Understanding How Brain Forms Habits and Routines

Just about everyone should learn how to take care of their brain actively. Although we think that we can control our conscious mind, there are many autonomous functions inside our brain that we can’t control. If we could understand our brain, it would be easier for us to control our action, thoughts and feelings. In this case, we should know how our brain works. This should allow us to tame our brain, instead of allowing it tame us. This could significantly change our lives and people who are clinically depressed could actually become much better if they know how to control their brain. In fact, people who can’t control their brain are more likely succumb to excessive drugs usages. Our brain is consisted of so many brain cells and each is known as neuron. They are responsible for specific tasks and if we want to move our thumb, specific neurons in our brain will send the signals to our thumb. Thousands of neurons are used just more our finger and the whole process can be more efficient if they could fire signals together. So, if we could tell them to send messages simultaneously, the synapses will be much stronger. It is true when we observe how babies learn to crawl.

Synapses that are responsible for crawling movements are not yet conditioned to fire off messages simultaneously to limbs. In adults, synapses have been fully optimized to make crawling, walking and running feel somewhat automatic and effortless to do. However, it is possible for us to create undesirable synapses. As an example, if we watch TV often, we will form a correlation between excitement and images shown on the screen. So, real life events could feel somewhat uninteresting, due to the lack of actions. Synapses are also associated with memorable events in life, such as first kiss, the day we get married, the day our first child born and others. In this case, neurons are responsible for specific emotions, but we should be aware that we could also recall undesirable events. It would be very easy for us to recall bad emotions and we could sabotage our well-being by conjuring those bad, past images. Synapses are also essential to sustain our daily routines. Each morning, we often do the same tasks and we could have formed a specific habit.

It also stores other habit details, such as whether we live passively or actively. Many people are living in an automatic mode, because their brains are conditioned to specific habits. However, we should avoid living in a reactive mode that lacks innovation and conscious creativity. The front lobe contains synapses that’s needed for our consciousness. If we live in a reactive mode, synapses in these areas could become weaker, because they are rarely fired. It may result in various age-related brain disorders, such as dementia and inability to memorize new information. We should try to break the patterns by creating new habits in our life and by being conscious about performing new tasks.