You don’t have to stay the same – How neuroplasticity can work for us

Hello everyone!

Today we are going to talk about why “I am just like this” is not a valid excuse for anything. I have learned this myself 7 years ago and today, I’d like to share it with you too.

Why anyone can change

You may have heard the term “neuroplasticity” already; it is frequently mentioned at the moment because there are a lot of break-throughs happening in that area of neuroscience right now. Neuroplasticity is the ability of our brains to change and build new connections all our lives.

quick facts:

neurons are nerve cells that “communicate” with each other (meaning they receive and send chemical and electrical signals to one another). Connections that are often used become fast-connecting, which makes thoughts and actions more effortless (e.g. putting on clothes used to be a struggle when you were a child, now you do it automatically because you’ve done it so often)
those connections or “neural pathways” change continuously: they can become stronger or weaker and new ones can be created

When there is a trigger (something we see, smell, hear, etc.), one connection triggers the next, all the way to an actual worded thought. That way, neural pathways determine our beliefs, thoughts and actions and therefore they determine who we are. However, we can change our neural pathways, which means we can change who we are.

How to rewire your brain

The underlying cause of all your thoughts, decisions and actions are your beliefs. So this section is going to tell you all about how to change those (if needed).

self-awareness

The first step to self-improvement of any kind is always to know yourself as best as you possibly can. Know your opinions, values, strengths and weaknesses. What really helps you there (in fact, I’m not sure if you can be truly self-aware without it) is journaling. I’ve shared a few of my favourite journaling techniques on Social Media:

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There are so many good journaling prompts out there that you won’t have trouble finding some if you need to. I usually just write about what I struggle with at the moment and try to analyse that as best as I can. Here are some things that I’ve written about that have given me a lot of insight on myself:

Who are the people I most admire and what do I admire about them? → which qualities would I like to have and how can I adopt them?
What are attributes that I associate with my name from my childhood? (led to a treasure trove of childhood trauma and underlying insecurities for me)
What would I like people to say about me at my funeral? (multiple people from different areas of my life, e.g. family, work, friends, hobbies, charities etc.) → reveals values

refocus – change your beliefs through your thoughts

The interesting thing about neural pathways is, that new ones can be made, but none can be destroyed. They can only be “overwritten”, which basically means that you strengthen an alternative connection, which makes the old one less used and they get weaker. There are multiple ways to do this:

1. affirmations

Repeating certain thoughts over and over again strengthens the neural pathways that lead to those thoughts and ultimately makes them stronger than other, more negative thinking patterns. At some point the neural pathways become so strong, that those thoughts turn into beliefs. The key is to choose affirmations that really resonate with you and address the belief you want to change at it’s root.

example: you think you can’t be successful

possible source	corresponding affirmation
you think you don’t deserve success	“I am a good person and I deserve to be happy.”
you think you-re unlikely to do it because no-one in your family has done it	“I could be the first one.”
you think you are not capable	“I have what it takes to become anything I want to be.”

2. paying attention to positivity

Our brain is by default focused on negative things. This makes sense, since it is wired for a life in the wild and if we had noticed the pretty flowers rather than the tiger standing next to them, that would probably not have ended so well. So in order to notice the beauty in life, we need to actively steer our attention to those positive things. After some time, you start to notice positivity without focussing on it, because you have trained your brain to notice it.

You can call it gratitude or just writing down good things, but either way, writing down 10 things that you are grateful for or that you liked that day every day is a very helpful habit here. The reason I say 10 is because it’s usually easy to get to 3 or 5, but you need to think a little to get to 10. Many people (myself included) get stuck because they write down the same things every day: family, friends, food, house, etc.. But the goal is to notice small positive things that happen every day. That can be making the early bus, the taste of a cookie, your favourite TV-show, or something you are proud of that day.

3. visualisation

Research has shown that visualising doing a task and actually doing the task activate the same brain regions. That means, they also strengthen the same neural pathways, which in turn means that you can strengthen neural pathways for things that haven’t even happened yet. Through visualisation, we can train ourselves to respond in a certain way when encountering a certain situation, for example. We can choose ahead of time what we would like to do based on our goals and values and then practise those actions just using our imagination. (Fun fact: I actually practised how to drive a car through visualisation and it helped A LOT in real-life practise!)

Key-takaway

If you take only one thing away from this post, then please let it be that you have the power to become a different person. I have already rewired my own brain massively once and it gave me such an empowering feeling. I could never say “I’m just like this” or “I can’t do anything about it” ever again. Because I know I can. Now, one of my core beliefs is that we are always in charge of our own happiness and of our lives, because how we respond matters more than the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Have fun rewiring your brain and I’ll see you next time!