Your Brain on Art- Day 16

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Annie Dillard

According to Your Brain on Art, neuroplasticity can work for you in helping create new neural pathways, but it can also be what keeps you stuck in a rut. 

I like to think about the paths the cows have made in our pasture. They seem to prefer traveling the same familiar way. How often have we been guilty of doing the same? 

Our day-to-day routines form neural pathways. These are the habits we develop, regardless of how good or bad they are for us. 

As we continue thinking about flourishing, we have to be open to the idea of creating new pathways. If we keep doing the same thing over and over in the same way we really can’t expect anything to improve. 

It wasn’t until I gave up eating sugar daily that my weight began to drop almost effortlessly. I no longer craved sugar and found that fresh peaches or a mandarin orange fit the bill.  I needed to reset my body's ability to naturally regulate my weight. Giving up the sugar made a big difference. 

Magsamen and Ross tell us that, “Practice and repetition rewire the brain. Our repeated patterns can help our brains to be agile, to conserve energy, and to flourish, or they can keep us stuck.”

Give some thought to your habits. Are they helping or hurting you accomplish your goals? There is a lot of research that supports the idea of starting small. I like to remember the adage, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. 

Our amazing brain is designed to rewire and adapt to new habits. It is through repetition that new neural pathways are developed. You can purposefully do this by replacing old routines with new more positive ones.