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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

W Is for Writing

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Writing is such an effective tool for change that I use it in all of my classes and workshops. It can help you clarify intentions or goals and assist you in staying on track. It’s also extremely useful for helping you calm down, focus, and develop clarity about troubling or difficult issues.

The pen compels lucidity. —Robert Stone, novelist

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 lot), but after you’re finished you may not be any clearer than you were to begin with. You might even be more confused.

Starting out with a question or prompt, maybe just a keyword or key phrase, can allow you to access some of the thoughts that may be swimming below the surface. Using a multi-part exercise can help you get even deeper and reap greater rewards.

The two basic approaches to writing—flow writing and deliberate writing—involve using the two different parts of the brain (System 1 and System 2). The problem with completely unstructured writing is that it can muddle these two approaches so that you don’t get 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 your 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. You 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 in 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, prompt, or keyword.

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 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 resolution.

Integrated Writing:
Making Use of Both Kinds of Thinking

Sometimes flow writing or deliberate writing alone is sufficient, but integrating them can be much more powerful. Integrated writing is synergistic rather than additive, which means the whole (the result) is greater than the sum of the parts you used to get there. 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, remember to have an intention. Be clear about what you’re doing and what you want to get out of your writing.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Even if writing doesn’t come naturally to you or seems like punishment, if you want to create habits that serve you, follow through on your goals and intentions, and develop your self-awareness, it’s worth exploring and experimenting with it.

As with any tool you want to master, regular practice makes all the difference. When you set and keep the same general time and place to write, you encourage (or prime) your brain to respond.

When you go into a restaurant, your brain is focused on deciding what to eat. When you get into your car, your brain is focused on driving. This is one of those obvious things you probably don’t really think about it. When you go into the restaurant, your brain is not focused on driving because it isn’t presented with environmental cues related to driving.

Another reason for developing a writing practice is that the real benefits of writing are cumulative. They are gained over time, not as the result of any individual exercise or piece of writing.

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

P Is for Perseverance

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A common explanation for the failure to accomplish something, reach a goal, or change a habit is a lack of willpower (or self-control). If only you had more willpower you could resist temptation, whatever form it might take: a piece of chocolate cake, binge-watching a favorite TV show, surfing the internet, adding unnecessary items to your wardrobe, or even just staying up late when you have an important meeting in the morning.

Willpower is trying very hard not to do something you want to do very much. —John Ortberg

It seems like common sense that if you had the ability to say no in the face of temptation, you wouldn’t be in whatever pickle you might be in.

And there’s a bit of truth underlying that belief. Willpower can be both useful and powerful. And yes, some people appear to have more willpower, at least in some situations, than other people. But willpower is an unreliable resource that can be easily exhausted. You can benefit from developing more of it, but it’s not the most effective tool in the behavior-change box.

Don’t Crash and Burn

When you’re bursting with willpower, you feel like you’re faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It feels great in the moment, but the moment doesn’t last. You may find yourself burning out before you get very far and end up abandoning your entire project. If at first you don’t succeed, you might decide it’s not meant to be or not worth the effort. Why bother? Just go with the flow. Or you might chalk it up to being weak, not wanting it enough, or lacking discipline.

It’s important to remember that the unconscious part of your brain has a bias for immediate gratification, which means you do, too. So after the initial burst of energy is gone it’s natural to find yourself distracted, derailed, or maybe even down for the count.

Worse, you may think what happened means something about you or your ability to follow through, which is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy because multiple failed attempts actually train your brain to not take you seriously. That means your next attempt will be even harder to follow through with than the last one was.

If  you recall the story of The Tortoise and the Hare from Aesop’s Fables, you’ll remember the moral of that adventure was slow and steady wins the race.

You could compare the unconscious part of your brain, which is extremely fast and processes 11 million bits of information at a time, to the hare. The conscious part of your brain, which is responsible for exerting willpower and self-control among other things, is like the tortoise. It’s much slower and more deliberate, and it processes only 40 bits of information at a time.

Change the Default

Repetition and perseverance, not willpower and self-control, are the keys to changing your behavior and accomplishing your goals. Repetition means doing the same thing over and over again until it becomes your brain’s default response. Perseverance means steadily moving toward your desired outcome regardless of setbacks or obstacles, adjusting course as you go, and taking in at least some of the scenery. Just keep moving at a steady pace until you get where you want to go.

You don’t need to chastise yourself if you get off track. You don’t need to make up excuses. All you have to do is pick up where you left off and keep going.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. —William E. Hickson

It’s amazing how much time and mental effort we put into berating ourselves or trying to figure out what’s wrong with us when we don’t behave according to our own expectations when, much of the time, it’s simply due to the way we’re wired. It would be far more effective to recognize that until we convince it otherwise, our brain is going to keep on correcting us back to our previous path. So falling off the horse is just part of the process. The important thing is to get back up there.

Perseverance isn’t the same as dogged persistence. Sometimes there’s a good reason to stop attempting to do something or at least reassess. On the one hand, you’re more likely to persevere if you’re committed to what you’re trying to accomplish and clear about your desired outcome. On the other hand, that commitment and clarity can help you recognize you aren’t really headed where you want to go—or maybe that you’ve bitten off too big a chunk and need to scale back.

If you want to make any change to your status quo, you have to convince your brain to go along with the plan, and that won’t happen overnight. Getting your brain to accept a change in the status quo as the new normal, for example, requires changing your mental model. That’s probably going to take a lot more perseverance than you’d like or that you expect. You might be tempted to give up when the results don’t come quickly, but that would be a mistake.

Perseverance isn’t flashy or sexy or stylish. It’s often linked with discipline and endurance and sounds like something that’s good for you or that builds character. But it’s the key to creating sustained change. And if you develop the habit of perseverance, you can still use willpower but you won’t need to rely on it to power yourself through. That means your brain will be working for you, rather than against you.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance. —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That’s why I call perseverance magic!

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

D Is for Desired Outcome

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desired-outcome

We repeatedly begin projects, large or small, start working on goals, long- or short-term, say yes or no when asked to do something or to participate with others, and make choices about how to spend our time. And far too often, we don’t stop to consider what we hope will happen as a result of the actions we’re about to take.

This isn’t to say we can’t come up with an explanation as to why we’re doing something—or at least why we think we’re doing it. Explaining ourselves to ourselves comes naturally to us. But having a reason for doing something isn’t the same thing as identifying the desired outcome.

You could be going on a job interview because you hope to get hired or because you’re thinking about quitting your current job and are testing the waters or because a relative hooked you up and you feel obligated…or…or…or. Those are some reasons you might have for keeping the appointment for that interview.

Let’s say you’re hoping to get hired. What’s your desired outcome? Maybe it’s simply to have a job so you can pay your bills. Or maybe you want to move up into a more challenging or more prestigious position. Maybe you’re looking for a congenial group of co-workers so you can expand your circle of friends. Or you might want a calmer work environment with less stress than you have now—or a more stimulating environment. It could even be a combination of factors.

If you’re clear about what you hope will happen as a result of getting the job, you’ll be better able to evaluate whether or not to take it if it’s offered to you. At the interview itself, you’ll be able to ask more informed questions and pay attention to things that are relevant to your concerns. Knowing the desired outcome you’re looking for is pretty important since it increases your chances of getting it. But if you accept the job offer without having identified your desired outcome, you set yourself up for being disappointed. Sure the money’s extremely good and the work is interesting enough but you don’t get to interact with very many other people and, as it turns out, the social aspect is really important to you. In fact, you realize you’d be willing to earn less in exchange for having more interpersonal interaction.

So you have the new job, which looks good on paper, but it isn’t as satisfying as you thought it would be.

Reality Check

In addition to changing jobs, we get into or out of relationships, take up hobbies, move from one part of the country to another, decide to go back to school (or drop out), sign up for a gym membership, start a diet, buy a complete new wardrobe—or a set of patio furniture or an expensive camera or a car. We not only fail to identify our desired outcome, we also fail to identify potential obstacles we’re likely to face along the path to getting it.

Included in the “Reality Check” exercise my clients complete when filling out a Goal Action Plan are these three questions.

  1. Imagine a positive vision (fantasy) of achieving your desired outcome and describe it. How will your status quo be changed?*
  2. Describe your current reality in regard to your desired outcome.
  3. Compare your positive vision of success with your current reality.

*Please note, though, that if all you do is generate a positive vision of your desired outcome and focus on that without doing anything else, you are less likely to be successful in achieving it because you’ve actually tricked your brain into thinking you’ve already got it.

Answering all three questions is a form of mental contrasting that can help you see your situation more realistically and identify the obstacles to achieving your desired outcome. If you know the obstacles you’re likely to face, you can figure out how to deal with them ahead of time instead of being blind-sided by them. Or you may realize there’s an obstacle big enough to be a deal-breaker, at least for now.

When we perform mental contrasting, we gain energy to take action. And when we go on to specify the actions we intend to take as obstacles arise, we energize ourselves even further. —Gabriele Oettingen, Rethinking Positive Thinking

Evaluate and Motivate

The more clearly you can visualize your desired outcome the better you’ll be able to evaluate how likely it is that the action you’re contemplating is the best path to getting there. If it is, great! That clarity can be highly motivating. If it isn’t, that’s great, too, because you can change or revise your plan and save yourself the time, energy, and effort of going off on a wild goose chase.

The longer-term your goal is or the more entrenched the habit you want to change or the more difficult or complicated the course of action you’re contemplating, the more imperative it is to identify your desired outcome. The unconscious part of your brain is hooked on instant gratification. Changing the status quo tends to be gradual, mundane, repetitious, and tedious. Being able to remind yourself not only what you’re aiming for but also why it’s important to you can get you through the slog.

But developing the habit of identifying your desired outcome is useful in all kinds of situations, such as responding to a social media post, attending a staff meeting at work, choosing a book to read, or planning a vacation. I recently got together with a friend to work out details of an upcoming trip (the reason for our meeting). But a big part of my desired outcome—and hers, too—was the opportunity to spend time discussing subjects of mutual interest, including current events. Identifying my desired outcome affected both my frame of mind and the amount of time I reserved for the meeting.

It’s a truism because it’s true: it’s considerably easier to get what you want if you know what that is.

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

C Is for Commitment

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home-run

When you set out to accomplish something significant or change a longstanding habit, do you stop to consider how committed you really are to doing it? You may have plenty of good reasons for wanting to do it. You may be able to rattle off the positive consequences that are likely to result if you succeed or the negative consequences if you fail. But altering the status quo isn’t easy. Reasons and potential consequences hold no sway over the unconscious part of your brain, which strongly prefers that you continue doing exactly what you’ve been doing up till now.

Making a commitment means binding yourself—intellectually, emotionally, or both—to a course of action. Some commitments in life are implied or assumed. For example:

  • following the rules of the road when you get a driver’s license
  • performing your job to the best of your ability after you’re hired
  • treating your employees fairly after you hire them
  • being considerate and faithful to your partner or spouse
  • providing for your children

Clearly some people “bind themselves” to these commitments more than others do. If you feel bound by your commitment, you’re more likely to follow through even if it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable to do so. Otherwise, you’ll find it easier to slack off and easier to come up with explanations and excuses as to why you did. The exigencies of the moment will feel more compelling than the course of action you never fully committed to.

Reality Check

alphabet-of-changeBefore my clients begin filling out a Goal Action Plan, I ask them to complete a “Reality Check.” Part of the reality check includes rating themselves in the following three areas on a scale from 1-10, 10 being the highest:

  1. certainty (how confident you are that you can achieve the goal)
  2. passion (how much you want it)
  3. commitment (how willing you are to bind yourself to the course of action)
Failure to Commit

People are unwilling to fully commit to a goal or a habit change for a variety of reasons.

Are you afraid of trying, failing, and disappointing yourself and/or others? The reality is that making a half-hearted commitment usually leads to half-hearted efforts which then lead to half-hearted results. This is a great example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Are you trying to keep your options open? It’s true that committing to one course of action generally means not pursuing other courses of action. And it’s true that you might miss out on something. But the reality is that trying to keep all of your options open doesn’t enhance your life; it prevents you from fully living it.

You can have what really matters to you or you can have the freedom to NOT have it, but you can’t have both.

Are you waiting to see how things turn out before making a full commitment? (I’ll give myself three months and if things aren’t panning out by then, I’ll give up or switch to Plan B.)  Although this sounds like a reasonable approach, it’s self-defeating. The reality is that we can’t single-handedly control the outcome, but we do have complete control over the extent of our commitment.

Going All-In

We often refuse to make a commitment, even to something we really want or that really matters to us.

Sometimes it’s hard to go “all in” when you don’t know how things are going to unfold. But fully committing yourself to a course of action actually has an effect on the outcome. When you’re fully committed to a course of action:

  • You don’t waste time rethinking your decision.
  • Instead of looking for ways to avoid taking action, you look for ways to take action—and by you, I mean your brain. Making a commitment alters your mental model and your perception. You literally see things differently—and see different things. Also your brain connects the dots in different ways.
  • You’re more likely to find your way around obstacles and to keep going even when you don’t feel like it.
  • You don’t have to rely as much on willpower and self-control in the face of temptation and the urge for immediate gratification.
  • You tend to view the results you get as feedback that you can use to adjust your course.

If you want to change your status quo, you need to take action, you need to be persistent, and you need to figure out how to overcome obstacles. But first you need to make the commitment to do those things. You won’t know ahead of time what your experience will be or how things will turn out. But making a commitment will increase your chances of success.

Are you holding back? Are you keeping something in reserve? For what?

If you’re not fully committed to a course of action, why are you taking it? If you set out to do something, be fully engaged in doing it instead of a sideline observer. Aim to get it done, not to wait and see how it all turns out.

This post is part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

Why Aren’t You Constantly Surprised?

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cat surprised

You’ve probably never asked yourself that question, but it’s not as silly as it sounds. Think about it for a minute. How do you explain the fact that you aren’t constantly surprised by the wide variety of events, situations, and reactions you encounter?

The answer to that question also explains why it can’t possibly be true that “you always have a choice.”

Your brain is predictive, rather than reactive.

Until fairly recently, the commonly held belief was that the brain merely reacted to sensations it picked up, primarily from the outside world. The idea was that many of the brain’s neurons were dormant most of the time until they were stimulated by a sight or a sound.

But that is not the case. Neurons are constantly firing, interacting and stimulating each other at various rates. According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University:

This brain activity represents millions of predictions of what you will encounter next in the world, based on your lifetime of past experience.

Your reactions are your body adjusting to the predictions your brain makes based on the state your body was in the last time it was in a similar situation.

Your brain is trying to put together thoughts, feelings, and perceptions so they arrive as needed, not a second afterward.

This activity does not take place at the conscious (System 2) level, but at the unconscious (System 1) level, which processes 11 million bits of information at a time. What you become aware of (thoughts, feelings, impulses, etc.) are the results of this unconscious processing. And you’re only aware of what your brain thinks you need to know, when you need to know it.

Furthermore, according to an article by a trio of neuroscientists published in Frontiers in Psychology:

Your brain generates multiple possible representations of what to expect in the environment. The representation with the smallest prediction error is selected.

However the generation of representations is constrained by what is stored in memory and by the sampling of the environment.

Another way to think about it is that these representations of what to expect are constrained by your mental model (see: Are You Thinking Outside the Box Yet?). Your brain constantly updates your mental model based on the accuracy of its predictions—as well as on its own agenda. Again, this occurs outside your conscious awareness.

Barrett provides this example:

You’re interacting with a friend and, based on context, your brain predicts that she will smile. This prediction drives your motor neurons to move your mouth in advance to smile back, and your movement causes your friend’s brain to issue new predictions and actions, back and forth, in a dance of prediction and action. If predictions are wrong, your brain has mechanisms to correct them and issue new ones.

The unconscious part of the brain is always several steps ahead of the conscious part. As both Barrett and neuroscientist David Eagleman have pointed out, this is what makes activities such as sports possible. If the brain was reactive, rather than predictive, it wouldn’t operate fast enough to enable you to hit a baseball or block a goal.

A merely reactive brain wouldn’t have helped Michael Phelps win his 10th gold medal while swimming blind as a result of his goggles filling with water. All of his previous practice, experience, and knowledge gave his brain a solid basis for predicting what he needed to do in order to win. Pretty amazing.

Because your brain is predictive:

  • You are not constantly surprised.
  • You don’t always have a choice.
  • You are able to engage in activities that require quick and accurate responses.
  • You are capable of learning from your experiences.
  • You don’t have to think about every little thing you do in the course of a day.
  • You find it difficult to change undesirable habits.
  • You may be tricked by various types of illusions.
  • You are unaware of your visual blind spot.

Our primary contact with the world, all this suggests, is via our expectations about what we are about to see or experience. —Andy Clark, philosopher and cognitive scientist, University of Edinburgh

When you are surprised, it’s because your brain encounters unpredictable stimuli: something other than what it expected. Unpredictable stimuli require conscious (System 2) processing. To get a sense of this in action, take note of the occasions when you experience surprise and try to compare your actual experience to the experience your brain might have been expecting.

The fact that you are not, in fact, constantly surprised means that your brain is pretty darn good at making predictions the vast majority of the time.

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joycelyn@farthertogo.com
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