GMR 143: The Secret to Lasting Change
Every single person wants to change something in their life. Maybe you want to change your weight, or perhaps it’s your finances. Regardless of what you want to change, there’s a process to change, and the biggest adversary to your success is your brain. In this episode of GMR, we look at what it takes to experience positive change that lasts.
Show Notes
Changing Behavior
Not 21 days, or 60 days, but 100 days or don’t even start.
You have to make Longer term commitment.
You need to change your expectations - it will take time .
You have to make some pre-commitments in advance.
Pre-plan the behaviors for the triggers that will occur as you make the changes.
Our brain doesn’t like change, the brain feels uncomfortable in change situations. The brain sends signals to the motor cortex of the brain. The messages that rationalize “today’s not a good day,” and “maybe I don’t really want this.” You talk yourself out of the right thing because your brain fights change.
You need to override the automatic responses of your brain and gain control.
Automaticity: anything that I repeat over and over for a period of time will go from conscious effort, will-power, or persistence (forcing of the behavior, which is difficult) and turn it into an automatic neural flow. That automatic flow feels great and can make you so healthy. Have to remove the destructive thought pattern with a 100-day plan, so that you create new automatic processes in the brain for healthy behavior, healthy finances.
Habits are formed by 3 things
Trigger
Behavior
Neurological reward
Examples 1
Hunger
Eating
Dopamine and renewed energy
Example 2
Feeling tired
Drinking coffee
Caffeine energy hit, a natural high, dopamine in the brain
Example 3
See an advertisement
1-click purchase
Immediate reward of excitement & bright future
Secondary reward when the package arrives
Two big dopamine hits, one immediate, one delayed
The Power of Advertising
The worse they can make you feel with the advertising, the bigger the hit of dopamine and joy when their product solves the problem… advertising is often focused on making you unhappy with where you are today, so they can make you “feel” great with their product. This is habit forming spending… neurological pathways are being created in the brain…. That’s a big dea.
Pre-commit to new behaviors when the trigger happens.
Write down the pre-commitment.
Interrupt the behavior which interrupts the neural pattern in the brain.
Need strategies - what you’ll do to interrupt the pattern.
New behaviors lead to new neural patterns, which leads to real change in your life.
Create a new ritual - soda to carbonated water, to plain water.
Budget is a “pattern interruption” because it helps us break the “hot mode,” helping us slow down and break the triggers of spending.
This doesn’t happen overnight, but through consistent you can train your mind to operate on the budget and not make purchases outside the budget.
Having someone else in your life as a natural pattern interrupter is also a huge benefit.
When you’re interested, you do what’s convenient.
You’ll stop when you lose interest.
Your brain will resist the hard work.
You’ll chase something new, because it promises to be easy, instead of doing the hard work of the current ta, but this is a downward spiral because you keep chasing new things. When the new thing gets hard to stick to you give up and start chasing a new thing.
When you’re committed, you do whatever it takes.
You’ll eat rice and beans.
You’ll pick up another job.
You’ll enter receipts into your budget every night before bed.
Increase your chance of success by enlisting the help of a spouse, friend, or a coach.