Buildings Highways in your Brain

Your brain have the wonderful property of being able to adapt, to create new couplings. This is the way we learn new things. We can practice them and make them permanent by repetition. Movements, languages and all other types on knowledge can be made permanent in such a way that you do not even have to think to perform the task associated with the knowledge; to speak the language or perform an acrobatic maneuver. In certain cases it is even necessary for the task to be fully automatic for it to be at all successful.

This can be visualized as a road in your brain. Creating it usually takes a lot of practice and a lot of repetitions. And even when the road is build it has a lot of built-in crossroads. These are places where your thoughts can drift away from the destination they were intended to go. If you, for example, try to perform a difficult movement and come to think about something else in the middle of the execution you do not succeed very well in completing it. This is equally true for all knowledge, not just movements. Studies of any kind are another excellent example.

You need to be focused to stay on the road you intend to follow. Most people fail to understand the importance of developing your ability to stay on the road. They keep buildings new roads, learning more and more things. But the can never be really effective because they keep drifting away in different directions and have to get back on track again. An average person can keep his/her focus for about 10 seconds. When the focus is lost it has to be regained. This happens very fast but it dramatically reduces the average speed toward the destination you are heading for.

A good way of training your focus is to try to think about one thing only, do it for at least 10 minutes and repeat that exercise. You can for example focus on a candle flame for 10 minutes every day. As any learning process it takes time to recouple/uncouple your nerve cells. But if you train you will become better in staying on track, keeping your focus for prolonged times. In time the roads in your brain will become like fast flowing Highways that takes you where you want, without any detours on the way.

Coming back... to a Challenge

I came back to where I grew up, just for the summer. In terms of Self Development there was a positive and a negative side of coming back here.

When you come back to a familiar environment after being away for a longer time you more easily notice the changes in yourself. Much like you more easily notice changes in other people if you do not meet them regularly. And the changes becomes very clear if you have not seen a person for, let us say 2-3 years. I experienced something like that when I came back to my old neighborhood. I noticed that I now saw things in a more healthy and objective way.

The negative side was that I found it harder to act accordingly here. I saw myself acting like the old me, but it was very hard to do something about it. Too much memories from places and persons. And because everyone around me viewed me as I were one year ago, it was very hard to act different from what they expected.

I think it will be a very good exercise for me to try to brake away from the social prejudices the people have about me. Prejudices created by myself during my time here. I want to show people around me that I have changed, for the better. And in a place like this, where everyone think they know everyone, it will be a tough challenge indeed.