I don’t think many younger people are familiar with the expression, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” The expression means that the older you get, the more difficult it is to change, and you eventually reach a point of no return where you can’t change. It has certainly been a widely held belief for as long as I can remember. No one wants a sex offender living next door because deep down inside we all believe you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
As a followers of Jesus, I believe we are charged with working to establish God’s kingdom here on earth. A big part of the is working for social justice, empowering the poor, removing barriers and obstacles from everyone living out the masterpiece that God created them to be. If I had to chose one word to describe this kingdom work it would be the word change. Working to establish God’s kingdom here on earth requires a boatload of change.
I have had an opportunity to see some pretty remarkable changes over the years in myself, those close to me, and even those far away, on the other side of the world in the Philippines. The outreach organization in the Philippines that I have been blessed to know have been significant agents of change. The work they do with children who live on the streets is near and dear to my heart. Over the last eight years now I have been able to see so many kids come out of a dark, abusive, masterpiece-destroying place and into a place of love, peace, encouragement, learning and growth.
Some of the kids who are part of the Face the Children program have finished high school, and have begun to live as adults in their world. My family, along with many other sponsors have invested in many of these kids and have even offered them the opportunity to attend college and position themselves to be successful contributors to society and making the world a better place.
A few of these young adults, including one that was very close to me and my family, chose to walk away from that opportunity. Our dreams for their lives were never their dreams. They were unable or unwilling to embrace a different view of their lives. They were seemingly unable to make the changes necessary to move from self-destructive behaviors into self-empowering behaviors. One of my acquaintances in the Philippines was discussing a particular fall from grace back into an old lifestyle with a passage from the bible As a dog returns to its vomit – meaning, that some people are not going to be able to change. I don’t think he meant anything personal by it but it really offended me and made my angry.
I want to believe and experience people changing, every day. I want to continue to believe and encourage those who have failed, and believe that those are only temporary setbacks. I want to believe that patterns of abuse, abandonment, neglect, poor self image and low self esteem can be replace with patterns of healthy self-awareness, love, tenacity, hope and a desire to give back. At the same time, I am a realist. I believe that reality is always your friend. I don’t want to just believe it, I want to be able to know whether or not significant change is really possible in everyone. I want some scientific proof that the old adage was wrong, and you can teach every old dog new tricks.
Well, I came across this article the other day about change, neuroscience, and corporate change initiatives in business. Strategy Business Article. This is a fascinating article that relates how neuroscience confirms that all of us have the ability to change even the most entrenched negative patterns in our lives, and can do it without expensive psychotherapy or mind-altering drugs. My brief summary of the article is:
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Habits are hard to change because of the way the brain manages them.
Many conventional patterns of thinking are held in circuits associated with deep, primal parts of the brain that evolved relatively early. These include the basal ganglia, the amygdala and the hypothalamus. Information that is processed in these parts of the brain is often not brought to conscious attention. If you want to create permanent new patterns of behavior, you must embed them in these areas of the brain. Taking on new patterns often feels unfamiliar and painful, because it means consciously overriding deeply comfortable neuronal circuitry.
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Despite the seeming inflexibility of the brain, neural connections are highly plastic; even the most entrenched thought patterns can be changed.
The kind of mindfulness that accomplishes this combines metacognition (thinking about what you are thinking) and meta-awareness (moment-by-moment awareness of where your attention is focused).
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Paying attention to new ways of thinking, however uncomfortable at first, can rewire people’s thinking habits.
The name given by neuroscience to this phenomenon is attention density. When a person repeatedly pays conscious attention to desired thoughts and related goals, the processing of these thoughts and goals stabilizes and moves to the part of the basal ganglia called the caudate nucleus, which lies deep beneath the prefrontal cortex and processes a massive number of neural signals from it.
MIT neuroscientist Ann Graybiel has referred to the basal ganglia caudate nucleus complex as the habit center of the brain. It shifts circuits into place so that ways of thinking and acting that at first seemed unfamiliar soon become habitual. The power of focused attention is enhanced further by the quantum Zeno effect: just as quantum particles become more stable when observed, neuronal patterns solidify more rapidly when repetitive attention is paid to them.
I am not sure I understand exactly what all of that means except to say that it is pretty freakin cool. It means that if you want to change, you can change; and you can change anything, even the most entrenched bad habits and negative patterns of behavior. That’s great news! Great news for followers of Jesus. Great news for people who want to work for social justice, freeing slaves, lifting people out of poverty and enabling people to be the best they can possibly be.
Reminds me of something that the apostle Paul said in Romans 12:2 – “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Sounds like the first century summary of the above cutting edge research. From another angle, Paul was saying, yes, indeed, you can teach an old dog new tricks, all day every day. Paul knew significant life change is possible. God knows it’s possible, because he created us with the capability for significant life change already inside of us. Yes!!
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