How to Use Neuroscience and Psychology to Improve Your Life

The only step: learning

Let’s agree on something; the brain is one of the most complicated things in this universe. The more we learn about it, the more we realize we know nothing. The more we try to understand it, the more we grasp how complex and intertwined this organ is.

And yet, we’re on a constant quest to improving ourselves, our lives, our missions, goals, contentment, and enjoyment, thinking we can skip through the fundamental building block of this pursuit: the human brain.

We call this a “post-truth world.” I first came across this term a while ago while reading about politics, finance, and economy, and I was hit by the recognition that the idea of post-truth applies to today’s everything, including ourselves.

Here is what it means: “Post-truth is a philosophical and political concept for “the disappearance of shared objective standards for truth” and the “circuitous slippage between facts or alt-facts, knowledge, opinion, belief, and truth.” ”

In other words, we are less influenced by factual information and more influenced by emotions and beliefs already ingrained within us, because it’s more comfortable, more convenient, and most importantly, because it falls under what we already hold true.

It’s time to snap out of our post-truth approach, especially when it comes to self-awareness, self-understanding, and self-fulfillment.

The Problem

The New Yorker journalist, Alexandra Schwartz, puts it perfectly:

“Self-help advice tends to reflect the beliefs and priorities of the era that spawns it.[…]In our current era of non-stop technological innovation, fuzzy wishful thinking has yielded to the hard doctrine of personal optimization.”

Of course, many of the pioneers of self-help are amazing psychologists, scientists, writers, journalists. But you know the old saying: “Give a man a fish… teach a man how to fish..”

Instead of being fed step-by-step guides, how about we switch the process? If people understood the fundamental workings of their brain and their psychology, wouldn’t they be able to determine how to improve themselves best? One size never fits all, and thinking it does will end up causing more harm than good.

How? By creating frustration and anxiety around the things we are unable to accomplish. Everyone around me is singing the same song, how come I can’t join in?

Well, here is the core of the problem: Science isn’t available to the people.

Scientists spend months working on publication pieces that are so raw, so dry, they bore even other scientists in the same niche field out of their minds trying to read it. I’ve been on both the writing and reading end and sometimes re-reading my own published scientific articles puts me right out.

Sure, there are amazing websites, journals, and blogs trying to translate scientific findings into readable and available articles; but these are not the standard. The standard is people preaching about what to do and how to do it. I’m the first one.

Let me give you an example:

• I wanted to teach my sister how to bake perfect bread.
• I gave her a step-by-step guide with ingredients, measurements, and timing.
• She followed the recipe to the letter, got beautiful bread.
• The second time I wasn’t there. She tried the same recipe. Something went slightly wrong, and she ended up with, well… not bread.
• The third time, we ignored the recipe. I explained the chemical process of every step, what each ingredient does, the role of moisture, the importance of timing.
• Since then, she’s been coming up with bread recipes, branching out and using her creativity to reach what she believes is ‘the perfect bread’.

Let’s go back to positive psychology and life improvement strategies. I trust you too believe it’s time to change patronizing approaches and double down on facts, snap out of the post-truth governing our time.

The Solution

We still need motivational speakers, inspiring writers, story-tellers, and life-changing personal accounts.

But what we need even more are facts and fundamental understandings. We need knowledge, verified truths, and tailored solutions.

Instead of being preachers, let’s be teachers. Instead of being passive listeners, let’s be active learners.

It’s okay to challenge ideas, question claims, ask for credibility, and become skeptical.

To overcome pain, depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, negativity, demotivation, addiction, fear, or the stigma attached to neurological and psychological disorders, we need to understand them.

To conquer love, positivity, mindfulness, happiness, memory, wellbeing, learning, intelligence, social adaptation, the impact of drugs and psychedelics, we need to understand them.

To understand them, we need to learn their neural basis, where they come from, how they are formed and expressed, how they can be altered. We need to learn who we are and how we are before attempting any change. If not, any attempt to adjust will only be transient.

Plato and Aristotle were satisfied by a ‘good life’, but for some reason, this is no longer enough. We need to show that we are leading a perfect life, and this perfection isn’t even defined by our own standards. This need to achieve and show that we fit society’s idea of perfection isn’t only stressful; it’s fatal.

“A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers” -Plato

So the answer to the question: How to Use Neuroscience and Psychology to Improve Your Life?

Is simple: Learn about them.

Listening and being motivated to progress to what you believe is a better version of yourself is good. Accepting advice from those with more wisdom and experience is even better. This is why we’re all here, isn’t it? But let’s add an extra layer; questioning and curiously searching for the fundamentals of an idea, claiming to change your life, is absolutely crucial. Once we do, only then can we be the judge of our self-improvement prophecies.

~Adriana~

Thank you for taking the time to read.

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