Free Your Mind2
Free your mind and the rest will follow. I’ll never forget the experience I had with one of my professors who was teaching a class I was petrified about. Though I loved science, math petrified me. I could sometimes get the answer of things, but not get there using the steps that were outlined. Later anything having to do with numbers petrified me. So, when it came time to take statistics as an undergrad, I was mortified. I had to take it, I had to get through it, and it was very much connected to completing the requirements for my major. Simply mortified. So, we all show up and there before us is a teacher who looks friendly enough. She’s smiling at us, seems kind of warm and interested, still, it was Statistics.
So our teacher starts talking and she tells us a story about herself. She starts out saying she was in a profession (if I remember correctly it may have been in the corporate world) did really, really well, was very successful and went on to accomplish everything she had set out to do, and made a lot of money at it, but there was more she wanted to do. She felt like there was something she had not conquered in her life and that was a fear of math. She stated when she was in school, she didn’t like math, and never really got over that. So, she decided that she would take it up, and if I remember correctly, she took it up as a career, and either was a mathematician or a statistician. She had learned that she could do anything she set her mind to and applied these principles to her new found career. The new goals she had set out for herself were to become a teacher, and teach students in this area because she knew she had something to offer. She told us she understood if there were fears in the room and that she was there to let us know that this was not going to be frightening. That Statistics is all about relationships things have with one another and there are formulas to interpret and make sense of those relationships. That’s all it is.
Well, you can imagine my surprise when I took two more classes. So what happened here? I freed my mind. We had a most incredible teacher who believed in us and gave us a platform to “Free Our Minds” and we did. I should really only speak for myself, though I do recall it was a healthy class, rich and open for learning. I will never forget that experience and have called upon it often, still do.
Liam Bean Brain Plasticity and You
The point is we all have things we could do better, would like to be better at, improve, get beyond, or any other way you want to describe it. It all amounts to the same – adapt for the good. Sometimes though, we psych ourselves out into believing this is our make up or resign ourselves into thinking something we’d like to change is out of our control. It isn’t. More and more information is being released about this.
Brain plasticity or neuroplasticity refers to our brains capacity to adapt. and will be discussed more fully in the “Oriented x’s 10” section. Briefly, in yesteryear, we thought a persons’ brain was fixed and whichever way it developed as a child, minus or plus some things, it was going to stay that way or was fixed. We now know, scientifically this is not the case. That we can change through new learning, new experience, exercise and practice. We can change how our brain functions thus how we function. This is very, good news.
It means what we believe we think we are is exactly what we’re going to be so if there are things we need to change, we can. It’s very freeing. It also means having the capacity to be true to the strength of ourselves despite labels, negative imprints, perceived or real limitations, doubts, resignation and the list can go on.
This has to do with the types of energy we put out in the world (it’s up to us) and learning how powerful brain activity can be. If we can use our brain waves to type on a computer, move a wheelchair or change gears on a bike, we can for sure work on the things we want to change.