This is an older article from his blog, but I like some of the things he had to say and I wanted to elaborate a bit on why. I've extracted some of the bits that got my attention:
Personal growth is like that. When we are young we don’t know very much about our selves or the world around us. We explore the world, having new experiences and incorporating some of what we learn and experience into our personalities, both unconsciously and consciously.
Exactly. As we explore our world and ourselves in it, our brains process and add our experiences to networks of connections -- looking for previous experiences that "match" in some way, shape, or form. That means our explorations lead to more and more density and richness in connections, available "patterns", and options for growth.
One problem can be if we get stuck in a "rut" of non-productive connections that tend to repeat over and over and over....the more we repeat the experience or thought or action, the more entrenched it gets -- like a looping of a closed circuit. More entrenched = harder to change.
As we get older yet we begin to explore our inner world. We find some things within our personality that we like, that enable us to pursue further growth. Other things we find are detrimental to our well-being. If we want to grow up, we take control of ourselves. The things in ourselves that we like, that benefit ourselves and those around us, we encourage and cultivate. The things we don’t like, that are self-destructive, self-limiting, or harmful to others, we try to minimize and weed out.
I agree again. What's really cool is that, unless something goes awry (like those eternal loopings ), this is largely a self-regulating process (from a brain perspective). We will naturally move toward more resiliency and away from less productive behaviours. The trick is that we don't entirely control the pace or consciously know which of the things we do are moving us in which direction. And sometimes our attempts at control can backfire and we end up somewhere we didn't intend. If we can wait long enough, though, we do change and evolve and progress.
We become aware that the personalities we have are not preordained by some god, our genes, or our environment. We may have predispositions to act in a given way, but whether we take the easy road, abdicating responsibility and control, and follow these predispositions is up to us. ...
...You can stay in the old familiar territory that is your self. Or you can grow up and grow out. The limits we are born with are not real limits. If you push beyond them, into the darkness that surrounds the sphere of the mind that you have known, you find a whole new world.
I love this part -- Pure poetry.And I heartily agree. This is why I see neurofeedback as a wonderful personal growth tool. It lets us move beyond the limits of familiar ways of being and thinking and feeling. It helps us break up the looping circuits and allow energy for new, more productive, connections.
Yet that also makes it a step into the unknown. By using neurofeedback in the way I work with it, we are supporting the self-regulatory, self-evolutionary processes of the brain. We give it a tool to enhance its communication with itself in order to speed up our personal evolution. And the good news is, we don't have to know how to get there. We can't know how to get there if it's really somewhere yet unexplored and unknown, can we? It is truly a darkness that we step forward into, but hopefully we take that step with a sense of anticipation and curiousity and willingness to allow change to "happen" and to be uncertain about where we will wind up.
For some people, the bad news is that they can't know exactly where they are going, that the changes may not follow their goals and expectations, that they can't decide on the pace or sequence of change.
But if we are willing to allow ourselves to take the step into the unexplored or unrecognized land, we can discover the real riches of ourselves. And I feel privileged to participate in the evolution of each of the explorers I work with.
To read the whole article and then tour Rick's blog (and you should), go to:
Personal Growth is an Exploration of the Unknown
Thanks for listening.
