When you want to make changes to the way you think and feel, it is important to understand the very thing that is making you think and feel: your brain. Your brain is your most important asset, a power station that connects your every thought, feeling and action. Yet people tend to take better care of their teeth, their hair and even their car than their brain. Understanding how your brain works helps you to take care of it and make it work better.

Scientists used to think that the brain is fixed and hardwired by the time we become an adult. Research in only the past decade tells us that this is simply not true. The brain is flexible and changes throughout our lives, and this process is called neuroplasticity.

Your brain is constantly changing and adapting based on your experiences. Changing old habits and creating new ones comes with directed and repeated practice of the new way of thinking, feeling and doing. By practising the Renew Your Mind techniques described in this book, you will literally rewire your brain. The techniques function as a circuit breaker that stops old, unhelpful patterns from being reinforced. They allow you to introduce and build new, more helpful roads. By doing this over and over again, the new pathways will become strong and take over. Eventually this new way of thinking, feeling or doing becomes second nature.

When you decide to start renewing your mind and training your brain, you are motivated to make changes. For most people at this stage, the desire to feel different is what drives them. When it comes to skills, at this stage you are unaware unskilled because you haven’t yet been introduced to the techniques that allow you to train new skills. Your old pathways and habits are strong and no new pathways have been built — yet.

In the early days of your practice, your brain begins to form new pathways. It requires effort and conscious attention for your brain to build and use these new pathways because the old pathways are still dominant and therefore easier to use. In this phase it can be a real challenge to keep practising!

After some weeks of doing the exercises you will notice that your practice becomes a lot easier. New pathways have been established and are strengthening. At some point the new pathways will become the dominant ones. But be aware — in times of stress, the old pathways can still take over quite quickly!

In the last phase of retraining your brain, the old pathways have become dormant. New pathways have become ‘roads well-travelled’. Your practice is still important to keep the roads maintained, but you will notice the techniques have created a new way of thinking that now comes without conscious effort. You have become a more mindful person. At this point, a mindful way of thinking, feeling and doing has become second nature.

The way your perceptions, thoughts and emotions work and interact is quite complex. They are constantly changing and consist of many different layers. Some are part of your conscious mind, while others are part of your subconscious mind. At any given moment, when you peel away the different layers of thoughts and emotions all the way to the bottom of your subconscious mind, there are two options: your brain either feels safe or unsafe. Throughout this book I will refer to the unsafe state as the red-brain state and the safe state as the green-brain state. All of your thoughts, feelings and actions in that moment will come from either the safe (green) or unsafe (red) brain state.

The red-brain state is a state of stress. You can see the state of stress as a fire alarm. Stress is activated when the mind perceives a threat; this activates the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight response makes you faster and stronger. I sometimes refer to it as ‘the Hulk mode’. Having red brain available to us is actually very useful when there is a physical threat. Speed and strength are, after all, what keep you alive when you are faced with physical danger. When the fight-or-flight response kicks in, your brain and body are in the best possible state to deal with a threat, hence ensuring the greatest chance of survival.