How to Strengthen Your Brain to Envision and Create the Future While Working with the NEWS Compass®

 
 

By: Aviad Goz

Building on BrainEvolve: From Awareness to Action

In our previous article, How the Brain Evolves with the NEWS Compass®, we explored how each direction of the NEWS Compass® aligns with specific brain systems to support growth, transformation, and adaptive leadership. We saw how the brain is naturally wired for navigation when given the right cues.

This follow-up takes it one step further. Now that we understand the architecture, how do we train it?

Below, you’ll find practical, neuroscience-based strategies to strengthen your brain, not just to survive the future, but to shape it. Each N.E.W.S.® direction is paired with targeted brain practices that turn insight into capability.

⬆️N – North: Creating a Compelling Future Reality

🔮 Practice Future Visualization

  • Activate the Default Mode Network (DMN)
  • Imagine your life 3–5 years ahead in rich sensory detail.
  • Ask: Who am I becoming? What impact am I making?
  • Journal or voice-record your vision daily.

Tip: Your brain treats vivid imagination like real experience — rehearse your future to make it familiar.

➡️E – East: Deepening Commitment and Motivation

🔥 Connect to Inner Drivers

  • Activate the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dopaminergic reward systems
  • Reflect on why your vision matters — emotionally and spiritually.
  • Link your goals to values, identity, and contribution.
  • Use music, movement, or storytelling to ignite passion.

Tip: Motivation is not a constant — it’s a brain state. Keep reawakening it through meaning.

⬅️W – West: Structuring and Planning the Path

🧠 Strengthen Executive Thinking

  • Engage the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)
  • Break down your vision into strategic, time-bound goals.
  • Reverse-engineer steps from the future to the present.
  • Use visuals: maps, boards, or timelines.

Tip: Planning creates mental structure — the brain performs better with a clear path.

⬇️S – South: Overcoming Inner Blocks and Acting Forward

🌬 Calm the Fear Circuits

  • Regulate the amygdala through emotional mastery
  • Practice mindfulness or focused breathing to reduce stress.
  • Reframe doubt: from “what if it fails” to “what if it transforms me?”
  • Use safe experiments to stretch your comfort zone.

🚀 Take Small Future-Aligned Actions

  • Activate motor cortex + belief systems
  • Turn vision into micro-actions now.
  • Track and celebrate progress weekly.
  • Reflect regularly: What evidence do I have that I’m becoming who I imagined?

Tip: Action rewires belief. Embodied steps train the brain to trust the future.

🧠 Neuroplasticity: Your Brain Can Change

Your brain is not fixed — it’s shaped by what you repeatedly think, feel, and do.

  • Repetition strengthens circuits.
  • Emotion fuels learning.
  • Reflection integrates experience.
  • Imagination + Action creates lasting change.

Every time you engage the NEWS Compass® directions, you rewire your brain to become more future-capable, *purpose-driven, and *transformational.