Change your brain, change your life

Nature…has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.~ Dr. Norman Doidge

We all know that change takes effort.  But why is this so?  It seems as if change ought to be painless.  Don’t we shed and replace our cells day in and day out without realizing it? About 72% of you is replaced every 16 days because 72% of a healthy human body is water that is exchanged.    It takes about 56 days for your body to replenish the pint of blood you donate to a blood bank.  We don’t think about this at all—it just happens.

And therein lies the clue to why change is so hard:  the systems discussed above fall into the category of the involuntary or autonomic nervous system. The voluntary nervous system refers to the neurons over which you have conscious control.  In other words, if you make the decision to change position by standing up or sitting down, you literally send this signal impulse from your central nervous system to the muscles.  To stand up or sit down takes effort.

When we try to change old habits, it gets even trickier.  We know the brain falls into old ruts and it takes a conscious effort to ski across the moguls of memory.  Our brains are constantly processing information and scanning the environment for any possible threat to our survival.  Even when we are simply sitting at our desk in an office, we can still experience the terror of a tiger about to pounce if the threat feels real.

It’s clearly safer to move away from a threat than to move toward it, and that is what you are more likely to do automatically. Whether you are planning for an interview, writing an article, sitting in a meeting, or discussing a book on stage, your limbic system is going to defend any perceived threat with a fight, flight, or freeze response.
If you change your brain, you change your life.  So what can you do?  Know these 5 elements of sustainable brain change and how to respond to them:

1)    Become aware of what exactly you want to change. Habit and automatic learned responses drive our behavior.   Just like big organizations must have policies and procedures to operate effectively, so do we need to create ways of doing things that free our strategic brain for thinking, a much more demanding process.

2)    Know that you are most likely to experience some resistance even after making a conscious choice to change. Remind yourself that habit, whatever it is, was created to serve you.  It’s a comfort zone.  Comfort zones and habits are hardwired.  Whatever it is that you are doing is a whole lot more comfortable, offering some stability, than pushing back on it.  In other words, you know what the current situation looks and feels like.  You don’t know what doing it differently will look and feel like.

3)    Remind yourself that reappraisal and readjustment are OK. It’s what your autonomic system is doing when it replaces that blood. You may set off alarm bells with the decision to change since it means you’ve made a judgment against yourself that the previous way of doing something is wrong. Cut yourself some slack.

4)    Pay attention to your threat responses. Remember, your limbic system is taking control of your cognitive system to ensure your survival. Below are a few of the threat responses that can upset your strategic planning system:

  • Your motor functioning will increase in some way (you could hyperventilate, feel your heartbeat harder, or begin to sweat);
  • Your field of view will literally (and perhaps metaphorically) contract;
  • Your working memory will be reduced (threats must be dealt with immediately);
  • Your ability to have an insight or make an unexpected connection will be reduced (necessary relaxation is at odds with self-defense)
  • One threat may become generalized (“everything” feels threatening);
  • You will err on the side of negativity, focusing on “what’s not working here” (your brain uses mistakes to learn).

5)    Self-regulate your thoughts. Realize that where you focus your attention will draw out your physical, emotional, and cognitive response.  The more you focus on the sense of threat, the more you will be compelled to address it.   The more you focus on distancing yourself from the threat by labeling it, addressing it directly, and being mindful of its effect on you, the better results you are going to get.  The old saying, “Marshall your thoughts before you act,” has a basis in brain functioning. Managing thoughts can allow you to change your behavior in a way that serves you, rather than staying fearfully stuck in the same place.

There is more on how to create sustainable change, including descriptions of some models for the change process in my 15-page booklet, Change: Thriving, Not Surviving, Transitions now available for $5.00.  In the meantime, remind yourself that you can create new neural pathways to avert that sense of threat by consciously focusing on what and how you want to change, then actively addressing it.

It is possible to change your brain for a new and better life.

 

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