How Our Thoughts Can Become Our Experience
Neuroscience has proven that we can change our brains — and therefore our behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs — just by thinking differently (in other words, without changing anything in our environment). Through mental rehearsal (repeatedly imagining performing an action), the circuits in the brain can reorganize themselves to reflect our objectives. We can make our thoughts so real that the brain changes to look like the event has already become a physical reality. We can change it to be ahead of any actual experience in our external world. Here’s an example. In Evolve Your Brain, I discussed how research subjects who mentally rehearsed one-handed piano exercises for two hours a day for five days (never actually touching any piano keys) demonstrated almost the same brain changes as people who physically performed the identical finger movements on a piano keyboard for the same length of time. 2 Functional brain scans showed that all the participants activated and expanded clusters of neurons in the same specific area of the brain. In essence, the group who mentally rehearsed practicing scales and chords grew nearly the same number of brain circuits as the group who physically engaged in the activity. This study demonstrates two important points. Not only can we change our brains just by thinking differently, but when we are truly focused and single-minded, the brain does not know the difference between the internal world of the mind and what we experience in the external environment. Our thoughts can become our experience. This notion is critical to your success or failure in your endeavor to replace old habits (prune old neural connections) with new ones (sprout new neural networks). So let’s look more closely at how the same learning sequence took place in those people who mentally practiced but never physically played any notes. Whether we physically or mentally acquire a skill, there are four elements that we all use to change our brains: learning knowledge, receiving hands-on instruction, paying attention, and repetition. Learning is making synaptic connections; instruction gets the body involved in order to have a new experience, which further enriches the brain. When we also pay attention and repeat our new skill over and over again, our brains will change. The group who physically played the scales and chords grew new brain circuits because they followed this formula. The participants who mentally rehearsed also followed this formula, except that they never got their bodies physically involved. In their minds they were easily able to conceive of themselves playing the piano. Remember, after these subjects repeatedly mentally practiced, their brains showed the same neurological changes as the participants who actually played the piano. New networks of neurons (neural networks) were forged, demonstrating that in effect, they had already engaged in practicing piano scales and chords without actually having that physical experience. We could say that their brains “existed in the future” ahead of the physical event of playing the piano. Because of our enlarged human frontal lobe and our unique ability to make thought more real than anything else, the forebrain can naturally “lower the volume” from the external environment so that nothing else is being processed but a single-minded thought. This type of internal processing allows us to become so involved in our mental imaging that the brain will modify its wiring without having experienced the actual event. When we can change our minds independent of the environment and then steadfastly embrace an ideal with sustained concentration, the brain will be ahead of the environment. That is mental rehearsal, an important tool in breaking the habit of being ourselves. If we repeatedly think about something to the exclusion of everything else, we encounter a moment when the thought becomes the experience. When this occurs, the neural hardware is rewired to reflect the thought as the experience. This is the moment that our thinking changes our brains and thus, our minds. To understand that neurological change can take place in the absence of physical interactions in the environment is crucial to our success in breaking the habit of being ourselves. Consider the larger implications of the finger-exercise experiment. If we apply the same process — mental rehearsal — to anything that we want to do, we can change our brains ahead of any concrete experience. If you can influence your brain to change before you experience a desired future event, you will create the appropriate neural circuits that will enable you to behave in alignment with your intention before it becomes a reality in your life. Through your own repeated mental rehearsal of a better way to think, act, or be, you will “install” the neural hardware needed to physiologically prepare you for the new event. In fact, you’ll do more than that. The brain’s hardware, as I use the analogy in this book, refers to its physical structures, its anatomy, right down to its neurons. If you keep installing, reinforcing, and refining your neurological hardware, the end result of that repetition is a neural network — in effect, a new software program. Just like computer software, this program (for example, a behavior, an attitude, or an emotional state) now runs automatically. Now you’ve cultivated the brain to be ready for your new experience, and frankly, you have the mind in place so that you can handle the challenge. When you change your mind, your brain changes; and when you change your brain, your mind changes. So when the time comes to demonstrate a vision contrary to the environmental conditions at hand, it is quite possible for you to be already prepared to think and act, with a conviction that is steadfast and unwavering. In fact, the more you formulate an image of your behavior in a future event, the easier it will be for you to execute a new way of being. So can you believe in a future you cannot yet see or experience with your senses but have thought about enough times in your mind that your brain is actually changed to look like the experience has already happened ahead of the physical event in your external environment? If so, then your brain is no longer a record of the past, but has become a map to the future. Now that you know you can change your brain by thinking differently, is it possible to change your body to “look like” it too has had an experience ahead of the actual intended circumstances? Is your mind that powerful? Stay tuned
