Reprogram Your Mind - You Are The Creator Of Your Own Destiny

Noted molecular biologist, Bruce Lipton in his seminal work, The Biology of Beliefs has argued that we are not prisoners to our genes. By directing our mind on new pathways and developing an empowering belief system we can recreate ourselves even at DNA level

Similarly, Dr Jeffery M Schwartz in his book, The mind and the brain suggests that you play an active role in influencing brain function by deciding where to focus your attention. He contends that mind and brain are not same and people are able to consciously change their brain functioning with proper attention and effort.

The latest research in the field of neuroplasticity indicate that the brain is capable of changing its function in response to your environment, thinking, emotions, behaviour, as well as injury.

Now, we know that the brain remains neuroplastic for life. Self-directed neuroplasticity  allows us to consciously control how we want our brains to work. In other words, if you want your brain to become better in social situations, you’d “force” yourself to become more comfortable in these situations and your brain eventually adapt. Similarly, anytime you learn a new skill (e.g. how to play guitar), your brain functioning changes and adapts to whatever you put in front

Indian Sages knew long back that  the “mind” is responsible for controlling the brain. They knew that the intangible ( mind) creates the tangible (brain). That is why, in the traditional Indian lifestyle a lot of emphasis has been made on purification of mind through focus, diet and goal setting. A purified and controlled mind is considered as the foundation of a fulfilling life.

 On a broad based level, brain is the hardware and mind is the software to run the most complex machine of this universe, the human body. The higher order areas allow you to refocus your attention and utilize willpower to alter your behaviour, which in turn creates changes within your brain (i.e. neuroplasticity).

Research suggests that through specific tools, the idea of neuroplasticity can be activated in any brain. Some the key tools in this regard are

1.             Attention: Any object can catch your attention at any given moment in time, that’s just the by-product of exposing your brain to various stimuli. However, you have full control over the amount of attention to which you give a particular object, thought, or behaviour. You could have a depressing thought and give it a lot of attention (further magnifying it), or you could choose to let it pass and refocus on something else. The goal is to pay attention to the ideas you want in order to make your brain “light up” and rewire the way you want.

2.             Willpower: Simply paying attention is great, but attention alone won’t really change anything. You need to actually go down in the trenches and put in some work. If you are trying to change a particular behaviour such as engaging in compulsive behaviour, come up with a plan to refocus your attention, and partake in a different activity to change the way your brain is firing. With consistent practice, your brain will begin to fire up the circuits associated with the new activity rather than the unwanted one. Willpower is your ability to not to focus on stimuli which is not good for your goals and aspirations.

3.             Practise (“You Don’t Use It, You Lose It”): Regions within your brain are constantly in competition for carrying out various functions. Whichever regions that you use more often, will effectively overpower the other regions and get more neural real-estate. The regions and neural pathways that you use less frequently will get less real-estate and may get minimized and/or eventually die down. Your daily habits make a big impact on your brain functioning because the neural pathways required to carry out those habits become strengthened in time, and those used less often get weaker.

4.            Awareness: Become aware of what you’d like to change. You may be aware of a variety of things that you’re unhappy with and/or things in your life that you dislike. Pick one thing at a time and become aware of the particular habit, mood, etc. that you’d like to change. Within the space of expanded awareness, we need to know our DOs and DoNTs. This list should always be ready with us and we should keep of upgrading the same with new experiences of life.

The above path is easier said than done. Unwanted external stimuli, will again and again take your thoughts to the regressive domain of oozing control. The subconscious mind also need to be trained well to fully exploit the potential of neuroplasticity. The below indicated tools are pretty useful for harnessing the power of subconscious.

•                Meditation: The act of meditating helps regain control of your attention. Without controlling your attention, self-directed neuroplasticity is useless. The greater the degree to which you develop your attention, the less you are an automaton or at the mercy of your pre-existing neural patterns. Certain forms of meditation can be used to create specific changes in the way the brain works; long-term meditators have significantly different brain waves and activation than non-meditators.

•                Mindfulness: The practice of mindfulness helps you become more aware of your thinking as well as your behaviours. It is an act of seeing the subject reality of life. It allows you to be mindful of how your brain is currently working as well as with refocusing your attention should you want to change a particular destructive behaviour. Some consider “mindfulness” as “Vipassana” meditation, but may simply consider it a way to consciously alter your perspective.

•                Visualization: The practice of visualization can create changes in the brain as well. In some studies, it was found that visualizing playing an instrument or engaging in a behaviour produced the same brain change as actually doing the behaviour. The thing with visualization is that it’s relatively difficult for some people to get specific enough and/or accurate enough to produce the same brain change

The final outcome totally depends on the particular activity that you are attempting to learn, your personal motivation for making the change, as well as the degree of the change you plan to make. Passion or personal motivation to overcome a particular problem plays a key role in dictating the degree of difficulty it takes to change the brain. The more you really want to change, the more effort you are going to make in order to get over the hump. Passion is what separates the people who get results and change from the people who stagnate in the same neural “ruts.”

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