Neuroplasticity is kind of a difficult word to write. It’s also kind of difficult to actually speak it out loud. But it’s one of my favorite words in the last few years. And that because it confirms one of the most important things about a human being: the fact that your brain can actually be modified by your consciousness. Your biological tissues will follow your immaterial thoughts and desires. If you think bad, you will develop and grow bad connections in your brain, in your cells, to be more precise, and you will also obfuscate the growth of other zones or tissues that could help you overcome the difficulties.

I knew about that for some time, as a personal assumption, and, one or two years ago, I had – let’s call it like this – a confirmation, after watching a Discovery documentary. It was about the taxi drivers in London, and what they have to do in order to receive their license. London is one of the most difficult cities for a taxi driver, because their street numbering and naming is quite insane. They even have a street that is called one name on one sidewalk, and another name on the other sidewalk? And, of course, with all that confusion and constant modifications of the street names (GPS doesn’t really help here) getting a taxi license is extremely difficult.

The documentary, besides the normal spectacular part, when the apprentices were awaken in the middle of the night, and imposed quizzes about some strange street names and addresses, was focused on a collateral experiment too: at the beginning of the observation of the first group of apprentices, they measured, using ultrasounds, their memory center, in the brain: dimension and weight. After two years – yes, it takes that long to get a taxi license in London – after an intense training and exercises sessions, they did the measurement again. Surprise! The center was completely modified: increased in size, and also weight. It’s like taking your brain to the gym. You exercise your brains muscles and grow them.

Last week I read a very interesting article on Time. It basically stated the same, but in a more formalized and verified form. I encourage you the read the article, won’t take you more than 5-7 minutes, and it will give you a very interesting, if not revolutionary, perspective on your own capabilities.

If we can actually rewire our brain, the NLP methodology could be actually working. A whole lot of other disciplines that were at the borders of the “academic science”, like meditation, positive thinking techniques, motivational literature, alternative therapies or hypnosis, would actually break in and become officially adopted. The result, as subtle as it can be, can also have a huge and deep impact.

Basically, we will all practice our daily “good thoughts session” as we do our daily gym exercises. We will have 15 minutes a day for visualizing our goals, and that will actually bring them closer to the reality. We will constantly think, before we go to sleep, that we have a wonderful life, and the mechanisms, not only for sensing that wonderful life, but to actually make it happen, by triggering the right actions and responses in our brain, will gradually start to function.

And we also start to learn how to avoid unnecessary thoughts – our mental trolls – and, by ignoring them, will finally eliminate all the obstacles, real or just invented by ourselves, that we have in our day to day activity. Will start to have regular “empty mind” sessions of just feeling life, and not loosing it by thinking at it, which is what almost everybody does.

One of the key information in that article is that the old perception of having a limited number of neurons and synapses, is quickly becoming obsolete. We have, in fact, much more than we need, and, most important, we can actually recreate it, if there’s a shortage somewhere. We usually think that we have a “flesh”, or organic, layer, and a “thoughts”, or immaterial, layer. And that the immaterial is conditioned and influenced by the first. Which, to be honest, is true.

But the good news is that the opposite is true either. Your thinking layer could heavily modify your flesh layer. It can actually rebuild or repair parts of your brain, and enhance their functionality to an unprecedented degree.

Is as simple as thinking at it. And you are the only one to decide that.

You really are what you think.