You didn’t get an owner’s manual with your brain, but that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with the circuit board you’ve got upstairs right now. In fact, your brain tomorrow will not be the same brain you have today. It might be more fit, or perhaps a little more out of shape. You get to decide which it is—and to determine how it influences how you prioritize, how you set expectations of yourself, how you motivate yourself, and how you get moving when you’re stuck.

We know more than ever about what goes on in the circuitry that makes our little gray cells hum. Experts used to think of the brain as a sophisticated machine, believing it was “hard-wired” and unchanging. Thanks to new brain imaging technologies, scientists can now track how thoughts and impulses move through the brain as electrical signals. It turns out our brain cells are organized more like points on a map than like cogs in a machine. Every day, our brains are busy laying down new mental pathways—sometimes superhighways—between those points. It causes actual, physical change. This is what we mean by “rewiring your brain.” Doing it intentionally is a sure-fire way to improve your quality of life. 

In A Users’ Guide to the Brain, John Ratey says, “The brain is changing its connective patterns every second of our lives in response to everything we perceive, think, or do…. There are more possible ways to connect the brain’s neurons than there are atoms in the universe [and these] connections guide our bodies and behaviors, even as every thought and action we take physically modifies their patterns.” 

Brain scans of concert violinists, for example, show significantly larger areas of the brain devoted to fine motor skills in the left hand—they have more wiring that facilitates their musical skills. Researchers also found that London taxi drivers have larger brain regions devoted to spatial memory and navigational skills than the rest of us have. As they expand their knowledge of London’s streets, they’re also expanding their own “mental streets.”  What would you like to build new wiring for?

I taught myself to juggle a few years ago—three balls, in the air, same time.  It seemed an impossible task. I had laughable hand-eye coordination. Toss me the car keys, they’d land in a snowbank and you wouldn’t find ’em till spring. Yet, with practice, I created new pathways and learned to juggle—and when I did, my hand-eye coordination improved as if by magic. I had grown new connections in my brain—no more car keys buried in a snowbank. “By viewing the brain as a muscle that can be weakened or strengthened, we can exercise our ability to determine who we become,” notes Ratey. It was great fun to become a juggler, even one with modest skills. 

Your brain is constantly laying down new wiring. You can let it happen haphazardly—and not always for the best—or you can supercharge your brain, and tap into your natural motivation, by upgrading your wiring intentionally. Once you learn to do something you know to be impossible for you, a whole new world of possibility opens up. It’s the ultimate exercise of free will, and it will have a big impact on the expectations you set yourself and how you prioritize those expectations.

Think about the skills or habits you wish you had. Are you willing to make them your new reality by creating new wiring?  The first step is to acknowledge that you really can rewire your brain. The second step is to identify what you care enough about that you will be inspired to take action. Finally, be willing to take action repeatedly until the skill becomes second nature or the habit takes root. 

There! You’ve just supercharged your brain, not to mention your quality of life.

Check back in this space every so often. I’ll occasionally share specific tips on how to rewire your brain and supercharge your quality of life.

Do you sometimes play the “What if…” game? (Also known as “If only…”)

What if you’d taken a different career path. What if you had a different life partner. What if you’d learned to play golf. If only you’d made a different choice about…whatever.

I play that game—most of us do—and it used to be a grim exercise. Because it’s easy for our brains to see only the bright future we might have had—and conversely, only the rut we’ve landed in from not having made a different choice. It was enough to make me slump my shoulders and wring my hands.

Lately, though, instead of feeling down in the dumps about my what ifs, they energize me. What changed? I took them out of past tense and put them squarely in present tense. My “What if I had” thoughts have evolved into “What if, right now, I…”

Let me give you an example.

I accompanied a friend to a fabric store a couple of years ago, and I was wowed by the creativity and possibility I saw down every aisle. This looked like fun. Darn! “What if I’d paid attention when my mom tried to teach me how to sew?” Finally a better question popped into my brain: “What if I learn how to sew, right now?” I joined an ongoing sewing class, and now I’m having every inch of the fun I envisioned that day in the store.

Second example…Microphones used to give me a severe case of nerves and a seriously squeaky voice. I stopped lamenting that sorry situation and decided to focus on, “What if I just learn this skill that doesn’t seem to come naturally?” I got some training, practiced, (realized I wasn’t going to die of fright) and…now I host a four-hour weekly classical music program on our community station. And people tell me I’m a natural. Little do they know….

Many people come to coaching because they want to make that shift—from lamenting past decisions and actions (or non-actions) to making (and following through on) decisions they can make today.

My present “What if” is “What if I’d jumped on the social media bandwagon five years ago? Wow, I’d be an expert today! Too bad I didn’t do that.” Then I ask myself the better question, “What if I jump on that bandwagon today?” With a little effort, it won’t be long before social media marketing is one of my strengths instead of one of my dreaded tasks. I’ve hired a social media coach, and I’m on it!

What’s your “What if?” I would love to hear from you.

 

When you take rational decision-making to an extreme, it starts to look a lot like irrational indecision.

Honing your skill in rational decision-making—evaluating and judging options free of emotion and desire—might not be the most rational approach to getting a good result.

Consider a man named Elliot, the epitome of rational thinking gone awry. Elliot is legendary in the neuroscience world. He was smart, successful, a good decision-maker. Until one day in 1982, when surgeons removed a tumor from Elliot’s brain. They cut into a critical part of Elliot’s brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which essentially deleted Elliot’s emotional capacity. He had become, in the words of neurologist Antonio Damasio (co-creator of the Iowa Gambling Task I wrote about last month), ‘a dispassionate, uninvolved spectator.’

According to the classical theory of rational thinking, this vacuum of emotional capacity should have made Elliot a model of good decision-making. He was a smart guy. His rational mental tools were exquisitely sharp. He had no emotions to cloud his thinking.

Yet, without emotion to guide his judgment, he was incapable of making even the simplest decision. He couldn’t choose which chair to sit in. He couldn’t choose which color pen to use.  Scheduling an appointment was an agonizing exercise for his neurologist. Don’t even think about a lunch date with this guy. It would take him all day to weigh the pros and cons of various dates, times and restaurants, and you’d still go home hungry. Assuming he could even make the decision that you were the one he wanted to chat up over lunch.

Unable to make a decision, Elliot became impossible to be around. His family fell apart, he got fired from his job, he went bankrupt. All because he could no longer feel emotion, that critical element that makes decision making possible.

Decisions require value judgments, and those value judgments are drawn from the part of our brain where we process emotion. When I try on a decision and pay attention to how I feel about it, when I pause and listen to my hunches, I’m more likely to make a decision I don’t end up regretting.

If you have a decision-making experience to share, good or bad, shoot me an email at mollyrose@mollyrosecoaching.com.

 

PFC: Prefrontal cortex, an area of the outer layer of your brain (cortex) that lies behind your forehead.

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for managing and orchestrating conscious behaviors of all other parts of your brain. It’s our PFC that enables us to reason, plan, and make sense of the world.

Unfortunately, the PFC makes up only 4 to 5 percent of our brain mass. It’s the newest in evolutionary terms and it’s the latest to develop as our bodies mature. That means it’s easily bullied by more primitive parts of our brain—particularly our limbic system—where deeply embedded instincts, habits, and emotional responses hold sway. The good news? Just knowing how your brain works makes it easier to quiet the bullies and give yourself more choices in how you respond to surprises, setbacks, and, of course, life’s joys.

I blog about the stuff of daily life and how differently I see the world when I pay attention to my brain — and how creating that awareness every day can help me be happier, more productive, and more fun to be around.