New Year, New Possibilities and New Highways for Your Mind
“Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculptor of his own brain.”
— Santiago Ramón y Cajal
We now know that the brain has an almost limitless ability to rewire, change and forge new neural pathways
When you think about it, that has incredible and inspirational implications for you.
It means that you have a tool—right between your two ears—that gives you the power to craft the exact life you want.
Everything you think about and do repetitively becomes a new neural connection.
The more often you perform an action, behave or think in a certain way, the more the new connections are strengthened.
Or as Daniel J. Siegel says, “Where attention goes, neural firing flows, and neural connection grows.”
The end result is the brain is rewired and a habit is born.
And habits are literally what makes up our lives.
In fact, we now know that 95% of what makes us who we are by the age of 35 are a blend of memorized habits, behaviors, emotions and attitudes that are mostly unconscious.
Want to create new habits and thoughts?
Want to build a new and different life?
The good news is that it’s absolutely possible to do so.
But it isn’t always as easy as it sounds.
Creating a new habit or replacing an old one is not a quick, straightforward process.
Our brain, which always tries to save energy, will choose the path of least resistance. It will prefer to employ the more established, well-used and familiar neural pathways, especially under stress or when we are tired.
In other words, the brain will always be partial to the OLD habit versus a NEW one.
Think of it as the brain preferring to travel on a paved, high-speed highway that requires little or no effort versus struggling to walk on an uneven, dirt path. The brain is wired to be energy-efficient and highway travel is so much less demanding.
This is precisely why breaking an old habit (or creating a new one) is so tough.
Your brain is not fixed.
Its plasticity gives you the tool for endless possibilities to learn and to lead better, healthier lives.
However, habit change is challenging until we have repeated the behavior or thought enough times that the neural connections become more robust and the new behavior requires less energy.
The struggle is real.
But the rewards are great.