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In this episode...

The Neuroscience of Shaping Your Brain for Success

https://faithfulontheclock.captivate.fm/episode/the-neuroscience-of-shaping-your-brain-for-success

The brain has incredible neuroplasticity — it can change over time. Episode 118 of Faithful on the Clock explains why intentionally directing the way your brain shifts contributes to your professional and spiritual effectiveness.

Timestamps:

[00:04] - Intro

[00:42] - The ideas that you can become better and hack the brain are widespread in the professional world. But you can intentionally shape your brain to be better, not just hack it.

[01:54] - What neuroplasticity is and how it works

[03:33] - God’s brain and neuroplasticity design is not accidental

[04:26] - The inherent neutrality of neuroplasticity and why we have to intentionally choose to direct it

[06:13] - Most people don’t make the best use of their time, which negatively influences their brain development.

[06:58] - Why continuously thinking about God and behaving according to His will is necessary to develop our brain for good professional and spiritual work

[08:48] - The importance of repetition in neuroplasticity 

[09:35] - The need for “mental dirt shovelers” (supportive people) who can help you through the neuroplasticity process

[10:58] - Prayer

[11:45] - Outro/What’s coming up next

Key takeaways:

• The concepts of improving yourself and “hacking” the way your brain works are widespread in the professional world. But you can do more than just hack — you can intentionally shape the brain.
• Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to change over time. Neural cells will build stronger, faster connections the more they fire together. It’s similar to the way a path gets built up over time into a faster highway.
• God’s brain design is intentional. Romans 12:2 can be viewed in the context of neuroplasticity and our responsibility to direct our own brain development to be able to serve God well.
• Neuroplasticity is going to happen regardless, influenced by our everyday micro-experiences and micro-elements. Unless we want negative development that’s not helpful to us, we have to be intentional about shaping the brain toward good health and function.
• The intentionality required in neuroplasticity means that we have to be constantly training the brain toward God and what’s good so we don’t get buried by the dark of the world and Satan.
• Repetition is your best friend when trying to shape your brain. Building new pathways takes time. Seeking out mental dirt shovelers — counselors, friends, etc. who can help you break old pathways and build new ones — is essential.

• Dr. Austin Perlmutter - Balancing Neurological Pathways to Heal Trauma (Transcript)
• Faithful on the Clock Episode 117: Shattering Negative Thoughts With Biblical Truths
• The Dangerous Paradox Hidden in Becoming Your Best Self
• Wanda Thibodeaux on LinkedIn: The Danger of the Become-Your-Best-Self Message

CTAs:

• Identify one habit or thought you engage in frequently that isn’t helpful. Find at least three verses you can call to mind when you are tempted toward that habit or script.
• Identify 1 - 3 motivating reasons for maintaining neural-building practices (e.g., reading Scripture). Repeat these to yourself when you encounter challenges.

What’s coming up next:

We all have bills to pay — paychecks matter. But Faithful on the Clock Episode 118 shares some nonfinancial elements to seek from your job when it comes to finding purpose and meaning.

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Support Faithful on the Clock

Hey, all! It’s time for another episode of Faithful on the Clock, the podcast where all the noodles get covered in sauce to get your faith and work aligned. I’m your host, Wanda Thibodeaux, and today’s show might let you nerd out a little, because it’s all about how you can deliberately build your brain to be prepared for whatever God wants you to do. We’ll go into a basic, easy-to-understand bit of neuroscience, connect that to your goals and habits, and help you understand how all of that’s relevant to your professional Christian service. Put on your lab coat, pick up your brain research journals, and follow me now.

Over the course of my career, I’ve been absolutely bombarded with content around the notion of growth and development. But the basic premise is, you always should be learning and improving yourself. Now, I do think you have to be a little careful and take that concept with a grain of salt, because if you take that too far, you can actually get to a point where you’re just never satisfied with yourself. You’re constantly searching for your faults with the intent of fixing, so you can’t just accept yourself in the moment. I have some posts about that that I’ll link to in the show notes. But the larger point is that, in the professional world, we tend to kind of accept this belief that shaping yourself is something you can do. You can make yourself into something better. And next door to that, there’s quite a bit of interest in understanding the brain and, you know, hacking how it works to be more productive or whatever. But what I want to explore today is the idea that you can do a lot more than just tap how the brain already is designed. You actually can intentionally shape your own brain through the process of neuroplasticity, and this becomes really critical as you try to live in a Christian way.

So, some of you out there might need to know — what exactly is neuroplasticity? Well, it just means that the brain is moldable. It has the capacity to change over time. And so, this is what actually allows us to learn, and also, by the way, to forget. And so to explain it really simply, I want you to think of walking on some grass. If you walk the exact same way every day over that grass, what’s gonna happen over time? Eventually, that grass is gonna start to wear away. And as more and more time goes by, you’ll wear a pretty clear pathway, and that pathway will start to get a little wider the more you use it. Maybe now you can get a bike in there and get where you’re going faster. Now, if you use that pathway enough, you know, you’ll end up with a five-lane highway where you can just fly by in a car. But what happens if you stop using that highway? What happens if you take another route instead? Of course, that path, it’s gonna start to get cracks and break down. You’ll start seeing grass pop up again in the cracks, and eventually, you’ll barely know there was even a path. And so this is what happens with the neurons or cells in your brain. Those cells have the ability to communicate and send signals to each other. We call this neural firing or neural activation. And if there’s very little communication, they’re not going to lay down a very strong or big pathway, right? But if they’re talking to each other and sending signals all the time, then the pathway becomes stronger to handle all of that traffic, and the messages start firing extremely rapidly. There’s not a whole lot of resistance for them, and so this is where you might say things become more automatic.

Now, before I go any further, I want you to first of all understand that this is not an accident. Psalm 139:13 reminds us that God puts us together, and it says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” And then Matthew 10:30 tells us that even the hairs on our heads are numbered. So, God is very much involved in our physical being, and a good verse for you to remember you can connect to having some control over the shape or direction of the mind and staying the course in service for God is Romans 12:2. And that says, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

So, understanding this, the next point you need to wrap your head around is that neuroplasticity is inherently neutral. We talk about it in positive ways a lot when we’re focused on learning and healing, goal setting and all of that. But everything depends on the habits we have and what we’re exposed to. So, for example, if you hear every day that your work isn’t good enough, you know, maybe your boss is just a jerk, that’s gonna lay down a pretty strong pathway in your head. And that recall of what your boss has said is gonna get easier, and it’ll be easier for you to think about all of those comments. And if that goes on long enough, that idea that your work isn’t up to par might become your default thought, and it’s gonna influence what you do and the choices you make. And I heard a really good online conference talk by Dr. Austin Perlmutter, a physician who's actually specialized in how our environment influences our mental health. And what Perlmutter points out is that there are tons of small environmental elements that contribute to how the brain changes. It’s all the little micro-events and micro-experiences we have that contribute to the end result, not just big events or experiences. And so his point around that was that that demands an intentionality in the way we live. The brain is gonna change. That’s a given. And so, if we do not choose to spend our time in good ways, that needle is gonna start leaning over in favor of the negative. And conversely, if we spend the time we have doing things that help the brain function well and build strong pathways for positive thoughts, that needle is going to lean in favor of good mental health, which ultimately plays a role in how happy and effective you are.

Now, I completely understand that a lot of you out there, you know, maybe you don’t have a lot of wiggle room in what your day looks like or the responsibilities you have. But to Perlmutter’s teaching on this, a lot of us, we’re not making the best use of our time. If you’re spending an hour, two hours every day just doomscrolling on your phone, or if you’re always opting to eat junk food that doesn’t give your brain the nutrients it needs, or if you follow the exact same routine every day and never try anything new or talk to new people, that’s not gonna help your mind very much. It’s gonna shape it so you don’t have energy or are always thinking really dark things, and that’s going to lead you to make bad decisions and fall victim to the temptations that are put in front of you.

So, the bottom line is, the more you think about God and the more you physically act in line with what He tells you to do, the more your brain is going to lay down pathways for good spiritual and everyday professional function. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own.” And John 9:4, I reference that a lot, it’s kind of a cornerstone verse for the podcast, that’s where Jesus tells us that we need to be doing the work of bringing people to God, because there’s gonna come a time when we can’t do that anymore. And if you take those verses together, it means that we have to be constantly asking ourselves if we are building our minds up in a way that respects that God resides in us, and that our minds have to be in a state that allows us to work right now, today, to share the Good News. You have to be in the Word every day so your brain can just recall it the minute you start to get tempted or find yourself in a bad situation. And this is exactly why Philippians 4:8 instructs us to think about what's lovely and admirable and noble and pure and praiseworthy. I’ve said it in a philosophical context before, but it’s not so we can just be blind to what stinks and ignore it. It’s because, from the neuroscientific perspective, we need all the time to be laying down and reinforcing the ability to be mentally healthy, to be maintaining a temple fit for God. And if we do not physically build up that defense, we’re gonna get lost in everything that’s black. Your mind will literally shape based on the negativity of the world and the Devil.

So, as I wrap up, I want to emphasize here that when you’re dealing with the brain and building neural pathways, repetition is your best friend. This is not something that you just do once and suddenly you’re golden. You have to be giving your brain the new material over and over, and it can take a really long time before you build a healthier pathway and your brain starts using it as the default. I mean, I’ve got some scripts that have played in my head for decades. And those tracks, I’m telling you, they’re not just freeways. They’re like stupid grand canyons in my gray matter, OK? Those suckers run deep. I’m still trying to divert traffic toward better things, which is one of the reasons I spent last episode on shattering negative thoughts. I’ll leave a link to that in the notes, too.

But this leads me to the idea of a mental dirt shoveler. What’s that? I’m so glad you asked! I’m covering this in more detail in a book I’m writing on rebuilding a relationship with God through trauma recovery. But a mental dirt shoveler is someone, maybe a friend, a mentor, your pastor, anybody who can come in and start taking a shovel to all your harmful pathways and cleaning all that up. They’re like the road crew, OK? And not only do they rip up the pathways that aren’t helping you, but they also clear the way for the new ones. They’re the ones who introduce you to new information and skills and show you alternatives or who point out all the mental traps you’ve got. They help you set up all kinds of detours and practice taking new mental routes. And I end with this because if you’re stuck on a negative road, you’re not gonna get going again yourself. You’re not fully equipped to do it. And when you’re in a canyon, do you think you have a good perspective of everything else? You don’t. All you can see is a big wall of dirt on either side of you. You’ve gotta have somebody come in there who can hook the chain up to your axle and pull you out and help you take a safer route. So, find some trustworthy people who can serve that role for you, because they’ll absolutely be lifesaving, both physically and spiritually.

So, let’s just lower our gray matter a little and sync up in prayer.

Lord, your design for the brain is absolutely brilliant. It leaves so much room for hope, because it means we can change. We can learn to focus on you and all of the truth you’ve shared with us so that we stay healthy and protected and effective. And I pray, Lord, that you’ll move our hearts to accept the responsibility that we also have with your design. Show us what’s doing damage so we can know which pathways have to go, and help us take care of ourselves with an understanding that we’re also taking care of your home. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.

Those are my thoughts, everybody. My hope is that you’ll take the points in this show and really just start thinking about your mental health a little more and how your physical, mental, and emotional care all go together. Because the better your mental health is, the stronger your confidence in yourself and God can be. Next episode, even though we all clearly need to pay our bills, I’m gonna keep you balanced and talk about some rewards you can seek in your work that are waaaaay better than money. That’s gonna drop two weeks from today. Until then, people, be blessed.