#22 - Plastic Brain?!
During this program, we are going to talk a lot about what we can do to care for and improve our physical body but we also want to cover another major part of the body; your brain! Obviously the brain is important and I’m sure you know plenty about it so today I only want to talk about one characteristic of the brain. The brain is considered plastic. What this means is just that it is responsive to the environment and can change over time. Over time, an amputee’s brain retrains the brain parts responsible for the missing limb to some other use. That is why blind people have such outstanding hearing and touch—all the parts that are usually used for sight are retrained to boost the other senses!
That’s interesting stuff, but what does that have to do with my daily life? The reason that I want to make you aware of it is because of its connection to habits. Based on how you use your brain a lot, it will adapt to that use. I was unaware of this phenomenon until I read the book The Shallows which describes the impact of technology on the brain. It said that many young people struggle with reading a book. They find it hard to focus on the pages, read every word, and have the patience to persevere through the entire book. I was shocked because that was exactly something I’ve experienced! It said that the typical teen will read text in an “F” pattern; they read all of the first line, skip/skim down a few lines, read part way across and then continue down. These same teens are able to grasp basic concepts and get general ideas from huge amounts of information better than any previous generation. What caused all of this? Brain plasticity of course. Smartphones, social media, online reading, all encourage reading quickly, getting general ideas, looking for the interesting parts, and skipping a lot. No wonder it’s hard to read a book!
The good news of course, is that the brain is plastic which means you can train it however you want simply by forcing it to. The process is surprisingly fast—it only takes a few days for the brain to start adapting. After hearing about the book above, I decided to try it out; I forced myself to read 100 pages per day for a week. At first it was very difficult to stay on task and 25 pages seemed like an eternity. Within a matter of days though, I started to notice a difference; it was getting easier to read deeply, to fully develop an idea and get all the details.
The goals that you have for this season probably aren’t going to come easy (otherwise they wouldn’t be goals!) and part of that has to do with your brain’s current state. Will “re-training” your brain help you reach your goals? Perhaps you’ve already noticed how much easier something gets after you force yourself to do it consistently. If you’re struggling with following through on a goal or habit, set a goal to force yourself to accomplish it every day for five days in a row. You are retraining your brain; eventually it becomes easier, expected, and a habit.
Sometimes brain training like this can have other benefits too. After I did the reading experiment, I found that focusing was easier in a lot of areas: class, studying, training, and meetings. Who would’ve thought that reading unrelated books would make me a better student and athlete? Is your brain how you’d like it to be? What would make it better? Focus? Creative thinking? Abstract thinking? All of these can be improved by using your brain’s plasticity. Very cool huh? If you have any questions, let me know I’d love to discuss further!