positive thinking
Paul Watson is the Huddersfield Giants Head of Strength and Conditioning. There is no “can’t” in his vocabulary!
The prevailing dogma is: we are who we are, and we can’t change. There is that word that I hate, the “C” word – “Can’t”.
When you tell yourself “Can’t” it instantly negates yourself of changing entities. It stops our growth and limits our actions. I always say it puts a full stop on our possibilities! Anyone saying it around me generally ends up doing 20 push-ups and has to come back with a more positive statement.
For decades neuroscientists have led us to believe that our brains are hardwired fixed and immutable much like we are when we tell ourselves we can’t do something!
I have always believed that we can change, and each day if we choose to, we can set out to improve ourselves. Recently Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone from Harvard Medical School returned some amazing results from a series of experiments. Volunteers had to learn and practice a five-finger piano exercise, playing fluidly, everyday for five days. They were then tested each day using transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS), which maps how much of the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What they amazingly found was that the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over the surrounding areas “like dandelions on a suburban lawn” (Time Magazine, Jan 2007).
“Like dandelions on a suburban lawn” not only is this one of the best analogies I have ever heard but what a great picture it conjures up. Picture our brains actually changing and the changes spreading out through our neural cortex like dandelions popping up. But Pascual-Leone did not stop there: he repeated the experiment, by having another group just visualize, practicing the exercises. Guess what, the dandelions spread again. Mere thought altered the physical structure and function of our brains.
So what we do, what we think both equally change the physical structure of our brains!! “Like sand on the beach, the brain bears the footprints of the decisions we have made, the skills we have learned, the actions we have taken” (Time Magazine, Jan 2007).
- Rob Gilbert
But wait there, wait there, there’s more! Richard Davidson from the University of Wisconsin used Buddhist Monks who are regarded as the Olympic (Elite) athletes of mental training, to measure their ‘happiness set point’. Our happiness set point is where we return to whether we have won the lottery or lost our spouse. It’s our base point of how content and how much enduring happiness we have in our lives. The Monks showed higher levels of set happiness points, with the more years of meditation practiced, and showed the brain had forged more robust connections between thinking and feeling. So after comparing these Monks with novices it was shown that a positive state is a skill that can be trained.
By acting positively, thinking positively and talking positively we are changing the structure of our brains, raising our happiness set point and increasing the occurrence of our positive states. So get rid of the “C” word, do some push-ups and start looking after your lawn. Now I want some of those dandelions!
man in the media
Scouring the articles and blogs of the past month to give you a bite size look at the rugby league media.
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