We Are What We Practice

A long time ago (although not in a galaxy far, far away), a rather clever fellow by the name of Buddha pre-empted the discovery of neuroplasticity by a thousand or so years when he said something along the lines of 

"We are what we have practised. What we practice today is what we will become".

I say along the lines of because there are dozens of different translations but the message is basically the same. That the things we practice become stronger. 

If I were a neuroscientist I could say it like this - 

"If it fires together, it wires together".

Neurons that fire together build stronger connections so that sequence of firing becomes easier in future. As we practice something, the neurons fire together, wire together, build strong connections and whatever it is we are practising becomes easier and easier. We are used to this when learning skills - as we practice we get better. At first we have to think about what we are doing and it is slow and clumsy but eventually our bodies take over and things become smoother and more skilful. The sport you are practising becomes easier. The language you are learning becomes easier.

We are used to this with skills, but that's not the end of the story. This applies to much more than just the physical. That's its real power. Anything we put our minds to practising, we get better at. Even things we don't realise that we are practising.

On any normal day, you interact with many people. You have many experiences. But when you get home and your partner asks you "How was your day?" (or you tell  your cat or whatever), what do you say? Do you reel off a list of the things that frustrated you? Or the things that delighted you?

If you are like most of us, you focus on the frustrations, the annoyances, the negatives. We all suffer from something called negativity bias. This has deep evolutionary origins - far better to remember the tiger that nearly ate you (so you can avoid it in future) rather than the nice thing that happened just before. In the words of one neuroscientist, our brains are "Teflon for the positive and Velcro for the negative". This means it's very easy for us to get stuck in negative thinking. To always see the worst in situations and others. It also makes us blind to the positive. We can go through a day with many positive experiences and not notice or remember a single one of them.

Not all of us are that negative but we all know someone who is. The office grump. The relative who always sees the worst in every situation.

Does this negativity bias mean we are doomed to a life of negativity? Will we forever regale our partner with stories of how bad our day was? No. We have a choice here. "What we practice today is what we become". If we make a choice and start to practice positivity, we can change our brains. We can start a positivity practice - when telling your partner about your day, always start with one good thing that happened. Keep a positivity journal. The internet is full of great suggestions.

It will be hard at first because, like all new skills, we aren't good at it but, with practice, it will get easier as the positivity pathways in the brain get stronger. Eventually, after much practice, we will become a more positive person. We will start to see the positive in situations where before we only saw negatives. We will have become what we have practised.

It's not just positivity. Anything we want to be more of we can practice and become. Compassion, determination, self control, all these things are skills we can learn, just like being a better listener or a better time manager. If we practice them deliberately, gradually we will become those things.

I have said that this is like learning other skills. That's both true and not true. It's true in that practice will make us better and by practising we strengthen connections in the brain that make it easier. It's different in that when learning a new skill, there isn't usually an anti-skill already sitting in your brain blocking you. When you learn tennis, there isn't an anti-tennis already in your brain making it harder. Not usually. It can happen sometimes. In my martial arts practice sometimes having one skill completely mucks up the distance and timing needed for another. But with things like positivity, compassion, mindfulness, there are always existing mental patterns in the brain that will get in your way. We all have negativity bias built in. We all have a natural tendency to selfishness. We have all these things wired in from very early on.

This doesn't mean it's impossible to change these things. it just means that it's harder. It takes more practice. It's easier to fall into bad habits because it's just falling back to the existing patterns. You need more deliberate practice to succeed.

Deliberate practice is the key here. It's not enough to tell yourself that "from today I will be more positive". That's passive practice. That won't work. You need to deliberately practice positivity. You need to stop yourself during the day and ask "what positive things have happened since I last checked?" You need to start your recital of the day's events with (at least) one positive thing. You need deliberate, focussed practice. 

It's hard work. It takes determination and willpower and concentration. But guess what? Those are all things that improve with practice as well. The only way we can truly change the way we are is to practice until we become what we are practising.