When practising Early Childhood, we spend a lot of time understanding and figuring out which conditional theories work well with our personal philosophies. I constantly went back to this when I first learned about neuroplasticity. I’ll explain why in just a bit. For now, let’s understand neuroplasticity. 

WHAT IT IS: Neuroplasticity describes our brain’s ability to change and adapt due to experience. This mouthful term is a powerful, science-based method to break undesirable habits and create new, healthy ones. 

HOW CAN I DO IT: Active reflection. You do what it takes (leave reminders, change your environment, use a journal, etc) to reflect and remind yourself to break your undesirable habits.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DO IT: You intentionally rewire your brain to create positive habits. Eventually (with consistency), your brain reaches for your healthier thoughts/habits naturally.  

Cool, right? It’s wildly popular among productivity and habit-building solutions. Many products and ideas have been built upon neuroplasticity simply because it works.

While writing about it soothed me, and helped me process
and come to terms with it all – it didn’t remove the pain.

Remember my avalanche of suppressed memories? While writing about it soothed me, and helped me process and come to terms with it all – it didn’t remove the pain. While brainstorming on how I could remove the pain, I considered the conditional theories I had learned in Early Childhood. Except, I wasn’t a child. I needed something similar, but different. And so I turned to the popular habit-building/breaking technique: Neuroplasticity. 

This is what I did. Every time the avalanche came, I:

1. Calmed me down by visualising the writing therapy journal entries I had made while processing it.
2. I used meditation to remind me that these feelings don’t define my entire being. That they are passing emotions, I acknowledge them and release them.
3. Picked one positive outcome, and/or memory to reframe my thoughts and shift my focus (neuroplasticity) during these episodes. 

By choosing to focus on something good in the third stage of this process, I was able to quickly calm myself down and move on with my day – without disregarding or disrespecting the negative incidents related to them. 

Gratitude + Neuroplasticity + Meditation + Writing therapy

And so began my second brush (here’s a post on my first brush) with gratitude. The intentional effort made in the initial stages of my journey towards a life well-lived. Little did I know what significant changes gratitude would bring into my life.