We tend to think of our brains as these highly complex organs—and they are—but when it comes to how they impact our behavior, they are actually quite primitive. What your brain wants is very simple: food, sex, comfort, good feelings and social acceptance.
Most of this is the biological imperative. Your brain evolved to ensure you survive and procreate. You survive by eating and being part of a social group. Sex is the drive to continue the species. In a sense, if that’s working, your brain’s job its done. The rest of it is just feeling good. That’s why we have addictions, bad habits, we do things we know are bad for us because they feel good in the short term.
It can be very counterproductive. And that’s why “change” is difficult.
A lot of you out there are thinking about New Year’s Resolutions right about now. Statistically, 46% of people have or will make New Year’s Resolutions. And statistically, only 8% of them will actually achieve them. There are a lot of reasons for this. Let’s explore that.
Common mistakes in achieving change
Perhaps your resolution is just too vague – If you start the New Year thinking: “My goal is to lose weight.” What does that even mean? Lose 1 pound? Lose 100 pounds? You could just stop drinking water for a day and “lose weight.” You’ve got to say: “I’m going to lose 15 pounds in two months and here is exactly how I’m going to do it.”
Your goals need to be SMART. And that’s an acronym: S-M-A-R-T. That stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Based.
Specific, i.e, lose 15 pounds. Measurable, i.e. 15 pounds. Attainable, i.e. 15 pounds in 20 months, not by next week. Relevant, i.e, your goal isn’t to become an Air Force pilot, it’s to lose 15 pounds. And Time-bound, i.e., you will lose that weight in 2 months.
That’s one way to beat your brain. You take the goals out of your brain and you use your MIND and write down what it is you want and how you are going to get it. Then it’s on a piece of paper and your animal, survival-oriented brain can’t mess with it.
You don’t have the proper knowledge – Going back to losing weight. Do you know what makes you overweight? Do you think you can exercise away the fat? Do you think you can just count calories? Do you buy “low fat” foods, thinking it will help you lose weight? Because all of these things are wrong.
It’s important to get a clear understanding of what you want and what it takes to get it. Obviously, we have Google, which can be helpful but might also lead you in the wrong direction. The best way to learn what it takes to achieve your goals is to talk about it with someone who has already achieved what you want to achieve. You can search for a sort of mentor, or one incredibly useful tool is message boards. The fifth most popular website in the world, reddit.com contains communities for nearly everything you can imagine. There are weight loss communities where people will tell you what worked for them and you are free to ask questions.
You start and you quickly lose steam – This is probably the most common issue. We are all pumped to lose weight (or whatever) on January 2nd and we do really well for a couple of weeks. Statistically, 30% people give up on their New Year’s resolutions after the first week, and it continues to fall off as more time passes.
Staying disciplined is one of life’s biggest challenges for many people. And those people you see who seem to do it flawlessly have probably put a lot of work and effort into training themselves to be that way.
There are some tricks. One of the most powerful is to anchor your goals to a “Why.” Ask yourself why you want to lose weight (or whatever it is). And you have to go deep. If your why is “so I’ll be healthy” or “so I’ll look better” or “so I’ll feel better,” this probably isn’t good enough. These are largely superficial reasons.
You have to anchor your “why” to something deep in your internal values. This might be family, or being consistent and congruent with who you are as a person. I always get a “Why” out of my new patients and I find the most powerful ones are family. When someone wants to get healthy, it is so they can see their children grow up, get married, meet their grandkids. It’s so they have the energy to be good husbands/wives, parents, be able to take care of their own parents and things like this.
Components of discipline
There are components of discipline you should be aware of. The first is desire. You have to really want it. You have to REALLY want it. If you can’t do it, you don’t want it enough. That’s totally up to you and there are no tricks or shortcuts anyone can offer you. If you don’t really want it, that’s the end of the story.
Imagination, visualization and the long-term. You have to imagine and connect with yourself in the long-term. You have to imagine your future self as who you want to be. Do visualization practices. Imagine yourself skinny. Imagine yourself with energy, playing with your grandkids and not getting tired. Imagine yourself eating and enjoying healthy food.
Then you have to connect your short-term actions to that long-term visualization. If you’re about to put a donut in your mouth, ask yourself if this is going to get you closer or further away from those things you envision for your future.
Doing this requires what some people call an “executive self” or “mediator.” In a sense, you split your own personality. There is, and always will be, that part of yourself that wants what the animal brain wants—comfort, dopamine from sugar, good feelings in the short-term. You have to establish a “boss” that doesn’t allow the smaller self to win. Ask yourself, “Who’s in control?” Is it your small, animal self, or is it the Executive? The Executive KNOWS that donut is bad. The Executive KNOWS being lazy and not exercising will snowball and you’ll end up skipping days, weeks or just eventually give up. Give the Executive (your higher self) all the actual decision-making power.
Then you have to anticipate obstacles – Try this exercise. Sit down with a piece of paper and write down things you think or know will throw you off course, then write down how you will respond to them. For example, if you are trying to lose weight and you know every Thursday, your office has lunch and there are always your favorite little chocolates involved, ask yourself How are you going to resist those? Maybe you tell your colleagues to give you a hard time if you reach for the chocolates. Maybe you bring your own healthy dessert (like cocoa fat bombs) and eat those instead so you don’t feel left out.
Try to truly anticipate your obstacles. Does your husband always eat unhealthy food? How are you going to deal with that? Do you have a standing date with a friend to Chic-fil-A? How are you going to deal with that? Get specific, write things down, follow your own plan.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
There is an entire branch of psychology/therapy dedicated to overcoming the self-defeating aspects of yourself. And rather than have you go in to a therapist’s office and talk over your problems, childhood, mother, etc., you identify problem areas in your thinking and actually go out into the world and apply techniques to overcome them. Here are a few great examples of some of those techniques and how they might benefit you as you reach for your goals.
First, you have to realize that the pathway from your mind to the real world flows in one direction. That is: thoughts–>feelings –>actions
If you can catch the thoughts, the rest of the process doesn’t even happen. A great little trick is to wear a rubber band around your wrist. Take notice of every time you think about, say, a sugary snack. When that snack pops into your head, or that craving for “something” (you know what I’m talking about), snap that rubber band on your wrist. And I mean really snap it so it hurts.
Your animal brain loves pleasure, and it equally HATES pain. If you start associating thoughts of sugary snacks with pain, your brain will eventually be scared to have those sorts of thoughts.
This takes time and vigilance. And by the time you start controlling your thoughts, your wrist will be red and quite sore.
Another trick is journaling. Expressing yourself is very liberating. You get those thoughts and feelings outside of yourself. And here’s really the best part: you get to see progress on a visceral level.
If you start at Day One and your first entry is: “Oh my God! I want a donut soooo bad! I went for a jog and my lungs were on fire and my legs hurt and I felt stupid running down the street and I hate it.” If you keep it up, you’ll notice six weeks later an entry that says, “I really enjoyed that salmon with green beans I had for dinner last night. And because my kid had a dance recital, I had to skip jogging and I felt like something was missing from my day.” When you see that sort of progress, it makes you realize that you CAN do it and it encourages you to keep going.
Another great trick is to schedule “me time” and rewards into your day. A big problem for people trying to make changes in their life is that they start out so pumped and excited, and they hit the ground running because they are MOTIVATED. A few days, a week, a month goes by and motivation disappears because eating healthy, exercising or whatever becomes boring and routine and you’re not getting the results you want as quickly as you think you should. You feel beat down because you’ve been just working yourself over for what seems like forever.
You need to indulge your animal brain/smaller self a little bit. AND THAT DOES NOT MEAN BY BEING LAZY AND EATING BAD FOOD. It means scheduling yourself fun and relaxing “me time” moments into your day, week, month, etc. Examples might be going to see a movie. It might be sitting in a steam sauna at the gym. It might be playing your guitar for an hour every couple of days. It’s up to you, and that’s the beauty part because you get to decide what’s fun and let yourself enjoy it.
Meditation
I can’t say enough about the power of meditation. It’s something that is very difficult to teach, especially in a short section at the end of an article.
I encourage you to research it yourself and start teaching yourself because it’s a very personal experience. When practiced consistently, it allows you to take control of yourself and your thoughts.
The idea is not to connect to the universe or God or have visions or anything like this. The real, true objective of meditation is stillness. You will have thoughts pop into your mind. With meditation, you can dissolve them or push them aside or just learn to give them no power and see them objectively.
You start to realize that thoughts and feelings are just these “things” that happen, sort of like a car passing by. They aren’t you. They have very little to do with you actually, and you can learn to pay them no mind.
That craving for a donut. That’s not you. That’s just some silly “thing” your brain threw at you and it doesn’t matter. It’s separate from yourself.
The best advice I can give you for getting into this is start getting on YouTube and looking for guided meditations that are catered to your needs and goals.
You can find a guided meditation for losing weight, for getting over a bad relationship, for quitting smoking, for getting better sleep, for making more money. There is about anything you can think of.
Some are better than others. Some are terrible. You have to experiment and commit to it. And eventually, you want to move away from guided meditations and just control your own meditation, but that’s a start.
Beating your brain is work. It’s actual work that requires vigilance and consistently making choices. But you can do it. You really can. I see people do it every day.
