Following on from the post about motivation last week, here is a ‘part 2’ which focuses on recognising the traps your brain sets for you, as recognising these traps or pitfalls is the key to avoiding them.
First we’ll consider the main points. I’ll split this up into reasons for change, end goal orientation, brain cost/benefit circuit, discipline and strategies to approach/overcome.
Reasons for change
Fundamentally, you need to have insight into yourself in order to change any behaviour. If you are not aware of what problems you have or the obstacles in your way, you will have a hard time ever overcoming these issues.
Thus, you need to ask yourself, ‘why change?’.
Perhaps most of us realise we probably should change (workout more, study more, get a better job…) but the why may not come so easy.
So it is important to get straight in your head what it is you want. Now, this question is not as easy to answer as it seems.
End goal orientation
As Dr K says, you need to ‘play the tape through’:
The key point from this, is that your brain is going to try and conserve energy and avoid doing any work, and so will find shortcuts and then convince you to take them. Unfortunately for you, this means skipping out on the things you know you should do, and just get that next dopamine hit.
It is important to understand that those intermediate steps are what makes life worth living, and you can’t skip the hard work and expect anything good to come to you.
Brain cost/benefit circuit
Following on from the scumbag brain post linked above, your brain will do a cost/benefit analysis of basically any situation. It is why breaking up large (seemingly) impossible tasks into bite-sized chunks is one of the best ways to get started on a project.
It’s how you can avoid decision paralysis, procrastination, and most importantly get yourself on a path to achieving and upgrading your life through gradual improvement.
As a survival mechanism, your brain will take into account all kinds of inputs in its decision matrix. For example, think about eating food. If you’re about to go on a road trip where you need to get there by not taking any rest stops, it makes sense to eat before you drive.
You may not feel hungry right now, but you know you will be hungry later, and you won’t be able to do much about it while you’re in the car. There is also little cost to eat now, so you may as well eat.
Your brain makes these calculations all the time, even into more abstract realms. This means that it will weigh up relaxing versus studying for an hour; hanging out with friends versus staying at work an extra hour.
Where you see glorious achievement, your brain instead slides in and whispers in your ear, ‘yeah sure you could go out for a run today, but your end goal is enjoyment/relaxation etc anyway, so why not just do that now?’.
Discipline
Discipline is the only thing which you can offer as a defence when your brain brings this argument. Taking the path of least resistance is great. You get to relax, you get that sweet dopamine hit, and you get to forget about actually working hard.
Unfortunately, you will steal from your own future to fund this living in the here and now.
You need to have what is called a competing interest. If not, the temptation of dopamine and feel-good chemicals is going to win every time. You need to be able to pay the price to stave off this temptation.
This is a deep topic, but you need to develop discipline for yourself, and not because of external pressures.
Strategies to approach/overcome
Find the one thing that you actually want. Write out a list of things that you want in your life. Review the list for what you want rather than what society wants for you. Keep removing items until you get that one thing, then focus on it. Start trying to achieve this one thing in small increments.
This is where the trap comes in. Your brain will tell you that you can get so much more enjoyment from watching YouTube and playing games, and you might as well not try that other stuff (that hasn’t worked in the past).
It will then try the ‘all or nothing’ approach, that you’re not doing enough to change your life despite the first positive step. It does this because it knows that if it tempts you in this way to completely overhaul your life now and then you end up doing nothing.
I hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.
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