Neurogenesis continues throughout life and we have the capacity to establish new neural pathways and strengthen existing ones.

Our emotional map is laid down mainly in relationship with our earliest caregiver in the first couple of years of life.

If we think of our brains as a map, those early roads are like grooves, tram tracks, easy to fall into.

Meditators are shown to have thickening in parts of the brain structure that deal with attention, memory and sensory functions. This was found to be more noticeable in older, more practiced meditators than in younger adults which is interesting because this structure usually tends to get thinner as we age.

Neurogenesis continues throughout life and we have the capacity to establish new neural pathways and strengthen existing ones.

We need to look at the repetitions in the stories we tell ourselves [and] at the process of the stories rather than merely their surface content. Then we can begin to experiment with changing the filter through which we look at the world, start to edit the story and thus regain flexibility where we have been getting stuck

If you start from a position of I'm a no-hoper, in a paradoxical kind of way you are not risking being vulnerable.