For reasons of my own, I’ve been interested in something called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for some time now. My interest started before I was even aware of CBT as a psychological discipline in the first place, though. I figured out some years ago that it’s possible to hack your own mind, if you do it right.
This is really something we do all the time, especially as children. As we age it becomes less overt, more subtle and integrated, harder to detect. But it’s still there.
Now, before we continue: I may sound like a self-help guru for the rest of this discussion. I apologize in advance. The thing is, most effective self-help gurus understand the idea that you can game your own brain’s machinery. They just don’t explain it that way. You hear a lot about things like the “power of positive thinking.” And then a sales pitch.
That’s not what I’m talking about, though. I want to explain the mechanism in action.
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It might help to think of it this way: your mind and brain comprise a machine. This machine responds to input in the form of stimulus, and outputs decisions and body commands. But your mind machine has a bug: you can’t distinguish properly between sensory, concrete input and conceptual input. That is to say, to your brain, an idea is effectively just as “real” as physical reality, and both affect your mind similarly, often through the same processing channels. After all, physically real stimuli are only electrical impulses by the time they reach the brain anyway. Consider:
- We can be frightened by a scary movie, even though we know it’s fake. We still show all the signs of fight-or-flight and fear: racing pulse, elevated alertness, reflexes on highly twitchy mode.
- Social threats – peer disapproval, emotionally charged arguments, loud meetings, and hostile bosses – all trigger our brain’s emergency systems, as if they were real physical hazards instead of intellectual, emotional, or social ones. As much as these things can potentially lead to physical consequences eventually, we need all our wits about us to face them. Thing is, our emergency responses make us temporarily dumber, pulling power from the brain and higher functions to enhance our ability to fight or run away. Against a physical threat this is a good reflex. Against these other threats it’s actively counterproductive.
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The key thing here is this: your mind machine can’t distinguish very well between an idea and a physical fact. You can take advantage of this little system bug, turning it into a feature.
Learn to game your brain.
Here, then is the challenge: figure out what you need to do to use this to your advantage. I’d tell you how, but honestly all I’d be doing is throwing out some anecdotal examples. One of the reasons why there are so dang many self-help books out there is that your brain is calibrated slightly differently from everyone else’s – no two are identical, even if they may be similar – and what works for some people won’t necessarily provide results for others. Your Mileage May Vary.
The main thing seems to be finding an approach that gets results for you. You need a method for talking yourself into things so that the ideas you want in your brain will find purchase and take root. This happens naturally in your youth, during your brain’s initial calibration period. You get your world map figured out, you learn your expectations and your baseline assumptions. Your brain’s default language parameters are set. Once you’re an adult, changing this calibration takes a lot of work and time. So hunker down for the long haul, folks.
There are some core principles you can start from, and these will of course seem like common sense to most readers:
- Ideas are just as important as facts. I’ve already described why, but this is really the key to the whole thing. The more real you can make an idea seem to yourself, the more you’ll act as if it’s real. Eventually it becomes real in fact, as you make it a part of your world view. Your imagination is capable of creating subjective truths, and once you act on them they become more objectively true. Remember that…
- Plausibility is required where belief is necessary. Those big ideas (“I am successful,” “my future is secure,” “I am healthy and beautiful”) are great and all, but if you’re going to game your brain, you have to do things in incremental steps that are all plausible. Basically, you’re telling yourself things, and you have to be able to believe them, or at least suspend disbelief for awhile. Those big ideas are almost too big, and if you think “yeah, right” immediately after you say them aloud, they aren’t doing you any good. This is the mental application of setting reasonable goals as described below.
- Repetition counts. If you hear something frequently, your brain is designed to assume that you will keep hearing it until something important changes. This is natural, because the ability to make predictive guesses is a major feature of your grey matter. So if you tell yourself something repeatedly – or have it told to you, or read it, or whatever – it will tend to seem more true to you. This applies to big ideas (“I am a successful person”) but also to the more useful but elusive small ideas (“my lunch was very satisfying and tasty”) that you’ll need to cause longer-term changes in your thinking and behavior.
- Reinforcement is key. Some people respond to guilt – negative reinforcement – while others prefer the positive reinforcement of rewards. Whether you need a threat or a carrot on a stick, figure out what will keep you on track and use that as a tool. This is important because…
- Progress is critical. Even if you start out with the best hopes and expectations, if you don’t feel like you’re getting somewhere, you will give up more readily. The minute you find yourself asking “why am I bothering with this again?” you’re in trouble and need to take a good long look at your priorities, goals, methods, and overall approach. You can make this easier by setting…
- Reasonable goals! If a task seems too big, break it into little bits you can complete in a single sitting. Make a little progress every day if you can. And if you can’t – don’t sweat it, but try to do better in the future.
- Optimism can’t hurt. Even if you’re not a morning person, avoid being defeatist. It won’t do you any good, and the worst possible result of a defeatist attitude is you prove yourself right in the end.
- Know your limits. Keep pushing them, but know where they are now, and where you want them to be when you get there – wherever “there” is. Remember that you can’t give something out if you don’t have it yourself. If you want to be able to love, you need to love yourself so you know what it feels like. If you want to be charitable, make sure you have money or resources available to throw at people before you write any checks. That said…
- Take a few risks. Nobody ever reaches success through safe decisions and a string of compromises. Don’t do anything stupid, but don’t play it too safe, either. Moderate your moderation.
- Enjoy yourself. Not in the sense of “have fun,” although that’s not a bad idea either. I mean, really, enjoy being you. Even if you’re not perfect – and you aren’t, and that’s okay – enjoy being yourself. You can’t be anyone else, no matter how far you travel or how much you earn or what you drive. So get used to the idea that you can fix the things you don’t like about yourself, and enjoy the rest instead of sweating the bad bits. Don’t forget your imperfections, because complacency is bad for you. Just don’t dwell on them to the exclusion of the rest either. You need to enjoy your life, or what’s the point?
- Have fun. It’s a good idea, it’s good for you, and it keeps you going through the tough bits. Take time out for yourself, as they say.
- Maintain your health. When you’re stressed, remember your body. If you’re worn out, exercise. Get your body moving. It’s a powerful tool, and the mental side effects of even minimal exercise and healthy habits can be amazing.
- Remember to breathe. A moment of focus on your breathing can be a meditative step, letting you rein in your body before it runs away with your mental faculties. Pause, look around, enjoy the texture of the wallpaper or the glow of the streetlights in the snow, then refocus. Smell some roses.
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That’s not all I have to say on the topic, so I’m sure I’ll revisit this arena later on down the line. Until then, remember to breathe.