How to Retrain Your Brain

Going lobal

By Dr Kevin Orrman-Rossiter and Dr Sharon Orrman-Rossiter

There is a well known phenomenon that suggests you can't teach an old dog new tricks. That may be true for dogs, but the latest in neuroscience research has been showing that people can continue to learn and change their brains at seemingly any age. This is great news for business or those trying to map out a career trajectory.
In a nutshell, it tells us that it is never too late to learn. What we now need to determine is how we can best achieve the brain changes that would make a difference to guiding the grey matter towards peak capacity and performance and apply them to our own business environment.
The best news is that to make the most of this for yourself you don't need to start remembering words like ventral prefrontal cortex or caudate nucleus. Instead, it is a matter of following some basic concepts and practices.
Much of this has come from a new idea called neuroplasticity. 'Neuroplasticity is simply the rewiring of the brain,' says UCLA research professor of psychiatry Jeffrey Schwartz. Except that 'now we are talking about a fully mature brain changing; a basic fact that took scientists some time to accept,' Schwartz says in his ground-breaking book The Mind and the Brain.
Until only five years ago, the prevailing scientific understanding was that we were born with a certain number of brain cells and these decreased with age. It is true that we lose neurons every day (up to 30,000 a day by some estimates). However, work published by researchers in the past five years has shown that we can grow new neurons within the brain regions normally associated with learning.
One of the key findings from Schwartz's and others' work is that the degree of attention we pay has a marked impact on and influences our success in engaging in tasks. This mindful awareness, or mindfulness, as this type of attention is called, can systematically bring about changes to our own brain function.
The original studies were conducted with patients who had what were thought to be incurable brain disorders, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Now studies have been extended to people who simply want to improve the functioning of their brains or preserve their cognitive abilities as they age.
This 'mindfully active' process is important to trigger new brain circuitry. By paying attention in this manner it is then possible to exploit the brain's tendency to pick up on repetitive behaviour and make this behaviour automatic. That is, to form new habits. This is different from the manner in which we normally attack a problem or change a behaviour.
We live in a very analytical society where we pull apart or deconstruct a problem. In doing so we are paying attention to the very parts of our brain that we want to change.
Instead, the research shows, we need to focus our attention on what we want to do instead. It is a matter of concentrating our attention on what we want to do rather than what we do not want to do. This means that if we try to modify a habit, we will start using the 'old', previously created neural wiring. Making a change to this entrenched 'wiring' is far more difficult than creating new 'wiring.'
Here's how it works. When you undertake an activity or think thoughts, then a whole distributed collection of neurons in your brain fire in particular patterns. These patterns may be located in similar brain areas but are individual in pattern for each person. The more you repeat the activity or thought the more the neurons are likely to fire in the same pattern. This has been expressed as 'the neurons that fire together, wire together'.
So, through this process our habits, skills and personalities continue to be created with time. Changing these patterns in your brain requires effort. This can be illustrated by imagining that your brain is like a lump of jelly (a wonderfully evocative metaphor that Edward de Bono spoke of in his book The Mechanism of Mind).
These activities and thoughts are like drops of water that create paths in the jelly. Some will become quite deep. And a drop of water that falls near a pathway will run into one of the existing channels. Only by mindfully starting a new channel, a new thought or action, do we effectively move on to create new ways of doing something.
The key point here is that when you are endeavouring to change, don't try to modify the old habit. Instead, mindfully develop a new habit. You are then working with, rather than against, your brain physiology.
We can introduce these concepts into our own business environment in some simple and powerful ways. Think about how you can set up your work environment so as to corral your attention through your own actions and become more productive. This can be achieved by arranging your day and your surroundings in a way that encourages focus and accomplishment.
Furthermore, if you want to, or are needing to modify a behaviour or thought pattern, then changing the start of that pattern is important. By you changing a single action at the start you can initiate a whole new set of complex behaviours or 'chunks of action repertoires'. These chunks help form coordinated sequential motor actions and develop streams of thought and motivation.
Motivation has been shown to be important in all this work. 'Experiments have shown that when animals are motivated to learn, the brain responds plastically,' says Michael Merzenich in Norman Doidge's book The Brain That Changes Itself. So it is important to recognise what will motivate you (and your staff). You can't make the assumption that everyone's motivations are the same.
It is also important to recognise again the degree of focus required to learn as adults. Quite often, instead of learning, we will be replaying mastered skills. It 'costs' us effort to learn, particularly if we are at middle professional levels. 'To keep the mind alive requires learning something truly new with intense focus,' says Michael Merzenich.
It is no wonder then that it is difficult to change someone else's mind, given the individual differences in brain physiology and that changing our own habits and thoughts requires mindful attention. Given the incredibly large possible combinations of neuronal wiring in each person's brain, it is not surprising that we have such unique ways of looking at and performing functions.
Therefore, for those who are managing, leading and working with knowledge-based workers, it is important to guide rather than tell others how to think. To create successful change, it's a case of assisting others to make their own thought connections.
Research has illustrated that distractions, including multi-tasking, are the enemy of this attention-focused learning. This key finding has a bearing on many of our current business practices. It has shown that multi-tasking is not something the brain engages in well.
Critically, research shows that interruptions, no matter how short, can cause the brain to take up to 15 minutes to collect its thoughts and go back to where it was before the interruption. This is because the brain works in sequence and has to switch tasks consciously.
These findings provide a great reason for blocking out time, that is free of email, phone and Blackberry interruptions when attending to important business thinking and tasks. If you want to, for example, put on a load of washing and chat to a friend about the weather, the lack of complexity allows your brain to switch easily. In contrast, the more complex nature of business thinking is not so easily or efficiently handled in such a manner.
And, the benefits of a good night's sleep is also showing up in the research. Neuroscience is starting to uncover the links and benefits between exercise, sleep and your cognitive abilities. It has been found by Professor Nicola Lautenschlager of the University of Melbourne that moderate exercise can improve cognitive function.
But, the important conclusions from neuroscience research are that our brains have the ability to change if we give them the opportunity. Brain function differs from one person to the next and our brains change during the course of our individual lives. It is never too late to teach ourselves new tricks throughout our lives.
What business can learn from neuroscience
don't assume you can't change, you can change your behaviour and thoughts at almost any age
it is easier and more effective to create a new habit than modify an existing one
'rewiring' of neurons requires mindful attention and focus
understanding why you want to change provides the motivation to change
exercise can enhance neuronal growth
adequate sleep assists memory consolidation and problem solving
brain individuality means that you shouldn't assume that others will change in the same manner as you do; instead guide rather than tell others how to think
Rewiring your brain
Take note of the following areas where either individually or collectively you are experiencing:
the inability to get the desired results
a high staff turnover
a lack of staff engagement
a disconnect between jobs and rewards
individuals who are bored
staff feeling their strengths are not being used
a culture of distraction
How to refocus in order to rewire:
To create a new habit (in contrast to trying to modify an old one) mindfully focus on developing the new habit in the following way:
be clear and specific about what action you want to take
understand and be clear about why you want to develop this new behaviour or habit
take action and focus with intent and concentration for a solid 15 minutes
swiftly recognise if and where you get off track or start down the 'old habit pathway'
refocus with action for a further 15 minutes with intent and concentration
for success repeat each day for three to four weeks

Dr Kevin Orrman-Rossiter is an executive coach, social researcher and futurist. He has a PhD in physics as well as management and marketing qualifications. He was awarded a prestigious Australian research award, the Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship and has worked in international manufacturing and the financial services industries.

Dr Sharon Orrman-Rossiter is an expert in coaching for performance. She is past chairman of Monash University's Centre for Biomedical Engineering. She has a PhD in medicine and has been involved in cutting-edge research in the UK and Australia. With her husband Dr Kevin Orrman-Rossiter, she founded Clarity Now where their brainpower is used to coach individuals and groups on how to get the most from their minds in executive leadership and career planning.