35 pages • 1 hour read
Craig GroeschelWinning the War in Your Mind: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Rewire Principle”
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 opens with an extended example from Groeschel’s life. Groeschel accidentally wired a new stereo system through the wiring for the headlights in his car, so that his stereo only worked when his headlights were on. This illustrates a basic principle: how our minds are wired determines how they work. Drawing on neuroscience, Groeschel describes the natural tendency of the human brain to wire itself into repetitive patterns based on our thoughts and experiences: “Every thought you have produces a neurochemical change in your mind. Your brain literally redesigns itself around that thought” (67). This tendency is an adaptive and protective function of the brain, allowing us to learn new patterns of thought and then easily redeploy those patterns when faced with similar situations. This enables us to learn even very complex patterns and behaviors, like playing the piano. Unfortunately, this tendency also predisposes our brain to hardwire patterns into our minds based on repeated negative thoughts or behaviors.
Groeschel describes these negative patterns as ruts. As is the case with ruts, it is very difficult to get out of them, especially once your brain has hardwired a predisposition for staying in that rut. The first step for getting out is to discern what our ruts are by considering the behaviors or feelings which exhibit a repetitive or compulsive nature.
Part 2, Chapter 5 Summary
Groeschel observes that most people have difficulty keeping resolutions to overcome negative behaviors. He believes this stems from the fact that most approaches to self-improvement focus on a problem’s symptoms, but not on the underlying causes of the behavior. He gives the example of trying to cut down a tree by just chopping off a branch. Returning to his imagery from Chapter 4, Groeschel says that the solution to getting out of a rut is not just to try to stop following the rut, but to replace the rut with a trench: “The antidote for a negative neural pathway is a new neural pathway. Instead of living in a rut, you can create a truth trench that runs deeper, diverting the flow of your thoughts from old pathways to new ones” (86).
The process for creating a “trench of truth” is called the Rewire Principle: “Renew your brain, renew your mind” (87). This is done by finding Bible verses that directly address the fears or anxieties which underlie negative behavior patterns, and then creating a simple, one- or two-sentence declaration based on the truths revealed in those verses. The verses and declarations that result from this process are meant to be studied, written down, meditated upon, and repeated to oneself, until they become a naturalized way of thinking.
Part 2, Chapter 6 Summary
In Chapter 6, Groeschel outlines the process he advised at the end of Chapter 5. In order to internalize the life-changing truths in the Bible verses one has selected, it is necessary to engage in practices of intentional repetition. This includes the classic spiritual discipline of meditation, which Groeschel describes as “rumination,” likening it to the way that cows repeatedly chew their cud to extract more nutrition from their food. Making a regular, repeated practice of ruminating over the Bible verses and declarations helps to cement them in our minds: “Repetition is what created the old rut. Repetition is what will create the new trench. Write it, think it, confess it until you believe it” (104). Once you have written down your series of declarations based on your selected Bible verses, you should commit to reading them on a daily basis, as well as reminding yourself of them whenever you feel the pressure to go back to old habits and negative ways of thinking. If done enough, Groeschel says, this should train your brain to think along the lines of the positive truths in your declarations rather than following the ruts of the self-destructive lies that conditioned your unwanted behaviors.
Chapter 6’s exercise introduces a new practice, meant to represent an easy way to undertake a healthy, repetitive habit of inputting truth into one’s thought life. This practice of meditation—which Groeschel also refers to as rumination—
consists of slow, prayerful reading of Bible verses.
Part 2, Chapters 4-6 Analysis
Whereas Part 1 focused on the truth or falsity of the thought patterns underlying our behavior, in Part 2 Groeschel looks more directly at the practical steps by which his readers can replace false ideas with true ones. This marks Groeschel’s first significant interaction with neuroscience. The steps he advises are based on the discovery of the brain’s neuroplasticity. The brain is constantly adapting itself to the thoughts and actions a person undertakes. Repeated patterns of thought or action produce distinct changes within the brain’s neural pathways, making it easier for future repetitions of those thoughts or actions. This feature of neuroscience is both part of the problem and part of the solution. As part of the problem, it means that our repeated negative thoughts result in a neural pathway conditioned to lead our mental life along the contours of negative thoughts. However, the brain’s neuroplasticity also opens an opportunity whereby we can forge new neural pathways by repeated practices focusing on positive thoughts. Groeschel aims to make neuroscientific principles accessible by putting them into the metaphors of “ruts” and “trenches.”
The dominant theme of this section is the importance of intentional habits. The repetition inherent in habits makes the creation of a new neural pathway possible: “The more you do something, the more natural it becomes. […] With enough repetition, falling into a neurological rut will become automatic” (70). This is at the core of Groeschel's solution to negative thought patterns: If the reader wants freedom, they have to engage in a repeated, intentional sequence to input healthy thoughts into their daily lives. Without regular repetition, the method will not succeed.
The end-of-chapter exercises build on themselves in stepwise fashion, moving from a self-reflective exercise of identifying one’s ruts (Chapter 4), to discerning biblical truths and writing personal declarations (Chapter 5), to a practice of biblical mediation (Chapter 6). The exercises from Chapters 4 and 5 are essentially expansions of the exercises undertaken in Chapters 1-3.
