Can you remember the last time you stopped to experience and enjoy the positive moments that happened in your day? These moments, and the ability to enjoy them, are vital to your health. Everyday positive experiences can change your brain—and your life— for the better. These fleeting experiences create lasting improvements in the brain. Most of us don’t enjoy our positive experiences long enough for them to transform the structure of our brain. Yet our life experiences matter. They influence how we feel in the moment, and research now shows that these experiences increase the number of neural pathways in the brain. These changes in the neural pathways then influence how we feel and how our brain functions. When we experience positive thoughts and emotions, more neural pathways are generated, and more positive thoughts and emotions may be generated (Hanson, 2013). There is power to the statement “Mental states become neural traits” (Hanson, 2013, p. 10).
The human brain is the most important organ in the body. The activity in the brain determines what an individual thinks, feels, says, and does. Neurons are the primary cell in the brain. They are the functional unit of the nervous system and consist of a cell body, an axon, and dendrites. Neurons are specialized cells, conducting electrical and chemical impulses received throughout the body across gaps (synapses) to the brain and back to the body. When these cells conduct impulses (“fire”) based on repeated patterns of behavior or mental activity, more connections and dendrites are created to manage the activity. Nerve cells are, quite literally, being created with everything we think, feel, say, and do. There is a saying in neuroscience that reflects this understanding of the connection between our experiences and our brain. It states “Neurons that fire together, wire together.” Every day, your mind is building your brain (Hanson, 2013).