How to get your brain to accept change

Think you’re confused as to which direction to go. What about your brain? You just sent it a list of new goals you want to accomplish for the New Year through its gigantic neural network system for sorting and activating.

Things basically work until certain goals which require a change in habit collide with your older and entrenched habit programs. These old habits programs are reliable neural pathways that you and your brain don’t give second thought to running.

Think of it as your drive each day back and forth from home to work. Once you’ve learn the best route that works for you, you repeat it day in and day out.  You’re even sure that you could drive it in your sleep; you know it that well. But, then you change jobs to a completely new location.  You have to learn a new route all over again. It takes a while to feel comfortable and confident that you know you way to your new destination.

In the previous post, the example I used was the new goal message of “don’t eat pizza” having a tough time competing against the ingrained programmed messages to “eat pizza”. In order, to change that old program, I said that the brain needed a meaningful message of change so that the neural wiring could be uncoupled from its old connections and rerouted and rewired to new, more desirable connections.

So, if we want to uncouple the old habit connections, the brain needs a meaningful message of change. Let’s start with the goal message itself and use the pizza example again.

The goal is to stop eating pizza for the purpose of losing weight. If you are an avid pizza eater this sounds like a good thing to do. But, if your not and you are only eliminating pizza and continuing to eat hamburgers and fries, then the goal message is a miss-match. But, for the sake of argument, let’s just say the reason for not eating pizza is justified.

To take a stand and say no more pizza, which was okay to eat yesterday but not today, will be tough to uphold with a brain history of pizza experiences. So, the first thing in uncoupling the neural connections to the pizza eating program is not to pull the plug immediately.

The message of change becomes more meaningful to the brain when it’s done in steps.

So, instead of no pizza ever again, you can start by reducing the number of pizza eating experiences and associating it with something more positive.

You can program a new goal to eating a green salad with your pizza and then modify your goal to eating only one slice of pizza a week with a salad. This allows your brain to adjust its programming by phasing out the old program over a period of time and at the same time phase in a new and better program.

Stay tuned for more ways to create meaningful messages of change.