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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Is Santa Claus Coming to Town?

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I was standing in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to be ready while mulling over the implications of delayed gratification. But what came to mind was being a child and waiting for Christmas—more particularly, Christmas presents! The weeks leading up involved lots of thinking and dreaming about what I wanted; it was hard to choose from so many possibilities. Then there were the lists, written and rewritten. And once the die was cast, wondering what I would actually get and picturing opening those colorful wrapped packages.

Reminders were everywhere, stoking the imagination: Christmas carols on the radio and in stores, decorations inside and outside houses and other buildings, sending and receiving cards, Christmas trees, sugar cookies and other holiday treats.

Christmas was on December 25th every year; nothing I could do about that. And I would get what I got on that date; nothing I could do about that, either. Until the big day arrived, I was full of eager expectation, aka anticipation. Unlike with the concept of delayed gratification, there was no self-control involved, since I had little to no control over the contours of the holiday.

OK, I have to amend one of those statements. Theoretically, I had some control in that I was supposedly more likely to get what I wanted if I was “nice” than if I was naughty. According to the well-known song:

He’s making a list,
He’s checking it twice,
He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice

He being Santa Claus, of course. I don’t recall paying a price for not being “nice,” even though that word was probably not in my vocabulary. In any case, we could look at Christmas presents as rewards for good behavior, which is the way we use them now to get the brain to pay attention to what we want it to pay attention to.

No Stanford Marshmallow Experimenters Need Apply

Kiyohito Iigaya, the lead author of the paper published last year in Science Advances on the brain regions associated with anticipation (mentioned in this blog post) says:

Anticipation can probably drive us to prepare better for actual reward consumption so that we can get the most out of it. It’s also healthy—good for our mental health—to have something to look forward to. The reward is not physically here yet, but the brain somehow manages to create it in our mind.

When I hit upon a really good reward for myself, delaying getting it or consuming it is an entirely enjoyable experience that doesn’t involve any amount of self-control whatsoever. This makes sense because, other than the hippocampus—which is more or less keeping track of who we are—the brain regions involved in self-control and anticipation are not the same. (However, it also makes sense to me that having an ability to make use of anticipation might have a spillover effect on impulse control. Something to explore down the road.)

Double Your Pleasure (Redux)

All of this is to say that anticipation is not the same thing as delayed gratification. Although it’s possible the two concepts have become entangled for some, it’s important to recognize they are entirely different.

Anticipation amps up the potential pleasure of a future reward now, while delayed gratification (and self-control) minimize the potential pleasure of a future reward now. So if you want to develop your anticipation skills, focus on the pleasure, not on the delay.

Two experiments you can run (often—not just once):

  1. Think about any situations from the past when you experienced anticipation. Maybe they were like my Christmas example in which I didn’t have control over when I would receive the thing I wanted. That doesn’t matter because the point of the exercise is to recognize the feeling and the experience.
  2. Play with creating anticipation incrementally by waiting to do or get or consume something you want. During that time, think about the thing you want. Imagine doing or getting or consuming it. Focus on the pleasure you expect to feel. You can start with a few minutes and work up to hours or days.

Rewards are an essential component of lasting, significant behavior change. But rewards don’t work if you are unable to anticipate them. A bonus result from these experiments may be that you learn more about what you really derive pleasure from, which will give you good information about future rewards as you develop your anticipation skills.

I’ll leave you with this video of Melissa Hughes, author of Happy Hour with Einstein even though it features that Carly Simon song I hate (however, it was interesting to learn that Simon wrote it about Cat Stevens).

This is the fourth and “final” post on the topic of anticipation.

More Is Definitely More

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In April, I abruptly decided to re-start my strength training program. It turned into a series of intentions with a nearly perfect reward structure that includes craving, anticipation, and more-ness, for lack of a better word. I’d like to say it was all on-purpose, but some of it was accidental.

My initial intention was to complete three sessions a week for three weeks, and to get a reward for doing precisely that. If I failed to get three sessions in during any of those weeks, my three week period would start over. I don’t watch much TV, but I recently discovered a show I liked that was cancelled but had 10 seasons on DVD. So I set the season one DVD as my reward. The whole thing was more an experiment than anything else.

Craving

It turned out I really wanted that first DVD! One day when I felt I might be better off not exercising, I considered the possibility of having to start the three weeks over, thus delaying the reward, and decided I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I ended up doing fine, which was informative and gratifying.

I also really like how I feel when I’m doing strength training, and I began to crave that sense of energy and wellbeing, which started paying dividends in other areas.

When I got the first reward, it was more enjoyable than I expected. That’s what’s known technically as a reward prediction error, and it releases even more dopamine.

Anticipation

I look forward to tracking my progress each session, to completing another series of exercises, and to getting closer to my reward. During my second three-week period, I saw that the season two DVD might not be available on the day I completed the 9th session. I could have ordered it then to be “safe,” and put it away until I’d earned it. I have enough willpower to resist. But I realized I would miss out on the anticipation—and that would have felt like a deprivation.

Right now, I’ve finished watching season one and am awaiting the arrival of season two, which I’m really anticipating due to the cliffhanger ending of the last episode!

When you enjoy anticipation, the waiting provides a cascade of feel-good neurochemicals. Of course, while I’m anticipating receipt of the second season, I’ve begun working toward the third.

More

Well, obviously I want all the seasons of this TV show. The best case scenario is that I complete 30 consecutive weeks of three sessions per week, so that’s what I’m aiming for. (Since I recently hit my 1,000th consecutive day of walking, this new intention seems more doable than it might have previously.) I doubt I will become habituated to this reward because there’s always something new going on in the show. Each season is different. Plus I don’t binge-watch the episodes but enjoy one or two at a time.

And there’s more involved in the strength training as I move up to heavier weights and more reps. There’s even more in being able to get (by which I mean righteously justify the purchase of) the next set of weights. And of course, there’s more in continuing to feel better and have more energy.

The Alternate Route

I could watch this show on Netflix, if I still had Netflix, whenever I want to. But that isn’t even remotely appealing to me. By connecting the show with something I want to do and having to wait to enjoy it until I’ve completed the actions, ordered the DVD, and collected it from my mailbox, it has a much bigger impact than it would if all I had to do was turn on the TV. [fyi, I can state this as a fact because I’ve had both experiences, and there’s no contest.] And since I am collecting the DVDs, I’ll not only be able to watch them in the future, I’ll also be reminded of what I achieved in order to earn them. That reinforces the sense of accomplishment and personal agency

Some Unexpected Outcomes

I said I don’t watch much TV, but since undertaking this experiment I don’t watch any TV at all.

The two physical activities I haven’t been able to engage in during the past 5+ years of multiple heart conditions are hiking and dancing. Last year, just before Covid restrictions were put into place, I set up a program to see if I could get myself into shape to hike. But hiking was not in the cards last year, and without that to look forward to, I let the program slide.

Dancing is something I used to do in between sets of strength training exercises, before and after classes, or just spontaneously whenever. Every time I tried it the past few years, I immediately got out of breath, so I stopped trying. But now…I can dance!  And it occurs to me that the dancing might be a better means of getting in shape for hiking than anything else.

I see that I’m getting different rewards for different aspects of this program, which makes it more interesting and compelling to my brain.

Motivation

I actually enjoy strength training, appreciate the increase in vitality and wellbeing I get from it, and understand and value the benefits (mental, physical, and emotional). There are a lot of good reasons to do it. But it’s anticipation of the rewards that increases the likelihood I’ll continue with this program instead of letting other things get in the way.

Dopamine is not just about reward anticipation; it fuels the goal-directed behavior needed to gain that reward; dopamine “binds” the value of a reward to the resulting work. —Robert Sapolsky

And that makes all the difference in the world!

Coming up next: an investigation into learning how to anticipate.

Double Your Pleasure…
by Waiting for It

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The most interesting and frustrating encounters I have with people tend to be based on their reaction to the implications of the brain’s reward system. Regardless of anyone’s individual attitude about it, though, the reward system is a biological fact. So we can either learn how to use it or we can let it use us.

It’s true that some personality types have an easier time with rewards than others. But in addition to that, let’s face it: Homo sapiens is a jaded lot these days. When we can get what we want when we want it—and do so regularly—waiting any amount of time for something can feel painful, like deprivation. We expect, and even require, immediate gratification.

In Behave, the Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst, Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky talks about the conundrum we’re in as a result of having access to stimulation of the brain’s reward circuitry, some of which is “at least a thousandfold higher” than anything previous humans experienced. Sure that includes drugs like fentanyl and cocaine, but it also includes processed sugar, which wasn’t readily available until the 18th Century.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top non-natural sources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation. This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task [emphasis mine]. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we’d desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger.

The Molecule of More

Well, the brain has been referred to as an insatiable wanting machine, and dopamine—the primary agent of the brain’s reward system—isn’t called “the molecule of more” for nothing.

I’ve written and talked a lot about rewards and dopamine already, including the important role of craving in creating desirable habits or pursuing juicy desired outcomes. But it appears there’s a state to be mastered before craving can be put into play. That state is anticipation.

While craving is a powerful desire for something, anticipation is the condition of looking forward to it, especially with eagerness. Without the ability to anticipate, a craving will take you directly and immediately to the object or sensation. You will experience pleasure, but pleasure (aka liking) neurochemicals fade quickly, and then you’re right back to wanting.

For the record, I hate that Carly Simon song, but as long as I can remember I’ve enjoyed anticipation: going to the beach, strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream, the next issue of a particular magazine, a picnic in the backyard, beginning—and finishing—a new piece of writing. When scientists talk about the pleasure evoked by anticipation, I totally get it. As Thomas Hardy wrote in The Return of the Native:

Pleasure not known beforehand is half-wasted; to anticipate it is to double it.

So it surprised me to discover that anticipation can have either neutral or even negative connotations for others. But it’s entirely logical that if you don’t enjoy anticipation, you will probably have a hard time delaying gratification. Sapolsky says that once your brain figures out what it gets rewarded for, dopamine is less about reward than about its anticipation.

The Utility of Anticipation

Temporal discounting suggests that rewards are more attractive when they are imminent as opposed to when they are delayed. But this is not always the case. If you were the recipient of an Easter basket or bag of Halloween candy as a child, did you consume the contents quickly or did you moderate your consumption and delay gratification?

A paper published just last year in Science Advances describes a function called anticipatory utility, which counteracts temporal discounting:

An influential alternative idea in behavioral economics is that people enjoy, or savor, the moments leading up to reward. That is, people experience a positive utility, referred to as the utility of anticipation, which endows with value the time spent waiting for a reward. Anticipatory utility is different from the well-studied expected value of the future reward (i.e., a discounted value of the reward) in standard decision and reinforcement learning theory, where the latter’s utility arises solely from reward and not from its anticipation. Crucially, in the theory of anticipatory utility, the two separate utilities (i.e., anticipation and reward) are added together to construct the total value [emphasis mine]. The added value of anticipatory utility naturally explains why people occasionally prefer to delay reward (e.g., because we can enjoy the anticipation of eating a cake until tomorrow by saving it now), as well as a host of other human behaviors such as information-seeking and addiction.

The paper is a report of cutting-edge research conducted to test how the brain dynamically constructs anticipatory utility. Three different brain regions appear to be involved:

  1. the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), which tracks the value of anticipatory utility
  2. the dopaminergic midbrain (DA), which enhances anticipation
  3. the hippocampus, which mediates the functional coupling of the vmPFC and the DA

Researchers suggest that the vmPFC and DA link reward information to the utility of anticipation, while a strong conceptual tie between the hippocampus, memory, and future imagination supports a suggestion from behavioral economics that the utility of anticipation relates to a vivid imagination of future reward [emphasis mine].

And that brings us smack into the arena of personality and personal operating systems. It explains why I find anticipation to be enjoyable and am therefore able to use future rewards effectively to alter my behavior. It’s not a skill I’ve developed. I’m just wired that way!

Coming up next: (1) my personal example of successfully employing and enjoying anticipation; (2) an investigation into learning how to anticipate.

Only Trouble Is Interesting

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If you write fiction, read fiction, or read books about how to write fiction, you know the one thing a story absolutely, positively must include is trouble and plenty of it. If you don’t have trouble—otherwise known as conflict—you don’t have a story. But why is conflict essential for capturing our attention?

This seems like a worthy question to ask given the fact that conflict isn’t something we actively seek out in our daily lives. As Janet Burroway says in Writing Fiction:

In life, conflict often carries a negative connotation, yet in fiction, be it comic or tragic, dramatic conflict is fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting.

There’s no denying that trouble interests us. We start looking for it at a very young age—specifically at about one year. Much of children’s play is organized around big trouble, including homicide, kidnapping, and getting lost or trapped. And children’s nursery rhymes are riddled with violence. Many child psychology experts believe children’s play helps them develop social and emotional intelligence. In a sense, children are rehearsing for adult life. (Hopefully their actual adult lives will be a bit sunnier than the danger-filled lives they appear to be rehearsing for.)

That doesn’t exactly explain adults’ continued interest in looking for vicarious trouble, but it does jibe with research indicating that people who read fiction have better social skills than people who read mostly nonfiction.

Looking for Trouble

We humans are, to a great extent, operating with the same brain we had back when we were traversing the savannah—a brain which, as John Medina explains in Brain Rules, “appears to be designed to solve problems related to surviving in an unstable outdoor environment while in nearly constant motion.” Doesn’t that sound like the plot of any number of books, movies, TV shows, and even video games?

It should be noted that many of us aren’t fighting for our survival, don’t spend much time in unstable outdoor environments, and are rarely in nearly constant motion. Of course, we still get into trouble, in spite of or because of our best efforts, but our troubles are of a vastly different nature from the troubles of our distant ancestors. Could it be that we’re so intent on “entertaining” ourselves by stirring up all this harrowing pretend trouble because it simulates the kind—or at least degree—of trouble our brain is used to dealing with?

Everything that Happens Happens to Us

Based on neuroscience advances over the past 20-30 years, we now know that our brain doesn’t distinguish very well between actual experience and vicarious experience. It reacts the same whether we read about or watch something awful happen to a fictional character or actually see that same thing happen to a person in real life. Watching a fictional disaster unfold on the screen or the page elicits the same response in our brain that it would if it were happening to us—even though we know it isn’t actually happening. (First, of course, we have to suspend disbelief, but that isn’t difficult for us to do primarily because we’re prepared to find stories compelling.)

We anticipate how certain types of books or movies will make us feel. That’s why we select particular books to read or movies to watch. We know how we’re likely to react to a story described as a “tearjerker,” for example. Some genres, such as suspense, thriller, action, science fiction, and mystery, make us feel anxious, frightened, uneasy, sometimes even terrified. Yet we keep going back for more.

This is pretty fascinating in light of the fact that the prime directive of the brain is our survival. Why would a brain that is intent on our survival create all these fictional worlds filled with trouble, disaster, loss, horror, and even death—clear threats to survival—for us to experience as if they were actually happening to us?

We All Lived Happily Ever After

Stories are notable for how they help us learn and remember. One reason is that stories include emotion, and we’re more likely to remember something that has a strong emotional impact. The greater the conflict or trouble in a story, the more emotion we feel, and the more emotion we feel, the likelier we are to remember.

But remember what exactly? The ending! All stories have beginnings, middles, and endings, but we don’t remember beginnings and middles nearly as much as we remember endings. If a story has a happy—meaning emotionally satisfying—ending, we experience a burst of feel-good neurochemicals the gives us a rush of pleasure and also ensures that we will remember how things worked out: the dragon was slain, the day was won, the quest was completed, the boy got the girl, the challenges were overcome.

In the end, a problem related to some aspect of survival was solved. Something was learned about the way the world works and how the people in it function. And we survived to get into trouble another day, just like (some of) our distant ancestors.

So one possible answer to the question of what’s so interesting about conflict is that it isn’t the conflict per se that interests us—or interests our brain. It’s the resolution of the conflict. When the hero or heroine of a story faces big trouble and not only survives but even triumphs, we feel as if we did, too. And that feeling is definitely worth the roller-coaster ride it takes to get it.

Guidelines for a Growth Mindset

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Even if you recognize the considerable benefits of developing a growth (or get better) mindset, you may not be sure what steps to take or what to focus your attention on to shift your mindset.

My recommendations are:

(1) Understand the differences between the growth and fixed mindsets. You can read this article, find information on the internet or from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, or get a quick take from this infographic.

(2) Try to identify where in your life you operate primarily from a growth mindset and where you operate from a fixed mindset, so you can get a sense of the difference in perspective and outcome. You can use this handout for that.

(3) Incorporate the Guidelines for a Growth Mindset:

Develop your curiosity.

Curiosity keeps us engaged in exploring our inner and outer worlds. Curiosity causes us to ask questions, not necessarily to get answers, but to arrive at even bigger or deeper questions. It opens our minds and expands our perspective, which is what a growth mindset is all about.

Identify and pursue juicy desired outcomes.

If you want to expand your world, you need to choose worthy targets to aim for. The brain is an insatiable wanting machine, and dopamine is the wanting neurochemical. The bigger and juicier the desired outcomes you give your brain to pursue, the more dopamine it will release, and the more creative tension it will generate.

Run toward challenges instead of away from them.

Challenges can be expansive, too, if we are not afraid of them. Anything we haven’t done before or that requires effort or deliberate practice to accomplish takes us out of our comfort zone. But continually seeking out challenges ultimately expands our comfort zone, and trains our brain to assist us in mastering the unfamiliar.

Recognize that failure and success are equally transitory, but you only learn from failure.

Richard Saul Wurman is an architect and the founder of TED Talks. He said it better than I could: “I have failure every day. I know that I will not grow at all except by understanding my failures. Success tells you nothing; you learn nothing from success.”

Follow the path of the trickster.

Trickster is at home in liminal space, the space of possibility and uncertainty. In fact, trickster represents the opposite of a fixed mindset, avoiding staying in one place too long and preferring to be on the road, out and about, engaging with the world. Trickster keeps it light, but always has a juicy desired outcome to pursue. If he or she fails today, well there’s always tomorrow to try again.

Click here to print or download the guidelines.

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677