No matter what our circumstances are, we always have a choice about how to think, feel, and react. And if we want to change something, we can simply make a different choice.
Or so we’re told.
If this myth were actually true, there would be no self-help industry because there would be no need for it.
We would all choose positive, productive ways to think, feel, and react that were in our own and others’ best interests. We would all behave rationally all the time.
If we wanted to change a behavior—say a habit—we would simply do so. After all, it isn’t as if we lack information or tools. It isn’t as if we aren’t aware of better alternatives. It isn’t as if we don’t know what it is we would prefer to do. It isn’t as if we haven’t had profound moments of insight—sometimes the same moments of insight—over and over again. It isn’t as if we haven’t been nearly beaten into submission by a frenzy of motivational quotations and exhortations.
On the one hand, it’s appealing to believe the myth, to think that if we really wanted to we could change fundamental things about ourselves just like that!
On the other hand, when we attempt to make one of those different choices and come up short, the natural inclination is to think there must be something wrong with us. We’re stubborn or lazy or lack will power or we’re resistant or don’t really want to. Because if we wanted to we would just do it.
Both the good news and the bad is that it’s simply not true.
The reality is that we rarely have a choice.
The majority of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are the result of automatic brain processes. We operate on autopilot most of the time because that’s how our brain is wired.
The conscious part of the brain—which is the part that thinks logically, sets long-term goals, and can imagine things being different (the source of the desire for change)—processes only about 40 bits of information at a time. The part of the brain that runs us the vast majority of the time—which is completely uninterested in our long-term goals and is intent on maintaining the status quo—processes a whopping 11 million bits of information at a time.
When it comes to our immediate thoughts, feelings, and reactions, there’s no contest between the non-rational unconscious part of the brain (processing 11 million bits of information) and the rational conscious part of the brain (processing 40 bits of information). In almost all cases, we are going to follow the path of least resistance, go with the flow, and think, feel, and do whatever we’ve always thought, felt, and done before.
This is the elephant in the room most change strategies ignore: one part of the brain desires change, while the other part actively resists it.
Is it hopeless then to think we can actually make the changes we want to make—in our own lives and in the wider world? No, it isn’t hopeless at all. But it isn’t going to happen just like that!
Find out more about why the idea that we always have a choice is a destructive myth and what we can do to effect positive changes at the next Monthly Meeting of the Mind (& Brain).