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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

Give Up Choice; Get What You Really Want

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boston snowstorm

Being clear about what you really want and why you want it is essential if you want to bring about a behavioral change. The what and the why provide you with direction: your highly desirable outcome. But if you don’t feel a sense of urgency about creating that outcome, you’re likely to continue operating on the assumption that you can choose whether or not to do what you need to do to get there.

If you want to change the status quo, the outcome you’re after has to be so compelling that you’re willing to give up the freedom to not have it. I’ll give you a personal example.

Vitality is a highly desirable outcome for me. One thing that contributes significantly to my level of vitality is a combination of physical activities, such as walking, hiking, using a treadmill, and strength training. I generally enjoy doing those things as much as I enjoy the results of doing them. A couple of years ago, I had a much more regular schedule that allowed me to walk nearly every morning, hike a couple of times a month, and get in four strength training sessions a week at the gym. But that hasn’t been the case for the past year.

When my schedule changed, my level of physical activity declined and became hit-or-miss instead of regular. At the beginning of last summer, I decided to start walking for 25-35 minutes every day. That seemed like something I could reasonably commit to. Although it wasn’t ideal, it was a start. So from May 31st through today, I have walked or walked and used a treadmill every single day, no exceptions.

In September, I decided to increase my target to 45 minutes a day and have reached that most days. In December, I took a deeper look at how important vitality really is to me (VERY!) and realized that walking wasn’t enough. I get a better aerobic workout on a treadmill. In fact, I’d made a few attempts to get over to the gym to use the treadmill in the fall, but didn’t get far because I felt like I had a choice as to whether or not to do it. On December 19th, after an insanely busy two weeks, I decided to start using the treadmill three times a week, no exceptions. Since the best I’d managed during the  previous 12 months was three times in one month, I may have been overly optimistic.

But even though my schedule isn’t any more accommodating than it was before, I am now using the treadmill three times a week. The difference is that having decided to do it, I stopped giving myself a choice. I schedule the day and time I’m going to go to the gym. I may have to reschedule once in a while, but because I have no choice, I always get my three sessions in.

Going to the gym brought home to me how much I miss strength training and how wonderful I felt when I was doing it. I had a portable weight bench in the garage and a few sets of hand weights in a closet, and I realized that even if I couldn’t go to the gym to do it, I could do some upper body strength training at home. So on January 1st, I decided to include three 30-minute sessions of upper-body strength training each week, no exceptions.

Of course, I feel much better as a result of all of the increased physical activity, but maintaining this schedule is far from easy or comfortable. It’s winter now, and on the days I’m scheduled to walk outside for 45 minutes, the wind chill might be in the mid-20s, and snow might be blowing directly in my face. Winter, to put it mildly, is not my favorite season. I’ve been known to hike in the Sandia foothills when the temperature was in the mid-90s. If I could dress in shorts, T-shirt, and sandals all year, I would be ecstatic. But as I’m writing this, we’ve just had three brutally windy and cold days in a row, the coldest so far this winter. If I gave myself a choice as to whether or not to put on multiple layers of clothing and subject myself to the elements, I would never do it.

But having made the decision to invest in my vitality, I’m willing to tolerate (not always silently) the discomfort and occasional pain in the moment for the medium and long-term outcomes I’m after. And because I don’t have a choice in the matter, I don’t waste any time whatsoever debating whether or not to follow through or trying to talk myself in or out of doing what I have decided to do.

When the path ahead is clear, why wouldn’t you take the obvious next step?

By giving up the freedom to not have it, I get to have what I really want. And although it isn’t always easy, it is astonishingly simple.

Note: This is the fourth in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box under Explore.

How Do Decisions Affect Your Choices?

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choice snooze

Moment-to-moment, the vast majority of the choices you seem to be making are being made for you by the unconscious part of your brain. You do have both the ability and the opportunity to affect your choices, but you may not be making the best use of either.

The terms choice and decision are often used interchangeably, which muddies our understanding of the process of taking one action instead of another. So let’s make a distinction.

A decision is a conclusion you reach after some consideration of a significant issue. It involves thinking or deliberation. That means a decision is a result of a conscious (System 2) process. Some examples are: moving to a new city or staying where you are; keeping your current job or looking for a new one; trying to iron out the problems in your relationship or separating from your partner.

A choice, on the other hand, is more immediate and—at least in the short term—usually less consequential. Choices are generally the result of unconscious (System 1) predictions and responses. Some examples are: selecting from a restaurant menu; determining which movie to see; getting up with the alarm or hitting the snooze button.

Over time, the choices you make add up: to an outcome you want or to an outcome you don’t want. If you hit the snooze button every morning instead of getting up when you need to, you could end up getting to work late often enough that your employer notices. That’s probably not a desirable outcome. If you regularly select healthy meals in restaurants, you could end up maintaining a healthy weight or improving your sense of well-being, either of which is a desirable outcome.

If you don’t have much influence over your moment-to-moment choices, how can you influence them to add up to outcomes you want instead of outcomes you don’t want?

If you want your choices to add up to positive outcomes, you need to clearly identify what those positive outcomes are. Not only do you need to know what outcomes you want, you also need to be clear about why you want those outcomes. Identifying the what and the why requires conscious deliberation, and anything that requires conscious deliberation is energy intensive for your brain.

The decision-making process is sometimes protracted and even painful. For many people, it involves making a list of pros and cons, which is not a particularly effective strategy. Trying to imagine how you will feel if you achieve a specific outcome is also ineffective. There’s plenty of research to indicate that humans are notoriously poor at affective forecasting (being able to predict how we will feel in the future). No matter how much time you invest or how carefully you consider your options, you still can’t guarantee you’ll be happy with the outcome.

That’s why the default response is to throw up one’s hands and give in to following the path of least resistance. It means letting your brain continue choosing for you because it’s just so much easier. Learning how to use your brain to regulate your behavior (choices) definitely does not come naturally or easily.

Given that the unconscious part of your brain is completely capable of making the majority of your choices for you—with no input from you—why bother expending energy and mental effort on decision-making or trying to change your behavior?

The short answer is because you have consciousness. You’re driven to try to change your behavior because you can imagine outcomes other than the ones you have gotten or are likely to get if you continue along the path you’re on. Simply following the path of least resistance may be easy, but it isn’t satisfying and it doesn’t provide you with a sense of meaning.

In order to have a meaningful and satisfying life you need to master the process of changing the status quo.

So…what do you want to change? And why do you want to change it? If you can’t answer those two questions, the how is irrelevant.

Note: This is the third in a series of posts. To follow the thread, select the category Making Different Choices in the box under Explore.

The Space-Mind Continuum

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distraction

We all have a limited amount of System 2 (conscious) attention to dispose of each day, and when we’ve exhausted it we can’t quickly or easily replenish it.

Every waking moment, you are making judgments about where to focus your attention. If you didn’t, you would be overwhelmed by the vast amount of sensory information in your surroundings. The ability to direct attention, a skill humans share with species as primitive as fruit flies, helps you process what is important to you at the moment and ignore what is not. —Ingrid Wickelgren, Scientific American

The problem is that if you don’t have enough System 2 attention available to direct your focus, System 1 (the unconscious) will focus on what it thinks is important.

You use your conscious attention for many different things, some of which are necessary and unavoidable. You can exhaust it on important matters and complex tasks, for example. Or when you’re sick or injured or worried about a friend or family member. But you also probably squander conscious attention bit-by-bit on dozens of minor things throughout the day. Even worse, you may be squandering it on the same minor things day after day. Many of these things are literally just occupying space, thereby limiting the conscious attention you have available.

Inner Space and Outer Space

The things that occupy space in your mind (inner space) and in your environment (outer space) have an effect on the way you think, how effective your thinking is, and even what you think about. For example:

  • It’s difficult to focus your attention, solve a problem, or complete a complex or demanding task when you’re preoccupied with another issue (inner space).
  • It’s hard to focus or to think clearly when the surrounding decibel level gets above 90 (outer space).
  • It’s difficult to avoid thinking about how utterly and completely disorganized you are every time you can’t find something—or what a sloth you are you when you can’t invite guests over for dinner because the dining table has become the repository for several months’ worth of mail, numerous unfinished projects, and the general detritus of your daily life (outer space).
  • It’s next to impossible to be present or attentive when you’re in the process of running through your mental to-do list (inner space).

The more things occupying your inner and outer space at any given time, the less System 2 attention you have available. And the less System 2 attention you have available, the more likely you are to be at the effect of System 1 (unconscious/autopilot) thinking.

The Trouble with System 1 Attention

System 1 attention—also called bottom-up attention—isn’t always bad. In fact, it’s essential to your survival. But as Winifred Gallagher writes in Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life:

Bottom-up attention automatically keeps you in touch with what’s going on in the world, but this great benefit comes with a drawback, particularly for postindustrial folk who live in metropolitan areas and work at desks rather than on the savannah: lots of fruitless, unwelcome distractions. Maybe you want to focus on your book or computer instead of the fly that keeps landing on your arm or that ambulance’s siren, but just like your evolutionary forebears, you’re stuck with attending to those insistent stimuli.

Not only do you have to contend with a host of fruitless, unwelcome distractions in your environment over which you may have little to no control, you are also continually creating additional distractions in your environment and in your head.

The result is that, moment-to-moment, rather than being deliberately focused, your attention is likely to be spent responding to stimuli.

That’s important because what you put your attention on shapes the quality of your life.

We all have a limited amount of conscious attention available. We can’t easily get more, but we can learn how to make better use of what we have. A good first step is to try to identify what claims–and can drain–our conscious attention.

Ode to the Brain!

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Oh, the amazing brain. This Symphony of Science video is included in the playlist in an edutopia article (Five-Minute Film Festival: Learning and the Brain). It’s under four minutes. So just go for it and hit play. The article is also worth reading and all the other videos in the playlist are similarly short and awesome.

Ode to the Brain! is the handiwork of “John D. Boswell (melodysheep), creator of the web series Symphony of Science and a host of other unique musical remixes and projects.” The music can be downloaded here.

Searching for Clarity? Try Writing.

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writing

Writing is a great tool to use when you want to gain clarity about an issue you’re dealing with or are troubled by. This is not news. The catch is that in order to get the best results you need to be clear from the outset about what you want from your writing. You could just fill page after page in a notebook (something I did for quite a few years until I chucked the entire lot), but after you’re finished you may not be any clearer than you were to begin with. You might even be more confused.

Simply writing about a troubling issue can provide benefits, such as helping you feel better, but it isn’t the best way to get clarity.

There are two approaches to writing for clarity—flow writing and deliberate writing—that involve different ways of using the brain. The problem with simply writing about something is that it tends to muddle these two approaches, which means not getting the full benefit of either.

Flow Writing: Making Use of Associative Thinking

The unconscious (System 1) excels in associative thinking. It detects patterns and connects dots quicker than the conscious part of our brain (System 2) can. It’s a fast processor that sometimes sacrifices accuracy for speed. But it also has access to lots of information the conscious brain isn’t aware of.

Flow writing, which is also called free writing, is non-linear, non-rational, and non-logical. There’s no structure to flow writing. You just put your pen to paper and write quickly, letting the words “flow” without censoring or editing them. You don’t stop to think about what you’re writing. The best way to free your mind for flow writing is to set a page limit or use a timer. Flow writing is a good choice if you’re not entirely sure what the problem is. If you have a lot of thoughts swirling around inside your head, you can get them down on paper and take a look at them. But even with flow writing, you’ll get better results if you begin with a specific question to prime your unconscious to focus on the issue or situation at hand.

Deliberate Writing: Making Use of Logical, Linear Thinking

The conscious part of the brain is rational, logical, and linear. It operates at a much slower—more deliberate—speed than the unconscious. A good way to engage conscious thinking to gain clarity about something is to respond to a series of questions or prompts. While flow-writing casts a wide net in search of answers or information, deliberate writing narrows the search.

This 8 Step Problem-Solving exercise is an example of using deliberate thinking to gain clarity. You proceed through the sequence of questions or statements with the intention of reaching some type of resolution about the problem.

Integrated Writing: Making Use of Both Kinds of Thinking

There are times when either flow writing or deliberate writing alone will be sufficient. But integrating them can be much more powerful in terms of results. Integrated writing is synergistic rather than additive, which means the whole (the result) is greater than the sum of the parts you used to arrive at it. A few examples of integrated writing include:

10 minutes of flow writing (System 1 associative thinking) followed by writing the answers to a series of questions (System 2 logical, linear thinking). You can create your own set of questions or use the ones in the 8 Step Problem-Solving exercise.

Write Your Way Out of the Story. For instructions scroll to Antidote #3 in this post on rumination.

Go Deeper: This is a 4-part exercise that’s best to do in one sitting. Begin by writing a question at the top of a blank page and then flow write in response to it for 8-12 minutes. Next, reread what you wrote (engaging System 2), select a sentence or phrase, and write it at the top of another blank page. Flow write in response to this sentence or phrase for 8-12 minutes. Finally, reread both pieces (System 2), find a question—either one you asked in your writing or one that occurs to you after reading—write it at the top of a blank page, and flow write in response to it for 8-12 minutes. Then reread all three pieces and write a one-paragraph summary (System 2).

No matter which type of writing you decide to use, having an intention—being clear about what you’re doing and what you want to get out of your writing—is probably the most important element.

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
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