When I have the opportunity to talk with people, either as a speaker or a psychologist, one thing that always seems to make a huge impact on them is information on how our brain influences so much of our lives, and how we can become more influential in this process. Therefore, I thought I would use this week’s quote, comment, and video to speak in more detail about how to make this happen.

As the quote suggests, it all starts with a willingness to change our minds. This means we will want to discover what sort of “mindset” we have about specific situations and types of people, and determine whether this state of mind or perspective is indeed serving us. For example, if we see traffic as annoying, or difficult people as aggravating, or certain situations as stressful or frustrating, then this mindset will determine how we experience these situations in the future.

If stressed, frustrated, annoyed, or aggravated isn’t how we want to experience life, we must either ensure we never deal with these types of people and situations ever again, or change our mind about whether we really want to give them the power to make us feel this way.

Obviously, I’m a fan of the latter. However, this change of mind is easier said than done. That’s because we have been thinking this way for quite some time, and these thoughts have shaped the physiological make-up of our brain. You see, whenever we think, feel, or do anything, we create and/or reinforce what is known as a neural pathway in our brain. These pathways are like a path through a field of grain. Go down it once, and it may be hard to find again. However, if we go down this pathway again and again, it becomes wide, well worn, easy to find, and easy to go down. That’s why it’s so easy to become stressed, anxious, and frustrated by certain situations and certain types of people.

Most of the pathways that lead to stress, worry, frustration, annoyance, etc., go from our limbic system, or the middle brain just behind the eyes, to the brainstem, or the lower brain called the brainstem. What we want to do is create new neural pathways that go from our limbic system up to the upper 80% of our brain, the neocortex.

In other words, if we want to change our experience of life around traffic, difficult people, difficult situations, etc., we must first change our mind about them, because it is this old mindset that has created and reinforced our old “limbic system to brainstem” neural pathways.

We must first recognize that we will indeed find ourselves dealing with these situations in the future and then determine how we want to think, feel, and act when this happens. This is an important shift from the mindset of worrying about the problem to first imagining and then creating a solution… in a way that doesn’t require the outside world to change.

This means we will want to create a list of mindsets, or states of mind (confident, flexible, patient, wise, compassionate, etc.) that we want to engage, and what it would look like if we were using the future “difficult” situations to bring these new mindsets to life. In other words, what would it look like if we were being patient and flexible in traffic… or confident and curious, when dealing with difficult people, etc.?

The good news is that just imagining ourselves being different in the future creates a new neural pathway from our limbic system up to the neocortex, and if we are willing to use those old “trigger” situations to practice this new mindset, first in our imagination and then in real life, these new neural pathways will soon become habits. The bad news is that until this new habitual way of thinking is in place, we will probably find ourselves going down those old neural pathways and feeling stressed and or frustrated from time to time.

However, we can even change our mindset about this! In other words, if we can see even our negative reactions as good information about what part of the brain we are in, we can then immediately shift to a new part of the brain and a new way of thinking. In this way, we use our negative thoughts and emotions as a signal that something needs to change, and then use our powerful, creative mind to make the change.

If the idea of creating more purposeful neural pathways that allow you to access your clarity, confidence, and creativity appeals to you, I suggest you begin the process of changing your mind and changing your brain. In doing so, you will be creating more purposeful ways of thinking, feeling, and being that will soon become your experience of life.

~ All the best, Dr. Bill

In addition to being named Speaker of the Year for organizations in both the United States and Canada, Dr. Bill Crawford holds a masters degree and PhD in psychology from the University of Houston. He is also a licensed psychologist, author of eight books, and organizational consultant. Over the last 40 + years, he has created more than 4,500 presentations for such organizations as T-Mobile, Shell, The American Medical Association, PBS and many other organizations and professional associations, both nationally and internationally. In addition, his two PBS specials on stress and communication have been seen by more than 15 million people, and he has been quoted as an expert in such diverse publications as The New York Times, Entrepreneur, The Chicago Tribune, Investor’s Business Daily, and Working Mother, just to name a few.