Let's Rewire Your Brain

What if there was a way to hack your brain that could make you feel more confident and positive in all aspects of your life?

Since it was the first week back to school in a new year, I decided I wanted to rewire my students' brains. Well, at least help them rewire their brains. January 1st is the most popular time that people make a goal for the year, and it is also the worst time to make a goal for the year. Only 9% of people who make a goal at the beginning of the year actually achieve it. That means the remaining 91% don't succeed. 43% of people quit by February. What the heck?? Why aren't people completing their goals? I posed this question to my social communication class, and there were some good responses: "they felt overwhelmed by other things that they couldn't focus on their goal," "it was too daunting of a goal," and the classic, "they're just lazy". All of those can be true. Life gets in the way, we set unrealistic expectations of ourselves, and some days we just want to eat half a family-sized bag of Cape Cod chips. More often than not, our New Year's resolutions are to replace a 'bad' habit with a 'good' habit with an all-or-nothing mentality. For example, a goal might be to 'be healthier'. What's wrong with this goal? The concept is good, but it's vague and immeasurable. It also requires you to change multiple habits at once in order to consider yourself successful. And let me tell you, habits are hard to form, but they are even harder to break.

Habits are formed over time through practice and repetition. Think about a hiking trail. How do you know you are on a path? It's easily identified by the lack of brush and grass since so many people have walked on it. It is the path that most people take to get to the final destination. It's a good route because it's easy and there are fewer surprises since it's so frequently traveled. This is the same thing our brain does with habits. Our brain takes the path of least resistance because it's familiar and easy. Usually, when hiking, you can identify a path that some people have ventured on but not many. It has some roots sticking up, some brush to navigate around, and it's steeper. It's definitely doable, but you might trip a little on the way and you might be more fatigued by the end. Some people might turn around and others will continue to the final destination. This is similar to forming new habits. Our brain is trying to forge new pathways, and the more times it frequents the new pathways, the easier and more familiar it becomes. As the new neural pathway becomes more used, the old neural pathway becomes weakened. This is when a new habit has successfully formed.

This is easier said than done. Rewiring your brain takes time and conscious effort because you are trying to disrupt the pathways that your brain has worked so hard to forge over years and years. As a graduate clinician, I spent a lot of time working with patients who suffered strokes. Their strokes severed multiple neural pathways, and we worked on rewiring their brains so that they could be successful when they went home. One patient, in particular, had a severe left-sided stroke that left her with right-sided hemiparesis, which is a weakness or inability to move one side of her body. Her language and cognition were so greatly impaired that she was classified as having global aphasia, which affects all language modalities: speaking, understanding, reading, and writing. By the end of the first week, her brain had healed a lot -- she could talk, but she still struggled with language comprehension, reading, and writing.

For 6 weeks, we worked on rewiring her brain and forming new neural connections. She had to learn how to write with her left hand since she could no longer use her right side, which was a big area of frustration for her. She was already re-learning how to read and write but now she also had to learn how to write with her left hand. When we would get set up for our writing task, she would try to grab the pencil with her right hand. It was such a habit to use her right hand that remembering to use her left hand took a conscious effort. She would express her frustration by saying things like, "Ugh. Why can't I remember to use my left hand?" and "I know how to write! Why can't I do this?" As she gained more coordination in her left hand, she saw her potential and started repeating the affirmations I would say to her: "You can do this!", "You got this!", "You can do hard things!". Eventually, she started reaching for the pencil with her left hand on the first try -- she had successfully rewired her brain to rely on her left hand! This habit was slowly developed over many weeks with consistent practice and repetition. Throughout those weeks, she did still try to use her right hand, but she would catch herself, acknowledge her mistake, and correct her behavior to continue forging the new pathway. As her focus became less on using her left hand, she was able to fully focus on re-learning how to write, which also became easier over time. She was one of the most resilient and lovable patients I have ever encountered.

With many of my patients who suffered strokes, I noticed increased performance the more they engaged in self-affirmations. There is a lot of research out there that looks at the benefits of self-affirmations, such as increased confidence and decreased anxiety. So what are self-affirmations? They are positive phrases that you say to yourself about yourself. And, guess what? Positive self-affirmations rewire your brain at the cellular level! This means that saying nice things about yourself doesn't just make you feel good, it actually rewires your neural connections. Your brain is constantly firing neural connections -- approx. 100 billion neurons are firing every second!

Start saying things like, "I can do this," instead of, "I can't do this," and your brain will fire new neural connections, forging new pathways. And BOOM -- you have hacked your brain to automatically promote confidence, self-love, and positivity. This is how I plan to help my students rewire their brains. Each week, we will read the self-affirmations below to build a habit of positivity and self-love. The point of self-affirmations is to have a ripple effect in the other areas of your life: professionally, academically, personally, socially, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Small changes can have a big impact, so why not wake up and tell yourself you're amazing every day? Fake it 'til you become it!