Episode 36: Your Brain Can Build New Roads

Your brain is incredible. It can actually rewire itself to believe new things, form new habits, and create totally new outcomes in your life.  Believing something new can feel like bushwhacking through the jungle at first, but if you stick with it, the new road will get easier and easier to drive on.  Whether you're stuck in self-doubt, trying to parent differently, or just craving change, you already have what it takes to build a new road. Let's talk about how to start paving it.

Schedule a free 1:1 mini session with me and I'll show you how to do this!

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 36. Your brain can build new roads.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

About two years ago, we got our basement finished. Normally, I park my van in the garage, but for this project, we moved everything that was in the basement into the garage, and I parked in the driveway for a couple months. And this was funny, because I've been parking in the garage for years, and so when it was time to go somewhere, I'd grab my keys, go through the laundry room and into the garage, and then realize that the car wasn't there. And then I would remind myself, hey, Emily, we gotta go out the front door.

Your car is parked in the driveway now, remember? And some days I would remember, and go straight out the front door, but I've gone out the laundry room and through the garage thousands of times. So a lot of times, I would just go on autopilot and forget, and end up in the garage, and then realize my car wasn't there, and then I needed to go out the front door. Have you heard of the 21-90 rule? Some experts suggest that it takes around 21 days to form a new habit, and about 90 days to integrate it into a more permanent lifestyle change.

And this was definitely my experience with training my brain that my car was parked in the driveway and not the garage. It took a couple weeks to form the new habit, and then it actually took about three months to really get to the point where I could just do it without thinking, which is hilarious, because about the time I finally made the shift where it became automatic to go out the front door to my car, our basement was done, and it was time to move everything back downstairs and start parking in the garage again. But the cool thing is you can train your brain to think in a new way and to make new habits, and it takes time, but your brain can build new roads.

Changing your thoughts is kind of like forging a path through the jungle in a four-wheeler. The first time you try to drive through, it can be kind of a mess. You might have vines tangled around your tires or branches smacking your windshield, and there's no clear road in sight, and your brain is like, uh, we don't go this way.

But if you keep showing up and keep driving that same route, day after day, choice after choice, the vines start to fall away. The path gets smoother, and eventually it's really easy to drive on this new road you've made. This is what it means to pave new neurological pathways.

You're literally training your brain to believe something new, and just like that jungle trail, it gets easier every time you choose to drive it. The scientific name for this is neuroplasticity. Research has proven this to be the reality for the human brain.

Neuroplasticity is your brain's ability to rewire itself by forming new connections between neurons. Basically, it's how your brain builds new roads when you think new thoughts. Just like driving the same trail through the jungle makes a smoother road over time, consistently practicing a new belief makes it easier and more natural for your brain to go there.

Like when you move to a new city and you wanna drive to the grocery store, you have to really think about it the first few times. But eventually, you can get to the point where all you have to do is tell your brain, hey, it's time to drive to the store, and it will take care of getting you there without much effort on your part, right? The average person thinks 40,000 to 60,000 thoughts in a day, and 90% of those are actually repeat thoughts from yesterday. So if you keep thinking the thoughts that you've always thought, you're gonna keep ending up at the same places that you've always been, and that's fine.

But would you like to go somewhere new? If you do, your brain can build a new road to get you there. Like maybe you've believed since you were a child that you are inferior to other people and that what you have to say isn't valid. You can build a new road anytime you want to and start believing today that all humans are amazing, that no one is actually inferior or superior to another person.

If you started blazing that new trail in your mind, you would be able to go places you have never gone before. Maybe you've told yourself that there are certain things that you can't do in your life or that you just aren't good at. You can keep driving on that road if you want to, but you could choose to build a new road, and you might have to bushwhack through some rocks and trees, and you might feel like at first that it's not gonna work and that you just need to go back to what you've always believed.

But if you keep thinking it and believing it and living out what it creates, eventually your brain will build that new road and you'll be able to accomplish things that you never have before. Here's a new road I've been working on building for seven or eight years now. The old road that I used to drive on was, as a parent, it's my job to make sure my kids make good choices and never make quote-unquote bad choices.

Sounds logical enough, right? And this belief is motivating in certain ways, but it also creates a lot of anxiety and stress. And for me, once I had teenagers, trying to make sure my kids always made good choices and never made quote-unquote bad choices produced a lot of conflict in our home and a lot of me being frustrated with my kids and trying to control them. Coaching helped me to start to observe myself and notice how I feel and what I do when I'm thinking that I need to control other people versus how I feel and what I do when I'm accepting that it's actually a natural and important part of life to make quote-unquote bad decisions, and that's all for our growth and it's actually how we learn.

And God's okay with it. He designed life to be this way. I show up as a completely different person from this belief than when I'm trying to control people.

Over the last several years, the pathway in my brain of trying to control other people and try to prevent anyone from making bad choices is starting to get overgrown with vines and look less and less like a road because I don't drive on it very much anymore. And there's a different path that I did have to totally bushwhack at first. It was challenging and kind of scary.

The pathway that says, actually, the goal of my parenting is to encourage my kids to make tons and tons of choices. And some of them will be great choices and some of them will be not great. And that's actually how it's supposed to be.

This was a significant paradigm shift for me and my husband. But we decided to build this new road and we like driving on it a lot better than the other one. I've been forming new pathways in my brain that say, hey, let's let go of trying to control other people's choices.

And I wanna focus on who I wanna be, which is a safe, calm, compassionate place. I wanna be someone who can help my kids notice how they feel and what they create for themselves with whatever choices they make. And I wanna be someone they feel comfortable exploring options with because I'm not freaking out trying to control their every move.

At first, this new road was more challenging to drive on because it wasn't familiar. But the more I've done it, the smoother it gets. Now it's like a paved road and we've even got some stoplights and street signs on it because we use it so often.

So what is it for you? What new road would you like to build inside your mind? What destination are you tired of getting to? And where would you like to go instead? Your brain can build new roads. Let me just say though, that if you wanna give this a try, keep the 2190 rule in mind. It will probably take you around 21 days of consistently believing something new to really make it a habit.

So if you just think a new thought one time or two times or five times, and then give up when a big old tree hits you in the face, you'll probably go back to your old road, your old way of thinking, because the path is more paved and it will feel easier and more comfortable to you. If you wanna be successful at building a new road inside your mind, plan to be unsuccessful at it at least 100 times. And this might sound crazy, but think about it.

Kids don't learn how to eat or walk or ride a bike by doing it once. They do it again and again and again, but eventually they can not only walk, but they can run and then play soccer and then do flips on the trampoline, right? So it's totally possible for your brain to build new roads. And it's totally worth it to stick with a new belief long enough to flatten out a new pathway.

But just understand that to make it a habit, it will take around 21 days. And to integrate the new belief into a more permanent lifestyle change that comes automatically without you having to remind your brain, that will take more like three months. Like me getting used to my van being parked in the driveway.

So stick with it. Be okay with tripping over some vines and getting some scrapes or bumps as you're bushwhacking the new trail. The price of the new destination is some discomfort, some uncertainty, maybe even some discouragement.

But if you're willing to pay that price, it will be so worth it in the end to have a new road that goes somewhere awesome. If you wanna think new thoughts about yourself and what you're capable of, you can. If you wanna think new thoughts about someone else, a spouse or kids or someone that's hard for you to love, you can.

If you wanna build a new road inside your mind that doesn't lead to self-doubt and insecurity, but instead leads to confidence and a sound mind, you can. And I'd love to help you. Go to emilyrickscoaching.com forward slash mini session to schedule a free mini session with me and I'll show you how to train your brain to build a new road.

I'm not gonna lie, it does take some effort, but it's also really fun and incredibly rewarding. In the words of Dr. Seuss, you have brains in your head, you have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

So be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai, Ali, Van Allen, O'Shea, you're off to great places. Today is your day. Your mountain is waiting.

So get on your way. I want you to know that your brain can build new roads to wherever you wanna go, my friend. Maybe it's time to head somewhere new.

Thanks for joining me today. I'll talk to you next week.