Use THIS Neuroscience Mantra to Help You Change
Science Holds The Secret
“Neurons that fire together, wire together.”
Donald Hebb, the Canadian psychologist and proclaimed “father of neurophysiology” probably didn’t realize his 1949 description of the formation of pathways in the brain would still be around 80 years later.
But here we are.
In my own personal growth journey, I remind myself of his words often. It reminds me of the mechanisms behind why we behave the way we do and what must be done to create change.
A hope that our bad habits can be altered, our beliefs made anew, and our outlook brightened.
It’s become my own mantra.
And it should be yours, too.
Why You Do What You Do
Our habits, good and bad, become habits through repetition. It is through this repetition that conditioning occurs: the process of embedding behaviors into our subconscious.
All of our habits stem from one singular moment when we first did something. The first lie we told to avoid conflict leading to our habit of people-pleasing. The first time we ignored our intuition and did what we thought others wanted us to do. The first time we created a fantasy around the person we’re dating out of a need to mask their flaws or the first time we put someone else’s needs above our own.
From that first moment of action, neurons in our brain fired a particular way. They formed pathways — cementing the behavior and the environment associated, in our minds. To you now, the people-pleaser, all it takes is your coworker or friend asking for your opinion for you to feel the fearful need to hold back what you truly think. You feel almost paralyzed at that moment — because you are. The pathways in your brain aren’t wired for you to speak up.
Instead, the neuronal pathway that tells you to remain silent has now been fired hundreds, if not thousands of times across your life. Now it’s second nature to feel anxious and fearful when asked for your opinion. It’s a pathway you’ve traveled too many times. Like driving a car, riding a bike, or writing a book; your response to such questions is almost automatic now.
Deann Ware Ph.D. speaks about this process of neuronal learning in more detail below,
“When brain cells communicate frequently, the connection between them strengthens. Messages that travel the same pathway in the brain over & over begin to transmit faster & faster. With enough repetition, they become automatic”
Who we are today is the result of specific wiring of our brains over time. James Clear, the writer of Atomic Habits, claims our identities are merely a collection of all of our habits…
“Your identity emerges out of your habits. You are not born with preset beliefs. Every belief, including those about yourself, is learned and conditioned through experience” — James Clear, Atomic Habits
And I don’t disagree.
Think of anything you believe about yourself and you’ll have a list of “evidence” in the form of thoughts and behaviors to back it up. Thoughts and behaviors, I’ll add, with traces in the brain in the form of neuronal pathways strengthened over time.
Whatever fires, wires, after all.
A Mantra For Change
Before neuroscience took off, our brains were believed to be fully formed by adulthood. From then onwards we were merely subjected to how our brain was structured.
Luckily, the neuroscience community was wrong.
Neuroplasticity emerged and with it, our view of the brain changed — no pun intended. No bad habit is a life sentence to self-sabotage and pain. Habits can be changed, brains can be rewired, and new behaviors born.
It just takes a little bit of time.
Behaviour Change Is More Complicated Than We Think
Changing behavior is not easy. If it was, we’d all be the people we want to be. But we still feel insecure when we shouldn’t be, we still struggle to not feel anxious when asked for our opinion, and we still feel resistance in our everyday life. Change takes time.
As our mantra states, “Whatever fires, wires” and the wiring of our bad habits are likely tangled and stubborn. The pathway may begin at one behavior but be linked to other things, like mood. For example, people-pleasing is a fear response to avoid conflict. The pathway relating to the need to save face will be tied up in our fear-response system — our amygdala. Now we have a behavior entangled with fear.
This makes it harder to break.
Stress and junk food, stress and procrastination, low moods and hitting up an ex, getting excited, and acting impulsively. Emotions impact behavior and most of our bad habits will likely temporarily serve a purpose in calming ourselves. Junk food is nice until your sugar levels crash and you feel bad. Procrastination feels good at the moment until you’ve neglected all your priorities.
With this in mind, behavior change now moves from the simple art of changing what you’re doing to ensuring you are replacing your bad behaviors with healthier ones that treat your moods. For example, when stressed you could meditate or have fruit instead of turning to junk food. When excited you take a few moments to relax before making any compulsive decisions. When you’re low you could turn to self-care instead of self-sabotage.
We replace our bad habits with NEW behaviors that will benefit us and then we condition them in our minds through repetition. Time after time. Eventually, old neuronal pathways fade away (as they’ve not been used) and new ones form. For example, going to the gym is fine when you’re in a routine (when the pathways are firing often and are strong) but it’s hard to be motivated when you’re not consistent.
Whatever fires, wires and we keep this in mind as we move through this period of behavior change. We allow old pathways to die out and new one’s to form.
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