You See What You’re Wired To See

Two amazing videos on neuronal firing and synaptic pruning:

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit ~Aristotle

As you think, so shall you become ~Bruce Lee

Briefly; The neocortex - literally the 'new covering' - sits atop the emotional mammalian brain and the primal, subconscious reptilian brain."

The neocortex - the thinking brain - is the seat of your conscious awareness. It loves to gather information, and each time you learn something new, you make a new synaptic connection in your thinking brain.

Every time you learn something new, your brain physically changes.

Upon learning, your brain immediately up-scales it's hardware to reflect a new level of mind. That new information is biologically wired into your cerebral architecture.

If learning is making new synaptic connections, memory is maintaining and sustaining those connections.

The more neurons communicate, the more bonded they become.

As these neurons fire and wire together, they form networks... neural-networks.

If you have a new thought that disagrees or is in contrast to your previous thoughts and experiences, it can easily get drowned out.

BUT, if you persist, and put your attention behind that thought, sooner or later that thought becomes the strongest and loudest voice in your head.

Once this happens, the brain seals this circuit more permanently. It does this by using a 'glue' called Nerve Growth Factor, which is finite, and so must be 'stolen' from neighboring circuits.

This essentially... literally... changes your mind.

Forgetting, rewiring, and reinforcing prunes away the memory of the old self.

Synaptic pruning is a lifelong process, in which unnecessary connections are shed. The connections that aid in survival and mastery of the environment are subsequently empowered and reinforced.

This can be thought of as Neural Darwinism. The weakest of the herd get thinned, leaving the herd itself faster, stronger, and more efficient.

Synaptic pruning is why success and mastery is a function of hours dedicated to a particular field. You are constantly writing the blueprint of your neural circuitry through your daily routines and rituals.

This pruning process is also called learning.

Your brain is a prediction machine - not just a mirror, but a lens. It doesn’t simply reflect the world; it reshapes it, filters it through the echo of everything you’ve seen, thought, and believed before.

Think of the red car effect: You start thinking about a red car, and suddenly the streets are full of them. The world didn’t change - you did.

Your attention, sharpened by intent, began pulling that pattern from the noise.

Now apply that to anything - investing perhaps. The more you experience and study financial markets, the more your perception shifts. The noise becomes signal. Patterns emerge where before there was only static.

Opportunity, then, isn’t something you chase... It’s something you see.

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Additional stuff:

Emotion acts as a highlighter for the brain. The more emotionally charged an experience, the more likely it is to be remembered. They say the music that stays with you for life is the music you heard between the ages of 12 and 17. This also happens to be the most emotionally turbulent period of life. The brain, highly impressionable during these formative years, binds sound and emotion in ways that echo for decades.

Repetition is the vote you cast for a neural pathway to stay. Focused repetition wires it in. Mindless repetition does not. In every moment, you are either reinforcing the old self or wiring in the new one.

Scientifically, as circuits get used more often, the brain begins to insulate them with a fatty substance called myelin - like wrapping electrical wires.

Myelination makes thoughts, skills, and reactions faster, more automatic, and more precise. This is how you become fluent in anything.