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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

L Is for Luck

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Plans, practice, and preparation are all useful, even essential, if you want to accomplish anything significant in life. But no matter how rock-solid they are, your plans, practice, and preparation cannot immunize you against random occurrences, aka luck. Your luck in a given circumstance may be good or bad, but by its nature it isn’t predictable.

A good definition of luck is:

The chance happening of fortunate or adverse events.

It’s important to recognize that, statistically speaking, random events occur far more often and have a far greater impact on us than we recognize. Events outside our control will occur. When everything goes according to plan or falls into place, we can thank our lucky stars. But we can’t count on being lucky. And we can’t take credit for luck.

The fact that luck is something we can’t control automatically casts it in a bad light. Both the nature of it and the outcome are uncertain and uncertainty gives the unconscious part of our brain the heebie jeebies. We prefer to operate under the illusion of control, maintaining our belief that we can influence outcomes even in the face of significant irrefutable evidence to the contrary.

Thus there are people who believe they create their own luck. “Chance favors the prepared mind,” said Louis Pasteur. And in some circumstances that’s true. You can’t necessarily take advantage of advantageous circumstances if you don’t know how to respond or are not prepared to do so. You can, to an extent, be ready to open your arms to random good fortune—which would certainly be more welcome than bad fortune.

Estimating Impact

However, good fortune does not always lead to good outcomes. Take lottery winners, a group that has been the subject of numerous studies. Not everyone who wins the lottery ends up worse off than they were before—but a surprising number of winners do. And most report being no happier after winning than people who didn’t win.

Our beliefs about outcomes are strongly affected by one of the cognitive biases we’re afflicted with. This one is known as the impact bias, and it has two parts. We think we know whether a future potential event will affect us in a positive or in a negative way. And we’re usually pretty good at getting that prediction right. We also think we know how large or small that impact will be and how long it will last. That’s where we often miss the mark by anticipating that both good and bad events will affect us more—and for longer—than they actually will.

Something that is pretty predictable is that you’re more likely to overreact to bad luck when you aren’t fully committed to your current plan of action. If you’re more or less going through the motions, it won’t take much to blow you off course or permanently derail you. You might think what you’re up to is just not meant to be or that you don’t have what it takes.

That’s why it’s critical to get very, very clear about your desired outcome ahead of time. If you have a strong commitment to what you’re going after, you’re more likely to consider bad luck a bump in the road. Maybe it’s a small bump or maybe it’s an enormous boulder. Nevertheless, you’ll be more inclined to figure out how to navigate around it and continue on your way if you really want what’s on the other side and if you know the next steps you need to take.

Enter the Black Swan

Sometimes luck, good or bad, has a relatively minor effect. On the other hand, luck—in the form of what Nassim Taleb calls Black Swans—can be life-changing. Taleb describes a so-called Black Swan this way:

First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility. Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

The majority of swans are white, so black swans are unexpected. As Taleb says, on September 10, 2011, the events of September 11 were not reasonably conceivable. If they had been, something could have been done to prevent them.

A Black Swan event can permanently alter your course or at the very least make it vastly more difficult to pursue. But you can’t anticipate such events or know whether they will be positive or negative. What you can be certain about is what is meaningful to you. If the course you’re on is massively disrupted, you will still have the knowledge of what’s important to you, even if you have to find a completely different way to create it in your life.

If there’s something you want to do and the main 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?

You can’t predict the future no matter how much your brain wants you to believe you can. Although you can—and should—plan ahead, it’s important to remember that the path from here to there is rarely a straight line. Randomness and luck often play a larger role in both process and outcome than we’d like to acknowledge.

In the long run, how you respond (persevere) in the face of setbacks and random events is more important than achieving instant or quick success. And you can take all the credit for persevering.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

K Is for Know-How

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Knowledge and know-how have a lot in common, but they’re not the same thing. You can read a book, watch a DVD, or listen to a lecture and gain knowledge—maybe even a lot—but that knowledge is theoretical until you actually apply it. Memorizing a camera’s instruction manual, for example, won’t give you the know-how to use your camera effectively, easily, or creatively in a wide range of situations. To be able to do that, you need hands-on experience and practice—the more practice, the better.

You probably know how to do a lot of things you didn’t always know how to do.

  • Drive a car
  • Operate a computer
  • Search the internet
  • Use a smartphone
  • Purchase airline reservations and board a plane
  • Order food in a restaurant
  • Speak in front of a group
  • Assemble furniture using an Allen wrench
  • Knit a scarf

Learning how to do all those things—at least to do them well, with confidence, or in some cases, safely—involves actually doing them, not just knowing what to do or how to do it. Drivers’ education, when I took it, included both classroom learning and operating a vehicle with an instructor in the passenger seat. A few of my classmates who demonstrated great proficiency in the classroom didn’t do so well on the road. I still remember one of a series of near-misses with Susan N. behind the wheel. Our instructor frantically gestured for her to pull the car over and park it, after which he got out and strode up and down the sidewalk for several minutes, repeatedly rubbing his hands over his face.

And if you think you can sit right down and knit a scarf using, say, the garter stitch (a relatively easy knitting project), after having watched someone else do it or reading the pattern instructions, you’re in for a surprise when you try manipulating the yarn and needles for the first time.

Getting to Carnegie Hall

We expect that in learning how to do something that involves a procedure, a sequence, or the use of tools or equipment we will need to practice doing it in order to master the activity. In fact, we expect to spend the majority of our learning time not on theory, but on practice.

But we don’t approach changing our behavior the same way. We seem to think that having knowledge or information is enough—or more accurately, should be enough. When it turns out not to be, we don’t rethink our approach or beliefs. We decide there’s something wrong, either with the knowledge and information or with us.

I think one of the reasons for this is that we don’t recognize that the same mechanism of action is involved in almost all behavior change. So putting the practice time in will eventually pay off not just in one area, but in many areas. It’s similar to learning how to play the piano. Mastering playing the piano doesn’t just give you the ability to play one song or one type of music. Yes, playing improvisational jazz is different from playing classical sonatas, but the underlying mechanism of action is the same. The piano skills you develop are transferable.

Theory and Practice

Mastering the art and science of change involves both theory and practice, too. In the realm of theory, you need to understand some things about the brain, including:

  • The difference between System 1 (the unconscious) and System 2 (consciousness)
  • Why your brain keeps “correcting” you back to your old way of doing things
  • How your brain creates habits, with or without your participation

You also need to know how to make use of the way your brain is wired or how to work around it when you need to. That involves developing various tools, including:

  • Setting goals and following through on them
  • Keeping your attention focused on your intentions
  • Making use of rewards to activate memory and learning circuits

That’s a lot of information to absorb. It’s a lot of knowledge to process. But it’s not enough.

Even if you know everything there is to know about how the brain works in regard to behavior, and even if you understand the reasons for and the absolute best ways to use goals, habits, intentions, and rewards, if you don’t engage in regular and deliberate practice, you won’t be able to master the art and science of change.

When clients begin my Goals, Habits & Intentions course, I always tell them the most valuable thing they’ll get from the course is coming face-to-face with how they get in their own way. If you really want to master behavior change, you need to develop the kind of self-awareness you can only get when you’re in the midst of trying to change something. For example:

  • How do you respond to feedback?
  • What do you do when faced with obstacles, delays, and distractions?
  • What beliefs and assumptions do you have about yourself and the way the world works that you don’t know you have?

Regular and deliberate practice is the only way to fully grasp the tools and make them your own. Regular and deliberate practice combined with knowledge and information helps you develop the know-how to master making the changes you want to make in your life and to help others do the same.

Change is not easy. It takes a lot longer than you think it will or than you want it to. It can be messy and discouraging, too. In his book Mastery, George Leonard says:

To take the master’s journey, you have to practice diligently, striving to hone your skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so—and this is the inexorable fact of the journey—you also have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to be getting nowhere.

That’s the challenge. But once you really get the hang of it—once you develop the know-how—you’ll have it for the rest of your life.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

I Is for Intention

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Junge Frau beim Bogenschiessen

An intention is something (an act, speech, or effect) you plan or decide to do. An intentional act isn’t accidental or unconscious. That’s pretty straightforward, but intention has become a buzz word, so some clarification is in order.

In the world of magical thinking, intention is touted as a highly potent element. Or is it? One high priest of magical thinking describes intention as a directed impulse of consciousness that contains the seed form of that which you aim to create. (A simpler way to say it would be you have a thought or an idea.) You must then release your intentions into the fertile depths of your consciousness (aka the ground of pure potentiality) so they can grow and flourish. How or why you would need to release an impulse of consciousness into consciousness is unclear. But it’s the escape clause that really gets me. After releasing your intention, you are advised to relinquish your rigid attachment to a specific result because the outcome that you try so hard to force may not be as good for you as the one that comes naturally.

Hold on! The one that comes naturally sounds suspiciously like the very status quo your intention would serve to change. So what was the point of that directed impulse of consciousness? And who or what directed—or, more accurately, misdirected—it?

In a nutshell, you have a thought, you release it, and then things do or do not proceed as you intended. It appears that a directed impulse of consciousness is neither relevant nor powerful after all.

Intention Really IS Powerful

If you want to do something deliberately, as opposed to habitually, you defiinitely do need to start with an intention. Without one, you’re likely to succumb to the siren song of the path of least resistance: that thing that comes naturally. This is just the way we’re all wired.

An intention is more than wishful thinking, a good idea, or a thought released into fertile ground. Creating and acting on an intention requires your conscious thought and attention. If you want to break away from the path of least resistance—no easy task, given your brain’s desire to maintain the status quo—you need to be both committed to following through on your intention and willing to do whatever that takes, including feeling uncomfortable.

You also need to get very, very specific. Many ideas begin as vague or general aims, but if you want to give yourself a fighting chance at changing the status quo, you need to spell out the what, when, where, and how of what you intend to do. this may take some practice.

Creating an Intention

Although creating an intention is not complicated or difficult, there are a few pitfalls to watch out for.

“Shoulds”

You probably have some concepts about the way things should be, as well as how you should be and what you should be able to do. When you’re creating an intention, banish the word should—and even the concept. It isn’t helpful, and it sets you up to have unrealistic expectations. Why start out by pitting your actual self against an idealized self who can easily do whatever it is you’re currently struggling with?

If you have created an intention to do something because you think you should do it or you should be able to do it, let it go. You’re less likely to fully commit yourself to something you should do, and you’re probably not willing to do whatever it might take to accomplish it since you think you should already be doing it. If you prejudge yourself as somehow lacking, you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

Giant Steps

Maybe there’s an entire area of your life you want to revamp, so you create an intention to do just that. No baby steps for you; you’re going for the gold! But trying to tackle too much all at once is another recipe for failure because the chance of succeeding is minuscule at best.

When you try to do many things at the same time, you give yourself many opportunities to fail. So if, for example, you want to develop a habit that involves doing something multiple times during the day, start out by creating an intention to do it once or twice a day—or even every other day. Once you’ve succeeded with that, you can expand on it.

Aiming to do too much and missing the mark only reinforces any existing feelings of ineffectiveness or inadequacy. When you take baby steps, you have a much better chance of accomplishing what you set out to do. You can then build on your success.

Wiggle Room

As indicated above, a common mistake to make when creating an intention is to be vague rather than specific. Maybe you aren’t consciously trying to give yourself wiggle room, but that’s what vagueness does to intentions: it paves the way for you to wiggle right out of them. Maybe you believe just creating the intention is sufficient. Or your schedule is too variable for you to be specific. Or you want to maintain your flexibility.

It’s important to be specific when creating an intention because vagueness simply doesn’t work, so creating a vague intention is a waste of time. If you want to do something twice a week, decide on the days of the week and the time of day you will do it. If your schedule varies, make appointments with yourself and write them on your calendar or in your planner. Treat your appointments with yourself the same way you would treat an appointment with someone else. Give yourself a little respect. If you know the result (desired outcome) you want, think through the steps you’ll need to take to achieve it. Make the steps your intention and the result is more likely to follow.

For more on intentions and the IAP (Intention/Attention/Perseverance) process, see Make It So!

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

H Is for Habits

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donut-and-coffee

Habits are recurring, generally unconscious patterns of behavior you acquire through frequent repetition or that are learned over time. Since they operate outside conscious awareness (and control), you may suddenly discover, as I have, some habits you didn’t know you had.

Your brain creates habits, with or without your conscious participation, in order to operate more efficiently. It chunks repetitive behaviors and turns the chunks over to the basal ganglia so you don’t have to waste your precious and limited System 2 attention on them. So the habit habit is actually a labor-saving device for your brain, which means your brain is primed for habits.

Since we tend to identify with our conscious brain rather than our unconscious, we’re under the illusion that most of what we do is the result of conscious choice (behaviors are preceded by conscious intentions). So you may not be aware of how pervasive habits are in your life.

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. —Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

Habits vs. Goals

Habits differ from goals in two significant ways:

  1. Goals are temporary; whether it’s three weeks or three years, there’s always an end point. Habits, on the other hand, are ongoing.
  2. Goals require conscious attention from beginning to completion. Habits, once in place, use System 1 attention. That’s why you may be unaware of some of your habits.

Creating a habit you want (or changing an existing habit) does require conscious attention initially, but only until System 1 takes it over, at which point it is initiated automatically as a result of something in the environment—a cue or a trigger.

Continual repetition of behaviors and thoughts results in highly reinforced neural connections, which are experienced as habits. …By adulthood, most emotional responses and behavioral impulses are conditioned: we think, feel, and behave more or less the same in the same states and social contexts over and over. Habits and the conditioned responses that compose them are processed in the brain in milliseconds, thousands of times faster than conscious decisions. —Steven Stosny, Ph.D.

According to Charles Duhigg, there are three parts to what he refers to as the habit loop: the cue, the routine, and the reward. The cue is what triggers the routine—the beginning of the habit loop—and the reward lets your brain know the loop is complete.

Habits: Good or Bad?

The word “habit” often conjures up the word “bad.” If you think of habits as bad—or as just something inconsequential that you do—you’ll have a harder time creating the habits you want to have.

Whether your habits are “good” or “bad,” they’re all the same to your brain. It doesn’t care what you think of your habits. All it cares about it is being efficient. Do anything often enough and it will become a habit. And habits, by their nature, are hard to change. Trying to exert willpower, using positive thinking, engaging in deep soul searching, or looking for the underlying cause of a habit are all fruitless endeavors. Unfortunately, you can’t have a heart-to-heart with your basal ganglia.

The main reason that conscious control of habits is limited is that it requires the most easily exhaustible and metabolically expensive of mental resources: focused attention. …When resources are limited, people are unable to deliberately choose or inhibit responses, and they become locked into repeating habits. …The autopilot, being virtually inexhaustible, wins the struggle more often. —Steven Stosny

The Value of Habits

It’s easy to see the positive, productive role of habits in the development of a skill or craft—that of a musician, an artist, a writer, a quilter, or a cook, for example. We generally expect that the more a musician practices her instrument, the more dishes a cook prepares, the better they will become at doing those things. A musician is unlikely to attain excellence if she only practices when she’s in the mood for it. Skillful musicians develop the habit of practicing regularly whether they’re in the mood for it or not. And they don’t have to be in the mood for it precisely because they’ve developed the habit. They don’t have to waste conscious attention or drain self-control resources by thinking about or deciding each time whether or not to practice.

Because habits don’t drain self-control resources to the same extent as non-habits, once a behavior becomes a habit, it frees up your conscious attention and makes achieving goals considerably easier. Habits and routines are actually essential to people who need to be creative on a regular basis.

Changing the status quo isn’t easy. The unconscious part of your brain, which might be said to be allergic to change, is way ahead of the conscious part, especially in familiar situations. It’s built to predict what’s likely to happen next, construct multiple response scenarios, and initiate the response it considers the most effective—not the response you consider most effective.

That’s why habits seem to have so much power. They are very familiar to your unconscious, which bases its predictions and responses on previous experience. You may want to go for a walk after dinner, but if you’ve been plopping down on the sofa every evening, your brain is going to “choose” the sofa over the walk. You may want to cut back on the donuts, but if you’re in the habit of grabbing one with your coffee at the office, that’s what your brain is programmed to “choose” to do.

You can make use of the power of habit by learning how to change the ones you don’t want and by creating habits you do want. In order to change an existing habit, you need to identify the cue and the reward and substitute a different behavior (routine) that gives you the same reward. To start a new habit, first decide what the behavior will be, and then choose a reward and a cue. It’s easier to start a new habit if you make the cue something you already do on a regular basis. Charles Duhigg explains the process in his Guide to Changing Habits.

One major caveat: There is no magic number of days that it takes to change or create a habit. But there is a highly effective type of magic you can apply; it’s called perseverance.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

G Is for Goals

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goal-map

“Goal,” I once wrote, isn’t one of those four-letter words. Nevertheless, it’s often treated as if it is, which is unfortunate. Becoming proficient at identifying, setting, and achieving goals is essential to mastering the art and science of change. So what exactly is a goal? The definition I use (not coined by me) is this one:

A goal is a specific state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it.

That means you are now here; you want to be over there; you figure out how to get from here to there; you take the steps to get from here to there; and when you arrive you stop taking steps because now you are over there.

Goals:

  • are concrete, time-bound, and involve planning or multiple steps to complete
  • require ongoing conscious attention
  • may be short-, medium-, or long-term, but always have an end point; once you arrive, you stop trying to get there
  • when achieved, result in a change in the status quo

It turns out that people who set low goals or no goals tend not to accomplish much. On the other hand, people who do set goals not only get more done, they also tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives. In addition, people who set and achieve challenging goals increase their self-confidence and self-esteem.

Two factors that will greatly increase the likelihood of achieving a goal are:

  1. Knowing why you’re doing it.
  2. Making a commitment to doing it.
Knowing Why You’re Doing It

Knowing why you’re doing it means identifying how the goal relates to what’s most important to you. What are the things in life that really matter to you? Your goals should not be ends in themselves, but rather the means of having more of what you really want. If you know what you want, you can either hope those things will come your way or you can identify goals and take the necessary steps to help you get them.

Knowing why you’re doing it also means identifying your desired outcome. What is the change in your status quo that you expect to have as a result of achieving your goal? You need to identify your desired outcome so you’ll know what you’re aiming for and will be able to tell when you’ve arrived. Once you’ve done that, however, focus your attention on the steps it will take to get there—on the process. Focusing exclusively on the outcome will actually decrease the likelihood you’ll achieve your goal.

Making a Commitment to Doing It

There’s no point in putting time, effort, and energy into doing something half-heartedly or half-way. If you aren’t sure why you’re setting or working toward a goal, you’ll have a harder time making a commitment to achieving it.

Of course, making a commitment doesn’t mean you can see into the future and know what the outcome will be. There are no guarantees. But if you build escape clauses and wiggle room into your goals right from the start, you’re probably wasting your time. Once you know why you want to achieve a goal and have made a commitment to doing what it takes, these three steps can increase your chances of success:

  1. Write it down. Writing out your goal can help you clarify it and solidify your commitment.
  2. Make it SMART. That means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rousing, and Time-Bound.
  3. Develop a plan. A plan consists of the action steps you need to take in order to achieve that specific state of affairs you are now committed to creating in your life.

A goal without a plan is just a wish. –Seth Adam Smith

Just Do It

If you know what you want and have an idea about how to create more of that in your life, you’re likely to find working toward your goals exciting rather than tedious. Of course you won’t be excited about every single step and you won’t be excited every minute of every day. No one is. That’s where having a plan—and a system of rewards—comes in handy. But if you discover you’re not passionate about your desired outcome, let go of the goal and find something else to work toward.

The best way to approach a goal is by breaking it down into manageable baby steps and rewarding yourself for each step you complete. Your brain is wired to work toward obtaining rewards, so you might as well take advantage of that. It’s also important to pay attention to feedback and adjust course as needed. There’s nothing in the definition of a goal that prevents you from being flexible or responding to new information or insights. After all, it’s your goal.

To summarize: if you want to change your status quo, which is what a goal is intended to do, you need to focus your conscious attention on completing the steps you’ve outlined until you’ve achieved it. Maintaining focus is not easy. It helps to have a plan that includes a means of measuring your results and rewarding yourself for your accomplishments. If you don’t get your brain to go along with your plan, your brain will get you to go along with its agenda. The unconscious part of your brain is much more interested in immediate gratification than it is in long-term satisfaction—which is why doing whatever you feel like doing in the moment is so appealing. Your brain is generally at the ready to divert your attention to any nearby bright, shiny objects. In the majority of cases, going with the flow is less a philosophical choice and more the path of least resistance of the unconscious part of your brain.

A knock against goals is that they limit you, which is true, but not having goals also limits you. You face limits no matter what you do because when you’re doing one thing, you can’t be doing something else at the same time. Trying to keep all your options open doesn’t enhance your life; it keeps you from living it.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
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