I want to talk to you about new neural pathways. Of course, I'm sure you're aware that research
on the brain is taking off in a way that it hasn't ever before, has taken off, and though
our understanding of the way the brain works is new, what we've learned already is extremely
powerful. We're at a primitive stage of what could be known, but we know some things that
make a huge difference. One of the things that we really know is expressed by a kind
of little mantra that's become a clich�, and that is cells that fire together wire
together. That little slogan means that if you connect one neuron with another neuron
in the brain, you've created a little pathway there. But it's not much of a pathway. It's
like it's happened once. If you continue to fire those neurons in the same pattern in
the order, that neural pathway will get to be like a very wide boulevard, if not a superhighway,
and the more neurons that are connected in it, they can link to each other and form resonances
with each other so that one firing of one neuron leads to the firing up another and
another and another, and you can put that to work for you because we talk about habits
often as something we want to get rid of, we want to break, we want to sever that habit,
and we want to not be attached to that habit. It's a negative habit. But habits are one
of the greatest tricks the brain ever learned. Habits are the replacement for the instincts
that we don't largely have. We get choice over our behavior. We get to choose, and if
you begin to think of habits you design, you can create habits that con become extremely
powerful. And if they don't have to immediately go up against existing habits and try to conquer
them, because you take a brand new habit, and it will never win a battle against an
old, existing habit, unless new neurons are being fired. If you just try to not fire a
neuron or a neural sequence, a neural circuit, it's not so easy. There's so many things,
and that's the brilliance of the brains ability to create habits. So many things can wire
together, and then they fire together, it's almost like autopilot, and in a groovy way,
it is autopilot. You can do a lot of things. You can brush your teeth without giving it
a lot of thought, and you'll get the job done. If you put attention on the floss and as you
brush your teeth you pay attention, it's clear you'll do a more thorough and a better job,
and you'll strengthen the habit of doing it really well. I didn't use an electric toothbrush
for a long time because I thought why would I, you know, substitute something electric
from my good hand, but, you know, I had a very attractive dentist who will convince
me that it would be a good thing for me to do, and I did it, and she told me exactly
how to do it to get the maximum benefit and to save my teeth. I began to do it, and I
close my eyes sometimes, and almost meditatively go over each service. And the more attention
I put on it, the more I fire neurons that get stronger and stronger and stronger and
the better the pathway is so that I could do it quite well with no conscious attention
paid. Now, if you drive a car and you're like me, you may have gone 50 or 60 miles and barely
noticed the road consciously because you were caught up in thought. It scares me sometimes,
but it's true. And nowadays I understand the way I'm built well enough to know that if
somebody's riding in the car with me, they don't talk because if I get in a conversation,
my vision--actually this is what happens to all of us. Your visual field narrows, and
I can go for 60 miles and not remember consciously seeing the road. Sure, if an emergency came
up, I would react, but it wouldn't as well or as fast as it would be if I were paying
attention. By paying attention and setting in new pathways, you strengthen them, and
you create habits by design instead of accumulating ones on autopilot or bringing ones with you
from the archival distant past. Don't be a victim of existing habits, but don't always
go to the trouble of trying to break them. They are resistant, and they're sturdy. Find
a way to create a new habit that cuts a path through new parts of the brain. You can do
this. It is really easier than you think. It's beautiful. It's lovely. And you'll have
habits you chose instead of ones you accidentally developed and didn't even know you were doing
it. Since you're a high achiever you may know about this. High achievers often hit a wall.
They're going along, they're having one success after another and then suddenly, something
happens and they grind to a halt. And it's confusing because they're not sure what it
is they've done wrong if anything. They just know that they're not moving anymore the way
they're used to moving. The way they have moved in the past. If you've run into like
what seems like a ceiling over you and you're kind of in a fog and you're mystified by what's
getting in your way, you can even kind of slide into a swirl of doubts and wonder if
you ever really achieved anything significant at all and whether any of your amazing achievements
you have done were anything but kind of fronting or a little bit of a fraud. That is really
negative and pernicious and it doesn't have to be that way. I want you to go get a free
report from me. Go to DrKenChristian.com/Breakthrough and receive from me this free report with
action steps that are going to tell you exactly what to do now to get you going.