Neural Plasticity: 4 Steps to Change Your Brain & Habits

Your Plastic Brain

Perhaps you have heard the notion that you can change your brain. In fact, scientists have proven that your brain is being shaped, molded and changed by your experiences every day. This is referred to as neural plasticity or neuroplasticity. Just as a plastic water bottle becomes pliable when heated, your brain is being influenced and shaped by what is happening in your life. This single scientific breakthrough has significantly altered our understanding of how to change habits, increase happiness, improve health and even change our genetics.

Neural Plasticity Defined

Neural plasticity is defined as the brains ability to reorganize, grow, change and form new connections. According to Sharon Begley science writer studying brain plasticity and author of The Plastic Mind, neural plasticity is the brain’s ability to change and adapt its structure and function in response to experiences, including learned behaviors, thoughts, and even the environment.

Neural plasticity has evolved as the study of the plastic and malleable nature of the brain. Rewiring your brain is a dynamic process that happens within the relationship of your mind, brain, and body. They are intricately interconnected as a sophisticated system to ensure your survival and homeostasis. What happens to one of these systems has a direct impact on the others.1

What Does This Mean for You?

You can use your mind to change your brain and increase your levels of happiness, health and wellbeing. Tapping into self directed neuroplasticity or your mind, body and brain’s ability to change is empowering.

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

— Abraham Lincoln

What are Neural Networks

According to Michael Merzenich from the book,  The Brain that Changes Itself, practicing a new habit under the right conditions, can change hundreds of millions and possibly billions of the connections between the nerve cells in our neural pathways. The human brain is made up of an estimated 100 billion neurons making a total of 100 trillion neural connections. This is a lot of neural power, right at our fingertips.

Improve Your Neural plasticity and Change Your Nervous System

4 Steps to Change Your Brain & Habits

These four steps and coinciding practices will give you the right conditions as Michael Merzenich explains on how you can improve your neural plasticity and create billions of new connections in your brain. Use these to build new habits, new beliefs and change your brain.

1. Align with your desired emotion

A thought without intense emotion and feeling has no meaning, no value, and no real power to effectively engage your neural pathways. Intensity of emotion and feeling is required to take an experience and make it a solidified habit. The more emotion you engage, the more neurons you activate to form well-worn pathways. Emotions and feelings act as the glue that binds you to experiences. Emotional energy is the juice, or fuel, behind your thoughts that give power to your memories, goals, hopes, and dreams.2

Feel genuinely and emotionally connected to your intention to be happy with feelings of hope, trust, and positivity.

PRACTICE: Do something everyday that you enjoy. While you are engaged in this good feeling activity, focus on the feelings of achieving your goals and intentions.

2. Repeat and practice consistently

Neural pathways are strengthened into habits through the repetition and practice of thinking, feeling and acting.

PRACTICE: Start your morning passionately declaring aloud your goals for the day. Declarations send the power of your subconscious mind on a mission to find solutions to fulfill your goals.

3. Visualize what you want as if you already have it

Visualization is almost as powerful as the real thing given your brain cannot tell the difference between something real or imagined. Research shows that anytime you are thinking, you are engaging and thus conditioning neural pathways. Consequently, whether you are reminiscing about the past, thinking about the present or anticipating the future you are strengthening the neural networks associated with whatever you are thinking about. The most important part of using visualization to strengthen healthy habits is to engage your emotion. Emotion provides the fuel to enlist more neural power for creating powerful neural networks.

PRACTICE: Spend 10-15 minutes per day visualizing yourself achieving your goals. As you use your mind to imagine, it should be so vivid, dynamic and pleasing that it easily engages positive emotion.

4. Meditate to improve neural plasticity

The true masters of manifesting meditate daily. When you meditate you slow down the nonsense, ungrounded chatter of the busy mind and access the calm abiding wisdom of your inner awareness and the skill of laser focus. Meditation is the process of relaxing the body and quieting the mind. In order to tap into the benefits of neural plasticity you have to disengage the stress response and stimulate the relaxation response. When you are stressed your brain rigidly defers to the strongest neural pathways out of survival and the path of least resistance. Consequently, during stress you do not have access to newly formed neural networks because they have not been tried and proven yet. Most people live in a perpetual state of stress believing feeling tense, time pressured or overwhelmed is the norm. This is simply not true and is the result of an undisciplined mind and body.

The prefrontal cortex is the actual mechanism in the brain that meditation activates, which helps the body shift from the stress response to the relaxation response. It has been called the clutch that releases the gas pedal and applies the brakes. Research shows that meditation increases gray matter in the brains prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex of meditators is actually larger than that of nonmeditators. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were the first to discover that meditation alters the structure and function of the brain and specifically the prefrontal cortex. According to Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School,

Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being.3

PRACTICE: Spend 10 minutes each day sitting still while focusing on your in-breath and out-breath. Retrieve your mind anytime it wanders onto anything but your breath. Meditation is the highest form of mental training that disciplines the mind to focus on what you want and allows the nervous system to bring about homeostasis. The type of meditation is not as important as the consistency of practice. Consider trying different techniques such as practicing mindfulness, loving kindness, breath awareness, walking meditation or visualization.

If you want to learn more about how these four steps can be applied in your life click here and start the journey with neural networks

Creating New Neural Pathways

To create new neural pathways, it’s essential to understand the role of human development and the brain’s remarkable plasticity. As the brain begins to grow and mature, especially during key stages of brain development, experiences and learning shape the physical structure of the brain. This process involves synaptic transmission, where electrical and chemical signals pass between neurons, strengthening neuronal connections. Engaging different brain areas through activities like learning new skills or practicing mindfulness can promote the formation of new neurons and enhance synaptic efficiency. These changes not only support healthier brain function but also bring numerous brain benefits, such as improved memory, cognitive flexibility, and emotional regulation. Through consistent stimulation and experience, the brain continues to rewire itself, underscoring the dynamic nature of neural growth throughout human development.

Brain Plasticity: How to Use Your Mind to Change Your Brain

Mental activity strengthens the neural pathways in your brain associated with what you focus on with your thoughts and feelings. This is the way the brain functions in relationship to the mind. Understanding brain function, the way the brain works in connection to the mind and body, gives us the ability to change. To oversimplify this—but, nonetheless, clearly state what is happening—if you focus on happiness with your thoughts and feelings, you strengthen happiness pathways. If you focus on stress with your thoughts and feelings, you strengthen stress pathways. Every thought you think and feeling you feel, strengthens the circuitry in your brain known as your neural pathways.  The science, study and application of how neuroplasticity works is a whole new language. Neural pathways are the basis of your habits of thinking, feeling, and acting. They are what you believe to be true and why you do what you do. Donald Hebb’s landmark discovery in 1949, “neurons that fire together wire together,” best explains the process of forming, strengthening, and solidifying neural pathways.4 We experience these pathways as our patterns in important areas of our life such as relationships, food, money, career, health and happiness levels.

What are Brain Pathways

Hiking trails are similar to your brain pathways. Just as a grassy path becomes flattened, matted and worn away every time a hiker walks over it, as you focus on something with your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, you strengthen your brain pathways. Over the days, months and years a well-traveled hiking trail becomes a well-worn pathway. Compare this to a trail that is not well-traveled or perhaps a faint trail made by small animals. These trails might be noticeable to the naked eye, however their visibility pales in comparison to the trails that get higher foot traffic.

This is great news for making desired changes such as engaging in a new behavior and new activities and thinking healthier thoughts. As long as you know how to develop and strengthen neural pathways, you can change just about anything you want. This is also why the habits you have had for many years are the most challenging to change. They have carved the most well-worn grooves, or deepest trails, in your brain. Thus, the pathway related to getting dressed in the morning at 50 years old is much deeper and worn than the pathway you had at 8 years old.

Create New Habits with New Neural Pathways

Fortunately, as you practice traveling down new pathways, you naturally weaken old pathways.5 As you think similar thoughts and feel similar feelings, you either create new habits and beliefs or solidify old ones. Eventually, through repetition and feeling intensity, your new behavior and new habits run on autopilot.6

Neural Pathway Examples

Exercise Example

For example, if you consciously focus in the present moment on exercising four times a week by reviewing your goals daily, talking to others for support, visualizing your success, getting to bed early, and meeting with a fitness trainer weekly, you rewire your new habit of physical exercise. However, if you don’t consciously direct your mind’s attention onto your physical exercise goal, you will find your strongest existing patterns of sleeping-in will run on autopilot.

Habits Drive Behavior

Existing and often undesired automatic habits drive your brain, body, and behavior. Nevertheless, over time and under the right conditions, tap into your brain’s ability to create new pathways, change old habits and experience lasting results.

You might be asking, if my brain is changed as easily as overheating a plastic container in the microwave, why is it so hard to stick to a goal, new diet, fitness program or stop a habit of self sabotage?

Path of Least Resistance

Most people live on autopilot most of the time. This is because our neural pathways operate under the law of least effort, or the path of least resistance. The most worn path is the strongest and easiest to travel. It’s like traveling down a super highway or Olympic mogul ski run. It allows you to conserve mental energy and respond quickly to your life experiences.

Neural Plasticity on Autopilot

This type of automatic conditioning can be seen in the body memory of professional athletes or top piano players. It can also be seen the last time you drove home from work yet didn’t recall the entire trip.

The simple truth of the matter is that most people are not aware that they are recycling yesterday’s old news. It has been said that by the time we are 35 years old, up to 90% of what we think, feel and do is recycled from our past. At first blush this can sound a bit depressing. It is true, we are creatures of habit and as such tend to take the path of least resistance whenever possible.

Beliefs Drive Habits

We develop beliefs and habits of behavior pertaining to our relationships, money, career, health, driving, dressing, fitness and our bodies. We then look to confirm and validate these beliefs in our everyday experiences. Habits are helpful in the case of driving a car, mastering a work skill or learning a computer program, however they can be highly limiting when applied to our relationships, bodies or happiness levels. This is one reason why many people set the same goals each year about getting fit and eating healthy. Rest assured, change is absolutely possible, yet in order to stop recycling old habits of eating or exercising you need to understand how to rewire your brain.

How to Create New Neural Pathways

As you look at creating new neural pathways you’re going to confront your existing beliefs that keep your current neural pathways in place. If we look at creating new neural pathways for feeling happier as an example, you will likely be examining beliefs that are keeping you stressed and unhappy. Beliefs play a central role in maintaining your patterns of stress or happiness.

What Are Beliefs?

Beliefs are often regarded in your mind as the truth or facts of a situation. In reality, they are thoughts you have been thinking and emotions you have been feeling over and over. They are strong opinions at best. But they aren’t necessarily right or wrong.

They are based on experiences from your past that have been validated repeatedly over the years by similar new experiences. For instance, if you grew up with parents who didn’t show much physical affection, you may have developed the belief that displaying affection in public is not how proper couples should act. As you get older and begin to date, you may notice feeling uncomfortable when your boyfriend/girlfriend tries to put an arm around you, hold your hand, or kiss in public. You may not even be sure why you feel so uncomfortable, but in your mind you believe it’s wrong and improper to be affectionate in public. This belief may cause a lot of tension in your relationships.

What are Interpretations vs. Facts

Interestingly, beliefs are typically not even based on facts of the experiences but rather interpretations of the facts. In any given situation, there are the facts and then there are your interpretations. Generally, these two factors are very different. This is why five children growing up in the same family can have five different interpretations of their childhood experiences. Most often we live out of our interpretations as if they were the facts. This is where we get into trouble.

Physical Affection Example

Let’s return to the example of your parents who didn’t show physical affection. There is a multitude of reasons why they might not have shown affection. These reasons typically have more to do with the health of their connection and communication than with any ideal of morality or right/wrong behavior regarding public displays of affection. If you don’t question or examine the interpretations that form this belief, then you will likely stay stuck in the belief as if it were the truth or facts about how to act when in a relationship. Consequently, you may never experience the magic of a romantic walk on the beach holding your partner’s hand.

Defending Your Beliefs

You don’t have to look far into differing political, religious, and moral beliefs to see how and why our interpretations get us in trouble. Interestingly, once a belief is in place, you spend the rest of your life defending it. This is because of the biological bias that prioritizes self-preservation, which translates into being right. Let’s say you want to experience greater happiness. In order to create new neural pathways of happiness, you have to believe it’s right for you to be happy. Ironically, although most people want to be happy, they have conflicting subconscious beliefs regarding actually being happy.

Stress is a Path of Least Resistance

In line with understanding how the path of least resistance works regarding outdated beliefs, it also points to the self-sabotaging potential of stress. Dubbed the ‘Epidemic of the 21st Century’, stress inhibits our ability to improve neuroplasticity. In its true-to-form plastic nature, the brain adapts and changes into what it’s most influenced by. Consequently, because of the predominance of chronic stress, the analytical brain is highly influenced by the emotional brain. The repetition and emotional intensity of the stress response easily overrides feeble attempts at positivity; instead, the analytical brain changes in structure to match the stress.

Norman Doidge refers to this phenomenon:

Neuroplasticity has the power to produce more flexible but also more rigid behaviors—a phenomenon I call “the plastic paradox.” Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity. Once a particular plastic change occurs in the brain and becomes well established, it can prevent other changes from occurring. It’s by understanding both the positive and negative effects of plasticity that we can truly understand the extent of human possibilities.

Chronic Pain and Neural Plasticity

As an example, the plastic paradox can be seen in some individuals dealing with chronic pain. Chronic pain is closely linked to neural plasticity, particularly in the form of maladaptive plasticity, where the brain undergoes structural and functional changes that can reinforce pain perception and emotional distress. In the average adult brain, prolonged pain alters cortical pathways and disrupts the normal balance of neural mechanisms, leading to cortical reorganization in areas of the brain involved in pain processing and emotion regulation. These changes can hinder the formation of new neurons and impair cellular mechanisms essential for healthy brain function. Over time, such alterations may contribute to cognitive decline and heightened anxiety, as the brain becomes “wired” to expect and react to pain. In simple terms, the emotional stress and anxiety associated with physical pain form their own set of neural pathways whereby feeling one can bring on the other. Psychotherapy and treatments such as Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be helpful in rewiring this patter. TMS has emerged as a promising intervention by targeting specific cortical areas to reverse or modulate these patterns. By leveraging the brain’s plasticity, TMS and other therapies aim to restore more adaptive neural connections and reduce the negative impact of chronic pain on mental health.

How the Nervous System Impacts Change

Change that isn’t supported by the nervous system isn’t lasting change. Stress continues to be a daily contender in modern times with 70% of people reporting chronic stress. According to a study on Stress in America, fear of mass shootings is the most common source of stress in 2019 with health care coming in a close second. Other top stressors include immigration, safety, discrimination, acts of terrorism, climate change, sexual harassment, financial worries, workplace stress, and social media pressures. Diffusing stress through self-awareness and self-regulation strategies that target nervous system regulation are vital components of rewiring neural pathways. In our counseling practice we help clients utilize the top four conditions for supporting neural plasticity and rewiring their brain.

Some of the mind body practices we use include meditation, somatic therapy, EMDR and Brainspotting therapy.

How to Rewire Nervous System & How to Improve Neural Plasticity

Rewiring the nervous system involves engaging the natural adaptability of the human brain—commonly referred to as brain plasticity or neuronal plasticity. This remarkable capacity allows brain structure and function to shift in response to intrinsic or extrinsic stimuli, including learning, experience, and even trauma. In the developing brain, this plasticity is especially pronounced during a critical period when sensory inputs and experiences shape the architecture of brain regions such as the cerebral cortex and motor cortex. Even in the adult brain, homeostatic plasticity and synaptic plasticity continue to regulate the balance and strength of neuronal connections by modifying the responsiveness of postsynaptic neurons and reshaping dendritic spines, often with the help of supportive glial cells. These ongoing processes enable the brain to adjust and rewire in response to injury, stress, or change.

In the context of a traumatic brain or emotional trauma, the brain attempts to adapt by redistributing functions across different brain regions. This can result in functional consequences, both positive and negative, depending on the level of support and stimulation. Structural plasticity—where brain cells physically change connections or grow new ones—can be influenced by therapies that target emotions and thoughts, such as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), brainspotting, andmindfulness. These interventions can engage deeply rooted patterns within the nervous system, promoting healthier pathways and interrupting maladaptive loops caused by trauma. Physical exercise is also a potent tool for promoting neuronal growth and enhancing synaptic strength, particularly in the motor cortex and other areas involved in movement, cognition, and mood regulation.

Long-term rewiring of the nervous system requires consistent and targeted engagement of both the emotional and sensory systems. Techniques like mindfulness help bring awareness to the present moment, reducing stress and enabling more intentional rewiring of thought patterns and emotional responses. Sensory inputs, when paired with emotional processing (as seen in EMDR and brainspotting), can help the brain reprocess trauma and form more adaptive networks. Over time, this process helps the brain transition from reactive survival modes to more regulated, resilient states. By understanding and utilizing the science of brain plasticity, individuals can reshape their brain structure and function—creating lasting change and healing through both biological and experiential pathways.

Neuroplasticity for Happiness and Emotional Wellbeing

Let’s look at a demonstration of neuroplasticity from brain science research. When you engage in practices that increase feelings of happiness, you increase synapses or brain activity in your left prefrontal cortex. As you continue to feel happy, you strengthen the synapses and brain’s activity and solidify brain pathways that make it easier to replicate feelings of happiness. People who are optimistic have more activity in their left prefrontal cortex than people who are pessimistic.7 Neuroplasticity has opened doors of hope for transforming mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, for changing unhealthy habits, and for increasing the potential to experience lasting happiness.

Brain plasticity appears to be the physiological basis for the possibility of transforming our minds. By mobilizing our thoughts and practicing new ways of thinking, we activate or brain’s neuroplasticity, reshape our nerve cells and change the way our brains work.

— Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler8

How to Create New, Positive Neural Pathways

Creating new, positive neural pathways in the brain relies on the principles of structural neuroplasticity and functional plasticity—the brain’s ability to physically and functionally adapt through repeated experience and stimulation. In both the developing brain and adult brain, consistent exposure to positive emotions, thoughts, and behaviors can enhance neuronal function and strengthen the connections between cortical neurons involved in joy, motivation, and resilience. Practices rooted in positive psychology, such as gratitude journaling, visualization, and affirmations, help stimulate brain regions associated with happiness and optimism. Through repetition and habit formation, these mental practices build a more resilient neural network system, increasing functional connectivity between emotional regulation centers and cognitive control areas. This rewiring process is especially powerful when integrated with mindfulness and meditation, which cultivate awareness and allow for intentional focus on positivity and emotional balance.

Therapies like EMDR and brainspotting further support the formation of healthy pathways by helping the brain process and release emotional blockages, creating space for more adaptive thoughts and feelings. These methods, combined with regular mindfulness practices, can reduce the influence of negative patterns and foster the emergence of new, empowering perspectives. Visualization—a mental technique where individuals imagine successful or calming outcomes—has also been shown to activate similar brain regions as actual experiences, enhancing the brain’s receptivity to positivity. Over time, the adult brain can form new, stable circuits of emotional well-being, demonstrating the incredible potential of plasticity to reshape how we feel and think. Through deliberate and repetitive engagement in positive mental and emotional states, we lay down new tracks of thought and behavior that support long-term happiness and inner growth.

Neural Pathway Examples

Neural pathways are the communication routes formed by brain cells that allow different areas of the human brain to coordinate functions like movement, thought, and emotion. One example of a positive pathway involves learning a new language, which engages multiple regions of the cerebral cortex and enhances both synaptic and structural plasticity. As new vocabulary and grammar are learned through repetition and immersion, brain cells form new synapses, and dendritic spines grow stronger and more numerous, reflecting synaptic plasticity. These changes improve functional connectivity between language-related areas, such as Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, boosting overall cognitive function. This kind of experience highlights how structural and functional changes in the brain arise from targeted effort and consistent mental engagement.

Another clear example of neural pathway formation through functional neuroplasticity is seen in physical rehabilitation after a stroke. The brain, through a combination of functional and structural plasticity, can reroute functions from damaged regions to healthy ones. Repetitive movement exercises stimulate motor circuits, allowing the brain to rebuild functional connectivity and gradually restore movement. Here, neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s capacity to reorganize itself, often relying on undamaged neurons in the cerebral cortex to take over the lost function. Through structured therapy, brain cells adapt by creating new pathways, demonstrating the power of plasticity in regaining lost abilities and reinforcing healthy neural communication.

On the other hand, maladaptive plasticity shows how these same processes can result in negative outcomes. For instance, in chronic pain or certain anxiety disorders, the brain forms neural pathways that reinforce pain perception or fear responses, even in the absence of a direct threat. In such cases, repeated focus on pain or anxious thoughts strengthens those circuits through functional plasticity, leading to long-term structural and functional changes in the brain. These changes, often seen in areas like the amygdala or prefrontal cortex, can reduce cognitive function and emotional regulation. Understanding neuronal plasticity in both its adaptive and maladaptive forms is key to developing effective interventions, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy or neurofeedback, which work to rewire the brain toward healthier patterns.

Positive Neural Pathways

Creating neural pathways for happiness involves consistently engaging the brain in practices that generate positive emotion and reinforce uplifting mental states. Repetition is key—when we regularly focus on joy, gratitude, or peace through techniques like visualization and meditation, we activate and strengthen specific neural circuits associated with well-being. Visualization allows the brain to simulate positive experiences, effectively training it to respond with real emotional uplift even in challenging times. Meditation supports this process by calming the nervous system and increasing awareness of positive thoughts and feelings. Over time, these repeated experiences create lasting neural patterns that make it easier for the brain to access happiness, promoting emotional resilience and a more optimistic outlook.

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Fredrickson, B., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward spirals toward emotional well-being. Psychological Science, 13, 172–175.

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8. HH Dalai Lama & Cutler, H. (1999). The art of happiness: A handbook for living. New York: Riverhead.