Build skills using repetitive thoughts

The power of repetitive thoughts is greater than we realize. We can build skills by using repetitive thoughts. We tend to underestimate them but studies show that thoughts alone can rewire our brains.

This article is about thoughts and the consequences of repetitive thoughts. How they influence our unconscious mind and by this our automatic behavior. Here I want to share with you, how we can improve ourselves only by supervising our negative thoughts and repetitive thoughts. And by using repetitive thoughts to our advantage.

In our early existence, the brain was considered only a form of "cranial stuffing". In ancient Egypt, in preparation for mummification, the brain was regularly removed. Because it was the heart that was assumed to be the seat of intelligence. It took five thousand years, to have this view reversed. The brain is now known to be the seat of intelligence, although people still use the expression "memorizing something by heart".

The architecture of thoughts

But let's move from memory to thoughts and see how they affect the brain. In 2005, the?National Science Foundation ?published an article presenting the results of research on human thoughts per day. It was found that the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day:

- 80% of those thoughts are negative

- 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.

To have your attention on the importance of the repetitive ones, I will first dismiss the fear related to the negative thoughts. The same study states that:

-firstly 85% of what we worry about never happens and

-secondly, with the 15% of the worries that did happen, 79% of the subjects discovered that they handled the situation better than they expected OR the lesson was worth learning.

The conclusion is that 97% of our worries are the results of?pessimistic perception and the effect of our?amygdala. Amygdala is the part of our brain, situated in the reptilian cortex. Its main responsibility is to protect us and to keep us alive, just like a lifeguard. In order to do that, one of its functions is to identify and process fearful and threatening stimuli. And then activate the appropriate fear-related behaviors in response to those threatening or dangerous stimuli.

The amygdala is a kind of supreme court. When it has identified a threat, the brain weights that threat three times heavier than its positive counterpart. And it issues the automatic fear-related action.

The consequences of repetitive thoughts

Now that you know that 85% of your negative thoughts never happen, let's focus on the repetitive ones because those do happen. Your repetitive thoughts define the "neurological you".?What you mentally rehearse is what you will become.

Human beings absolutely follow through on who they believe they are. If your daily thoughts are negative, like:

"I am not good! Can't learn anything new! My memory is awful! I will never find a good job!"

then you will believe about yourself that you are not good enough, that you can not learn or do find a job. So you will be consistent with your beliefs, and this is how you will behave. At the brain level, those beliefs of yours are seated into some neural networks. The most active neural circuits in your brain trigger a great number of unconscious actions. If your thoughts are predominant negative, those networks will trigger the majority of the unconscious behavior. And this will be accordingly negative.?

In order to understand how neural networks work automatically and unconsciously, I will make use here of associative learning?and make an association with a familiar phenomenon.

Let's imagine that you get lost in the woods and you have no orientation tool or app with you. No big deal, you?automatically?follow the path that looks most used. Many people used it before you, and this should get out of the wood. The same happens with your thoughts: the most activated neural path takes the lead. And you follow automatically the behavior (most human behavior is automatized) that this one triggers.

Repetitive thoughts support skill formation

Learning and practicing a new skill can be also automatized by using the same principle of repetitive thoughts. The brain makes no difference if you practice a skill or you simulate it by?rehearsing it in your mind.

Research was conducted on two groups of individuals practicing piano for five days. The first group was given a specific sequence that they learned and physically practiced every day for two hours during the given period. The second group of individuals never touched the piano. They only observed what the first group was taught until they memorized the sequence. And then they only mentally rehearsed their exercises by imagining the piano and keyboard, for 2 hours a day just like the other group.

At the end of the five-day study, the researchers measured the changes that took place in the brains of the volunteers. And to their surprise, the group that only rehearsed mentally showed?the same expansions and development of neural networks in the specific areas of their brain, as the participants who physically practiced the sequence on the piano.

Exercise / Experiment:

I have prepared an exercise for you, that simulates somehow the piano experiment. Would you like to feel how your repetitive thoughts and mind rehearsing work?

Take the left hand and with the thumb touch the fingers in the following order: index, ring, pinky, middle. This is one complete exercise.

Make 3 such repetitions of the above-explained exercise. In the beginning, you have to focus more on the moves, but it is ok. It is a "new skill" and you need concentration. After 3 rehearsals rest your hands and close your eyes, but only after you read what you have to do next?:) Practice the movements only in your head (without physical movement) and visualize the fingers while doing that. Rehearse 7 times in your brain, just like the second group in the piano experiment.

When you stop the brain rehearsal, open your eyes, and do the exercise again for real.

What do you notice? Do you still have to focus as much as when you practiced the first 3 times?

In most cases, you will be able to make that finger touches much faster and with less concentration.

What happened during the exercise?

When you started to learn this "new skill" you had some difficulties and you needed a lot of concentration. Because there wasn't a neural network in place for supporting the skill. The first 3 repetitions were tedious. Weren't they?

Then you practiced the skill in your mind. The brain didn't notice that you only think about the moves and you don't make the moves. So, he created new connections between the neurons in the area of the brain responsible for performing the skill. The connections were created on-demand by your thoughts.?

Learning means creating new neurons connection and memorizing means activating those new connections through repetition.?This is why learning without repetition doesn't work. In order to learn something new, you have to rehearse it, to activate and reactivate the neural networks associated with it.

With each simulated repetition the brain has activated the same neural network as if the fingers would have done the movement.

This was the learning episode for today. You can find more about learning and the pillars of effective learning in this article .?