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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Inside Week 3 of What Do You Want?

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This is the third guest post by Jean S., who is sharing her experience of participating the 6-week What Do You Want? course. She previously wrote about week 1 and week 2.

More Questions Than Answers

Any time we set out to solve a problem of any sort is a good time to question whether we have found the right problem, first. Creative problem finding was the main focus for week 3 of the What Do You Want? course.

What I am learning is that in making a list of “what I really want is…,” it is useful and interesting at some point to ask of an answer that comes up, “What problem that I have would that solve?”

There is sometimes more than one core reason that we want a thing, more than one need we think it will fill. So keep bouncing off the “want” with another answer to the question, “What problem would this solve?” This is, perhaps, a specialized form of the why? questions of last week. “What problem would that solve?” can help us see where a “want” has many layers, many threads that can be teased out.

Then after asking “What other problem does that solve” and getting perhaps multiple and diverse answers, another question may be asked: “What other ways might there be by which I can get “the thing that I really want?” This is the process of finding the right problem.

Handouts and writing activities in class included exploring one thing we want in more depth by repeatedly asking why? to dig below the first or usual responses our brain serves up to us.

What I Really Want Is… (working with the cards)

In order to keep up with the pace we need in order to take the steps Joycelyn has designed for this process of getting to the heart of the matter in 6 weeks, I find I have to schedule in the writing time each day, or it gets shoved aside more often than not. After all, it’s a course, and I’m not really taking the course if I don’t do the homework. What a coincidence—being able to write every day is one of my prime desires. How sweet!

Embrace Uncertainty

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Embrace Uncertainty

We are wired to crave certainty. For some of us, that means focusing our efforts on getting and maintaining safety and security. For others, it means hedging our bets in regard to anything we undertake. For still others, it means not even starting something without a guarantee of a satisfactory outcome. And for many, it means not stepping out of a narrow and well-worn zone of comfort and familiarity.

We’ve come up with a lot of explanations for the behaviors that go along with trying to fulfill our craving for certainty. In fact, one of the reasons we like explanations is that they make us feel like we understand, and that feeds our craving for certainty. A lot of our explanations are stories spun by the interpreter in our brain. They may be quite wide of the mark in terms of accuracy, so what they’re really giving us is a false sense of certainty. Unfortunately, as far as our brain is concerned—which means as far as we are concerned—a false sense of certainty is almost always preferable to any amount of uncertainty.

Yet people do take enormous risks and undertake challenges and ventures where the outcome is very much in doubt. I’m not talking about the compulsion for engaging in thrill-seeking high-risk behavior. I’m talking about doing something that’s never been done before—like the Wright brothers did—or doing something to bring about change—like Nelson Mandela did. Or doing something we’ve never done before. I’m talking about creating something: a piece of art, a business, a different approach, a change in one corner of the world.

When you start out to do something you have never done before, you can’t know what the outcome will be. Our unconscious causes us to pay more attention to what we might lose than to what we might gain. In trying to avoid loss, we shy away from taking risks or accepting challenges even when the potential payoff might be magnificent. But our unconscious is also notoriously bad at calculating odds, and it doesn’t take randomness and luck into account—both of which are far more significant factors to any outcome than we’d like to believe.

Certainty itself is an emotional state, not an intellectual one. To create a feeling of certainty, the brain must filter out far more information than it processes, which, of course, greatly increases its already high error rate during emotional arousal. In other words, the more certain you feel, the more likely you are wrong. –Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

Life, by its very nature, is risky and enormously uncertain. The truth is that there are no guarantees for any of us for anything. If we want to do more than survive, we might have to step out on a limb once in a while. We might even have to take a leap.

Last week, I was at a luncheon where one of the participants went around the room offering everyone a chance to take one of the tiny cards inside a wicker basket. The card I pulled had “success” on the front. Inside it said:

Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death. –Betty Bender

If there’s something you want to do and the only thing holding you back is uncertainty, try imagining a world where all is preordained, everything is known in advance, and there is no possibility of surprise. Is that really a world you’d want to live in?

[NOTE: This post is the fifth in a series. See also When the Going Gets Grueling, Fortitude: Don’t Leave Home Without It,  Focus: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, and Patience: Learn to Play the Waiting Game.]Enhanced by Zemanta

Inside Week 2 of What Do You Want?

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This is the second guest post by Jean S., who is sharing her experience of participating the 6-week What Do You Want? course. She wrote about week 1 last week.

Inside Week 2 of What Do YOU Want?

Continually look backward asking why?—as we so often do—is sort of like picking at a scab. Does it really help us to heal? Can it take us anywhere new if it’s just a “tired rehashing of the fragmented, misremembered past?”  Asking why? forward instead of backward can be much more fruitful.

The handouts for week 2 of the What Do You Want? course were on looking forward vs. looking backward, which shed more light on the way our brains work. Can we get new experiences in life if we so often ask why? about the past? What matters more: exploring a past we can’t change or exploring what we want for the future so we can get clearer on the changes we can effect.

We think maybe it will help us put the past to rest if we make up “answers” to our why? questions about it. That’s all we can do about it, after all. On the other hand, we can be energized by looking at and probing for what we want to have ahead of us. There is a forward thrust toward truth when we ask why? forward.

Think of a 4-year-old child’s drive to ask why? Children at this time discover the power and vastness of that word why. Sometimes we may suspect that they persist with their why? questions just to annoy us. Yet, really, it’s all new to them. Maybe the only intelligent thing for them to do in their “new to the planet” situation is to keep asking why?

WE are in a “new to the future” situation. It is a vantage point for discovering what we really want our future to look like by asking of each answer we give—or is it get?—why?! If we probe for an answer to each why? that will allow us to deepen our understanding of ourselves and what DOES really matter most to us.

As Joycelyn says, “If you keep asking why? forward, you’ll eventually get to the ultimate answer…to the heart of what’s at stake.” One thing that is clear to me is that I have not yet asked why? enough times. If I find it intimidating to start, once I begin, I find it surprisingly interesting and exhilarating to do. Try it! It’s great for getting to clarity.

The Illusion of Choice

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You always have a choice.

Isn’t that what everyone says? No matter what happens, you can choose how to respond. And if you want things to be different, well then just make different choices.

Making a different choice sounds so simple. And it’s appealing to believe you can do it if you really want to. But if you don’t make a different choice, does that mean you really don’t want to? Does it mean you lack self-control or will power? Does it mean you’re trying to sabotage yourself?

If you believe that you could make a different choice but don’t, why don’t you?

When we believe we could make a different choice, but we fail to do so, we’re forced to explain ourselves—at least to ourselves. So we get busy rationalizing, making excuses, or berating ourselves. It’s the start of a vicious cycle, one that can go on for years or even decades. Not only is this a waste of time, it’s also counterproductive to changing behavior.

The truth is that we don’t always have a choice. In fact, we rarely have a choice. We keep doing the same things we’ve always done because that’s how our brain is wired. It conserves precious energy by turning as many behaviors as possible into routines and habits. Once those routines and habits are in place, they’re extremely difficult to disrupt. When faced with a familiar situation, you and I and everyone else will likely as not do what we’ve always done in that situation, even if we want to make a different choice.

Minute by minute, second by second, the unconscious part of your brain is absorbing and processing an unbelievable amount of data, all but a small fraction of which you’re not consciously aware of. So at the moment you’re faced with that familiar situation, your unconscious is picking up on signals, making connections, and initiating the usual response long before you can consciously entertain the idea of doing something different. When it comes to routines and habits, consciousness is simply no match for the speed of the unconscious brain.

As long as you don’t recognize what’s going on, you’re up against an unseen enemy. The challenge is to use the brain’s labor-saving mechanisms instead of being used by them. That’s where intention comes in.

The time to decide how you want to respond in a familiar situation is not when you’re in that situation but when you have some distance from it and can think clearly about it. If you know what you’re up against, you can come up with a plan to outwit your unseen enemy and even turn it into an ally. The plan involves IAP:

    • Intention
    • Attention
    • Perseverance

The IAP process is based on the way the brain actually works.

(1) Plan ahead. Formulate a clear and specific intention.
(2) Don’t count on remembering. Come up with a way to keep your attention focused on your intention.
(3) Assume you won’t be perfect out of the gate. Your unconscious brain is stubborn and set in its ways. With perseverance, however, your desired response will become the automatic one.

Patience: Learn to Play the Waiting Game

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Patience (New York Public Library)
Patience (New York Public Library)

Whatever it is we want, we want it right now! We are primed for immediate results and instant gratification to a greater extent than we have ever been before. Remember when we had to travel to a theater to see a movie—and we could only see it at certain scheduled times? Wasn’t it great when we could rent or buy VHS tapes or DVDs and watch them in the convenience and comfort of our own homes? Netflix made that even easier by sending DVDs to us in the mail. We only had to travel as far as the mailbox to pick them up. Now streaming a movie is just one of many things we can do instantly. Only a quarter of Netflix customers opt for receiving their movies in the mail. Imagine: by comparison to live streaming, overnight mail delivery of DVDs requires delaying gratification.

The expectation of immediate results comes with a decrease in impulse control and a low tolerance for delays. We don’t want to wait in line—any line. In fact, some of us will pay quite a bit of money to avoid waiting in line. We don’t want to wait to get an appointment. We don’t want to wait for a page on the internet to load. We don’t want to wait for a store or business to open. We don’t want to wait till after dinner to have dessert. We don’t want to wait till we have enough money before we buy something. We don’t want to wait more than two days to have a purchase delivered.

And we are famously unwilling to turn down a smaller reward today in exchange for receiving a bigger reward later.

Getting something we want activates the release of dopamine in the brain. What we really want are those hits of dopamine. After repeated instances of instant gratification, impatience becomes a habitual response. In essence, our brain rewards us for being impatient. But while instant gratification obviously feels good in the moment, it isn’t conducive to the carrying out of long-range plans or the completion of long-term projects. It isn’t conducive to turning down the smaller reward today in order to wait for the bigger one tomorrow—or a year from now.

Impatience does have a place. There are lots of things in life that are not worth waiting for, worth putting up with, or worth spending time and attention on. But the part of our brain that rewards us for instant gratification—the unconscious—doesn’t make distinctions. It’s a stimulus-response machine. Making distinctions requires conscious attention.

Knowing when to delay gratification and being able to control the impulse to go for the immediate reward are crucial to the success of any type of venture—from starting up a business to maintaining an exercise program to cleaning out the garage to completing a course of study. But the strategic application of patience can improve the quality of life for anyone, no matter what their situation.

Giving in to the desire for instant gratification can lead to a short-attention-span theater approach to life, where we’re merely skimming the surface of things, of experiences, and even of other people.

Just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available to vision does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. –Jennifer L. Roberts, Harvard Magazine

Being patient means being willing and able to wait for something instead of hopscotching from one thing to another. Being patient means giving something our full attention, which allows for a deeper and fuller immersion in whatever it is we’re involved in. Patience helps us stay focused on the goal, the prize, the long-term result we’re aiming for. Patience and clarity go hand-in-hand because a busy mind that’s hooked on hits of dopamine is not a peaceful, calm, or clear mind.

So if you find yourself having to wait for something—traffic, a line in a supermarket, equipment at the gym, the food you ordered in a restaurant—use these small opportunities to develop the patience you’ll need in order to accomplish the bigger, more meaningful things in your life.

[NOTE: This post is the fourth in a series. See also When the Going Gets Grueling, Fortitude: Don’t Leave Home Without It, and Focus: Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.]Enhanced by Zemanta

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677