Become a Better Version of You… with Science

How neuroplasticity can give your life the 360 you’ve always wanted

I know the feeling. You stand before the bathroom mirror, look at the person across from you, and think “what happened?” Maybe this isn’t your mirror talk — and it’s not mine every day, but some. We get close to that turning point where we know we really need to turn something around in our lives.

It’s time.

Not only can you become the opposite of that person across from you, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle. There is a way to develop new habits and behaviors without fighting against your natural wiring.

No, you can’t wish your way to a different eye color or the ability to fly. There are limits to this process. But not many.

Most of us try for the whole 360 at once. All or nothing. “If I’m not a different person by tomorrow, dammit, then I’m a total failure.” We put 110% effort into the transformation for a couple days. We miss something on the checklist. The whole transformation dies in a fiery ball of self-flagellation.

There’s a better way to change. And an easier way… with less fire and more science.

Instead of fighting our hard-wiring, we’ll work with it. Instead of trying to trick our own brains into becoming something we’re not, we’ll work with ourselves. It’s not like we can tag-team for a new self. Our brains don’t like all-or-nothing change. We’ve got built-in gate-keeping mechanisms to protect us from harm. Those gate-keeping mechanisms are what make us give up on the third day of an all-immersive, do-or-die transformation.

How about a better you? Using a method that works with your brain instead of against it.

OK, so what does this all mean for you?

You’ve heard this a lot lately — the amygdala and limbic system as a whole, is your fight-or-flight alarm — the dirty, old man of your brain. The ancient part. Back when the Flintstones peddled cars with their feet. The part of our brain that hasn’t evolved as fast as our environment. Writers and speakers love to use the ‘running from lions’ analogy, so I’ll refrain. I doubt our ancestors had to run from many lions — not enough to alter our brains forever.

Run. Hide. Fight.

Your limbic system thinks that unwanted phone call you have to make is a predator, “run!” It thinks your planned, daily, 500 push-up regimen is a forest fire, “escape and hide!” This lizard brain of yours looks in the mirror and says “let’s keep everything easy, the way it is. Lazy and static. So there’s no rift in the space-time continuum. I like you better on the couch, in sweats.”

Your brain is wired to conserve as much energy as possible. New, personal change requires a lot of energy.

Every new change our prefrontal cortex delivers to our conscious mind, you’ve got old man lizard back there, pumping the brakes and keeping you from imaginary harm.

The limbic system even lights up before that uncomfortable conversation where you’re supposed to ask for a raise, but you cave at the last minute, or the moment you’ve got your business plan all laid-out and you get a negative email from your first customer, which sends you into a tailspin.

Traditional methods of self-transformation don’t work well.

Yes, you can force your way through the limbic response. Some people have the capacity to do so, but it’s incredibly hard.

The more you activate your fight-or-flight, the more likely it will activate again. Self-transformation becomes a self-made wheel of yuck and peril. If you want to get off the wheel you’ve got to change the way you look at habit-building and all-or-nothing approaches.

How to make a self-transformation plan that works

Instead of fighting against our fight-or-flight, we’ll work around the alarm system altogether. We’ve got a secret weapon in our back-pockets. Like a cat burglar in the night, we’ll don our black masks and tip-toe over the tripwires and lasers, leaving the alarm system to rest.

Instead of sweeping change, we make micro-commitments.

A term coined by Ryan Levesque, of the books Ask and Choose, Levesque found that micro-commitments can bypass this ancient alarm system and reward you instead. Ryan teaches his methods for business-use, but they have great application for self-transformation as well.

We reward the mid-prefrontal cortex instead of alarm the amygdala.

If you were to start exercising today, for the first time. And you went after your workout with so much enthusiasm you worked your face off — tomorrow you’d feel like death. And two days later every muscle in your body would hurt like punishment. Maybe you’d try again in a week. By the third week of this all-or-nothing routine you’d probably give up. Your limbic system would call it quits. “Get back to the couch or else.”

Instead, we’ll make this workout a reward.

We’ll give ourselves a little dopamine squirt. Our prefrontal cortex lights up our neurons and looks forward to the workout. We want to do it again tomorrow. Instead of punishing ourselves with something adverse, alarm bells ringing, we give ourselves a reward.

How to make your self-transformation a reward:

• With micro-commitments. Say you can do ten pull-ups as your maximum. Instead of doing all ten, once a week until you can’t feel your arms, you do three. Every day. You do enough so it feels good — like you accomplished something — a reward. But not enough that you feel spent (adverse — training the fight-or-flight to stop you next time).
• One or two small changes at a time. If you made it this far a certain way, what makes you think you can change your entire life overnight. Your brain is now hard-wired to keep you in your current condition. You’ve got to circumvent the alarm, with daily micro-commitments to reward the prefrontal cortex and avoid the amygdala.

You also get to pack a parachute.

Fight-or-flight expects to be followed by a lot of running (aka. fast movement). Your limbic system thinks it did you a solid by warning you, now it wants you to run. If you don’t run, the system makes you feel terrible about yourself. You haven’t metabolized the excess cortisol through vigorous movement.

So, your parachute is movement. When you feel your brain fighting against your new idea, get moving, a lot, NOW. Jump, run, flap your arms, walk fast — do anything to get your heart moving and the cortisol out of there.

…but we’ll do our best not to sound the alarm. Tip-toes. Micro-commitments.

Start today. Not tomorrow

Pick one thing you want to transform about yourself. Write the big thing at the top of your paper. Break the big thing down into the smallest measurable chunks.

If you want to be the person who exercises every day do one push-up per day until the habit is the reward. Then make it ten a day. Then fifty.

If you want to be more assertive, say hello first, to every cashier you encounter. Keep a mental scorecard, like a game. If get 100 points you get a reward.

If you want to read more, do more, be more, break it down to the simplest, most-rewarding daily task you can think of. Neurons that fire together, wire together.

You’ll become the person you always wanted to be. And you can do it without sounding the alarm.

You want to start a business and tell your boss to stick-it — start today. Write the big goal at the top of the paper and work your way down until the daily practice is so small you want to put it in your pocket.

We need you to be a better version of yourself.

Now you’ve got the keys to the kingdom. The process takes awhile. Self-transformation is a life-long pursuit, but it’s worth it. If we’re not growing we’re shrinking. There’s no stasis in anything. Even rocks move really slow.

We’re waiting for you.

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August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. As a self-appointed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indies how to make work that sells and how to sell more of that work once it’s created. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing, August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by +431,678 people.

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