Trick your brain to create success (train your brain to succeed) your youniverse mind tricks
in this video I'm going to tell you how I tricked my brain to create automatic
success in my life if you don't know anything about my personal story I'll
just briefly tell you that I was a maid and a single mother for over 15 years I
had a ton of anxiety and not a ton of money and I was in what I consider to be
the struggling Department I now hold a PhD in philosophy a successful online
coaching platform a successful YouTube channel my personal life is great I'm
abundant I'm happy and I'm creating new success in my life all the time so how
did I do that when research has discovered that approximately 95% of
people who set goals do not follow through with what it takes to create
them I used to be in that 95% and like most people in that percentile I didn't
know why this happened I would procrastinate repeat limiting beliefs to
myself and act in ways that didn't produce successful results even when I
knew I was doing it here's the scientific reason why this happens when
we make plans for ourselves like creating a successful business
manifesting a dynamic relationship or developing the physique we want we tend
to look at these things as being future events in looking at the future the
brain says okay I can get on board with that and see how it will be beneficial
to our existence however when it comes to making immediate decisions and
behaviors that align with those goals the brain prefers to stay consistent
with a more instant gratification point of view it thinks from the present self
vantage point and what the immediate payoffs the present self can experience
it might be on board with the benefits of the long-term goals but it holds more
value regarding present moment satisfaction and why does it do this
the simple answer is dopamine in the brain we have neuro transmitters that
send signals between one neuron in the next neurotransmitters are chemicals
made by nerve cells called neurons they're used to communicate messages
across different parts of the brain and between the brain and the rest of the
body dopamine is involved mainly in controlling movement it's a
neurotransmitter that helps send signals in the brain
that relate to motivation and it's known as the feel-good neurotransmitter
dopamine is released when we eat food that we crave meet someone new that we
like win a trophy or any other event that contributes to feelings of pleasure
and satisfaction dopamine is also the reason individuals become addicted to
specific substances and other modes of behavior it's a reward system to the
brain and body because it boosts the mood and attention and it motivates us
in specific ways including behavior and physical action and although it's very
normal for dopamine levels to fluctuate low dopamine is linked to low enthusiasm
low attention span and decreased motivation the bottom line is that
dopamine can drive us to successful outcomes because it motivates us here's
how that works we experience a trigger and then an act of behavior
automatically that behavior will almost always align with what the brain deems
Trick your brain for success (train your brain to succeed) your youniverse mind tricks
as the biggest reward which is what dopamine is to the brain so how do we
trick our brains into being rewarded for things that drive us towards success so
it will cause us to behave in ways that are consistent with that in my own
research for this I discovered a series of psychological studies conducted by
Walter Mischel a Stanford professor that gave me a very big clue as to how to do
this during professor Michels experiments he tested hundreds of
children mostly between the ages of 4 and 5 years old each child was brought
into a private room by a researcher seated at a table and given a
marshmallow placed in front of them they were then given a deal with incentive if
the child refrained from eating the marshmallow when the researcher returned
they would receive a second marshmallow but if the child decided to eat the
marshmallow during the time the researcher was gone they would not
receive the second one ultimately the choice was this an instantaneous reward
or double the reward in exchange for a little self-discipline in filming the
children they saw that some of the children ate the marshmallow as soon as
the researcher left the room others tried very hard to wait but ultimately
surrender to their craving for the treat and a few of the children managed to
wait until the researcher returned receiving their reward for doing so but
the experiments didn't stop there as the children became older the researchers
followed up on them and their progress in specific areas of their lives
interestingly the individuals who delayed gratification were marked as
being and I'll quote this from the research article academically and
socially competent verbally fluent rational attentive planful and able to
deal with frustration and stress they were also reported to have overall
higher scholastic performance the children were followed into adulthood
for over 40 years the overall conclusion the ones who
waited for the higher reward were consistently reported as more successful
in all areas of their lives than the children who chose the instant
gratification they were more likely to succeed with their goals okay so now
that we've discovered that it's important to know that the brain
develops habits based on what it considers to be the reward one of the
common features that all life possesses is a mechanism for maintaining orderly
conditions when the brain gets used to feeling a certain way due to the
dopamine reward it starts going there more and more because it's familiar and
easy to get to mostly because of what are known as synapses within the brain
which I'll get into in just a minute but it's important to note that if the brain
dismisses long term goals to go for the instant gratification of something that
made at or from those long-term goals it will be because the brain has created
the habit of doing so synapses are connections in our brains that form
during development in the womb and are strengthened during childhood and
adolescence as we get older we go through a process known as synaptic
pruning this is the process by which extra neurons and synaptic connections
are eliminated in order to increase the efficiency of the pathways that we use
most often you can think of these as roadways that have been well established
over time in order to make travelling much easier and more efficient and the
ones that get rewarded the most with those dopamine rushes are the ones that
will be the most traveled and that's what makes a habit
what happens in the brain and body is much like a thermostat regulating the
temperature of a room with a thermostat as the temperature in a room changes the
how to trick your brain to create success (train your brain to succeed) your youniverse mind tricks
thermostat regulates the unit to return the room to a predetermined state our
brains do much the same thing in order to keep us within specific boundaries or
those established roadways in order to be efficient to conserve energy within
the brain and body and to create the most reward however just as new roadways
can be created synapses can be strengthened and or restructured through
deliberate conscious effort and a little self-discipline if you teach your brain
that the greater reward comes with delayed gratification you can create new
automatic habits that bring you greater rewards when we update the reward value
of our behavior we can easily create new habits that drive us towards success so
here's how I did this the first step was allowing myself to start thinking that
success could be possible I didn't believe that yet so I just nurtured the
thought until I could prove it to myself secondly there's a term in psychology
known as implementation and tension this is a strategy that leads to better goal
attainment and assists in modifying behavior brain reward and in turn
creating new habits but these types of intentions you specify the win where and
how portions of goal directed behavior for example I will study at my desk on
specific date and time for one hour this automates action and assists in
overcoming procrastination in other words it makes a person much more likely
to perform an action and some say as much as five times more likely and in my
case I felt committed to it once I wrote it down so it worked the next thing I
did was I wrote a two column list using the implementation intentions that I
just mentioned in the first column I wrote a list of committed actions to
follow through with that would lead me towards my success in the second column
I listed rewards that I would allow myself once those actions were completed
these were daily actions and daily rewards so it doesn't have to be all
work and no play in fact the rewards super important this
taught my brain that it would receive a reward after doing something that moved
me towards success this also kept me from depleting my
dopamine levels early in the day which would cause a decrease in motivation if
I had done that then I removed myself from distractions that would activate
the dopamine craving my brain was used to with the old habits that weren't
working for me for example I would move my phone to another room
avoid social media completely which I still do to this day with the exception
of business purposes I think this is a really important point because social
media is extremely distracting and extremely addictive because of the
reward system in the brain and then I stopped buying snack foods which might
give me an excuse to walk away from a commitment so these are just my examples
of things that distracted me and you may find that you have other things that
reward your brain that might be considered distractions that keep you
from doing the things that would actually drive you towards success the
next thing I did was I put a note up near my desk that read this
procrastination feels bad success feels great this reminded my brain of the
rewards that would receive for creating success each trigger we have creates a
behavior that creates a reward for the brain starting with the behavior can
sometimes be the thing that blocks us this note triggered me to start a
behavior that was working for me and the life I wanted to live which is the
reward it's important to note here that the behavior with the biggest reward is
always the one that we're going to act out so you have to trick your brain into
understanding what the new bigger reward is so that it will create the habit of
going towards that and the last thing I did was I gave myself positive rewards
that were linked to increased dopamine levels and these included things such as
listening to high vibrational music spending time in nature and soaking up
the Sun meditation restful sleep and creating vision boards that included
things that I considered as successful outcomes to change a habit we have to
change the experience of the rewards we are getting from our behavior and doing
so we create automatic behaviors that become habitual and drive us towards
success oftentimes our reward system is outdated
ask yourself how rewarding your current behavior is when it comes to creating
success in your life if your answer is anything less than very rewarding it may
be time to update the reward system you're giving your brain and when you do
this you trick your brain into creating automatic success in your life
Trick your brain to create success (train your brain to succeed) your youniverse mind tricks