The Source summary

You may have heard that once you physically stop growing, your brain stops growing too. It’s received wisdom, right? Well, not anymore. Neuroscientists now know that embryonic nerve cells can be found in the hippocampus – an area of the brain where we store memories – and quite probably (although not yet proven) in other areas of the brain, too.

Despite the potential for your brain to regenerate and grow, it’s vitally important that you look after your brain to maintain, maximize, and optimize the way it functions. Here’s how:

Let’s try a little experiment. Think about what you did one day last week, or last birthday or some other special occasion. What happened? Where were you and who were you with? Do you remember how you were feeling?

When you do this kind of exercise, you strengthen the neurons in the part of your hippocampus responsible for memory. Add in the dimension of emotion and the memory becomes even stronger. This neatly illustrates exactly the phenomenon of neuroplasticity – your brain’s ability to change and become flexible. It’s what enables your brain to create pathways between your subconscious and conscious parts of your brain. It’s key to your self-empowerment.

Let’s kick this section off with an example. Fred worked at a bank. His decision-making was always logical. He even used spreadsheets with pros and cons listed for both business and personal decisions. How did that work out? Sometimes he’d make what he knew were likely to be bad decisions – ignoring his gut feeling – simply because it looked good on paper.

Swart worked with Fred on getting him to use what’s known as a brain agility model. He began to trust his gut more and think more creatively. He was determined to make it work for him. It took about three months to fully integrate the model and be confident that he could trust his “whole brain.”

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” So said Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. This really sums up what’s required to unlock your future potential. 

In the book, Swart offers several exercises for each of the four steps we’re about to cover, whereas we can only offer you a few suggestions in this Blink. But please remember that you should only move forward to the next step after you’ve attained benefits and insights from the previous one.

The science behind the law of attraction and visualization is real. But in order to unleash the full potential and power of your brain you must first take good care of it. Then, once you understand how you can rewire your brain and think using all of it, you can use the four-step process to build a more confident you and be able to attract the things you want from life using visualization. Opportunities that once passed you by will now only be a thing of the past.