As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

Nice quote no doubt, but pardon me for being a little pedantic.

https://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thore...

"As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Misattribution. By Wilfred Arlan Peterson in his The Art of Living, Day by Day: Three Hundred and Sixty-five Thoughts, Ideas, Ideals, Experiences, Adventures, Inspirations, to Enrich Your Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) p. 77 "

I have no idea how thoroughly researched the misattributions website is.

You may well be right, I just love the quote and googling part of it I found an attribution to Henry David Thoreau.

Extremely well-put

Well-put, indeed, and true. Some things make us think/feel better, over time. Some things make us think/feel worse, over time.

The twin tricks are: to choose the right things, and to do them over and over again. Not easy tricks to learn, from the evidence.

Emphasis on thinking is often misplaced. It's pretty much impossible to "think" yourself happy when sad, or think yourself into being a competent person when you think you're worthless. But deciding to do some particular action can go a long way.

From the wiki page of one of my favorite modern pysch methods:

"Behavior is made up of these four components: acting, thinking, feeling, and physiology... We have considerable control or choice over the first two of these, and little ability to directly choose the latter two. As these four components are closely intertwined, the choices we make in our thinking and acting greatly affect our feeling and physiology." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasser%27s_choice_theory)

True a million times over. In most contexts, trying to repress your emotions (emotion or expressive suppression) is the most damaging response you can have. It destroys executive performance and cognitive function and chronic suppression is associated with a host of disturbances (especially depression) and is even correlated with suicidal ideation.

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/emo/15/1/78/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2839199/

http://spl.stanford.edu/pdfs/2003/Gross%20&%20John.pdf

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sltb.12076/abstra...

Read about emotional intelligence:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

The real way to change your brain for the better (or at least slow its decline) is to sleep (5) and eat right (3) at regular intervals (7), avoid inactivity (1) (6), get regular sunlight (2) and exercise (4), be moderately (eu)stressed (challenge yourself mentally (9) and physically), avoid chronic excessive stress (10), fast (or just skip meals) occasionally (8) and have a rich social life (1).

Sources:

(1) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Karin_Volkers/publicati... and http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v13/n3/full/nrn3151.html

(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3448747/

(3) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.23944/pdf

(4) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2796.2010....

(5) http://journals.lww.com/co-psychiatry/Abstract/2014/11000/Im...

(6) http://europepmc.org/articles/pmc3915771

(7) https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kelly_Baron2/publicatio... and http://www.pnas.org/content/111/47/16647.long

(8) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3206295/

(9) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4227476/ and http://mggu-sh.ru/ipgit/Kupriyanov_Eustres.pdf

(10) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410434/

(edit to match points to sources)

I'm surprised you left out language learning and video games, given the research that's been accumulating over the past decade.

I'm not familiar with any body of research backing up video games - I've found some actually that indicated the opposite. But I'd love if you shared!

Here's one (behind paywall unfortunately) by the Max Planck Institute for Human Development that "found significant gray matter (GM) increase in right hippocampal formation (HC), right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral cerebellum in the training group" that was trained for 2 months for at least 30 min per day with a platformer game:-

http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v19/n2/pdf/mp2013120a.pdf

But it seems brain training games don't seem to provide any conclusive benifit:- http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus...

What did the control group do instead? It seems that video games would be a great replacement/complement to the crossword puzzles people do in their elder years.

While you have a career or if you have a hobby, I suspect any new skill that you practiced would lead to similar mental simulation.

That falls under "challenge yourself mentally" I would think.

Today on leg strength vs. brain health: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10594516

This is completely normal, and we call it "practise".

The article articulates both sides of the argument. Reasoning from chemistry/physics principles, there shouldn't be anything fundamentally "non-malleable" in our brains.

Scientifically, we are probably relatively far from that moment, but in the entirety of time any brain damage, disease, deficiency will be fixable

Right now that's just empty speculation - presently we have little idea how the brain works so all we can do is try to reduce damage. Not a sexy message, but one you can hang your hat on.

Yes you can think yourself into a different person.

I thought myself into being 40kg (90lb) lighter in 40 weeks without exercise.

http://weightloss40kgin40weekswithoutexercise.com/

You can think whatever.