What Does "Rewire Your Brain" Mean?
The phrases “rewire your brain” and “retrain your brain” are popping up everywhere these days. Have you wondered what that means?
To understand this concept, it helps to know a little neuroscience. There are about 100 billion neurons (nerve cells) in our brains, and each neuron has thousands of connections, making our brains “the most complex object in the known universe” (Physicist Michio Kaku).
Our brains are the command center for our body. Every physical and mental process involves the firing of thousands of neurons, in a chain reaction.
Our brains evolved to be efficient. Processes that are repeated frequently are memorized so they don’t require conscious thought. This happened with every physical and mental skill we have, from walking to speaking to reading and writing - literally everything we do involves memorized neural networks
Think about learning how to ride a bicycle, or drive a car. At first there was so much to pay attention to, your full focus was required. With repeated practice driving and bike riding, your brain memorized huge chunks of processes, and put those into background storage for you to draw on whenever you need to do those activities. Now when you ride a bike or drive a car, you don’t have to think about every little process - your brain knows how to do it automatically.
“Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Donald Hebbs, neuropsychologist
This famous phrase means that anything we do repeatedly, including thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, gets “wired” into our brains. These patterns become well-worn paths that are very easy for the brain to travel down, and the more they are repeated, the more hard-wired they become.
This applies to physical skills, such as driving and riding a bicycle, and it also applies to patterns of thoughts and feelings. If we are thinking the same thoughts repeatedly, our brain “wires” those into long term storage, so they are repeated on automatic. Maybe those thoughts are helpful, so it’s great to have them on a continuous unconscious loop, but often a lot of our thoughts are not helpful.
If we realize certain thought patterns aren’t serving us, and we want to change them, we can “rewire,” or “retrain” our brain to think other thoughts instead.
Our brains are constantly reorganizing and rewiring, based on what we are doing, thinking, and feeling. Most of this rewiring is unconscious, we are just going about our lives and our brains are memorizing and putting into deep storage anything we are thinking, feeling, or doing repeatedly.
If we want to develop new habits of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving, we can consciously rewire our brains.
At first this intentional rewiring might feel strange, like we are trying to change who we are, because our habitual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors have come to feel like us. But our habitual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are not any more us than new thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that we rewire intentionally.
Here’s an example of how you can consciously rewire a habitual thought pattern:
Many people, when they wake up, think first about the difficult and challenging things facing them in the day ahead. This is common, due to the brain’s built-in negativity bias, which helped our ancestors survive, but often is counterproductive in our modern world.
Before I learned to retrain my brain, in the morning when I woke up, my first thoughts would tend to fall into old habitual patterns - often along the lines of something I was worried about, or something happening later in the day I wasn’t looking forward to, or reminding myself about all the things that needed to get done in the day.
This would tend to get my day started on a slightly anxious note. Psychotherapy and mindfulness meditation helped me to become more aware of my habitual thoughts and feelings, but it didn’t help me change them. To change those first-thing-in-the-morning thoughts, I had to consciously practice thinking new thoughts every day, until over time that has become my new habit.
Now when I wake up, I start thinking about things I am grateful for - I am grateful for waking up. I am grateful for another day of life on this beautiful planet earth. I am grateful for my family, my cozy bed, my dog, home, and so forth. Gratitude is great for getting positive neurochemistry flowing, and it feels wonderful.
During this waking up time, If there are challenging things I know I’ll need to give attention to later in the day, my survival brain might try to go to thoughts about those challenges. If that happens, I just bring my focus back to gratitude. I know that starting the day on a positive, grateful, calm note is the best thing I can do for my life, including helping me have the energy and creativity to problem solve any challenges I might be facing.
That is one simple example of brain rewiring/retraining that anyone can do.
Is there a thought pattern you would like to rewire?
Pay attention to your habitual thoughts and feelings. Are they serving you? Are they helping you to live your best life? Are they helping you make the contribution you’d like to make in the world? If not, you can rewire your brain and change those habitual patterns. It isn’t complicated, it just takes effort and repeated practice over time.
Today, write down one habitual thought pattern you’d like to change, such as your thoughts upon waking up in the morning. Decide what you would like to replace the old thought pattern with. Write down the new thought pattern, and when and how you are going to practice it. Then just start. One minute a day is a great way to start with a new habit. If you repeat the new mental pattern every day, soon it will be a habit - you will have changed those wires in your brain!
I’d love to hear what you come up with as a pattern you’d like to change, and your strategy for doing so. If you’d like to share, just send a quick email and let me know.
I’d love to hear from you! Please send your comments, questions, and suggestions to liz@happybrainlife.com.
Have a wonderful day!
Liz
