Positive Affirmations: 101 Life-Changing Thoughts To Practice Daily

Positive Affirmations: 101 Life-Changing Thoughts To Practice Daily

Over thirty years ago, I came across the book You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay. The book is about self-healing through the use of positive affirmations that correspond with different illnesses and ailments.
I was intrigued by the book at the time, but also skeptical about Ms. Hay’s claims that our thoughts and lack of self-love contribute to disease and that positive affirmations can help heal us. Although I understood how affirmations could support positive thinking, I didn’t believe they could change the cells and chemistry in my body.

Now I know that science supports the power of positive affirmations. Affirmations are basically a form of auto-suggestion, and when practiced deliberately and repeatedly, they reinforce chemical pathways in the brain, strengthening neural connections.

Says David J. Hellerstein, M.D., a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Columbia University, “In brief, we have realized that ‘neuroplasticity,’ the ongoing remodeling of brain structure and function, occurs throughout life. It can be affected by life experiences, genes, biological agents, and by behavior, as well as by thought patterns.”



Neuroscience now proves that our thoughts can change the structure and function of our brains. (If you want to learn more about this fascinating science, check out the book The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science** by Norman Doidge, M.D.)

By practicing positive thought patterns (affirmations) repetitively, we actually create neuroplasticity in the area of the brain that processes what we are thinking about. The key is repetition so you flood your brain with the positive thought.

When practicing affirmations, choose one or two to focus on for several weeks. Say the affirmation out loud in a confident voice several times a day and before you go to bed. To add more power to the affirmation, write it down as you speak it. Be sure your affirmations are in the present tense, as though they are a current reality.

Here are 101 positive affirmations you can practice to rewire your brain and change your life:


Happiness 

1. Happiness is my birthright. I embrace happiness as my set point state of being.

2. I feel joy and contentment in this moment right now.

3. I awaken in the morning feeling happy and enthusiastic about life.

4. I can tap into a wellspring of inner happiness anytime I wish.

5. By allowing myself to be happy, I inspire others to be happy as well.

6. I have fun with all of my endeavors, even the most mundane.

7. I look at the world around me and can’t help but smile and feel joy.

8. I find joy and pleasure in the most simple things in life.

9. I have an active sense of humor and love to share laughter with others.

10. My heart is overflowing with joy.

11. I rest in happiness when I go to sleep, knowing all is well in my world.

Love Relationship

12. My partner and I share a deep and powerful love for each other.

13. I respect and admire my partner and see the best in him/her.

14. I love my partner exactly how he/she is and enjoy his/her unique qualities.

15. My partner and I share emotional intimacy daily through talking and touch.

16. I have healthy boundaries with my partner.

17. My partner and I have fun together and find new ways to enjoy our time together.

18. My partner and I communicate openly and resolve conflict peacefully and respectfully.

19. I am able to be fully myself and completely authentic in my love relationship.

20.  I communicate my desires and needs clearly and confidently with my partner.

21. I want the best for my partner and easily go out of my way to support him/her.

Success

22. I expect to be successful in all of my endeavors. Success is my natural state.

23. I easily find solutions to challenges and roadblocks and move past them quickly.

24. Mistakes and setbacks are stepping stones to my success because I learn from them.

25. Every day in every way, I am becoming more and more successful.

26. I feel successful with my life right now, even as I work toward future success.

27. I know exactly what I need to do to achieve success.

28. I see fear as the fuel for my success and take bold action in spite of fear.

29. I feel powerful, capable, confident, energetic, and on top of the world.

30. I have an intention for success and know it is a reality awaiting my arrival.

31. I have now reached my goal of _______ and feel the excitement of my achievement.

32. Today I am successful. Tomorrow I will be successful. Every day I am successful.

Confidence

33. When I breath, I inhale confidence and exhale timidity.

34. I love meeting strangers and approach them with boldness and enthusiasm.

35. I live in the present and am confident of the future.

36. My personality exudes confidence. I am bold and outgoing.

37. I am self-reliant, creative and persistent in whatever I do.

38. I am energetic and enthusiastic. Confidence is my second nature.

39. I always attract only the best of circumstances and the best positive people in my life.

40. I am a problem solver. I focus on solutions and always find the best solution.

41. I love change and easily adjust myself to new situations.

42. I am well groomed, healthy and full of confidence. My outer self is matched by my inner well being.

43. Self confidence is what I thrive on. Nothing is impossible and life is great.

45. I always see only the good in others. I attract only positive confident people.

confidence affirmations

Self-Esteem

46. I approve of myself and love myself deeply and completely.

47. I am unique. I feel good about being alive and being me.

48. I trust myself and know my inner wisdom is my best guide.

49. I have integrity. I am totally reliable. I do what I say.

50. I act from a place of personal security.

51. I fully accept myself and know that I am worthy of great things in life.

52. I choose to be proud of myself.

53. I find deep inner peace within myself as I am.

54. I fill my mind with positive and nourishing thoughts.

55. My confidence, self esteem, and inner wisdom are increasing with each day.

56. My immune system is very strong and can deal with any kind of bacteria, germs and viruses.

Health

57. Every cell in my body vibrates with energy and health.

58. I am completely pain free, and my body is full of energy.

59. I nourish my body with healthy food.

60. All of my body systems are functioning perfectly..

61. My body is healing, and I feel better and better every day.

62. I enjoy exercising my body and strengthening my muscles.

63. With every breath out, I release stress in my body.

64. I send love and healing to every organ of my body.

65. I breathe deeply, exercise regularly and feed only good nutritious food to my body.

66. I pay attention and listen to what my body needs for health and vitality.

67. I sleep soundly and peacefully, and awaken feeling rested and energetic.

68. I am surrounded by people who encourage and support healthy choices.

Peace

69. My world is a peaceful, loving, and joy-filled place to live.

70. I sow the seeds of peace wherever I go.

71. I surround myself with peaceful people.

72. My work environment is calm and peaceful.

73. I breath in peace, I breath out chaos and disorder.

74. My home is a peaceful sanctuary where I feel safe and happy.

75. In all that I say and do, I choose peace.

76. I release past anger and hurts and fill myself with serenity and peaceful thoughts.

77. Peace descends all around me now and always.

78. I send peace from myself into the world.

79. I respond peacefully in all situations.

Mindfulness

80. I am grounded in the experience of the present moment.


81. I am focus and engaged in the task at hand.

82. All is well right now.

83. I am grateful for this moment and find joy in it.

84. I gently and easily return to the present moment.

85. I observe my thoughts and actions without judging them.

86. I am fully present in all of my relationships.

87. Life is happening in this moment.

88. I accept and embrace all experiences, even unpleasant ones.

89. I observe my emotions without getting attached to them.

90. I meditate easily without resistance or anxiety.

91. I release the past and live fully in the present moment.

Inner calm

92. Calmness washes over me with every deep breath I take.

93. Every day I am more and more at ease.

94. Being calm and relaxed energizes my whole being.

95. All the muscles in my body are releasing and relaxing.

96. All negativity and stress are evaporating from my body and my mind.

97. I breath in relaxation. I breath out stress.

98. Even when there is chaos around me, I remain calm and centered.

99. I transcend stress of any kind. I live in peace.

100. I am free of anxiety, and a calm inner peace fills my mind and body.

101. All is well in my world. I am calm, happy, and content.


Have you used positive affirmations in your life? If so, how have they impacted you? What are some of your favorite affirmations? Please share

(**The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science** by Norman Doidge, M.D.)

This book is about the revolutionary discovery that the human brain can change itself, as told through the stories of the scientists, doctors, and patients who have together brought about these astonishing transformations. Without operations or medications, they have made use of the brain’s hitherto unknown ability to change. Some were patients who had what were thought to be incurable brain problems; others were people without specific problems who simply wanted to improve the functioning of their brains or preserve them as they aged. For four hundred years this venture would have been inconceivable because mainstream medicine and science believed that brain anatomy was fixed. The common wisdom was that after childhood the brain changed only when it began the long process of decline; that when brain cells failed to develop properly, or were injured, or died, they could not be replaced. Nor could the brain ever alter its structure and find a new way to function if part of it was damaged. The theory of the unchanging brain decreed that people who were born with brain or mental limitations, or who sustained brain damage, would be limited or damaged for life. Scientists who wondered if the healthy brain might be improved or preserved through activity or mental exercise were told not to waste their time.

A neurological nihilism—a sense that treatment for many brain problems was ineffective or even unwarranted—had taken hold, and it spread through our culture, even stunting our overall view of human nature. Since the brain could not change, human nature, which emerges from it, seemed necessarily fixed and unalterable as well.

The belief that the brain could not change had three major sources: the fact that brain-damaged patients could so rarely make full recoveries; our inability to observe the living brain’s microscopic activities; and the idea—dating back to the beginnings of modern science—that the brain is like a glorious machine. And while machines do many extraordinary things, they don’t change and grow.

I became interested in the idea of a changing brain because of my work as a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. When patients did not progress psychologically as much as hoped, often the conventional medical wisdom was that their problems were deeply “hardwired” into an unchangeable brain. “Hardwiring” was another machine metaphor coming from the idea of the brain as computer hardware, with permanently connected circuits, each designed to perform a specific, unchangeable function.

When I first heard news that the human brain might not be hardwired, I had to investigate and weigh the evidence for myself. These investigations took me far from my consulting room.

I began a series of travels, and in the process I met a band of brilliant scientists, at the frontiers of brain science, who had, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, made a series of unexpected discoveries. They showed that the brain changed its very structure with each different activity it performed, perfecting its circuits so it was better suited to the task at hand. If certain “parts” failed, then other parts could sometimes take over. The machine metaphor, of the brain as an organ with specialized parts, could not fully account for changes the scientists were seeing. They began to call this fundamental brain property “neuroplasticity.”

Neuro is for “neuron,” the nerve cells in our brains and nervous systems. Plastic is for “changeable, malleable, modifiable.” At first many of the scientists didn’t dare use the word “neuroplasticity” in their publications, and their peers belittled them for promoting a fanciful notion. Yet they persisted, slowly overturning the doctrine of the unchanging brain. They showed that children are not always stuck with the mental abilities they are born with; that the damaged brain can often reorganize itself so that when one part fails, another can often substitute; that if brain cells die, they can at times be replaced; that many “circuits” and even basic reflexes that we think are hardwired are not. One of these scientists even showed that thinking, learning, and acting can turn our genes on or off, thus shaping our brain anatomy and our behavior—surely one of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century.

In the course of my travels I met a scientist who enabled people who had been blind since birth to begin to see, another who enabled the deaf to hear; I spoke with people who had had strokes decades before and had been declared incurable, who were helped to recover with neuroplastic treatments; I met people whose learning disorders were cured and whose IQs were raised; I saw evidence that it is possible for eighty-year-olds to sharpen their memories to function the way they did when they were fifty-five. I saw people rewire their brains with their thoughts, to cure previously incurable obsessions and traumas. I spoke with Nobel laureates who were hotly debating how we must rethink our model of the brain now that we know it is ever changing.

The idea that the brain can change its own structure and function through thought and activity is, I believe, the most important alteration in our view of the brain since we first sketched out its basic anatomy and the workings of its basic component, the neuron. Like all revolutions, this one will have profound effects, and this book, I hope, will begin to show some of them. The neuroplastic revolution has implications for, among other things, our understanding of how love, sex, grief, relationships, learning, addictions, culture, technology, and psychotherapies change our brains. All of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, insofar as they deal with human nature, are affected, as are all forms of training. All of these disciplines will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain and with the realization that the architecture of the brain differs from one person to the next and that it changes in the course of our individual lives.

While the human brain has apparently underestimated itself, neuroplasticity isn’t all good news; it renders our brains not only more resourceful but also more vulnerable to outside influences. Neuroplasticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors—a phenomenon I call “the plastic paradox.” Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well established, it can prevent other changes from occurring. It is by understanding both the positive and negative effects of plasticity that we can truly understand the extent of human possibilities.

Because a new word is useful for those who do a new thing, I call the practitioners of this new science of changing brains “neuroplasticians.” What follows is the story of my encounters with them and the patients they have transformed.

"The power of positive thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff...with implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history."

− THE NEW YORK TIMES

"Fascinating. Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait of the endless adaptability of the human brain."

− OLIVER SACKS, MD

"Brilliant...Doidge has identified a tidal shift in basic science...The implications are monumental."

− THE LONDON TIMES

"Superb. Brilliant. I devoured it."

− V.S. RAMACHANDRAN, MD, PHD

"Doidge... is a master ... at explaining science to the rest of us. Doidge is the best possible guide. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to read it, just curious about your brain. Buy this book. Your brain will thank you."

− THE GLOBE AND MAIL

"Lucid and absolutely fascinating. It satisfies in equal measure the mind and heart."

− THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Doidge turns everything we thought we knew about the brain upside down."

− PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY

"Brilliant...Doidge has identified a tidal shift in basic science...The implications are monumental."

− THE LONDON TIMES

"Superb. Brilliant. I devoured it."

− V.S. RAMACHANDRAN, MD, PHD

"Doidge... is a master ... at explaining science to the rest of us. Doidge is the best possible guide. You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to read it, just curious about your brain. Buy this book. Your brain will thank you."

− THE GLOBE AND MAIL

"Lucid and absolutely fascinating. It satisfies in equal measure the mind and heart."

− THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"Doidge turns everything we thought we knew about the brain upside dowto be explained in layperson’s terms, no easy task 

“Doidge leads the field in an extraordinary era for 

popular-science books about the brain…. This has 

to be explained in layperson’s terms, no easy task, 

but there’s a host of neurologists, psychologists, 

cognitive scientists and journalists explaining and 

interpreting the latest research….Two years ago, 

when the journal Cerebrum at the Dana Foundation 

in the US updated its list of great books about the 

brain for the general reader, it found there were 

already 30,000 brain-related books in English (and 

the total would no doubt be higher now). Aided by 

scientific advisers and readers, it produced a new list 

– with The Brain That Changes Itself at No. 1.”

- The Melbourne Age, March 31, 2012 

“Only a few decades ago, scientists considered the

brain to be fixed or ‘hardwired’ and considered most 

forms of brain damage, therefore, to be incurable. 

Dr. Doidge, an eminent psychiatrist and researcher, 

was struck by how his patients’ own transformations 

belied this and set out to explore the new science of 

neuro plasticity by interviewing both scientific 

pioneers in neuroscience, and patients who have 

benefited from neuro rehabilitation. Here he 

describes in fascinating personal narratives how the 

brain, far from being fixed, has remarkable powers 

of changing its own structure and compensating for 

even the most challenging neurological conditions. 

Doidge’s book is a remarkable and hopeful portrait 

of the endless adaptability of the human brain.” — 

Oliver Sacks, M.D. Author of The Man Who 

Mistook His Wife For a Hat.

“Brilliant…Doidge has identified a tidal shift in 

basic science and a potential one in medicine. 

The implications are monumental.”

— London Times

“Superb. Brilliant. I devoured it.”

— V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., 

Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition,

 University of California, San Diego 

Author of Phantoms in The Brain

“One of the best books of 2008.”

—The Guardian

“In bookstores, the science aisle generally lies well 

away from the self-help section, with hard reality 

on one set of shelves and wishful thinking on the 

other. But Norman Doidge’s fascinating synopsis of 

the current revolution in neuroscience straddles this 

gap: the age-old distinction between the brain and 

the mind is crumbling fast as the power of positive 

thinking finally gains scientific credibility. Mind-

bending, miracle-making, reality-busting stuff…a 

kind of word-made flesh outcome far more 

characteristic of Lourdes than the National Institutes 

of Health… with implications for all human beings, 

not to mention human culture, human learning and 

human history.”

— The New York Times, Science Times

“Lucid and absolutely fascinating…engaging,

 educational and riveting. It satisfies, in equal 

measure, the mind and the heart. Doidge is able to 

explain current research in neuroscience with 

clarity and thoroughness. He presents the ordeals 

of the patients about whom he writes—people born 

with parts of their brains missing, people with 

learning disabilities, people recovering from strokes

—with grace and vividness. In the best medical

 narratives—and the works of Doidge… join that 

fraternity—the narrow bridge between body and 

soul is traversed with courage and eloquence.”

— Chicago Tribune

“Doidge tells one spell-binding story after another as 

he travels the globe interviewing the scientists and 

their subjects who are on the cutting edge of a new 

age. Each story is interwoven with the latest in brain 

science, told in a manner that is both simple and 

compelling. It may be hard to imagine that a book so 

rich in science can also be a page-turner, but this one 

is hard to set down.”

— Jeff Zimman, Posit Science, e-newsletter

“Doidge… slowly turns everything we thought we 

knew about the brain upside down.”

— Publisher’s Weekly

“A rich banquet of brain-mind plasticity, 

communicated in a brilliantly clear writing style.”

—Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D., 

Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well-Being 

Science, Washington State University; 

Head, Affective Neuroscience Research, 

Falk Center for Molecular Therapeutics, 

Northwestern University; 

Distinguished Research Professor of Psychobiology, 

Emeritus, Bowling Green State

”This book is like discovering 

that the earth isn’t flat.”

—Gretel Killeen, Sun Herald, 

“The Books That Changed Me”

“The Brain That Changes Itself…is without 

question the most important book of the year, 

and maybe the most important book 

we have ever read.”

— Kiril Sokoloff, 13D Research Inc.

“Brilliant…This book is a wonderful and engaging 

way or re-imagining what kind of creatures we are.”

—Jeanette Winterson, novelist, 

OBE, Order of the  British Empire, 

Guardian, Best Book of 2008

“In the intrepid tradition of Oliver Sacks, 

Norman Doidge embarks on a fantastic voyage 

through the labyrinth of the human brain.”

—Simon Hughes, AFR, 

Australia Financial Review Magazine

“A masterfully guided tour through the burgeoning 

field of neuroplasticity research.”

— Discover Magazine

“A riveting, essential book. Doidge covers an 

impressive amount of ground and is an expert guide, 

a sense of wonder always enriching his skill as an 

explicator of subject matter that in less able hands 

could be daunting or even impenetrable. These 

stories are most emotionally satisfying. Doidge 

addresses how cultural influences literally “shape” 

our brain. [And] it becomes clear that our response 

to the world around us is not only a social or 

psychological phenomenon, but often a lasting 

neurological process.”

— Montreal Gazette, Liam Durcan, M.D.,

  Neurologist & Novelist

“Doidge provides a history of the research in this 

growing field, highlighting scientists at the edge 

of groundbreaking discoveries and telling 

fascinating stories of people who have benefited.”

— Psychology Today

“With example after fascinating example, 

Dr. Norman Doidge shows how patients have 

overcome deficits caused by trauma, strokes, 

prenatal problems, and disease. The stories are as 

instructive as they are inspiring.”

— Barnes & Noble: From Our Editors

“It takes a rare talent to explain science to the rest of 

us. Oliver Sacks is a master at this. So was the late 
Stephen Jay Gould. And now there is Norman 
Doidge. A terrific book. You don’t have to be a brain 

surgeon to read it—just a person with a curious mind. 

Doidge is the best possible guide. He has a fluent and 

unassuming style, and is able to explain difficult 

concepts without talking down to his readers. The 

case study is the psychiatric literary genre par 

excellence, and Doidge does not disappoint. What 

makes neuroplasticity so exciting is that it completely 

upends how we look at the brain. It says that the 

brain, far from being a collection of specialized parts, 

each fixed in its location and function, is in fact a 

dynamic organ, one that can rewire and rearrange 

itself as the need arises. It is an insight from which 

all of us can benefit. People with severe afflictions 

— strokes, cerebral palsy, schizophrenia, learning 

disabilities, obsessive compulsive disorders and the 

like — are the most obvious candidates, but who 

among us would not like to tack on a few IQ points 

or improve our memories? Buy this book. Your brain 

will thank you.”

— Jessica Warner, Ph.D., Globe and Mail

“Readers will want to read entire sections aloud and 

pass the book on to someone who can benefit from it. 

[Doidge] links scientific experimentation with 

personal triumph in a way that inspires awe for the 

brain, and for these scientists’ faith in its capacity.”

— Washington Post

“A hymn to life.”

— Panorama Italy

“The most readable and best general treatment of 

this subject to date.”

— Michael M. Merzenich, Ph.D., 

Francis Sooy Professor, 

Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences

University of California at San Francisco

“Perfect for fans of Oliver Sacks”

—Quill & Quire


“Norman Doidge’s book is beautifully written and brings life and clarity to a variety of neuropsychiatric problems that affect children and adults. With case histories that read like excellent short stories to illustrate each syndrome… 
It reads a bit like a science detective story and is fun
…and manages to humanize an often baffling area of 
science and controversy. It is aimed at the well-
educated lay reader-you do not need a Ph.D. to 
benefit from the wisdom imparted here.”

— Barbara Milrod, M.D. Psychiatry, 
Weill Medical College, 
Cornell University, New York

“A panoramic examination of plasticity’s profound 
implications. Injured or dysfunctional cells and 
circuits can indeed be regenerated and rewired; the 
location of a given function can, astonishingly, 
move from one place to another. The body’s lifespan 
may not have to outpace its mental lifespan…
Everything that you can see happen in a young brain 
can happen in an older brain. Deterioration can be 
reversed by 20 to 30 years.”

— Toronto Daily Star


“An eloquently written book about the boundless 
potential of the human brain. In addition to being a 
fascinating, informative and emotionally powerful 
read, it has the potential to enlighten parents about 
the incredible learning-enhancing opportunities now 
available to them and their children. Addresses 
learning disabilities in a unique way and could 
revolutionize the way educational issues are 
addressed.”

— The Jewish Week

“Why isn’t this book on the top of the bestseller list 

of all time? In my mind the recognition that the brain 

in plastic and can actually change itself with exercise 

and understanding is a huge leap in the history or 

mankind, far greater than landing on the moon. Clear, 

fascinating, and gripping. Dr. Doidge gives new hope 

to everyone from the youngest to the oldest among us.”

— Jane S. Hall, International Psychoanalysis

“For years, the conventional wisdom has been that 

the human brain remains fixed after early childhood, 

subject only to deterioration. Children with mental 

limitations or adults suffering from brain injury can 

never hope to attain brain normality. Not so, says 

Doidge. He outlines the brain’s ability to reorganize 

itself by forming new neural connections throughout 

life. Through numerous case studies, he describes 

stroke victims who have learned to move and speak 

again, senior citizens who have sharpened their 

memories, and children who have raised their IQs 

and overcome learning disabilities, among others. 

The science, he predicts, will have ramifications for 

professionals in many fields, but especially for 

teachers of all types.”— Education Week

“Astonishing. This book will inevitably draw 

comparisons to the work of Oliver Sacks. Doidge 

has a prodigious gift for rendering the highly 

technical highly readable. It’s hard to imagine a 

more exciting topic–or a better introduction to it.”

— Kitchener Waterloo Record

“Norman Doidge has written a fascinating, 

highly readable account of the new brain science.”

 —John Cornwell, Literary Review, England

“You really should read this book…this remarkable 

work will lead us to see ourselves in a new light.”

—Mail on Sunday, England

“An owner’s manual for the brain, giving advice on 

how to maintain intellect and reasoning functions as 

we grow older, Doidge's book gives the reader hope 

for the future. I highly recommend this book to 

anyone who enjoys stories of triumph against all 

odds. Extremely engrossing, and always informative.”

— Curled Up With a Good Book

“An ‘essential primer’ for anyone who wants to 

better understand their own brains and the 

considerable advances in neuroscience of the past 

two decades.”

—Gordon Farrer, Melbourne Age

“A fascinating glimpse into a new field … The Brain 

That Changes Itself could signal an important 

medical shift we’re in the midst of right now.

—Drew Turney, Sun Herald

“Anyone who has read Norman Doidge’s brilliant 

The Brain That Changes Itself, in which the author 

makes a convincing case for our brains being far more 

“plastic” and malleable than previously supposed, 

will suspect that our predispositions can be changed 

through experience”

—Andrew Smith, The Sunday Times, UK

“Doidge has a knack for translating scientific jargon 

into plain English … This is an enjoyable read, an 

impressive translation of neuroscience for a lay 

audience. It will interest anyone who wants to know 

more about how the brain works.”

—Winnipeg Free Press

"The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge 

provides a fascinating overview of the emerging 

science of neuro-plasticity—the study of the capacity 

of the brain to alter and reorganize itself under the 

influence of learning and experience. Through a rich 

tapestry of narratives about patients with some of the 

most intractable neurological and psychological 

disorders, and scientists with their inspiring, some-

times paradoxical cures, Doidge has accomplished a 

rare feat. He has written a book that accurately 

conveys cutting-edge scientific discoveries while 

simultaneously engaging both scientific and popular 

audiences.This book is in the same league as other 

popular and influential neuroscience books such as 

Antonio Damasio’s Descartes’ Error, Oliver Sacks’s 
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and 
Joseph LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain.”

—Douglas Watt and Eric A. Fertuck, 

in Neuro-Psychoanalysis 

“A remarkable book … a highly readable 

exploration of a branch of science that has the 

potential to change all our lives.”

—Hobart Mercury

“Fascinating synopsis of the revolution in neuro-

science shows that the age-old distinction between 

the brain and the mind is crumbling fast as the 

power of positive thinking finally gains scientific 

credibility.”

—National Post holiday book guide

“This is a fascinating book which alters the way we 

look at our brains, human nature, and human potential.”

—Suzy Wilson, South East Advertiser

“A book that everybody should read… 

it is nothing short of miraculous. Get it!”

—Yoko Ono, Yoko Reads Book Recommendations

“The Brain That Changes Itself  by Norman Doidge 

shows us that at last neuroscience has caught up with

what mystics and meditation have taught for centuries

 — the brain is infinitely changeable. Forget 

mechanics: the brain is not a machine, nor is it a 

computer made of meat. This book is a wonderful 

and engaging way of re-imagining what kind of 

creatures we are.”

—Jeanette Winterson, The Guardian, 

Best Books of 2008