Your Health Your Way
James Ross M.D. shares insights on health, business, and life
Your Health Your Way
You Change When You Believe A New Story About Yourself
We explore how identity shapes behavior, why visualization trains the nervous system for aligned action, and how spiritual focus reinforces lasting change. Practical steps, family examples, and a five-minute practice help you embody the future you today.
• identity before behavior and habits
• visualization as mental rehearsal, not wishing
• how the reticular activating system drives attention
• family use for sport, school, relationships
• questions that link feelings to future self
• spiritual alignment through renewing the mind
• a simple five-minute daily practice
• encouragement to start small and stay rooted
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Welcome to Your Health Your Way. I'm Dr. James Ross. And if you've been around here for a while, you know that this podcast is all about helping you live a full, meaningful, and intentional life. That means physically, spiritually, and even emotionally. Today I want to talk about something that may surprise you. And it's about the hidden connection between identity, your nervous system, and the life that you're trying to build. Let me say something that might feel counterintuitive. You don't become who you want to be through more effort, through the grind, through hard work. You become them through alignment, through focus, through habits, and through consistency. Most of us think that change starts with action, new routines, better time management, more discipline. But we have learned a lot from neuroscience, and I'd argue even scripture too, that we're taught that lasting transformation actually begins with how you see yourself. Not in some self-helpy sort of way, but in a deeply spiritual and neurologic way. The world says, act your way into greatness. But I think that the truth is that you become who you believe yourself to be. If your internal belief is, I'm always behind, you're gonna sabotage anything that feels like progress. If your subconscious says, I'm not a healthy person, your habits, no matter how good, they just won't stick. Before there's behavior, there's identity. And that identity is shaped in repetition, in emotion, and in imagination, which brings us to what I want to talk to you about now, and that's visualization. Dr. James Doty, a Stanford researcher, has done incredible work around this. He talks about the neurological power of manifestation. And I want to clarify, we're not talking about wishing something into existence. We're talking about the neuroscience of mental rehearsal. When you visualize a future version of yourself with clarity and emotion, your brain fires as if it's real. The more you feel it, the more your brain believes it, and the more it is becoming already possible. It activates the reticular activating system in your brain, a filter that determines the things that you notice, the things you pay attention to. So when you've practiced stepping into that future self mentally, you'll begin seeing new paths and maybe making new choices and even shifting your behavior to match. Now, this isn't some sort of magic formula recipe. What we're talking about here is mental alignment. And it's how we begin to embody the feature that maybe God has called us into. This isn't just theory for me. We actually use this in our home. One of my kids is a competitive athlete, and before games, we don't just go over mechanics. We actually sit down and visualize the whole environment. What does it feel like to walk onto the court with confidence? How do you respond when things go wrong? What do you sound like when you encourage your teammates? This is not about performance. It's actually preparation. We actually do the same thing with school, with relationships, with personal goals. My wife and I often ask our kids, what does it feel like to be that person? Not just see that person, see what that looks like, but what does it feel like? See, we're connecting both what we want to see, but we're layering that with how we feel. So we ask them those questions. What does it feel to be that person? Where do you carry your peace? What do you believe about yourself? Because if they can feel it now, they're more likely to lead themselves into it later. And I don't think this is just parenting or a parenting strategy. It's discipleship, it's leadership, it's reprogramming the brain to stop living in fear and start stepping into calling. The beautiful thing is this isn't just neuroscience. I believe it can be applied spiritually as well, what we would maybe call spiritual alignment. In Romans 12, it tells us to renew our minds. In Philippians 4, we're instructed to think on what is pure, lovely, and true. You see, what you meditate on, you become. What you think about, you bring about. This is the kingdom lens. We don't visualize success just to get what we want. We visualize who we're becoming so we can live with integrity and intention and peace right now. For me, that future version of myself, he's calm, he's present, he leads with wisdom, not ego. He's anchored, he's anchored in his faith. He's awake to the people around him. So I rehearse that. I sit with that, and day by day, I align myself with it. Now I'm not perfect. This is a process, but this is who I am becoming, this is who I want to become. And it's a daily process, a daily process of alignment. Let me leave you with something simple so that maybe you can act on it today. Maybe if you were just to take five minutes, uh, just five, sit somewhere quiet, close your eyes, and ask yourself who do I want to be in this next season? How do I carry myself when I'm walking in peace, confidence, and integrity? What does it feel like in my body? In my relationships, in my work. Now don't overthink it. Just sit with it. Let your nervous system experience that future self and let your actions start rising to meet it. I really want to encourage you today. You're not stuck. You're not too far gone. And you don't really need to wait until you arrive to walk like the person God created you to be. Your health, in every single sense, is deeply connected to who you believe you are. So start small, stay rooted, see the future that God has for you and lead yourself into it one aligned decision at a time. Thanks for listening to Your Health Your Way. If this helped you, share it with a friend and leave a review so we can keep building this movement. Until next time, stay aligned, stay faithful, and walk like it's already yours.