Play To Your Strengths: Embrace Change, Find Joy

Do you seek to make lasting change? Do you spend considerable time focusing on your weaknesses in order to make long-term life improvements? Have you had much success? Probably not. Incredible amounts of time and millions of dollars have been spent on trying to fix peoples weaknesses. Yet it is our strengths that define us. So why not play to our strengths?

Advances in a new field of neuroscience called "neuroplasticity" show that anyone at any stage in their life can achieve lasting change. What is neuroplasticity? Neuroplasticity means we can take control of our lives. First we must want to change enough to get in touch with our goals. Then we can begin to train our brain to develop new neural pathways with affirmations, meditations, and visualizations that take us where we want to go. You are literally and scientifically in charge.

These findings relate directly to playing to our strengths. By changing the internal conversation from "I can't do this," to "I am strong in this and can get stronger," we begin to see the change we want for ourselves and let go.

It begins with recognizing your strengths. Then it's developing a sense of play. Begin to see your negative thoughts as an opponent in a game you yourself have created. Every time a negative thought comes up, let it go and replace it with a positive affirmation. By doing this, you begin to trust yourself more and more.

That brings us back neuroscience, which tells us that our brain, if told the same thing over and over again, will naturally return to that thought unless we change the neural pathways. We make new brain cells and new neural connections all the time. So get out and do something fun every day, whether it's a soak in a tub, a walk in nature, tea with a friend, a game of racquetball, or simply anything that puts a smile on your face. Play to your strengths! After awhile these new changes will become old habits and you will finally achieve lasting transformation.

Of course, behavior change of any kind can be more complex and arduous process than we have stated thus far. If it were simple, no one would have a problem giving up tobacco or losing weight. However, next time you will be prepared. When an old negative stimulus appears and lifts its ugly head, your new conscious you will see it for what it is and let it go. Instead of listening to that negative voice, you will hit it head on with an affirmation from your bank of new neural pathways.

While this information or way of thinking may be new to you, thousands of articles, hundreds of books, and about 34,100,000 results on Google have been written on the subject of neuroscience. These tips work. The trick is you must want them to work. You must want to change. You must choose change.

Plus, psychologists tell us that our happiness ratio goes way up when we are learning something new. This is exciting! We no longer have to think--or act like we have no future and believe as we age we are doomed. Instead, we can learn a bit about the findings from neuroscience in the last decade and rejoice!