The Power of our thoughts extends to literally being able to change ourselves physiologically starting with the brain which Neuroplasticity explains
What Is Neuroplasticity
The good news is your brain makes physical changes based on the repetitive things you do and experiences you have. The bad news is your brain makes physical changes based on the repetitive things you do and experiences you have. This morphing capability of your brain, known as neuroplasticity, works both for you and against you.
Neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change structure and function based on input from repeated behaviors, emotions, and thoughts is an empowering truth of the last decade with far reaching implications and possibilities for almost every aspect of human life and culture. However, this same characteristic, making your brain amazingly resilient, also makes it very vulnerable to outside and internal, usually unconscious, influences.
Just in case you’ve managed to miss all the hype, neuroplasticity is an umbrella term referring to the ability of your brain to reorganize itself, both physically and functionally, throughout your life due to your environment, behavior, thinking, and emotions. The concept of neuroplasticity is not new and mentions of a malleable brain go all of the way back to the 1800s, but with the relatively recent capability to visually “see” into the brain allowed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), science has confirmed this incredible morphing ability of the brain beyond a doubt.
The concept of a changing brain has replaced the formerly held belief that the adult brain was pretty much a physiologically static organ or hard-wired after critical developmental periods in childhood. While it’s true that your brain is much more plastic during the early years and capacity declines with age, plasticity happens all throughout your life.
How many times have you heard someone say or even said yourself, “That’s just the way I am” or “I was born this way”? Those statements may be true, but do not mean that the person is fated to stay that way forever. Contrary to what used to be believed and was a rather convenient excuse, our brains are not hardwired at any age. You’re not stuck with the brain you were born with.
When a craving is satisfied, dopamine, a feel good neurotransmitter, is released in the brain. The same shot of dopamine that makes you happy is an essential component to neuroplasticity and making neuronal connections which reinforce your behavior.So we have to be extremely of context ,what thoughts and activities we do because negatives which we allow to give us a good feeling also releases dopamine
Our brains are changing all the time in response to our behaviors, emotions, and thoughts whether for our benefit or not. To work consciously to harness this process, called self-directed neuroplasticity, can transform brains, lives, and the world for the better.
(taken from a variety of articles on neuroplasticity)
