If you are alive on the planet at this special time, you are extremely fortunate. You have access to scientific breakthroughs that your ancestors only wish they had.
Mere decades ago, scientists believed that your brain was hard-wired from birth and that little to no changes could be made over the span of your lifetime.
This meant that personality traits, IQ levels, and abilities were set in stone. If a person had a trauma, injury, or brain health issue, it would simply be a miracle if changes or improvements could be made.
This is the kind of world your parents and grandparents grew up in, and it is likely that this limiting, inaccurate perspective governed their life experience.
Knowing what we know now about brain plasticity, however, doesn’t that outdated thinking seem old fashioned… even barbaric?
It turns out, that thanks to recent scientific discoveries, your brain is actually soft-wired and able to change vs. hard-wired and set-in-stone.
You come into the world with a basic neurological template for basic survival. More intricate, stronger neural connections and mapping come from your own unique life experiences.
Basically, your brain adapts ‘plastically’ to create a model and understanding of the big, vast and wonderful world that you live in. Then your brain controls its own plasticity to gradually figure out how to operate successfully within it. How cool is that?
At a young age, you are reliant on the adults and environment around you. Eventually, you become more independent until you are officially in the driver seat of your life experience, neurological health, optimization, and destiny.
Based on this awareness, there is information and strategies that are highly useful.
8 NEUROPLASICITY INSIGHTS:
- HOW YOU FIRE IT, YOU WIRE IT: Your thoughts, feelings, and actions have a corresponding neurological response. The more frequently you run a particular neural-circuit in your brain, the stronger and faster that circuit becomes. Being aware of what you are repeating, will give you the opportunity to assess if it is beneficial or not. If need be, you can re-direct the firing to create new wiring.
- YOUR MOOD IS BRAIN FOOD: Brain change is mostly influenced by situations in which the brain is in the mood for the situation. If you are tired, stressed, or distracted, you are not going to think clearly, act effectively, or access the higher order thinking of your frontal lobes and executive functions. This is why I like to refer to the importance of being in a ‘Learning Ready” state, a term which comes from my training in Brain Gym®.
- GREATER THE INVESTMENT, HIGHER THE COGNITIVE RETURN: The more invested you are in a person, activity, or situation, will mean the harder you work, the more energy you use and the greater focus you give. Thus, the bigger the brain change is activated! As well, when you are engaging in an action because you believe it will keep you safe or reward you in some way, powerful neurochemicals are released, stronger memories are formed, and your attention is heightened.
- YOUR FINGERPRINT DOESN’T CHANGE, BUT YOUR BRAIN MAP DOES: You have a fingerprint that is 1 in 7.5 billion. No one else has the same design and yours will never change. In comparison, your brain has a neurological mapping that is also 1 in 7.5 billion and completely unique to you. However, it can change, and does change, based on the neurons that communicate with one another and the strengths of those connections.
- CELLS THAT PLAY TOGETHER, STAY TOGETHER: Learning drives changes in neural connections and increases the cell-to-cell cooperation, which is crucial for increasing reliability and memory. As you learn new information and acquire new skills, your brain becomes more in-formed, and the literal ‘formation’ of your brain grows, changes, and solidifies.
- REPETITION CREATES YOUR CONDITION: Initial changes are just temporary but with frequent practise and repetition, the process of myelination will begin to coat the axons and make the neural pathways faster and stronger. (Myelin is the fatty sheath surrounding neuronal processes and fibers, which increases the efficiency of electrical transmission.)
- VISUALIZE TO MATERIALIZE: Your brain changes with internal mental rehearsal in the same way and involves precisely the same processes that control changes achieved through interactions with the external world. In other words, when you imagine yourself performing an activity, the same pathways are activated as when you actually do it.
- IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW, IT’S WHAT YOU RECALL: Your memory connects past with present and serves as a guide and launching pad for your future. In order to imagine a future event, you have to have some recollection of a past event for context and a basis to draw upon. By engaging with life and having a diverse set of experiences, you build your memory library, which adds to a healthier cognitive reserve and brain health.
While we cannot change everything, there is so much that we can. By leveraging neuroplasticity science and strategies, you are working with the best methods to effectively sculpt your Fit Brain & Fit Life.
You are ready, you’ve got this!
Jill