Reframing Your Thoughts: Neuroplasticity and Change

Finding a New Path: Sunflowers, Storms and Reframing

I’m writing this from the beautiful island of Guernsey, where Storm Austen has rather generously given me an unexpected early birthday present. Three extra days on this lovely island!

After three brilliant days doing work I love with some wonderful people, I was supposed to be heading home to sunny Bolton. Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas. Flights cancelled, travel plans disrupted and no chance of getting home until Sunday afternoon. And the rather lovely thing is, I’m absolutely fine with it.

Now, that might not sound like much of an achievement, but for me, it really is. This time last year, I would have found this situation incredibly difficult. The uncertainty, the lack of control, the disruption to my plans and the endless possibilities of what might go wrong would have sent my anxiety into overdrive. I would probably have spent the next three days worrying about not being home rather than enjoying where I actually was.

But something has changed. Not the weather, obviously, but the way I’m responding to it. And there’s some rather fascinating neuroscience behind why that’s possible.

Our brains love a familiar route

One of the things I’ve learned through my own mental health challenges, and through years of working as a coach is that our brains are rather fond of doing what they’ve always done. If you’ve spent years responding to uncertainty with worry, catastrophising or imagining the worst, those responses can become incredibly familiar. It’s not necessarily a conscious choice. Sometimes your brain gets there before you’ve even had a chance to think about it.

But here’s the encouraging bit. Our brains can change.

It’s called neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to adapt and reorganise through learning and experience. When we practise new skills, behaviours and ways of thinking, the connections and activity within our brains can change over time.

And this is where my sunflower field comes in.

My sunflower field analogy

Imagine a huge, beautiful field of sunflowers. There’s a lovely, well-worn path that takes you around the outside of the field. It’s easy to follow, the ground is clear and you know exactly where you’re going. You’ve walked that path hundreds of times.

But one day, you decide you want that gorgeous, Instagrammable photograph right in the middle of the sunflowers. To get there, you need to leave the familiar path and make your way through the field.

And it’s a bit of a nightmare! There are bugs everywhere, the plants are sticky, your legs are itching and you’re having to push your way through all sorts of uncomfortable things. It’s tempting to give up and head back to the lovely, easy path around the outside. But you keep going, and eventually you get to the middle of the field and take your beautiful photograph.

The next time you want to get there, it’s still a bit uncomfortable. But you can see where you’ve been before. A few plants have been pushed aside and there’s the beginning of a little path. Each time you walk through the field, that path becomes a little easier to follow. Eventually, there’s a proper route through the sunflowers and one day, you find yourself walking straight into the middle of the field without giving it much thought at all.

That’s how I imagine retraining my neural pathways.

The old path is still there. I could choose to walk around the outside again whenever I wanted, but I’ve spent time and effort creating another option. And the more I practise taking that new route, the more familiar it becomes.

It’s not a literal description of how individual neurons form pathways, of course, but it’s a helpful way of understanding how repeated practice can support learning and change.

What actually happens in our brains when we reframe?

There’s a psychological technique called cognitive reappraisal, which is essentially the scientific term for changing how we interpret a situation so that we can change our emotional response to it.

Researchers studying cognitive reappraisal have found that it involves areas of the prefrontal cortex, which help us think, interpret information and regulate our responses, working with brain systems involved in emotion, including the amygdala. The amygdala plays an important role in recognising emotionally significant information, including potential threats.

When we deliberately consider another interpretation of a difficult situation, we’re engaging brain networks that can help influence our emotional response. In simple Boo terms, we’re giving our brains another way of looking at what’s happening.

So reframing isn’t just a nice idea from a coaching workshop. There’s some proper science behind it.

But here’s something I think is particularly important. Knowing how to reframe something doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be able to do it when life gets difficult. Just like walking through my sunflower field, it takes practice. And sometimes it’s uncomfortable, frustrating and much easier to return to what you know.

My Guernsey sunflower moment

So, back to my unexpected extended holiday. The facts are simple. There’s a storm, my flight has been cancelled and I’m stuck on an island until Sunday. I can’t change any of those things, but what I can change is the story I tell myself about them.

My old familiar route might have sounded something like this:

I’m stuck here. I’ve got so much to do. What if the weather gets worse? What if I can’t get home on Sunday? What about everything I’m missing?

And believe me, my brain is perfectly capable of coming up with another 47 things to worry about!

But this time I’ve been practising a different response.

I’m safe. I’m comfortable. I’ve got a gorgeous view. I’ve got some unexpected time to myself. My wonderful team can keep things moving at Boo. And I’ve got M&S picky bits and emergency vino.

Same storm. Same cancelled flight. Same three extra days. A very different experience.

And that’s the thing about reframing. It doesn’t change the facts, and it doesn’t mean pretending everything is brilliant when it isn’t. It simply gives us an opportunity to consider another perspective.

What does this mean for us at work?

I think this is particularly relevant to the world of work, where so much of what causes us stress sits outside our direct control. We can’t always control organisational decisions, other people’s behaviour, budget pressures, unexpected challenges or the pace of change. And yet we can spend an extraordinary amount of time and emotional energy worrying about those things.

Imagine what might happen if we became a little more practised at asking ourselves some different questions.

• Instead of Why is this happening to me?, perhaps we ask What can I influence here?
• Instead of What if everything goes wrong?, perhaps we ask What do I actually know to be true right now?
• Instead of I can’t cope with this, perhaps we ask What would help me manage the next small step?

These aren’t magic questions. They won’t solve every problem, and some situations require action, challenge or support rather than acceptance. But they can help us move away from automatic reactions and towards more considered responses.

And leaders have a particularly important role in creating workplaces where people feel safe enough to do this. When people are constantly under pressure, frightened of making mistakes or worried about how others will respond, it’s much harder to pause, think and explore alternatives. Creating psychologically safe, supportive workplaces gives people more opportunity to learn, experiment and practise different ways of responding.

Something we care rather a lot about at Boo.

You don’t have to get it right every time

One of the things I love about the sunflower analogy is that it acknowledges how uncomfortable change can be. Sometimes you’ll make it halfway through the field and turn around. Sometimes the bugs and the itching will be too much. Sometimes you’ll take the old path because you’re tired and simply don’t have the energy for anything else.

And that’s OK.

Neuroplasticity isn’t about achieving some perfect state where you never worry, never get upset and always respond beautifully to whatever life throws at you. It’s about recognising that our patterns of thinking and behaving aren’t necessarily fixed forever.

We can learn. We can practise. We can change. And importantly, we can be kind to ourselves while we’re doing it.

I certainly haven’t mastered this. I still have anxious days, and there are plenty of situations where my brain would much rather take the familiar route. But compared with where I was a year ago, I can see just how far I’ve come.

And that’s worth celebrating.

So, which path are you taking?

If there’s something in your life or work that’s causing you stress or worry, perhaps ask yourself:

Am I spending my energy on something I can actually control?

And if the answer is no, is there another way you could look at the situation?

It might feel uncomfortable at first. You might have to battle a few metaphorical bugs and sticky sunflowers along the way. But every time you practise a different response, you’re giving yourself another opportunity to learn.

As for me, I’m going to enjoy my unexpected birthday extension in Guernsey, watch the storm from somewhere lovely and safe, and appreciate the fact that my brain is becoming a little better at finding its way through the sunflowers.

And if anyone needs me, I’ll be the one with the picky bits and a glass of wine.

The storm is outside my control. How I spend these next three days isn’t.

Becci x