How To Trick Your Brain To Doing Hard Things?

I have always loved learning new skills.

When we start learning a new skill, we suck at it.

To become good at anything we need constant practice over a long period of time. It requires hard work.

For the longest time, I had hard time doing hard things. My brain used to put resistance against the things I wanted to do.

You can either loose energy fighting resistance and maybe you can win. Or you can trick your brain to do hard things. Make it your friend.

Our brain despise hard work. It wants dopamine. When it can get cheap dopamine from scrolling social media, why will it want to do hard things?

Dopamine is the brain’s primary reward chemical. All our desires, from our sexual appetites to our quest for knowledge comes from dopamine. It makes us excited, enthusiastic and it also generates meaning from a situation .

When you hear a notification on your phone and you’re curious to check it out, that’s dopamine at work .

Our brain is made of chemicals and these chemicals can easily be rewired. It’s scientifically proven.

They have been manipulated many times before by going to school or college or by culture or religion. So why can’t we do it ourself?

There are three ways that helped me trick my brain in doing hard things.

1. 2 Minute Rule - by James Clear

   • The idea is to make your habits as easy as possible to start. Even when you know you should start small, it’s easy to start big.

   • When you start a new habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.

     1. Rather than reading a book, start with reading 2 pages.

     2. Instead of doing 30 minute of yoga, open up your yoga mat and do child's pose.

   • A new habit should not feel like a challenge. The actions that follow can be challenging, but the first two minutes should be easy.

   • We are tricking our brain to start something that we want to do.

2. Reframe your brain. A reframe approaches a topic from a new perspective. Imagine how the smartest and most aware people will approach it.

   In his book Reframe your brain, Scott Adams shares 160 different reframes to rewire your brain.

So what does it take to rewire the brain? It’s simple, only 3 things

1. Focus

2. Repetition

3. Emotion (fear, happiness, hate, love and passion)

Imagine you start something new and you fail, you feel that you are not good. How can you reframe this?

Past self: I am not good at it.

Reframe: I am a beginner and with practice I will become better.

Now whenever you feel you are not good at anything, use this reframe. Repeat it every time and you will see your brain changing over time.

Focus and repetition move an idea (or reframe) from concept to physical changes in your brain structure.

Adding emotion can make the rewiring happen faster.

To add emotion, focus on an emotionally powerful endpoint and imagine it often. That is why so many highly successful people talk about visualization. You see people like Conor McGregor, Kobe Bryant, Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Virat Kohli talk about it publicly.

Visualization is basically rewiring your brain with emotion. Imagining how would you look and feel after 1 year of working out.

Another example that shows how reframing can be so powerful.

Usual Frame: I want to workout.

Reframe: I have decided to workout.

When you want something, it's just a desire. But when you decide to do something, your whole identity becomes a part of it.

Now let’s talk about how can we change our identity to make hard things easier.

3. Change your identity.

Our brain does things easily when we identify as someone. If you identify yourself as a writer, you will write more.

If you identify yourself as a healthy person, you will think twice before eating something unhealthy. Your brain thinks that you are a healthy person.

Also remove the negative self-talk.

Change the narrative, start talking positively about yourself. This can be easily done with reframing. If you talk negative, ask yourself how can I turn this into positive?

Your self-image is formed by what you or people around you talk about you. If you talk negative about yourself, you invite negative emotions. If you hang out with people who talk negative about you or others, you are taking in the negative emotions.

So rather than fighting against your own brain, trick it to do the things you want.

Your life will be easy and more productive. You will be able to get more things done than ever before much easily and with fun.