What neuroscience can teach us about ourselves 🧠🌿

We spend a great deal of time trying to change what we do, how we feel or the way we react. Yet we rarely take the time to ask ourselves how our brain learns, adapts and influences our daily lives.

Neuroscience obviously does not provide us with a universal instruction manual for human beings. But it does offer us fascinating insights into certain mechanisms that shape our behaviour.

And sometimes, understanding what’s going on...

And sometimes, simply understanding what is going on inside us is the first step towards changing the way we relate to ourselves.

🌱 Neuroplasticity: our brain is not set in stone

For a long time, the adult brain was thought to be a relatively stable structure. We now know that it retains the ability to change throughout life.

This is known as neuroplasticity.

When we learn, repeat an action or have new experiences, the activity and connections within certain neural networks can change. This does not mean that we can reshape our brains at will, nor that every change is easy. But it does mean that our past does not entirely determine our future.

Learning a language, playing an instrument, acquiring a new skill or gradually changing certain habits draws on this extraordinary capacity for adaptation.

I like to think of neuroplasticity as a path through a forest. 🌲

The more we walk a path, the more familiar and easier it becomes to follow. When we start to create a new one, the first few steps require more attention and effort. With repetition, this new path can also become more natural.

🍂 Why do we slip back into our old habits so easily?

You may well have decided to make a change, feeling very motivated…

… only to realise a few weeks later that your old habits had crept back in.

It’s not simply a matter of willpower.

Our brain is particularly good at automating repeated behaviours. This is extremely useful: imagine having to consciously think about every single step involved in brushing your teeth or making your coffee.

Habits reduce the amount of attention required for certain actions.

The problem arises when the automatic behaviour no longer matches what we want today.

Changing a habit therefore rarely involves simply telling yourself, ‘I mustn’t do that anymore’. It may be more helpful to ask:

What triggers this behaviour? What does it give me immediately? In what context does it occur? And what more appropriate response could I gradually replace it with?

We then shift from judgement to observation.

And that is a crucial difference.

🤎 Our emotions are not our enemies

We often talk about ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ emotions.

However, an unpleasant emotion is not necessarily a bad emotion.

Fear can draw our attention to a threat. Anger may arise when we perceive an injustice or an obstacle. Sadness, in particular, accompanies certain experiences of loss.

Emotions result from complex processes involving the brain, the body, our past experiences and our interpretation of the situation.

They are therefore not simply ‘switches’ that we can decide to turn off.

The aim is not necessarily to control all our emotions, but to develop our ability to identify them, to understand what goes with them and to choose more consciously how we are going to act.

There is an important difference between:

‘I feel angry’

and

‘I am an angry person.’

In the first statement, the emotion is a present experience. It does not automatically become our identity.

✨ Attention: what we choose to focus on

Our brain is constantly receiving a vast amount of information.

We cannot process it all consciously.

Attention therefore acts as a filtering system: certain pieces of information take priority, whilst many others remain in the background.

And our attention is a limited resource.

Notifications, social media, conversations, thoughts, work, worries… every demand competes for our attention.

That is why learning to direct our attention deliberately can play an important role in our daily balance.

Reading without checking your phone every two minutes. Really taking in the forest whilst out for a walk. Listening to someone without mentally preparing your reply. Taking a few moments to notice your breathing or the sensations in your body.

These actions may seem tiny.

Yet they train us to return to what is happening here and now.

🌲 Understanding rather than judging

This is perhaps one of the things I find most interesting about neuroscience.

It can encourage us to reframe certain questions.

Instead of:

‘Why am I unable to change?’

we can ask ourselves:

‘What is perpetuating this habit?’

Instead of:

‘Why am I still feeling this way? ”

we can explore:

“What is happening inside me when this emotion arises?”

And rather than:

“I lack concentration.”

we can observe:

“What is constantly capturing my attention?”

This shift in perspective doesn’t solve everything. But it moves us from making sweeping judgements about ourselves to feeling curious about how we function.

🌿 A little experiment to try today

Simply choose one of your daily habits.

It could be checking your phone as soon as you wake up, snacking when you’re bored, mindlessly opening an app, or systematically putting off a task.

Don’t try to break the habit just yet.

For a few days, simply observe when it happens, what happens just before it, how you feel and what this behaviour brings you in the moment.

This careful observation can already reveal a great deal.

Because change doesn’t always start by doing more.

Sometimes, it simply begins with understanding what we’re already doing.

🌲 LÜMI – Inner Forest

Neuroscience reminds us that we are both the product of our history and beings capable of learning and adapting.

Our habits can change. Our attention can be trained. Our relationship with our emotions can transform.

Not necessarily by becoming a new person overnight, but by gradually creating new paths through our inner forest.

And that is precisely what I’d like to explore with you here.

Science • Consciousness • Nature
Welcome to LÜMI – Inner Forest. 🌲🤎