Don’t be a prisoner of your past
You need to always take calculated actions.
“We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.” – Rick Warren
Being the prisoner of your past means that situations or events have transpired that taints reasoning and behaviours in the present.
For instance, children who grew up in dysfunctional families might have learned to survive. But the challenge these children may have when it comes to functional families is that they may have huge anxieties because they don’t know how to function well.
They may even cause commotions because they know how to act during disruptions. Normal gives them stress. A dysfunctional past may make it hard to function normally.
For a long time, it was thought that neuroplasticity was the unique gift of young animals and humans, which could only occur when we are young. The perennial myth “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” came from this limited understanding of the human brain. Sadly, this was embraced as absolute truth.
When we talk about the plastic nature of the brain, we talk about a process by which neurons can change their connections and the way they work so that you can go from things being challenging and deliberate – requiring a lot of effort and strain – to them being reflexive. If there’s one truism to neuroplasticity, it’s that from birth to about age 25, the brain is incredibly plastic. Children are learning all sorts of things, but they can learn it passively.
They don’t have to work or focus too hard, although focus helps to learn new things, acquire new languages and acquire new skills.
But, if you are an adult and you want to change your neural circuitry, it becomes so difficult and requires a lot of deliberate action and strain.
