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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Persevering Is a Habit

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So Is Not Persevering

Persevering means steadily moving toward your desired outcome regardless of setbacks or obstacles, adjusting course as you go.

Perseverance is the P in IAP. If you don’t create a plan for getting back on track when you (inevitably) can’t or don’t follow through with your intention, one misstep can easily do you in. Your brain essentially reads it as an “end process” command, so that’s exactly what it directs you to do.

Until your brain learns to read missteps differently, you have to refocus and redirect it to get back on track. That requires System 2 attention.

Here are some steps you can take.

  1. Pause. Acknowledge what happened. Check to see if you got some new information from the experience. Maybe you did; maybe you didn’t. If you did, how can you incorporate the new information into your intention or action?
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  2. Consider your desired outcome. Use the Desired Outcome worksheet if you find that helpful. Is this something you really want? If not, go ahead and “end process.” If it is something you want:
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  3. Make a new commitment to your intention. Communicate your intention to yourself by more than just thinking about it. Fill out a new IAP Card (adjusted based on the new information, if applicable). Read your intention out loud or communicate it to another person.
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  4. Focus on your new intention, not on the previous one. In fact, tear up the old IAP card and toss it into the trash. Move forward instead of thinking backward.
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  5. Train your brain to “pause and refresh” by rewarding yourself each time you do it. It’s a habit like any other habit. If your existing habit is to “end process,” you need to reward yourself for changing it to “pause and refresh.”

Setbacks and obstacles are part of life. There’s no point chastising yourself over them, making excuses, or allowing them more power and control than they deserve. Just take a moment to assess your situation, decide what to do next, and take that step.

Perseverance is key to reprogramming your brain’s autopilot. And the key to perseverance is pausing.

Storying: It’s a Lot Like Breathing

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Just as breathing is automatic, and you can’t decide to stop breathing, storying is automatic, and you can’t decide to stop storying.

Your unconscious (System 1) monitors and manages your physical functions such as alertness, arousal, breathing, circulation, and digestion. Actions you take, including many of the lifestyle choices you make—as well as the circumstances of your life—can affect these functions.

You can consciously attend to some of them—breathing, for example—some of the time. But you can’t attend to any of them all the time. And you can’t consciously control them because you don’t have enough System 2 bandwidth to handle the job.

In addition to maintaining homeostasis by managing physical functions, System 1 also manages things like your sensory perceptions, your awareness of being located in space and time, your immediate reactions to events, and the vast majority of choices you make each day.

You can consciously attend to some of these functions, too, some of the time. But you can’t prevent System 1 from managing your mental processes and your real-time reactions any more than you can prevent it from managing physical functions. Although you might wish to have more say, moment-to-moment, it’s good that you don’t.

Storying Is Automatic.

One of the mental activities System 1 regularly engages in is weaving your experiences into coherent stories. I call this storying, because there doesn’t seem to be a better word to describe it. Storytelling and narrating both describe relating a story in some manner: either something that already happened or something that is—or is being—made up. Your brain is neither relating a factual account of past or present events, nor is it fabricating your stories out of thin air. Editing may be a more accurate term, but that implies the preexistence of a story to be edited.

The process of storying includes interpreting events and experiences as they occur for meaning and relevance, deciding which details are worth remembering, adding or subtracting for effect and coherence, reorganizing sequences, if necessary, and incorporating the resulting story into your ongoing life story based on your current beliefs and model of the world. Your brain is so good at this and does it with such speed that you aren’t even aware it’s happening.

Just as breathing is automatic, and you can’t decide to stop breathing, storying is automatic, and you can’t decide to stop storying. (Your brain is you, so you are storying, whether or not you’re conscious of doing it.)

There’s No Such Thing as a True Story.

But just as you can consciously focus your attention on your breathing to calm yourself or remind yourself to be present, you can consciously focus your attention on your brain’s storying, at least from time to time. You can learn to be skeptical of the stories your brain spins. You can allow for the possibility that your stories are often interpretations, explanations, rationalizations, and justifications. No matter how satisfying, they are not true, not fact, not an accurate reflection of reality. Your unconscious may be more or less biased than another person’s unconscious, but everyone is biased to one extent or another.

We are the great masterworks of our own storytelling minds—figments of our own imaginations. We think of ourselves as very stable and real. But our memories constrain our self-creation less than we think, and they are constantly being distorted by our hopes and dreams. Until the day we die, we are living the story of our lives. And, like a novel in process, our life stories are always changing and evolving, being edited, rewritten, and embellished by an unreliable narrator. We are, in large part, our personal stories. And those stories are more truthy than true. —Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal

Storying doesn’t just help you make sense of your own world; it also helps you make sense of the rest of the world. And you’re not the only person storying. Everyone else is doing it, too. Consider the implications.

A Neuro-Mythical Creation Story

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First I have to dispense with the Monty Python meme: and now for something completely different! Nearly 20 years ago, I took a mythology class right after I finished Biological Psychology. Lots of writing was required in the mythology class, one of the assignments being a creation story. At the time, I described what I wrote as “very loosely based on Buddhism and quantum physics’ theory of the unified field.”

I didn’t yet know about the distinctions of System 1 and System 2 because they were just being made. And although I knew what dopamine was, I wasn’t aware of the important role it plays in so many areas of our lives. When I read the piece now, it seems to be “very loosely based on” dopamine (which is desire), the relationship between wanting and liking, and by extension, System 1 and System 2.

The Yearning of Desire

In the beginning, All was One, and the One was nameless and without form. Within the One existed All Things. But there were no distinctions within the One: no thing was separate from any other thing. Countless aeons passed, yet there was no experience within the One of the passage of time. Gradually, from within the center of the One, arose the beginning of Desire. At first Desire was like a small bubble rising to the surface of a perfectly still lake. At first Desire was only the softest whisper of the wind. Desire wanted to give form to the formless and to name the nameless. Desire yearned for forms to touch and to surrender to.

As more aeons passed, Desire continued to grow within the One. Desire pulsed within the center of the One, louder and stronger, and the pulsing of Desire gave form to Spirit, that which inhabits all and everything. Spirit allowed himself to be inspired by Desire and to contemplate all the possibilities that form could take. Spirit saw that formlessness needed form, just as form needs formlessness. Spirit saw that formlessness needed form to complete itself. Spirit then dreamed the dream of the universe taking form, from its beginning to its end, which was not really an end but only a return to formlessness. As Spirit dreamed the dream of creation, Desire allowed herself to be infused with Spirit, and as she did, she took the shape of a large, graceful bird, covered in the palest of green iridescent feathers. Spirit was the air that she breathed.

Spirit longed for the forms that he had dreamed of. And Spirit longed to be inhaled by Desire, just as Desire longed to breathe Spirit. With each inhalation of Spirit, Desire flapped her pale wings. As the flapping of her wings increased, the colors of her feathers deepened into verdigris and copper, turquoise and silver, aqua and gold. She spread her wings and flew in a wide, lazy arc, and she sang the purest, most exquisite songs, whose haunting echoes trailed behind her. She coasted on the currents of air that were Spirit.

As Desire breathed in more of Spirit, she too began to visualize the forms that Spirit had dreamed of. As her yearning increased, so did the flapping of her wings. Her tail feathers grew longer and their color changed from pale green to deep red. She swooped and glided through Spirit, inhaling more and more of his visions. The feathers of her body turned crimson and saffron. Desire felt something growing inside her, in the same place where her yearning had first begun its delicate pulsing so many aeons ago. She flapped her wings again and soared upward. An indigo band formed around her neck. Her singing became louder, more rhythmic, and more intense. It filled the entire universe with its insistent, rapturous vibrations. Spirit was enthralled by the songs of Desire and continued to fill her with the countless forms he had dreamed of.

Desire was full of a longing so powerful that she thought it could never be filled. The feathers of her head changed to amethyst and violet, and a royal purple crest took shape along the top and back. She opened her mouth to cry out but no sounds of any kind emerged, neither cry nor song. Instead, when she opened her mouth the countless forms of the universe began to spill out into the air, into Spirit. Each time she opened her mouth more forms issued forth until everything that Spirit dreamed had been given its form. Spirit was satisfied because he was everywhere, inhabiting all of the forms of the universe. But Desire, without whom no form could exist, could not touch them, could not fully satisfy her yearning.

It is the nature of Desire to remain unfulfilled. And we, too, who were given birth through Desire, know that no matter what we have, something is always missing. Though Spirit fills us and gives us joy, there is a place in our hearts that it cannot touch. Desire is the permanent longing in our hearts for home, for the One, for formlessness.

Desire animates us, motivates us, and energizes us. It’s a powerful, creative force. Dopamine propels us toward what we are missing because:

Our brains were not designed for us to sit around contemplating what we already have. —Dr. Loretta Graziano Breuning

To Diverge or Not to Diverge:
That Is the Question

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Divergent thinking is a way of addressing problems by looking for multiple answers or solutions rather than trying to find the one right answer. Looking for the one right answer is an example of convergent thinking. The assumption underlying convergent thinking is that the number of options and possibilities is limited. The assumption underlying divergent thinking is that there are always more options to consider.

According to Mark A. Smith, Ph.D., divergent thinking occurs in a spontaneous, free-flowing ‘non-linear’ manner, while the process of convergent thinking is systematic and linear.

You probably have a preference for one type of thinking or another, but we’re all capable of thinking both ways—and neither way is better than the other. The important thing is to understand how they work and know when to apply them. Sometimes that means thinking outside your comfort zone.

Creative Creativity Testing

Divergent thinking is essential in both the arts and the sciences. In fact, it’s such an important element of any form of creativity that many creativity tests are often really divergent thinking tests.

One example you’ve probably heard of, the Alternative Uses Test, asks you to come up with as many uncommon or unusual uses as you can for a common object, such as a brick, a paperclip, a toothpick, a knife, or a ping pong ball.

However, another test, the Remote Associates Test (or RAT), which was originally deemed a measure of divergent thinking, turns out to measure convergent thinking instead. It asks you to identify the fourth word that goes with all three provided words. For example, the word that goes with paint, doll, and cat is house: house paint, dollhouse, and house cat (or…you know). If you’d like to take the Remote Associates Test online, click here.

These two tests do a good job of clarifying the difference between divergent and convergent thinking. The first asks you to generate multiple responses (quantity over quality). The second asks you to generate the one right answer (quality over quantity). If you are habitually a convergent thinker, you may struggle with the task of finding multiple uncommon uses for a brick or a paperclip. If you are habitually a divergent thinker, you may have difficulty focusing your efforts on finding one word (in the RAT test), rather than several.

This or/and That?

Your habitual thinking style, whatever it is, feels natural and normal to you. Your brain is inclined toward habits of thinking just as much as it is inclined toward habits of behavior.

A limitation of convergent thinking is that it lends itself to seeing all issues in terms of either/or, black/white, yes/no, or pro/con. So instead of looking for the best answer or solution to a problem, you end up trying to choose between the two alternatives you happen to have identified. And because of the way your brain works, the alternatives you identified are likely to be part of the gang of usual suspects.

A limitation of divergent thinking is that it lends itself to the belief that there are multiple possible solutions for all problems. So instead of looking for the best answer or solution to a problem, you keep looking for more solutions—investing more time and energy than may be warranted, and because of the way your brain works, perhaps failing to take any action at all.

The title of this post poses a question. What’s the answer?

Permission to Fail

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Here’s a handful of quotes to inspire you to fail and fail again because failure is an essential part of the creative process. It’s also a part of life.

If you’re not failing, maybe it’s because you’re not trying hard enough.

So go out there and fail better, fail faster. Rack up as many failures as you possibly can!

An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. –Edwin Land

Success is going from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. –Winston Churchill

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything. –E. J. Phelps

It takes sixty-five thousand errors before you are qualified to make a rocket. –Werhner von Braun

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. –Ken Robinson

Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. –Leonard Cohen

I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game-winning shot… and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that’s precisely why I succeed. –Michael Jordan

To develop working ideas efficiently, I try to fail as fast as I can. –Richard P. Feynman

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success. –Thomas J. Watson

Failure is a bruise, not a tattoo. –Jon Sinclair

An inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. If he succeeds once then he’s in. –Charles Kettering

I failed my way to success. –Thomas Edison

Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. –Samuel Beckettt

To be wrong is nothing unless you continue to remember it. –Confucius

Also:

The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. –Linus Pauling

If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied. –Alfred Nobel

I’m a perfectionist, which I think is a mistake. –Michelle Shocked

So try not to be too attached to any of the ideas you currently have or to take failure personally. Use the results—good or bad—as feedback not as evidence. And begin again.

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677