Why Do We Become What We Think About?

Due to time constraints, this is a very short treatment of the subject, but it's part of some work I've been doing in my own life that has made a big difference to me and I wanted to share it with you.

In the process of reading books on goals and listening to audio CDs by Zig Ziglar and Earl Nightingale, particularly this one: The Strangest Secret,I've been flumoxxed by one of the claims - we become what we think about the most. It seemed like a lot of mumbo-jumbo to me. Then, while watching this video (actually, listening to an MP3 I made of it), I think I figured it out. If you go to about the 18:30 mark and watch for about 3 minutes, you'll see what triggered my thoughts.

The brain is continually trying to refine behaviors to match what it sees as "successful." In the example in that video, the children are learning to use a spoon. In our cases, this same process is continually running in the background whether we're aiming it or not. If we don't think about a given goal, the brain's refinement processes operate almost randomly. If we do think about a given goal, the brain is focusing its refinement efforts on that goal.

In the talk, the speaker says that the most powerful aspect of the brain's learning is the creation and constant refinement of a mental model of success. When you focus on a goal, your sensors are tuned to be on the lookout for others who have achieved your goal. If you decide to become really good at soccer, you key in on soccer games on TV and watch the professionals.

I'm pressed for time, so I'll have to table the rest of this thought for later. As an exercise for the reader, I'd recommend visiting Tim's outstanding blog and consider how he got to be so good at what he does. I would suggest that his brain, like ours, was constantly running improvement processes in the background, but that his decision to focus on a particular topic harnessed what was already going on and led him to be the excellent specialist that he is.