You are not your brain summary

Why is it that when we know we shouldn’t be doing something, like smoking or binging on ice cream, we keep doing it over and over again? Why do bad habits feel so impossible to quit?

It’s because when we act out an unhealthy behavior, it provides us with a sense of relief from distressing sensations, in turn wiring our brain to connect this behavior to a temporary “high,” which strengthens the habit.

So is there any way of conquering these destructive brain messages? Yes, there is.

The good news is we can arm ourselves with self-directed neuroplasticity, meaning we can change how we think by constructively focusing our attention.

Now that you know there’s a way to change your brain’s unhelpful wiring, you’re probably wondering how to get started. Fortunately, there’s a systematic method to help you, called the Four Steps. The Four Steps are a guide to applying self-directed neuroplasticity to your situation, so that you can break the brain circuits linked with unhealthy habits and reinforce those that support healthy actions.

Specifically, the Four Steps focus your attention to relabel, reframe, refocus, and revalue the deceptive messages in your brain.

It may seem obvious, but before you can change anything, you first have to know what you want. So the first step in combatting your deceptive brain messages is to identify and relabel them.

This step involves developing an awareness of what your brain is doing as it’s doing it, often referred to as cultivating mindfulness. Mindfulness is an experiential process, so you need to put some effort into it and practice it before it can be useful to you.

Now that you know how to identify and label your deceptive thoughts, how can you change your relationship to them? You can use the method of reframing, which involves altering how important the deceptive thoughts are to you.

Take, for example, someone the authors helped. He had recurring thoughts that if he didn’t check certain things at a certain time, something bad would happen to someone important to him. Although he could admit that the thoughts were false, he felt urged to attend to them, as it appeared to be the only way to rid himself of the awful sensations they generated.

Like most of us, your attention is probably easily caught by a variety of deceptive thoughts and impulses which cause you to become trapped in repetitive cycles of unhealthy behavior, such as overeating and over-thinking.

The third step – refocusing – can be used to alleviate these destructive attention grabbers and it entails focusing your attention on a productive activity.

Although your deceptive messages will try to convince you otherwise, you need to change your beliefs about yourself – not yourself – in order to rewire your brain for healthy, loving thinking.

Revaluing is the fourth and final step in reprogramming your brain, and it involves looking at situations from the wider perspective of your healthy and loving side, instead of from the limited, negative perspective of your deceptive brain messages.