Are you sick of letting yourself down and flaking out on your goals? Use this simple hack to change your autopilot response and let your subconscious do the heavy lifting!
This is part 1 of a 3-part series on How to Trigger Your Brains Autopilot For Success. Be sure to check out the other 2 episodes (31 & 33).
How can you trigger your brain's autopilot system to help you achieve your goals automatically and on autopilot and to become unstoppable? Well, that's what we're talking about this week. If you missed the first episode, go back and listen to it after this one. But as an overview, we talked about our prefrontal cortex, our conscious mind and how it says to you, I want to achieve this goal, I am totally capable of achieving this goal. And our ofc, our orbital frontal cortex, and the other parts that are engaged with that the part of our mind that is habitual, it's called the habitual mind. It works on autopilot, it is much stronger than our conscious mind and our goals, right. And that's often a really good thing. So we don't have to think about stuff and it frees up those resources. But in order to achieve your goal, you have to reprogram this habitual mind. And all this week, you're getting three really stupid simple hacks to help you do that, and have your habitual mind work for you on autopilot to help you achieve your goals. And the technique that I'm going to share with you today is all about engaging your emotions in this process. You got your goal, right, and then you find that you're consistently not taking action towards that goal or taking action that is counterproductive to that goal. And I'm going to talk about this in the form of an example cuz I just think it makes it a whole lot easier to visualize and understand. So let's say your goal is to become more vital, more fit, lose weight, basically be your best self, right. And yet, you frequently find yourself binge eating bingeing on something that's not healthy. Like, I don't know, cheese ravioli, just speaking from personal experience. And it's okay, go ahead and do it. And you're like, Why put the brakes on girl? Nope, go ahead and do it. And while you are doing it, then stop and ask yourself, why am I doing this? Is this gratifying? And if not, why? How do I feel about it? Right? And through this process, you're actually changing the emotional context and engagement of your subconscious or your ofc, your habitual mind, around this activity. And so if you're eating, say, mindlessly, right? That I love that term mindlessly eating, then you're not doing this. However, if you go ahead and eat the cheese ravioli, and you stop and say, Is this good? Is this satisfying, maybe on some levels, just be honest with yourself, you're not trying to, you know, lie to yourself. But also what other emotions that you're feeling? Oh, I'm feeling like I'm self sabotaging. I'm feeling like this is contrary to everything that I want for myself and all that I'm capable of being in life. And so you're creating new emotions around this experience, rather than having the emotional payoff be? No, it just, you know, really stupid mean, or it's somehow felt good. Now, it's a negative emotional payoff, which is going to like prune that habit and your desire for that habit. Same with the business example, I talked about in the other episode, me recording my podcasts. And when I sit down and record all of them on one day, I do the research, I do the outlines, I record, I edit I schedule, and I stop and say how does that feel? Well, damn, that feels amazing, right? I am a podcaster. And we're gonna talk about that Friday, this identity collateral, and it feels so good. And I'm engaging my emotions in the payoff for doing that the reward for doing that, like, you realize were very primal in the fact that we work on reward and punishment system very much. However, in contrast, if I flick out, and I go into the dishes, and something else, and distract myself and end up recording the podcast on three different days, and I stopped at say, How does that feel, it doesn't feel good, it feels distracted, disoriented. I'm not putting my best self forward, I'm not providing the highest quality content for people who are listening, taking the time, their precious time to listen to my podcast, right? So then I'm engaging my emotions to understand and basically, you could say you're emotionally punishing yourself, but it's just being honest, right? And using my emotions to shift a programming of my habitual mind, so that it becomes speaking the same language as my conscious mind having the same agenda, right, having the same reward and punishment system so that it begins working for me automatically to achieve my goals. So unlike willpower, or brute force, or things that are going to fatigue and flake out on us anyway, you just go ahead and do the actions right as your habitual mind feels it's calling you to do but then you stop and you engage your emotions. And then this will reprogram the mind it's more gradual, and it's also permanent. Join me in the very next episode, where we have one more super easy tip but very powerful to absolutely reprogram your habitual mind to achieve your goals. autopilot