Researchers have discovered that the pathways in the brain that neurons travel down will more easily travel through the worn out path than a untraveled path. This explains why when you have lived a lifetime of thinking that the worst will happen it is so difficult to be optimistic in any situation. The pathways in the brain can become worn down just like a path in a heavily wooded forest. The process behind thinking positively and negatively starts early in your development and is reinforced over your lifetime of results. For example when your a student and you have constant thoughts of failing an exam, and begin repeating in your brain that "I am going to fail, I am going to fail" and then you take the exam and you fail, your brain has been rewarded by failure. Just as true for the student that prepares for the exam and constantly thinks "I am going to pass, I am going to pass" and they pass the opposite occurs and their brain is rewarded by success. A lifetime of these reinforcements create a path in the brain that will be used each time they face a new challenge.
The good news is, these pathways can be reprogrammed in your brain with constant training and rewards. By establishing smaller goals with shorter time horizons you can overtime slowly retrain your brain to become optimistic.
For example if a person wants to lose 50lbs of weight, rather than creating a plan that focuses on the entire 50lbs as a goal, you set smaller goals of 1lb of weight per week so that your brain will receive a reward each time you achieve losing 1lb and not be punished for only losing 1lb out of 50lbs. By setting smaller goals that can be easily achieved you will able to accomplish the task you set out to do, while at the same time retrain your brain to believe that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.
Club Recharge has been exploring the potential of creating a brain lab inside the club and expanding the lab over the next several locations that will focus on therapies that help retrain the brain.