Our brains are the physical structures which support our “minds” or thoughts, and our thoughts form physical structures in our brains – called neural pathways.

Neural plasticity is the capacity of the brain to change, and this takes place through re-organisation of the neural pathways in our brains. Neural pathways are “preserved” through frequent use,
for example:
Learning a poem off by heart through repetition creates physical structure in our brain, and a simple motor sequence practiced for 10 – 20 minutes a day for 4 weeks can cause a change in the brain region supporting performance of a task

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So “Practice makes perfect!” as they say, because actual physical structures are established in our
brains through repetition of an activity/thought etc.
It is therefore untrue to say “I can’t change the way I think/feel/ behave etc. because our brains have the ability to CHOOSE what we will think about, how we will deal with our feelings, or how we will react/respond. We can choose to create healthy pathways, or feed unhealthy ones until they become entrenched (i.e. a “mindset” or a particular way of behaving). We use the “executive” of our brains (frontal lobes) to analyse incoming information from all our other brain regions in order to decide/choose how we are going to respond or react. Of course it takes practice – but it can be done!

Watch Caroline Leaf on you-tube, for an informative talk about neuro-plasticity.

Click on:
Science of Thought | Caroline Leaf | TEDxOaksChristianSchool