What is Neuroplasticity and why is it important?

Your brain has the ability to adapt and change through your experiences. This is called Neuroplasticity. This term is an overall term that means your brain can adapt, change, reorganize, or grow new neural networks. This includes functional changes due to brain damage or structural changes due to learning. Your brain is composed of approximately 100 billion neurons. Your brain's neuroplasticity allows it to reorganize many pathways, create new connections, and, in some cases, even create new neurons.

Types of neuroplasticity

There are two main types of neuroplasticity, these are functional plasticity which is your brain's ability to move functions from a damaged area of the brain to other undamaged areas. The other is structural plasticity which is your brain's ability to actually change its physical structure as a result of learning.

How Neuroplasticity Works

When you are born and in the first few years of your life your brain is rapidly growing. At birth, every neuron in the cerebral cortex has an estimated 2,500 synapses, or small gaps between neurons where nerve impulses are relayed. By the time you are three, this number has grown to 15,000 synapses per neuron.

However, as an adult your brain only has about half that number of synapses. This is because as you gain new experiences, some connections are strengthened and others are eliminated. This process is called synaptic pruning. By developing these new connections and removing the weaker ones, your brain can adapt to your changing environment.

What does neuroplasticity do for your brain?

There are many things neuroplasticity does for your brain. It allows your brain to adapt to changes and this change helps promote improvements that can boost brain fitness, give you the ability to learn new things, to enhance existing cognitive capabilities and help with the recovery from strokes and traumatic brain injuries. It also strengthens areas where function is lost or has declined.

Characteristics of Neuroplasticity

Your age and environment play an important role in what the neuroplasticity looks like. While plasticity happens throughout your lifetime, there are certain types of changes that are more predominant at specific ages. Your brain changes a lot during your early years. It grows, matures and organises itself during these years. Your young brain would be more sensitive and responsive to experiences than your much older brain. However, adult brains are still capable of adaptation. Your genetics can influence neuroplasticity as well, as the interaction between the environment and your genetics plays a role in shaping your brain's plasticity.

Limitations of Neuroplasticity

You should be aware that the brain is not infinitely changeable. There are certain areas of your brain that are largely responsible for certain actions. These are areas that control movement, language, speech, and cognition. If you damage any of these areas it can result in deficits in those areas. Some recovery may be possible but other areas of the brain simply cannot fully take over these functions when they are affected by the damage.

What to do to improve your brain and life

It is very handy to know that your brain can change, learn and grow into new ways of doing things. This means you are in control of your learnt behaviours to some degree and can be very empowering. This is why it is important to feed your brain lots of positive information. Right now, you and the world have been through a hard time recovering from much misinformation and major historic events that threw us into a spin. Don’t buy into the negativity around you as it will lead to you being miserable and hibernate. Let’s stay positive and get our lives back on track to ‘normal’. This is important not only for yourself but for your family, career and peace of mind. Don’t fill your mind with negative garbage, endless webinars on doom and gloom for people and the planet. Be informed by all means but don’t dwell on it as it will lead you down a path of depression and anxiety. Read positive self-improvement books, meditate, socialise, eat good food, go on holiday and spend time with people you love. This is the best food for not only your brain but for your mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing also. 

Healthy habits that make you successful

Successful people make success a part of their lifestyle so to become successful we need to copy some of the things they do. This involves looking at future goals in order to make working towards these part of your daily habits. We need to first take care of ourselves with a healthy diet, some physical activity and good sleeping patterns so that we are healthy enough to work towards what we desire in our lives. There is no such thing as a quick fix and it’s important to start thinking long term about what you want your life to be. Setting small goals to achieve this will help keep you motivated to work towards that long-term goal.

It’s very easy to make excuses for not doing something and then beat up on yourself for not being successful. Excuses are a way of deflecting responsibility of weaknesses and past failures. In order to become successful it’s important to take responsibility for our own mistakes and learn from them. Excuses will just stop you from reaching your full potential. Once you put the source of the problem inside yourself you become empowered to do something about it. It is difficult to find perfection in an imperfect world but if you give of yourself 100% every time to reach your goals the very motivation and momentum will keep you going. This will make you the best you can possibly be. Sometimes we get stuck in the moment thinking that we cannot do something because our intelligence or talents are predetermined and that we can’t change this. If we change our way of thinking and remember that we can learn new skills then begin to work at it then it is possible to achieve anything.

Achieving our goals needs constant relentless attention. Find your dream and break it down easily into goals that are achievable. Put a time limit on each goal and work towards each one, one at a time. Be focused and do not diverse your attention. It is incorrect to split your energy and believe you will succeed. Multi-tasking is not a time saver because you are wasting time swapping from task to task and not giving each task your full concentration hindering the outcome. So stay focused and work your way towards success. Have faith and simply follow the path without needing to have vice grip control of everything. Some things need to gain their own momentum. Over control of situations leads to a lot of unnecessary stress over what we cannot control however it is important to remember that we can control the way we react to things. Change our reactions and immediately everything around them will change also.

To be successful you need to work smart, stay focused on your path, learn to discern what is not included in your path and say no to it, don’t let others distract you and don’t get side-tracked wasting time on other things.

Mental fortitude builds focus and success

Mental veracity is an important quality for us to develop. Life has its ups and downs related to many different issues such as relationship problems, work, family issues or any other challenges that may arise. An important key to overcome these challenges is enough strength of mind to not give up until you win the fight. Often people give up on something when they are close to succeeding and they don’t even realise it.

People who succeed all seem to have certain character traits that they have developed over the years. The first of these is simply not giving up just because things are getting hard. It’s important to keep believing in yourself and use the head talk that ‘I can do it’ to keep you going. If you focus on the goal then the journey becomes easier. If at first you don’t succeed remember that you are one step closer to knowing how not to do that again. Many famous people have failed time and time again at their goals and still kept going…to succeed in the end.

So what if you are not in your comfort zone? Push yourself past it towards what you want to achieve. It might be hard and you might need to change some things in your life but it is in your power to do so. Why not try something new and to feel the discomfort that comes when you have stepped out of that comfort zone?

Being out of your comfort zone may mean you need to look at where and with whom you spend your time. Are they positive, strong people or do they wallow in self-pity and gossip which will also bring you down? Successful people surround themselves with positive people. Also watch your own negative emotions such as jealousy, fear, and envy. Do you live in the past and hold grudges? That’s a behaviour you need to perhaps give up as the negativity of it will make you more negative. Learn to let go and forgive as that will benefit you even more than the other person. It will allow you to move forward.

Another way to increase your tenacity is to keep an open mind and put in the effort to succeed. Success will not drop in your lap if you don’t implement the right strategies and do the work to attract it. You need to have solid goals in line with the dreams that you believe will bring you happiness. Remember that you are the one that sets the limiting beliefs on your life. If you allow people or situations to limit you they will. If you allow them to chain you into situations they will. If you cower down instead of stepping up to your goals and dreams you will find you feel cheated as your life goes by. So it is important to stand up for what you want and develop the mental strength to fight for it. Start out small and one step at a time and you will find after a while you will have achieved far more than you ever planned to do.