This Is Our Purpose

What we’re doing at Mindshift Neurolab is very foundational. We’re helping kids develop better patterns of thought, behavior, and emotional regulation than children typically have the opportunity to acquire. Negative patterns learned early are hard to undo later – it’s not that you can’t, it just takes a lot of work. It’s much better to start off life with productive patterns that give kids room for ignorance and failure, learning and growth, confidence and compassion.

Our thoughts and beliefs about our worth, potential, abilities, how we deserve to be treated, and what quality of life we should expect start forming when we’re very young. Childhood traumas and anything that’s deeply ingrained can haunt us for a lifetime, so we want to help kids start life with the most positive, success-oriented perspective possible, no matter their background or current situation. 

If kids feel free to try, fail, learn, grow, and achieve, the confidence they develop won’t just benefit them, it’ll make them more compassionate and better able to help those around them. And when enough kids do that, the ripple effect can spread with no clear limits. 

Each time we respond to a situation in an unhealthy, unproductive, or negative way, we magnify the parts of the situation we don’t like and minimize whatever might be good about it. We remember the situation as bad, and doing so reinforces the thoughts, beliefs, and ingrained patterns that caused our unhealthy response to it. Negative patterns of thought are associated with patterns of activity in the brain, and those get stronger with repeated use, just like positive patterns. That’s how we get stuck in so many negative loops; we keep going round and round in circles, responding to life in ways that weaken us. We find ourselves living with elevated stress levels and all the unpleasant chemistry and negative health effects that go with it, and most of us don’t even know it’s happening.

We need to change the underlying patterns that support our unhealthy responses; we need to rewrite our base code so that we respond to life from a better starting point. We need a better baseline to work from so that every idea we have is coming from a place of confidence, rather than doubt. The more we do that, the more we shorten the distance between the way we respond now and the way we’d like to; we get closer to being the person who would think and act the way we want. Essentially, we learn to take a higher view of who we are. 

Many of us tend to view challenges as obstacles that are just too big for us. But what if we instead look at challenges as opportunities? These are just two sides of the same coin; what matters is how you look at it, and whether you adapt and overcome or look for the easiest way out. We want every child to bypass the pain of poor patterns of thought, belief, and behavior – not by avoiding challenges, but by embracing them. That’s what builds strength of character. It builds resolve and confidence, and that will allow kids to become effective adults faster, pursuing their dreams and achieving their goals by always learning, adapting, and reaching higher.