I was first introduced to the idea of neuroplasticity about two years ago, in the midst of an intensely creative and productive period of my life.
The brain, I was told, was able to alter itself in certain states. I could choose to prune decades-old thoughts and beliefs, buried deep within my subconscious, in the matter of minutes. These beliefs were replaceable by thoughts and beliefs that supported my conscious mind in its endeavours.
I still remember the sheer joy and awe I felt at this newfound knowledge. I would never have to experience mental anguish at a thought of my own fabrication again. I could, instead, instill any belief I wanted in my mind. I saw the walls of my skull-sized prison crumble. I saw expanses to be explored beyond them.
It's been two years since. What I've learned is that intellectual knowledge is not substitutable for actual practice. I've had some degree of success with a limited number of synaptic pruning techniques, but hardly enough to entirely purge the destructive patterns in my mind.
Tonight, unexpectedly, in my post-cardio revelry, I felt a feeling stir within me: that same awe and joy at the knowledge that our brains were moldable. With it came optimism and excitement, but also a deeper level of understanding.
You see, two years ago, I'd believed that the point was to prune our minds of destructive beliefs and to never experience them again. It was a goal-oriented approach, not a process-oriented one. But that wasn't the point at all.
In Tim Ferriss's recent podcast with venture capitalist-turned-executive coach Jerry Colonna, one of my favourite takeaways was:
[T]he first thing to do is to remember that the thing about the word “practice” is that we actually never achieve, right? We’re always moving towards. We’re always going there. But oftentimes, achieving it permanently, sustained, persistently, that’s a tough one.
The point of neurological pruning, and of self-improvement at large, isn't to check off the boxes and to become superhuman. It's to keep moving towards the unattainable ideal of achievement and betterment. The forward motion is the target, not the steady state.
It reminded me of a conversation I had recently with someone who had experienced something close to self actualization on an unnamed hallucinogenic drug.
I'd asked him: had he become disillusioned with sober life after experiencing this while high?
He'd responded: not at all. Because the drug had shown him that his mind was capable of experiencing this beautiful, ineffable emotion, at least for some period of time. And that increased his understanding of what was possible within the confines of his mind.
In other words, his boundaries of possibility had been expanded through this sliver of experience, aided by a synthetic compound.
There are, I believe, many tools I could use to expand the boundaries of what I believe to be possible in terms of thoughts and beliefs.
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