Brain happens to be our most complex part of the human system, in this digital age, where science has taught us that our brain shapes us and makes us unique who we are, ironically, there are many genesis of the brain that are unknown by the medical science.
We know average weight of the brain is 3 pound or at the time of birth its 12 ounce. The percent of total body weight that the brain represents is 2%, numbers of neurons in the brain are 200 billion, millions of connections in the brain more than the stars in the galaxy combined, so on and so forth. However, such data is not tough to find in fact one can read medical books to get such stats, but once we get into the core of the brain, try to study its scope and get extra technical about the brain that’s where medical science has question marks and yet remains a mystery, subsequently, we use the expression “Oh! this seems like a brain surgery”, casually, in our daily lives while understanding the perplexing concepts . This expression says a lot about its scope.
The good news is, with so much of its complexities brain is the most significant component of the human system, we can re-program it, we can re-boot it, we may have heard all of it, but can we change the brain? And if so, how on earth can we do that?
The other night, I was reading a book by Barbara Arrowsmith, “the women who changed her brain” which also inspired me to write this blog. She was born in 1957, with a mental block in her mind with doctors telling all sorts of obnoxious things they can ever tell a baby’s parent. Early on in Barbra’s childhood she was taught to live with her limitations in life as she can never learn like other children, she couldn’t tell or understand time and can never understand the relation between the hour hand and the minute hand, she can’t understand languages, pondered how her aunt can be her mother’s sister, irony in jokes were impossible to understand, therefore, she use to laugh when she saw other people laughing, cause and effect did not exist in her world, her world was a series of disconnected bits and pieces fragments. She would drop anything which was in her left hand, if she put her left hand on a hot burner she could feel the pain but had no idea where it was coming from, which eventually, made her a danger for herself. Barbra’s mother was convinced that she will die by the age of 5.
She even tried a failed suicide attempt at the age of 8, when she use to think about the horrors of handling the high school curriculum. The next morning, after the failed suicide attempt she debase herself for not getting it right and a part of what kept her going was an attitude she learnt from her father, who was an inventor, that if there is a problem and there is no solution to the problem, go out and create it and the other thing Barbara’s dad taught her was to identify the nature of the problem which kept her going but her source of the problem was still persisting.
Then at 25 years of age, sometime in summers, her life changed when she met a mind like her own, who was a Russian soldier, she read about the soldier in a book which help her to identify the source of her problem that her left hemisphere of the brain was not working, then she read about the work/study on rats that they are better learners in stimulated environment and rats brain change physiologically in the stimulated environment to support that learning, which gave her solution and this brought neuroplasticity in action, neuroplasticity, is to put brains ability to change physiologically and functionally as a result of stimulation. Now she knew what she had to do that she had to exercise to strengthen those weak parts of the brain which was a beginning of her life transformation.
In 3-4 months times she could see significant change in her life, she tested her brain exercises by going to the library and studying a psychology book (as she had immense interest in psychology) and found no problem and understood all the pages she read and before she was finished for the day she read pages from 100 books and found no problem in reading and understanding whatsoever and the experiment work that she was able to change her brain and from there on she wrote, to date, brain strengthening programs in 37 schools across US, Canada and Australia, have written many books and have attended various conferences on the same.
If a person born with such complexities can achieve so much in life and was able to change her brain completely, people born with normal capabilities, sky is the limit. We need to develop habits, condition the brain and set goals which may give a new meaning to life.
Best way to start this exercise and create your own program:
Get a notebook, keep it with you for the rest of your life and start writing all the 5-10 goals/likes/wants or anything you want to achieve in life in present tense (pretend you have achieve the goals) for example:
- Don’t write I will develop a habit of reading instead write I have develop the habit of reading by this _____ date. Or write:
- I am weighing X kg by this month, avoid writing, I will lose x amount of weight by this month.
The reason why we are writing in present tense is because sub conscious mind is activated if we are talking in the present/personal/positive tense. It’s always better to be specific whenever you want to achieve the goal and express in present tense. Begin with the word I, to create the more powerful impact which helps to develop new beliefs for what is possible for you. Positive/Personal goals written down each day activates the sub conscious and start to move more rapidly towards the goals and they move more rapidly to you.
