6. Brain Training

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When you hear a siren, what’s your first thought? Maybe an ambulance just wove around you on its way to the scene of an accident. Maybe a firetruck raced past on the highway below your apartment window. Whatever the source of the siren, your first thought was most likely something like “Oh no!!!” But...why is that our first thought?

Why do we leap so quickly to the negative? Isn’t it also the case that someone’s getting help? Wouldn’t it be just as honest for our first thought to be “Yay!!!” 

Brains require a LOT of energy to work well. One of the many ways our brains save energy is by using existing connections instead of making new ones. Unfortunately, traveling these energy-saving well-worn pathways sometimes means we get stuck in unhelpful ways of thinking.

It’s much easier to take the freeway than a winding road, but freeways don’t always take us where we need to go. Sometimes it’s better to take the winding road, or even to build a new one. The cognitive techniques recommended in this brochure work in much the same way—by shifting our thoughts from their automatic routes into healthier patterns. Read them. Practice them. They just might change your life.

-Jon