From Vision to Change: The Practice of Self-Directed Neuroplasticity

By Jill Barrett, Evolve Impact Founder & Managing Partner

This post continues the story begun in The Neuroscience of Visioning.

Jennifer* had a problem.

When we first began talking about imagination, this young IT analyst at a multinational media and entertainment company told me she simply wasn't imaginative.

It was a surprising conclusion from someone who had spent her childhood creating entire worlds with her siblings and friends.

Somewhere along the way, Jennifer had stopped experiencing herself as creative. Her work reinforced that narrative. She saw little opportunity to innovate in her role, and the more she experienced herself that way, the more evidence she seemed to find that confirmed it.

In The Neuroscience of Visioning, I wrote about why imagination matters when we are trying to change. We cannot intentionally move toward possibilities we have not yet learned to see.

But seeing something new is only the beginning.

Once we glimpse a different possibility for ourselves, how do we strengthen it enough to begin living differently?

From Insight to Attention

Insight can be exhilarating.

A new possibility suddenly appears. Something that had been invisible becomes visible. We understand ourselves differently or imagine a future that previously seemed unavailable.

Then Monday morning arrives.

The demands of our lives return. Our attention moves elsewhere. Familiar thoughts and behaviors reassert themselves.

This is one reason insight alone rarely creates lasting change.

The brain changes in response to experience. The term neuroplasticity describes its capacity to reorganize and adapt throughout our lives. What we repeatedly think about, practice and do can help strengthen some patterns of neural activity while others receive less reinforcement.

This gives us an important clue about development:

What we repeatedly give our attention to matters.

Jennifer Begins to Imagine Again

Rather than asking Jennifer to solve the problem of not being creative, I invited her to explore a different question:

What could be exciting and enthralling to step into?

The purpose was not to create a perfectly articulated career goal. It was to loosen the boundaries of what she had come to believe was possible.

Jennifer began imagining herself differently.

Instead of focusing exclusively on the constraints of her current role, she explored what it would feel like to be someone who noticed possibilities, generated ideas and brought curiosity into her work. She began paying attention to the environments and experiences that made her feel most alive and imaginative.

This distinction matters.

A vision is not merely a picture of something we want to acquire or accomplish. At its most powerful, visioning allows us to experiment with a different way of being.

Who am I becoming?

What would I notice if I were already becoming that person?

What would I do differently?

What deserves more of my attention?

These questions begin moving vision out of abstraction and into everyday life.

Attention Is a Practice

Once we have identified a compelling possibility, we can practice returning our attention to it.

This is where the concept of self-directed neuroplasticity becomes particularly interesting.

Rather than treating our habitual ways of thinking and behaving as fixed, we can intentionally direct attention toward new patterns we want to strengthen. We notice the old response without automatically following it. We practice another response. Then we practice it again.

Jennifer could begin looking for small opportunities to exercise imagination rather than waiting for her job to become more innovative.

She could approach a familiar problem differently.

Ask a question she would normally keep to herself.

Notice an assumption and test it.

Seek out people, ideas, art or experiences that disrupted her habitual thinking.

Imagine several possibilities before settling on the obvious answer.

Each act was small.

That was precisely the point.

What We Attend to Grows Stronger

Changing ourselves rarely happens through one grand act of reinvention.

It happens through repeated moments in which we recognize that more than one response is available to us.

Attention helps make that choice possible.

When we continually focus on an old narrative, we become extraordinarily skilled at finding evidence for it:

I'm not creative.

I'm terrible at difficult conversations.

I'm not leadership material.

This organization will never change.

Our attention can become an accomplice to the very pattern we want to escape.

But we can also learn to notice something else.

Where did I respond differently today?

When did I feel most capable?

What did I try that I would not have tried six months ago?

Where is there evidence that my old story is incomplete?

This is not positive thinking. It is not pretending reality is different from what it is.

It is training ourselves to perceive possibilities that habitual patterns of attention can obscure.

Vision Needs Practice

This is why the work does not end with a vision statement, visualization exercise or moment of insight.

Vision needs practice.

If Jennifer wants to become more imaginative, she needs opportunities to practice imagination. If a leader wants to become more courageous, they need opportunities to practice courage. If someone wants to become more skillful in conflict, eventually they must enter difficult conversations and practice responding differently.

Reflection and action begin working together.

We imagine.

We notice.

We experiment.

We reflect on what happened.

We adjust.

We practice again.

Over time, something that once required enormous conscious effort can become more available to us.

Becoming an Active Participant in Our Own Development

There is something deeply hopeful about neuroplasticity.

We are shaped by our histories, environments, relationships and experiences. They leave real traces in how we perceive and respond to the world.

But history is not the only force shaping us.

Through awareness, imagination, attention and repeated practice, we can participate in what happens next.

That does not mean we can think ourselves into any future we choose. Nor does it mean change is easy. Our circumstances are real, our histories matter and some patterns are deeply established.

It means we retain a remarkable human capacity to learn.

Jennifer did not need to become imaginative. The imaginative child who once created entire worlds had not disappeared.

She needed to begin directing her attention toward that capacity again and creating opportunities to use it.

Sometimes development begins not by inventing an entirely new self, but by giving sustained attention to a capacity within us that has been waiting to be practiced.

*Not her real name.