Why Your Imagination Can Go Both Ways

Do you know how you play a part in shaping your life?

Here’s how research has managed to show how we do experience our lives by just thinking, or perhaps, "imagining" about something - whether it is something that is actually happening,.. or not.

Imagined or Actual - Results Are The Same

Back in 2007, 11 years ago, Harvard Medical School did a study with a group volunteers who were told to learn and practise this 5 finger piano exercise. Half of the volunteers were told to practise the piano for 2 hours a day, for 5 days. And the other half were told to only think in their minds about practising the piano while holding their hands and doing nothing else.

Simple, yes? But guess what happened after 5 days?

Test results showed that the motor cortex specifically associated to these finger movements developed and grow over the surrounding areas.. and this is for BOTH, the first and the 2nd groups.

(FYI: The motor cortex is part of the cerebral cortex in the brain which originates the nerve impulses that kickstarts our muscular activity.)

Now, it is only the first group which did the actual "physical" piano practise whereas the 2nd group of volunteers did only mind practise i.e only “thinking”, about practicing the piano in a disciplined way.

Yet, both achieved the same results!

How Is This Relevant To You?

#1. You can consciously change your brain structure.

Say you have a goal to make a certain amount of money, climb up that career ladder, achieve a specific healthy lifestyle, or perfecting a skill, seeing yourself accomplishing them, thinking about it over and over again might actually help you accomplish all of those things.

When you think of something or visualize something in great detail, you might be able change the physical structure of your brain.

#2. Whether you did the action physically or not is not the point here.

As the study has shown, the brain cannot distinguish between a real or an imagined exercise. So long you think about something, you run it through your mind and you do it for long enough periods of time, you might get the same results. Is this not great news or what?

Only thing is not to contradict yourself by second guessing or doubting yourself, because your brain really does fit in with you accordingly.

The Downside: How We Create Shit That Happens To Us. Literally.

Numerous studies have shown that the brain reacts more strongly to negative experiences than positive ones. We all know for sure that negative experiences do cause stress.

Now, stress itself causes neural degeneration and neural degeneration is associated with diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer, due to the loss of structure or function of brain neurons over time.

This means that if we experience a negative experience, whether it is real or only imagined in our minds, it can have a damaging effect on us.

Our brains has the capacity to change its structure when we experience something. It doesn’t matter whether it is actually happening or or not.


The Brain Cannot Distinguish Between What’s Real Or Not

30 minutes of watching a chaotic and traumatic news, and 30 minutes of listening to someone complaining about how bad their lives are and gossiping about others, creates the same effect in our brains like as though we actually had those experiences ourselves!

The brain cannot distinguish between real and imagined experiences - so can you imagine the effect of us exposing ourselves to negativity? The good news is, we can reverse it once we take ourselves away and out of the negative environment or from the source of negativity.


Lesson

We have heard of the saying that “Men stay away from what feels bad, and move towards what feels good”. But generally we humans are wired to stay away from what doesn’t make us feel good.

Why not make this choice consciously now?

Stay away from negativity. Period. Avoid them as much as you can. If it doesn’t make you feel good, why stay with it?


In a time where creativity and innovation is very much encouraged and sought after, our imagination; i.e what we think, feel, imagined, or real, plays a crucial part. And given our imagination also governs our mental health, we really might as well try to pick an imagination that will serve us to accomplish and live better lives, rather than not.

So let's just pick the right thought, shall we?

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