The Key To Changing Your Life (even though you're not rational)

Being a human can be frustrating.

The handy Pre-Frontal Cortex we've developed creates the illusion that we are calculated, logical creatures, but this theory doesn't exactly hold up to the evidence.

We constantly engage in behavior that we know is bad for us.

The worst part is that we engage in destructive behavior when we are fully aware we're self-sabotaging, and the better path is set before us.

Anyone with an internet connection can learn how to increase their earning potential and improve their health.

If we were the reason-driven creatures we imagine ourselves, we would only need to know how to improve our lives and we’d be off to the races.

The annoying reality of the human condition is that we are not as logical as we imagine ourselves. We are driven by emotion, not reason.

Self-improvement is closer to breaking a wild horse than running a computer program.

Mistaking ourselves for being purely reasonable makes changing our lives so damn frustrating.

To make lasting change effectively, we need to work with the cards we're dealt.

If you approach changing your life from the perspective that you're a reasoned, logical creature, it will be infuriating.

But if you can accept your emotions are calling the shots, you'll set yourself up for a chance of success.

No Emotion = Big Problems

Before developing a brain tumor, Elliot was a stand-up guy.

He was a great father, a high performer at work, a fantastic husband — the whole nine yards.

But after having a portion of his frontal lobe removed during surgery, he was no longer the same man.

His life completely fell apart: He fell for money-making schemes, failed to perform even the simplest tasks at work, and destroyed his home life.

The puzzling thing was that Elliot aced any cognitive exam he was given — there was no indication that his intellect was damaged.

It was at this point that Elliot went to see neuroscientist Antonio Damasio.

Damasio finally concluded that Elliot's problem was that he had lost his ability to respond to emotion: Elliot responded neutrally to photos depicting disturbing and emotionally charged images.

Elliot's logic and reason were intact, but he couldn't feel.

You might think this would cause Elliot to become a superhuman — a badass execution machine of pure discipline and intellect.

But this isn't what happens when you remove emotions from a human mind.

Without emotion, we can't create a hierarchy of the most important aspects of our lives.

We feel our values. They're not the result of cold, calculated logic.

Losing emotion prevented Elliot from being able to determine what was necessary; he couldn't make effective decisions.

His life fell apart.

Takeaway: Step 1 is accepting that you are motivated by emotions, not reason.

Training Your Elephant

The dichotomy between logic and emotion is described in many different ways.

The most famous example is "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman.

In an article for Scientific American, Kahneman describes the difference between the systems he discusses in the book: "System One" and "System Two."

• System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little effort and no sense of voluntary control.

• System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.

System one is emotional, and it shouldn't surprise you that it is the book's hero.

My favorite depiction of system one and system two comes from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's book "The Happiness Hypothesis."

The cover of The Happiness Hypothesis shows someone riding an elephant, and Haidt uses this metaphor throughout to explore how humans can find happiness given our predicament of having two distinct parts of our brains that need to work with each other.

Our logical self (system two) is the rider.

The rider likes to imagine they are in control — they have the reigns, after all.

But the rider mustn't forget that they are riding a freaking elephant!

If the elephant wants something, there is no doubt about who gets the final say.

Self-mastery doesn't come from being a tyrant and abusing your elephant. It comes from seeing yourself and your elephant as a team and being a respectful rider.

You abuse your elephant when you don't negotiate with yourself to allow for any fun or relaxation in your life.

If you treat yourself like a machine, you'll break down. When a human breaks down this way, it's called burnout.

The best way to negotiate with your elephant (and avoid burnout) is to reward yourself for doing the work. When you complete an essential task, follow it up with something you enjoy.

Takeaway: You're in this for the long haul. You and your elephant have to get along forever. Don't abuse it — negotiate with it. Don't neglect your emotional needs in your drive to accomplish your goals.

Your Inner Lawyer

It's so easy to imagine that we're reasonable because emotion speaks to us in the language of logic.

The common term for this is rationalization.

We've all been there.

You're trying to lose 10 pounds, and you find yourself at a potluck where someone has brought the best cheesecake in town, and everyone is raving about it.

The truth is that you want the cheesecake.

You want the cheesecake because you have thousands of years of evolutionary programming informing you that effortless, plentiful calories are a good thing.

The desire is coming from your amygdala — it's emotional.

But this isn't how you proceed. You have to convince yourself that you're logical, after all.

So your pre-frontal cortex bends a knee to your amygdala so you can pretend that your lust for cheesecake is rational.

Jonathan Haidt calls this "using your Inner Lawyer."

Your Inner Lawyer is your base desire communicating to you in the language of logic.

The Inner Lawyer is why we can feel like the rider is in control, not the elephant.

There is nothing wrong with having a piece of cheesecake at a potluck. But it's important to learn to recognize your inner lawyer to make a lasting change in your life.

Takeaway: Keep an eye out for rationalizing behavior at odds with your goals. It's this rationalization that can make breaking bad habits so tricky.

Make Yourself Have To

When you accept that it's emotions calling the shots, you can leverage them to your advantage instead of fighting against them.

Many evolutionary traits are unhelpful in our modern environment, such as the desire to eat as much as possible and conserve energy.

However, there are some deeply ingrained tendencies that you can take advantage of to change your life positively. A powerful example is that you hate to lose anything.

Losing resources probably meant death for your ancestors. The result of this evolutionary trait is a phenomenon called loss aversion.

Loss aversion describes the effect that loss is twice as psychologically powerful as gaining something.

How can you use loss aversion to your advantage?

By investing in making change. I'm not talking about investing your time and energy — invest those hard-earned dollars.

You're not just paying for the information when you buy a course or a coaching package.

You're paying for the structure and the signal that this is a serious business because you've paid for it. Free coaching can't work — the transfer of funds is a crucial part of creating accountability.

You might abandon that tutorial on YouTube after a couple of days, but that $1000 course? Hell no!

You value your money far too much to let that go to waste.

You use loss aversion to your advantage when you invest in yourself:

• Buy online courses

• Buy a gym membership

• Buy a coaching package or a consultation call

Your deeply evolved hatred of loss won't allow you to waste these opportunities.

Accountability

I can't stand when people claim they don't care about what anybody else thinks of them.

What complete horse sh*t. It is impossible to be a human being and not care about what anybody else thinks about you.

You shouldn't care about what everybody thinks of you, and you need to develop thick enough skin to tolerate the people who won't like you or your work.

But there is no human alive that doesn't yearn for some form of social approval.

Being cast out of the tribe meant certain death for your ancestors, and as a result, you want to be seen by your peers as trustworthy, competent, and hard-working.

There are several ways you can use social accountability to leverage change:

• Join a mastermind or group committed to the type of growth you want to do

• Get an accountability buddy to who you report progress to

• Document your journey publicly (i.e., posting your weight-loss journey on social media)

Takeaway: You can leverage the emotional charge of fearing loss and being seen negatively to make the change you want to see in your life.

The "Emotional Why"

Dopamine gets a bad rep these days.

People think of dopamine as the driver of overeating, internet porn, drug addiction, and all our other destructive habits. And they're not wrong — these behaviors are addicting because they secrete dopamine.

But dopamine is not bad; without it, you wouldn't get out of bed.

Dopamine is motivating — it's what creates your drive to accomplish anything in life.

Desire Dopamine is often the culprit for why change is so difficult.

This dopamine fuels our bad habits, things we know aren't good for us but provide us with comfort. But there is not just a single dopamine pathway in the brain.

The dopamine control circuit (as opposed to the desire circuit) is a more recently evolved pathway in our pre-frontal cortex. This dopamine pathway is involved in planning and inhibitory control.

When you leverage the desire to improve your life (using the dopamine control circuit) against the desire for short-term pleasure (the dopamine desire circuit), you set yourself up to make lasting changes.

I think of this as creating an "Emotional Why."

A common mistake is to attempt to use a weak "logical why" against a powerful emotional drive.

We've seen how it's emotions that call the shots — and that's why this approach doesn't work.

The desire for a crispy, sugary, cream-filled donut is strong, and simply saying to yourself, "but I'll be healthier if I can lose ten pounds," won't be able to fight it.

You create an "emotional why" when you go beyond reason and feel your desire for change. You give yourself a chance when you clearly visualize the change you want to make.

Now you have something that can compete with your dopamine desire circuit's powerful cravings for instant gratification.

Takeaway: Logic can't compete with an emotional craving, but your emotional why can. Fight emotion with emotion, not an emotion with logic. Your "Why" is your champion.

TL;DR

1. Accept that you are not as rational as you think and that your emotions (rather than logic) are responsible for your behavior.

2. Don't attempt to suppress your emotions by being a tyrant. Self-mastery is a process of negotiating with your elephant, not attempting to beat it into submission. An angry and resentful elephant is dangerous.

3. Beware of your tendency to view your emotions through the lens of logic. This is using your inner lawyer, and it will cause you to rationalize your bad habits.

4. Leverage emotional traits to create incentives. Use your hatred of loss and your desire to be like to create accountability.

5. Never pit logic against emotion. Invest in making your goals emotional. Don't just articulate your goals — envision them. Feel them. Make them emotional, and they'll be able to compete with your unhelpful cravings.