Ideas of how the brain works have often reflected whatever technology was current at the time.
So when radio and TV were the most advanced technology we had, the brain was considered to be made up of electrical wires or circuit boards. Unfortunately with this idea came the sense that once a particular circuit was laid down then, that was it: you were wired that way for life.
With the growth of the Internet and it’s understanding of how things are interconnected, a new more developed model of how the brain works has come about.
In this model the brain is seen as series of interconnected pathways which grow stronger and more influential depending on the amount of traffic they have, and what underpins this idea is the phenomenon of neuro plasticity.
This is the scientific fact that when you use a nerve pathway a lot, then, much like training a muscle group in the gym, the brain actually physically changes its structure to make it easier to use that pathway.
This is great if the pathways that we have been training help us make better choices about what’s good for us in our lives, but it’s equally disastrous if we unintentionally train our brain to go down pathways that cause us trouble.
I’ve included one of my most popular videos which shows this.
So my question for you is which pathways are you currently exercising, and which pathways would you like to exercise less?
Changing this is actually very simple because the process of neuroplasticity which set up the strength and resilience of those negative pathways can equally be used to retrain your brain to go down the pathways that you wish for.
Phil
Lead Trainer NLP Coach Course
You can hear me talking more about neuroplasticity and how we can use it to change our brains, and lives, on my Essential NLP Podcast here