The brain can grow

We know that our brain is what makes us “us”. It's what does all of our thinking. It's what processes all the sensory input from the outside world and creates this reality in our brain that we experience. It is “us”. So the question is What is the brain actually made up of? And it's primarily made up of neurons. And these are depictions of neurons right over here. And the current view on how the brain processes information, it’s by these different neurons triggering, by getting excited and stimulating other neurons and as the signals go through this huge neural network that has 80 to 100 billion neurons. That electrochemical signal going through this neural network is essentially our thought. It's essentially our intelligence. It's arguably essentially “us”. So given that, a question arises. What determines our ability to do things? What determines our intelligence? and one school of thought is that “okay maybe you’re either just born with it or either have it or you don't some people are smart some people are less smart or maybe you can change it" And it turns out there's actually been a lot of research on this in the last few decades. And the answer is pretty clear that your intelligence can actually be changed. What we've learned what researchers have taught us is that our brains are actually a lot like a muscle. We know that you can grow your muscles by going into the gym and doing exercise and straining your muscles. You don't just work on things that are easy for your muscles to do. You do things that your muscles have to struggle with that your muscles have to strain with. And then they rebuild themselves and they come back stronger. By struggling it's a signal to your body to devote more resources to that part of the body. And we see that exact same thing with the brain. And here just a couple of examples of it. This first one, this shows how the human brain develops in early childhood. This is a depiction of the neurons in the brain at birth. And then over as a child develops it interacts with its environment It tries things out it struggles to talk to converse to interact with folks to understand the world around it. and as it struggles, you see that by age 6 you have a much deeper and much stronger connectedness between the different neurons Similarly...similarly, I can never say that word, these are depictions of the neurons of two different scenarios. This is the the nerves of animals that were in unstimulating environments where they're not around other other animals They’re in a bare cage. and then this is the brain of an animal that is in a stimulating environment that is constantly being challenged that is constantly looking at stimulating new things and so the big takeaway from this whole area of research is you absolutely can change your intelligence that your brain is like a muscle The more you use it, the stronger gets and that the best way to grow it isn't to do things that are easy for you that might help a little bit But what really helps your brain is when you struggle with things and actually research shows that your brain grows the most not when you get a question “right” but when you get a question “wrong” So at least for me this is incredibly exciting because it lets me know that when I'm going through something and I'm facing those times of maybe a little bit of adversity or a little bit of frustration I can feel good about the fact that those are actually the times that I am growing the most. And this isn’t just something that I'm saying nice words research tells us when you get something wrong when you challenge your brain when you review why you got it wrong when you really process that feedback that's when your brain grows the most and that if you keep doing that you're well on your way to having a stronger more able and I guess you could say smarter brain.