Hey Friend
This was an excellent week. I was back in NYC which is one of my favorite places to spend time. The lights, the people, the sounds, the congestion, the subways, the trains, the smell, the characters, the vibe – all make me smile constantly. It’s an overload of the senses that gel with my own sense of aliveness. It’s a lot. I can relate.
After doing a day of work with my client, I headed back in to the city that night to see David Byrne’s American Utopia. Sure enough, as I mentioned last week, they utilized the back stage effectively. Interestingly, he starts the show out sitting at a table, holding a brain and talking about how all of us are connected. It’s the second time this month, I’ve been in an environment talking about the brain. I also got my second brain t-shirt of the month.
You know that sensation when you buy a car, or are looking at a specific one, and you start to see them everywhere? That’s sorta how this brain thing feels to me, except preemptively. It’s like seeing road signs that show curves are up ahead. Maybe I want to see it too. I love neuroscience findings (not actually doing research, hello) and the meaning that can be extracted from the information.
It fascinates me that this physical gelatin mass is constantly firing electricity that generates and hosts “thoughts” which seem entirely intangible, but spring from micro-neural activity which is tangible! If that’s not curious enough, then those thoughts translate into reality. Like real, reality. Like our reality.
Our Mind IS Our Life
That’s kind of a bold statement, but also kind of obvious. Granted, we have a spiritual life. We have relationships that define us. We have skills, abilities, motives, strengths and weaknesses that shape us. But EVERYTHING is filtered through our brain.
Take spirituality. People can read the exact same Biblical passage and extract entirely different meanings from it, formulating a belief system that dictates their actions… all from the same words that are meant to be foundational Truth.
Take people. The same person can be admired and hated for the same action. Their personality can be appealing or off-putting.
It’s all processed and translated through our mind. Which of course is shaped from our upbringing, education, exposure and those closest to us. And yet as hard-wired as it seems, it all can be rewired. That’s shocking. The way we see and interpret the world seems right to us. It also seems permanent. But it’s not. At all.
Mind = intangible
Brain = tangible
When we want to renew our mind, create new habits, see in new ways, grow in understanding we tend to try to work on the intangible.
This snippet from Rehab Info Portal offers an insightful revelation
The white matter makes up more than the gray matter! The white matter are the ROADS our thoughts literally travel on. Habits, addictions, routines, thought processes and patterns, are deeply grooved roads. To break them we must simultaneously cut a new path and holistically avoid using the current ones. Which, as we both know, is extremely difficult to accomplish. Also, once a road exists, it never fully gets eliminated. That’s how we fall back into things we thought we were done with weeks, months and years ago.
One of my take-aways from this months conversations about the brain is that it doesn’t want to work hard. It isn’t trying to help us make new roads. You and I spend most of our day in our mind. When we dwell on certain subjects, people, situations we layer deeply that pathway and our brain is good with that, because it exerts less energy.
The brain has a mind of its own – a lazy one!
Our life will be shaped entirely by the white-matter-roadwork we are willing to do.
Environment – What we see, hear, experience and feel daily impacts hugely. Shape environments to stimulate road work.
Education – Digesting new ideas gives us tools and resources to dig new roads and fill in old ones. Keep learning!
Exposure – Purposely experiencing NEW. Also creating repetitive encounters with what we want. Explore diligently.
Relationships – Individually and community. Who challenges us to build new roads?
If you’ll re-read that snippet above, the last sentence is particularly telling: 76% of our brain is language-oriented. WORDS are the Primary Tools for building new roads – Those you say to yourself and those others say that you grab hold of. Spoken and written both have the capability to form new highways in your brain that take you to whole new thoughts.
What if this week you…
1. Named a roadway in your brain you wanted to shut down?
2. Redecorated an area you dwell frequently to see if it generates a different mental vibe?
3. Journaled your thoughts for a day?
4. Take one idea you want to see realized and read it, say it, meditate on it, write it and watch what reinforcements appear.
5. Ask someone you admire, how they think?
What’s fun is that my promptings in this area have come from a neuroscience PhD and a lifelong creative artist. Opposite extremes, yet both resonate similarly.
Whose thinking do you like? How does someone close to you see differently in a way that challenges you? Are you aware of how much time you spend in your mind? Do you designate weekly road work time? Are you mindful about words? Feel free to say the word Hello.