What you focus on is what becomes. The message is real and comes fortified with some serious science. It’s called experience-dependent neuroplasticity. The research around it has caught fire and the findings are powerful. The implications for all of us are profound. Each of us has a brain that is designed to be malleable and plastic and open to our influence. It is constantly shaping itself to be the best one it can be for us. Our experiences are the fuel for this shaping and everything we see, feel, experience, sense – sending gentle instruction on how they can build to best support us.
Between the walls of our skulls, billions of neurons (brain cells) work together to shape us into the humans we are. Different neurons are responsible for different parts of our experience, whether it’s eating, feeling, sleeping, sensing threat, firing up, falling in love, spelling, laughing, remembering, learning or nurturing. Every time you have an experience, the relevant neurons switch on and start firing. Even as you read this, sparks are flying in your head.
Everything you experience will alter the physical structure of your brain in some way. The things you do, the people you spend time with, every feeling, thought, and automatic experience will influence the wiring of your brain to make you who you are and to influence who you can become. Experiences matter. They matter in the moment and in the way they can change the brain beyond the immediate moment.
If you aren’t deliberate and conscious in shaping your brain, other people and experiences will do this for you. Experiences, situations and people – positive or negative – will leave lasting traces on your brain. What you focus on will determine the parts of your brain that fire, wire and strengthen. If you let your mind settle on self-criticism, self-loathing, pain, distress, stress, worry, fear, regret, guilt, these feelings and thoughts will shape your brain. You will be more vulnerable to worry, depression, anxiety, and be more likely to notice the negatives of a situation, frame things in a negative way.
On the other hand, if you focus on positive feelings and frame situations with a tilt towards the positive, eventually your brain will take on a shape that reflects this, hardwiring and strengthening connections around resilience, optimism, gratitude, positive emotion and self-esteem.
We have to switch on to the good and be deliberate in noticing positive experiences. This might be more difficult than it sounds, particularly if you have a brain that is well-trained in noticing the bad. Try calling on a memory, listening to a song, making a phone call, organising a catch-up, playing or doing something that makes you feel nurtured. When you do so, make the feeling stay.
Like any habit, noticing the good takes time to become automatic. Notice how quickly you notice the bad and let go of the good. Be deliberate in balancing things up and gradually, this in itself will also change your brain.
When someone magnifies a situation, they evaluate it in a way that makes the situation a much bigger deal than it is, which causes them to react to that situation or the people involved in ways that cause further problems. Imagine looking at something with a pair of binoculars, or zooming into a photo so that you can only see one small portion of it up close. When you do this, all the imperfections show even more, and the picture might even begin to blur. You can no longer see everything around the image, which could be important to understand the whole picture. Magnifying affects the context in which you view the situation. When you magnify, you focus on one part of a situation (usually a problematic one), and all of the possible effects take control in your mind.
It’s okay to have negative thoughts. However, you can re-train your brain to not let these thoughts take over and to focus on the positive instead. Use a gratitude journal to write down at least three good things a day. When our brain focuses on the negative, it will seek out the negative. When it focuses on the positive—on blessings, joys, affirmations, and good feelings—it will learn to look for these things and desire the good effects that come from them.
By directing your focus and staying with your experience, you can change your brain and shape it towards a more positive, compassionate, resilient, kinder, happier, more empowered and contented way of being. What you focus on is powerful. The brain will build around what it rests upon. Whether we view the world through a lens that is sad or happy, optimistic or hopeless, is all directed by our brain. What you pay attention to will shape your brain, which in turn will shape your experiences, your relationships, your life. The choice is ours. “Happiness is about looking beyond imperfections, not having a perfect life!”
Focus on the solution, not on the Problem
