Most people think memory loss comes from bad food, being a booze hound, bad sleep, or just Father Time kicking your ass!

A 2024 Chinese study (424 adults, PMID: 40457276) found something more sinister: :
Repetitive negative thinking.

The mental loops of stewing, worrying, and overthinking crank stress hormones that torch your hippocampus—the same way saltwater left on steel makes it rust

It’s not just harmless fretting. It’s frying your brain wiring and leaving wreckage behind.

🧠 5 Fixes for Brain Rust (Repetitive Negative Thinking)

1. Call It Out and Guard Your Mind

Negative thinking is a mullet rep—half lift, no gains. Call it out. “That’s worry.” “That’s fear.” Don’t let it snowball into a failed set.

And once you name it, never take ownership. “I am” is sacred ground. When you say “I am worried,” you weld fear onto your identity. Instead, say “I’m feeling worried.” That’s just weather passing through, not the foundation of who you are.

Guard your mind like the last sack of Allsup’s burritos on a Friday night—once they’re gone, you’re left with moon pies, cheap beer and regret.

 Build the Mansion of “What Now,” not the Motel of “What If.” Brick by brick, thought by thought, you protect your “I am” from being hijacked.

2.  Wrestle Through, Be Transformed

Jacob went into the fight one man and came out another—Israel. That wasn’t a small tweak; that was a complete metamorphosis. And as Joe Dirt says, if you “keep on keepin’ on,” good things happen. But the story shows it won’t always be easy. Jacob limped away scarred but blessed.

Same with your mind. Once you acknowledge negative thinking and refuse to own it, you open the door for transformation. Paul said, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2). That’s the other side of the fight: the limp is proof you wrestled, the blessing is proof you didn’t quit, and the renewed mind means you’re not who you were—you’re becoming who you were created to be.

3. Change Your State

You don’t stay pinned under a heavy bar—you rack it, reset, and get back under it the right way. Thoughts are no different. When negative loops start pressing down, you don’t just sit there suffocating. Change your state. Stand up, drag a sled, splash cold water, walk outside, hammer push-ups till your arms shake. Anything that jolts you back into the present tense.

You don’t conquer negative thoughts by letting them squat in your head—you redirect them. Trade out defeat for gratitude, fear for victory, and worry for what’s good and true. Fill the space with stronger thoughts, and your mind follows just like your body follows the bar path.

4. Motel vs Mansion Mindset

The Motel of “What If” is where junk thoughts crash for free—cheap rent for mental squatters who never leave. That’s not where you were built to live. Start laying bricks on the Mansion of “What Now.” Every action you take instead of stewing—every sled drag, every prayer, every rep—is another brick in resilience. The Motel rots with fear. The Mansion stands on faith and action.

5. Flow Over Fear

Flow state is training with intent—present, locked-in, bar speed fast and smooth. Fear state is sitting on the couch, staring at ghosts that don’t even exist. Negative thinking thrives when you freeze. Flow crushes it when you move with purpose. You choose which room your brain rents: the dungeon of fear, or the gym floor of flow.

🔥 The Takeaway

Repetitive negative thoughts dump stress hormones into your system. They gnaw on your hippocampus like a lot lizard on minthin’s and and malt liquor at a truck stop—empty, corrosive, no nourishment, just damage. Over time? Slower recall, slower thinking, a rusted-out mind.

Most people do this 50+ times a day without knowing it. But you can train your thoughts the way you train for strength—intent, progression, consistency. Break the loop. Reframe the thought. Choose the Mansion over the Motel.

Mental rust isn’t inevitable. The limp means you wrestled. The blessing means you didn’t quit. The renewal means you’re building something stronger inside than what you had yesterday.

Build mental and physical armor with one of Josh’s programs HERE.