mindset over another. Instead, Goleman asserts that the reflective, analytical thought process can weigh down one’s thoughts to the point where little gets done other than constantly evaluating every thought and act. Goleman responds, “The more you can relax and trust in bottom-up moves, the more you free your mind to be nimble.”
Goleman provides an example of why the bottom-up mind is beneficial. Goleman provides an example from Daniel Wegner, a Harvard psychologist, whose tests on cognitive mechanisms inform our thinking. In a study, Wegner asks volunteers to try not to think of a particular word. Then, the study volunteers are “pressured to respond quickly to a word association task, ironically they often offer up that same forbidden word.” Focusing on our top-down mind, as Goleman suggests, can lead to an “Overloading attention” that often “shrinks mental control.”
Golman continues, “The bottom-up circuitry learns voraciously-and quietly-taking in lessons continually as we go through the day.” The result is we must be intentional about what we focus on, because where our focus is, there our mind follows. The positive implications are that we can repattern our minds by refocusing our attention on areas of our lives where we want to change or improve. Our emotional responses are not set for life. We can reset our subconscious thoughts and emotional reactions. If we focus intentionally, we can become less anxious, fearful, or pessimistic. Whatever your concern, you are capable of reframing your responses in a way that better aligns with your values.
Transforming your top-down, bottom-up mind has beneficial implications for your faith life. Imagine how exhausting it is to have every thought and emotional response be the opposite of the person you believe Jesus desires for you? Now that we’ve named and defined top-down and bottom-up mindsets, we are capable of using each characteristic to our advantage. When we spiritually reflect on our values, beliefs, and behaviors, we understand that we are remolding our spiritual and emotional personhood.
Once the Apostle Paul got knocked off his horse, his letters and those of the writer, Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, describe someone whose values, beliefs, and actions transformed quickly and dramatically. With Goleman’s help in Focus, we can gain insight into the mind of the Apostle Paul, how his reflections, attention, and viewpoints changed him from a hater of the people of faith to perhaps its most influential leader, preacher, and supporter.
Now it is your turn. I’ve given you Daniel Goleman’s descriptions of top-down and bottom-up mindsets. Do your spiritual and psychological work, using your top-down understanding, and reflect on how you act and who you want to become. Then, prayerfully consider how God is molding your changing process, so you can influence the bottom-up mind that reacts. Journal, as you recognize transformations taking place in your top-down learning, and your bottom-up gut responses. Each day, re-invite God into your process, so God is the one molding you anew.