Beliefs Archives - Page 2 of 24

12 Years After

April 25, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Twelve years ago this month, I headed off on the path I came to call Farther to Go! I was on a path of sorts at the time—well, on a sidewalk, anyway, heading west on Academy, into what I tend to refer to as the (expletive deleted) New Mexico wind—when I experienced a profound moment of ferocious dissatisfaction. It’s true that the wind had something to do with it, but the wind was also emblematic of my then current state of affairs and my feeling about it.

I wasn’t entirely sure where the new path would lead, I had no idea what I would find out along the way or who I would encounter, and there was certainly no inkling of Farther to Go! on the horizon.

During the past 12 years, I’ve read an insane amount of information about the brain and behavior. Many, but not all, of the books are identified on the Reading List page on my website. That list doesn’t include all the articles and other materials I’ve accessed. All my bookshelves and file drawers are maxed out. There’s been a lot of input into the system (me, that is; into my system).

In addition to applying what I learned to my own life, I’ve written hundreds of blog posts, articles, and newsletters, produced countless handouts and exercises, and created workshop and course materials galore. The 36 3-ring binders lined up on the desk behind me can attest to my output.

I was armed with a small amount of knowledge about the brain and behavior when I managed to look up at exactly the right moment to take advantage of the explosion of research in this arena. It was serendipitous to a great extent.

What kind of surprises me now is how well what I’ve learned has held up. Over the course of these 12 years, I have significantly revised my perception of only the four key elements outlined below.

Dopamine

Dopamine was long considered to be the pleasure neurochemical. A “hit” of dopamine was thought to be like a hit of a drug such as cocaine or heroin (more metaphorically than factually). This was still the prevailing view when I first learned about the brain’s reward system. Many people haven’t yet let go of this mistaken idea, which has led to some really silly concepts like dopamine detoxing.

Fortunately, I encountered the work of Kent Berridge early in my exploration and research. He’s an expert on dopamine and rewards and his work set me straight and helped me understand how essential rewards are in regard to behavior, whether we’re aware of them or not.

Dopamine is the wanting neurochemical. It’s associated with anticipation or craving or desire. When we attain what we anticipate, crave, or desire, other neurochemicals referred to as liking neurochemicals are released. Liking neurochemicals such as serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphin generate feelings of pleasure.

Dopamine motivates us to move (physically as well as psychologically), to pursue what we want, to take action. This wanting system is considered to be robust, while the liking system is considered fragile. Our experience of pleasure waxes and wanes, but wanting is always with us. This isn’t a personal problem or a design flaw; wanting is absolutely essential for both surviving and thriving.

Rewards

In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg described what he calls the habit loop, which consists of a cue, a behavior, and a reward. This was a bit of a revolutionary idea because we tend to think of a habit strictly in terms of behavior. Duhigg’s research led him to see that all three parts of the habit loop had to be in place in order for the brain to initiate, run, and end the habit.

That means that if we want to create a new habit, we need to determine what the cue will be, what the behavior will be, and how we will reward ourselves. I think this is accurate.

But Duhigg says that if we want to change a habit, we have to identify the reward we’re getting from the current behavior and substitute a new behavior that will give us the same reward. He makes a compelling case in his book. The problem, though, is that as far as the brain is concerned, liking neurochemicals are the reward, while to us a reward is something tangible or meaningful or perhaps symbolic.

Trying to identify a reward we’re getting for an existing behavior is like trying to figure out why we have a tendency to react the way we do to rain or a particular type of music or stray dogs or umbrella thorn trees. We can’t possibly figure that out with any degree of certainty—and even if we could, it wouldn’t make any difference.

In the case of changing a habit, what’s important is to be consistent about providing a reward for the new behavior until the brain takes over the job of releasing liking neurochemicals without the added stimulus.

Berridge is helpful here, too. He points out that our conscious perception of the reward we’re getting is essentially a story that may or may not have anything to do with what’s going on in the brain. The purpose of a reward is to get the brain to pay attention to a desirable behavior we just engaged in to increase the likelihood we will do it again. It’s positive reinforcement, plain and simple. It doesn’t matter if the reward we supply is related in any way to the behavior. It just has to be something we like so the brain will release liking neurochemicals. (I’ve done two consecutive 30-Day Challenges based on the same behavior, each with a different reward. Neither reward has anything to do with the behavior; both rewards have been extremely motivating.)

System 2

Although he didn’t come up with the terms—and dual-process theory was not a new idea—Daniel Kahneman did popularize the concepts of “System 1” and “System 2” in his best-seller, Thinking, Fast and Slow.

According to dual process theory, the unconscious part of the brain, System 1, is “fast,” meaning it processes 11 million bits of information at a time, while consciousness, System 2, is “slow” by contrast, as it can only process 40 bits of information at a time. There are many other significant differences between conscious and unconscious processing.

Kahneman, who died recently, won a Nobel Prize. He was considered a genius. I think that’s why it didn’t initially occur to me to question this binary division of thinking processes. But doubts started creeping in quite a few years ago. The characteristics attributed to System 2 thinking simply cannot be applied across the board to conscious thought. (There are even some researchers who question whether or not there is such a thing as “conscious thought.”)

After grappling with the problem for a while, I concluded that System 2 is a part of consciousness—a very, very small part of it, one that we access quite infrequently, possibly never. If we use Freud’s iceberg to represent consciousness and the unconscious, with consciousness being the tip of the iceberg, then System 2 is the tip of the tip. I’ve come to refer to the rest of conscious thought as ordinary consciousness. It has some attributes in common with System 1 and some attributes in common with System 2. Most of the time the stream of consciousness just flows through our minds, carrying us along with it.

Ordinary consciousness can be extremely useful and it has a role in creating transformational change, but accessing System 2 is essential for it. If we believe we’re accessing System 2 thinking just by being awake, we’re missing the boat entirely.

Autopilot

It seems hard to believe that the scientific estimate for how much of our behavior is outside conscious control was once a mere 40%—and that 40% was hard for a lot of people to swallow. Neuroscience has now concluded, logically, that 100% of our behavior is generated by our unconscious.

“Autopilot” is the short-hand term for this. It’s somewhat of a misnomer, though, because it was intended to contrast with the supposedly conscious “pilot” that makes intentional rather than automatic choices. But consciousness can’t and doesn’t make moment-to-moment choices.

Accessing System 2 can provide us with some ability to steer our personal ship in terms of determining direction and affecting future outcomes. But it can’t affect the choices we’re making now or the outcomes we’re getting as a result.

Duhigg’s conception of what happens at the end of a habit loop is that the brain is returned to conscious control. This is a perspective from the point of view of ordinary consciousness. It implies, first, that the brain is normally under conscious control, which it isn’t. Second, it fails to take into consideration that the unconscious is attending to multiple things at the same time, which means it is generating multiple action sequences, not just one. So the idea that the brain is “on autopilot” for the duration of a habit and then returned to the control of the pilot is both inaccurate and simplistic.

Habits are a bit different than the rest of our so-called autopilot behavior, but the fact remains that all of our behavior is initiated by the unconscious. If that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t survive long enough to get to the point of contemplating thriving.

Provisional Assessments

There are bound to be other conclusions that will be overturned by the ongoing research into how the brain works. So it’s useful to consider the conclusions we’ve arrived at thus far as provisional assessments. Provisional assessments are essential because they give us something to work with and to test, and they indicate new directions for further examination.

I’m excited to keep learning in this area. I don’t think there is any other exploration as challenging and potentially rewarding as this: humans investigating our own internal operational systems from the perspectives of our internal operational systems. Some contortionism required!

Here’s to many more years of learning—and of overturning.

It’s All about the Action

April 12, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

“I think therefore I am.” So declared Rene Descartes sometime in 1640.

Cogito ergo sum! was the culmination of his attempt to identify something he could be certain of, some bedrock truth of which there was no doubt.

Even he knew, way back then, that sensory perception can be incredibly misleading and was not to be trusted. His thinking led him to wonder if we are all hallucinating our experiences. Or part of the Matrix. These are not new thoughts.

In coming to his conclusion, Descartes assumed a separation between the physical and the mental that many members of the species continue to grapple with, at the same time he elevated the mental beyond all proportion.

Right off the bat, however, the first two words, as translated—“I think”—are totally misleading. They imply agency and intent. It would be more accurate to say “I have thoughts” or better, “thoughts have me.” Most of the thoughts running through our mind at any given time are involuntary and unintended. The best analogy is to the air we breathe.

Having air circulate via the nostrils, throat, lungs, etc. is highly desirable, but (fortunately) it isn’t under our voluntary control. It’s debatable how desirable it is to have thoughts continually circulating in the mind, but circulating thoughts, like circulating air, is not something to take credit for or, in the case of Descartes, crow about.

This is all to say that at least since Descartes, thinking has been assumed to be the crowning glory, so to speak, of the species. Granted, there are some tasks only thinking (i.e., System 2 logical/linear, voluntary/intentional thinking) can and should handle. But that kind of thinking is extremely hard, so we do very little of it. And even when we do it, if we don’t follow it up with action, there isn’t much point to it.

A number of false assumptions follow from the false belief that it’s what we think that matters most. The most significant of these assumptions is:

Understanding something will automatically have an effect on behavior, as will having a desire or an intention to do something.

Two more false assumptions:

We don’t need to pay much conscious attention to what we do.
Only some of the actions we take are worth paying attention to, in any case.

The unconscious part of the brain, however, pays attention to everything we do, including the things we’d really prefer no one—including us—noticed at all. It pays considerably less attention to what we think or even what we think about doing.

What Is the Brain for?

The purpose of the brain is to figure out what to do (what action to take) and then to make those actions happen.

It’s blindingly obvious why we have a brain. We have a brain for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to produce adaptable and complex movements. There is no other reason to have a brain. Think about it. Movement is the only way you have of affecting the world around you. —Daniel Wolpert, neuroscientist

It’s also via the actions we take that the brain figures out how to interpret the information it receives, including who we are and what things mean. It’s via repetitive actions that the brain determines what behaviors to turn into habits and hand off to the basal ganglia to administer. It’s via persistent actions that the brain changes: trajectory, perception, identity, awareness, and areas of attention.

Yes, it’s annoying that the brain pays attention to all our actions—including those we aren’t paying attention to. It’s as if the brain maintains or modifies our mental model of the world according to its own parameters rather than to our wishes. [That was sarcasm. Of course that’s what it’s doing.] But since our wishes, like our thoughts, are fleeting and contradictory and ephemeral, it’s a good thing the brain doesn’t take them seriously because that would result in chaos.

As we know, our moment-to-moment choices—or actions—are not consciously determined. Rather, it’s our unconscious that determines out actions based on its interpretations of the internal and external sensory data it views through our mental model of the world.

Since action is the only way we can affect the world (of which we are a part), then the only way to create change is to get our brain to take different actions than the actions it is currently taking. And that requires modifying the brain’s interpretations of the sensory data it processes.

How does the brain modify its interpretations? By the actions we take. If this sounds like a vicious cycle, it really isn’t. This is where thinking comes into the process. Thinking can provide a bridge between the undesired actions (and outcome) and the desired actions (and outcome). It can do that by identifying the outcome we want, the actions that are likely to produce that outcome, and the contrivance or contrivance we can use to train the brain to take the actions we want it to take.

This is what contrivances are for: to train the brain (our movement organ) to automatically take the actions we want it to take rather than the actions it’s automatically taking now. This is how to use the brain to create a satisfying and meaningful life. The process isn’t complicated or complex. It’s our thoughts about the process that get in the way.

Note: This post is an update of an article in lucidwaking from February 2022. Look for the companion piece next week!

False Beliefs about Motivation

March 22, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Most theories and beliefs about motivation are quite far removed from the neurochemical reality. But theories that ignore the neurochemical basis of motivation are not only not useful, they can also be harmful. We’ll look at three ways beliefs based on these theories can get in our way, but first, let’s review motivation one more time.

Motivation Redux

The purpose of the brain is to figure out what action to initiate based on its interpretation of the circumstances we’re in. Motivation is the mechanism of movement, the mechanism by which we take an action toward a potential reward or away from a potential threat.

My brain may very likely interpret a set of circumstances differently from your brain’s interpretation of the same circumstances. And my brain has been trained by me to identify rewards and threats just as your brain has been trained by you to identify rewards and threats. Therefore, even in extremely similar sets of circumstances, we are likely to have different interpretations and response, and we are likely to take different actions. The processes are the same; the outcomes of those processes differ from person to person.

This brain training started roughly at birth for each of us and has been ongoing since then. We are training our brain daily to either maintain the status quo (continue to interpret circumstances the same way and take the same actions in response to those interpretations) or to change it. It’s far easier to train the brain to maintain the status quo (reinforce it) than it is to train it to change the status quo. Although that’s probably obvious, it bears emphasizing given that the brain is always looking for the path of least resistance. The current status quo is that path of least resistance so it will always be more compelling.

We don’t need to “motivate” ourselves to take action to maintain the status quo. We are already motivated to take the actions we’re currently taking. It’s a mechanical process: no congratulation or castigation is warranted. Because most of this brain training was unconscious rather than intentional, however, we may be more satisfied by some of the actions we’re currently taking—and the outcomes of those actions—than we are by other actions. But whether we’re pleased or not:

The same process of brain training is responsible for all the actions we are currently taking.
Our brain releases wanting and either liking or stress neurochemicals for all the actions we are currently taking.

This neurochemical activity happens outside our awareness, without our moment-to-moment influence, and faster than our 40-bit brain can process. Yet, if we want to create positive, intentional, significant, and sustained change, we have to modify our brain’s neurochemical activity. If we don’t succeed in doing that, we won’t succeed in changing our behavior.

Hopefully that makes it reasonably clear that motivation is motivation is motivation—meaning there are not different kinds of motivation, such as intrinsic and extrinsic. The belief in intrinsic and extrinsic motivation—and the supposed superiority of intrinsic motivation lead us to think that:

1. We Ought to Be Motivated to…

Current motivational theories strongly suggest that we ought to be (intrinsically) motivated to take some actions rather than others. They also suggest that understanding the value or benefit of taking an action ought to lead directly (meaning motivate us) to taking that action.

This ridiculous notion is even applied to children with the expectation that they ought to be motivated to take the actions we want them to take. That’s not how motivation works. Children don’t come pre-motivated to follow arbitrary social rules, for example. You can train children to take an action you want them to take—if that’s your aim—but your chances of success will be greatly enhanced if you use an extrinsic reward.

Neither adults’ brains, nor children’s brains, automatically produce wanting and liking neurochemicals on demand or because it would be convenient for said brains to do so.

Adults who believe not only that they ought to be motivated to take specific actions that they are not currently taking, but also that their lack of motivation reflects badly on them, tend to have a diminished sense of personal agency and self-efficacy. We have to train our brain to be motivated to do what we want it to do. This takes intention, planning, repetition, and perseverance, which we are much less likely to engage in if we believe motivation ought to be automatic.

2. Enjoying an Activity Is an Indicator of Intrinsic Motivation

Current motivational theories place an undue emphasis on the extent to which we find an activity or an endeavor enjoyable or satisfying in-and-of-itself. I addressed this in previous posts on motivation. What I want to point out here is that there are plenty of things we find enjoyable that we would actually prefer not to do because they lead to undesirable outcomes. If they weren’t enjoyable it would be much easier to not do them.

But we’re only motivated to do what we’re motivated to do—that is, what we’ve trained our brain to be motivated to do. So if we want to get a different outcome, we have to train our brain to do something different. Again, this is a mechanical process. There’s no underlying meaning in the fact that you or I are doing something we don’t want to do or are not doing something we want to do. If we want to develop a new behavior we need to artificially generate liking neurochemicals which the brain will eventually take notice of and begin generating dopamine (the wanting neurochemical) in order to get.

We may come to enjoy the new behavior or activity in-and-of-itself or we may not. In any case, the brain will generate the neurochemicals that motivate us to do the thing and get the desired outcome—which is something we need to identify if we want to create change. Focusing on momentary enjoyment rather than long-term satisfaction is extremely short-sighted. It generates unreasonable expectations about the kind of experience we think we should be having. And it keeps us from developing a relationship with our future self: the person our current actions are creating.

3. Using an Extrinsic Reward Is Cheating

This is based on the false belief that doing the thing is not good enough; we also have to be doing it for the right reason. Presumably we have a reason for wanting to do the thing and whatever it is it’s a good enough reason. The point is to do the thing we want to do instead of the thing we don’t want to do—and to be motivated to continue doing it. Extrinsic rewards are excellent contrivances (tools) to facilitate the motivational process.

If we believe we shouldn’t need a reward or that extrinsic rewards are somehow unnatural, we further handicap ourselves in our attempts to create change. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, transformational change is possible but it isn’t probable. We need all the help we can get!

Recognizing the neurochemical nature of motivation and using the process intentionally can help us cut to the chase so we can act as we prefer to act and be who we prefer to be.

This is the third of three posts on motivation. The first one is here. The second one is here.

What Do You Want to Have Done?

March 11, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Common perceptions or definitions of motivation vary somewhat, but most are based on the work of Richard Ryan and Edward Deci, the developers of Self-Determination Theory. Self-Determination Theory incorporates the belief that humans have various needs they attempt to satisfy; it associates extrinsic and intrinsic motivation with the levels of needs Abraham Maslow described in his hierarchy, which was itself a misguided theory of motivation.

Oh, well, humanist psychology seemed like a good idea at the time, as I explained last year. But the fact is that people need air, water, food, sleep, shelter, and other people. Anything else is a preference, not a need. Treating preferences as needs trains your brain to focus on detecting threats (the lack or potential lack of something you’ve convinced your brain to perceive as a need) rather than on seeking rewards. That means it’s another impediment to creating transformational change. It’s also a great way to amp up your anxiety.

Ryan and Deci differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation based on whether you are doing an activity for its inherent satisfaction (your enjoyment of it in the here and now) or for some separable consequence (your potential enjoyment of a future outcome that will or may result from what you’re doing now).

They don’t, however, appear to make much of a distinction between the nature of the outcome (or reward) you are aiming for, as if a cash prize—an extrinsic reward—for correctly estimating the number of marbles in a jar is no different from the joy you experience—an intrinsic reward—when you finally master Corcovado on the saxophone after slogging through weeks or months of practice. (As I mentioned last time, although all motivation is intrinsic, rewards can be extrinsic or intrinsic.)

Just as all humans have six needs, we are all intrinsically motivated to do everything we’re currently doing, regardless of how much—or even if—we’re enjoying those activities. The notion that enjoyment in the here and now is a sign of intrinsic motivation is as nonsensical as the notion that we need respect or acknowledgement or appreciation.

Having Walked

I have walked every day for over 2,000 consecutive days. That’s over five and a half years. I always want to have walked. That hasn’t wavered from the first day to the present day. I wanted to have walked yesterday and the 2,000+ plus previous days, but on any given day—in the here and now—I may or may not want to walk.

Fortunately my walking does not depend on my day-to-day or moment-to-moment enjoyment or desire to walk because I always have a desire to have walked. Long ago, the impulse to walk became a habit. It’s part of my mental model, which is entirely intrinsic. When I don’t want to walk, it’s because I want to do something else. That’s how dopamine, aka motivation, works. But I still want to have walked. And I know that tomorrow I will want to have walked today, so I will walk today.

I’ve been a walker at least since I was three years old and set out on my own to check out the unknown lands beyond the block where I lived. But I didn’t make a commitment to daily walking until five and a half years ago. I couldn’t have known that I want to have walked every single day until after I had some experience with walking every single day. I started out with a 30-day commitment, which provided me with the additional information (experience) that resulted in an ongoing commitment.

After doing it for several years, I now know that having walked is extremely satisfying. Furthermore, the experience of having walked every day for the past 2,000+ days is far more persistently satisfying than any individual experience of walking could possibly be!

Having Written

Writing is an even better example. Over the course of several decades, I wrote a lot of fiction. During that time I subscribed to and read many magazines and books aimed at writers and attended classes, workshops, and conferences for writers. “Writer’s block,” something even non-writers have heard of, is addressed in many of those spaces and places. Although, I was never really afflicted by it, I definitely didn’t always want to write.

It’s said that there are two kinds of writers, those who enjoy writing and those who enjoy editing. I fall into the latter category. However, unless you write, there’s nothing to edit. In the case of writing, as in walking, sometimes I wanted to write and sometimes I didn’t, but I always wanted to have written.

The actual experience of writing is described by very many writers as something they go to great lengths to not do. A Google search for “writing is hard” revealed 2,760,000,000 results. One writer said:

I also hate writing when I have better things to do. Doze, eat cheese and crackers, solve easy Sudoku puzzles, shop for books on the Internet, doze some more. I’ve concluded that even some unpleasant chores are less hateable than writing. Cat box cleaning, evacuating the hard drive of viruses, defeating drain clogs. Sometimes I feel like I would trade a writing obligation for a trip to the emergency room for stitches. More than once I’ve promised the gods in their pantheon a year of my life if they would get me out of a writing commitment.

Although this person talks about a writing obligation and a writing commitment, remember that no one forces anyone into becoming a writer and those who do undertake the writing life could certainly find more enjoyable hobbies or easier or more lucrative ways of making a living. But they don’t.

Here’s a post about all the things you have to do before you can begin writing, including:

Patch all the nail holes in your walls.
Deep clean anything. Some ideas: the washing machine, the bathtub, the kitchen counters.
Try a new recipe that requires an ingredient you have to go to the store to find.

No deadline is required; simply being faced with a blank page can get writers to tackle all the household chores they’ve been putting off.

So if the extent to which you enjoy what you’re doing is a signal of intrinsic motivation, then the logical conclusion is that most writers are not intrinsically motivated. And yet the vast majority of people who write are deeply committed to the writing itself rather than to the possibility of fame, wealth, or even publication—which is fortunate because the chances of achieving any of those things are extremely slim. Whether or not they want to write in this moment, they want to have written.

When you consider your future self—tomorrow’s or next week’s or next month’s version of you—ask yourself what that you would want to have done. What would that you be satisfied or joyful or exhilarated by having done? And then try doing that in the here and now.

This is the second of three posts on motivation. The first one is here.

The Reward System Is Functional

February 27, 2024 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Yes, the reward system is functional, which means that it isn’t conceptual or fanciful—or optional. It’s integral to our survival, and it’s even older than we are: it evolved in worms and flies about a billion years ago. It doesn’t care what your or my opinion about rewards is. Having an opinion about the reward system is like having an opinion about whether or not your car should need gas. No matter how deeply committed to your opinion you are, unless you have a battery operated car, it needs gas. If you fail to put gas in the car, it won’t operate. If you fail to utilize your brain’s reward system, on the other hand, it will operate you. It fulfills a non-optional function that’s essential to survival.

One thing that gets in the way of using rewards intentionally and effectively is the mistaken belief that things like rewarding experiences, benefits, or celebrations are the same thing as rewards. They are not.

Rewarding Experiences Are Not Rewards

You undoubtedly have experiences and engage in activities that feel rewarding to you. All that means is that you enjoy them, which is really neither good nor bad. Some of the experiences or activities people enjoy or find rewarding are the very ones they want to eliminate or change. And the reason these behaviors are difficult to eliminate or change is because they are rewarding (smartphone scrolling, eating unhealthy food, binge watching, buying things, snorting cocaine…).

So it’s extremely important to recognize that rewards and rewarding experiences, while related, are not the same thing. They both elicit “liking” neurochemicals in the brain at the time they are experienced. And some rewarding experiences also involve dopamine, the “wanting” neurochemical. In fact it’s the dopamine, rather than the liking neurochemicals that makes altering some existing behaviors so difficult. This is an example of the reward system operating you.

Rewards utilize dopamine intentionally. Dopamine can help develop creative tension, which increases the motivation to take a specific action or series of actions that you want to take in order to get the anticipated reward. It’s a carrot…if carrots motivate you, that is. I can take or leave carrots, but the opportunity to add new music to my digital playlist always motivates me. Dopamine also puts your brain on notice that this particular action or series of actions is important and it should pay attention.

Experiencing an unmediated rewarding activity is passive. Identifying and using a reward to reinforce behavior change is active.

Rewarding: providing satisfaction or gratification; enjoyment
Reward: an act performed to strengthen approved behavior; reinforcement

You can use rewarding experiences as rewards, but they are not rewards in and of themselves.

Neither Are Benefits

A benefit is something that is advantageous or good. Benefits can be short-term or long-term. They result from actions you take. (Of course, you can also benefit from actions other people take or from fortunate changes in circumstances, but you have no direct control over those things.)

If there were no benefit to you for embarking on a particular course of action (completing a project or goal action plan, changing or starting a habit, or following through on an intention), there would be no point in doing it. Benefits answer the question of why you want to do something. So it’s useful to clearly identify all the benefits that would—or could—accrue if you accomplish what you set out to do.

It seems logical, doesn’t it, that understanding the benefit or beneficial nature of a particular action somehow ought to magically translate into the taking of that action? And yet this isn’t how the brain works. The brain’s reward system is functional, not logical. Benefits are not interpreted by your brain as rewards just because they are good for you. And understanding what benefits may accrue doesn’t have any direct impact on your behavior. Knowing that ordering from the salad side of the lunch menu instead of from the burger side is better for your cholesterol level and maybe your overall health will not make ordering a salad happen. Nor will it turn a salad into a reward or even a rewarding experience.

But you could use a reward to motivate you to order that salad if good health or some aspect of it is a long-term desired outcome.

Celebrations Aren’t Rewards, Either

In behavior-change terms, a celebration is an impromptu acknowledgement, after the fact, of something you’ve accomplished. The difference between a reward and a celebration is in how you use it, not what it is. In order for something to be effective as a reward, you need to crave it. That’s because dopamine is triggered by the expectation of a reward. So in order for you—and your brain—to crave a reward, the reward needs to be (1) something you really enjoy and (2) identified ahead of time.

Celebrations are great! Go ahead and celebrate your successes and accomplishments. But don’t try to substitute celebrations for rewards because they will not help you train your brain to do what you want it to do, which is the point of a reward. If you have trouble identifying suitable rewards, pay attention to how you celebrate and the treats you give yourself. You may be able to use some of those things as rewards.

The Bottom Line

Rewarding experiences and celebrations are enjoyable, and benefits are…beneficial (good for you). But, unlike rewards, they do not serve the function of motivating you to create behavior change. Because the reward system operates at the unconscious level, you can’t simply dismiss it or try to circumvent it. The best course of action is to take advantage of it and work with it. Otherwise, you may unwittingly develop and reinforce behaviors you don’t want. No one sets out to develop undesirable behaviors or habits on purpose. And yet each of us has trained our brain, often unwittingly but via the same process, to engage in every one of the behaviors and habits we now have, both the ones we like and want to keep and the ones we don’t like and want to change or eliminate.

I’m beginning a six-month experiment called Contrivance of the Month. This experiment includes using my newsletter, lucidwaking, to feature an article on the relevant contrivance in one issue and links to worksheets, instructions, and additional information in another issue. The March contrivance, as you may already know or have guessed, is rewards. If you want to play along, you can check out the 2/20/24 issue on the Newsletter page on my website, where you can also subscribe to lucidwaking to keep up with the contrivance content. The next issue with all the links and other good stuff will be published tomorrow, 2/28/24.