Happy new day! High five yourself, you made it to your feet and you have been gifted another day on this planet! Todays article is all about a brain hack that is both fun, and a highly effective programming tool! Celebrating!!!
Do you understand the power of your brain?
If you do, how much time do you spend optimising your brain’s computing power? Or reprogramming old patterns - habits - that no longer serve you?
“….the human brain is much more advanced and efficient and has more raw computing power than the most impressive supercomputers ever built.”[i]
John Staughton
Even the most powerful supercomputers need reprogramming from time to time, perhaps to fix bugs, or keep up with the latest software update or technology patch. But here’s the thing. Even if you can conceptualise your brain as a computer, only a very limited percentage of the human population knows how to deliberately, consciously re-program it.........and even fewer then choose to use this human superpower.
Why don’t we use this human superpower to improve our lives?
Well….change is uncomfortable for humans. We like what we know, and everything else represents a potential threat, simply due to being different. After all, the mindset, beliefs, behaviours, and values that got us to this point in our lives didn’t kill us, so why change anything? Why take a chance on a dangerous new belief that might, by the very nature of being different, be the thing that kills us. We can’t take that chance! And so, we choose to remain the same.
In many cases we can logically compute that a certain mindset or belief is limiting us somehow, and in many cases, we would rather keep it than set out an unknown path. This is not logical. This is emotional.
Ahhhh emotion.
Here is where we, the human whole, is entirely unlike a supercomputer. We cannot consider the computer-brain in isolation. It is attached, wired into, limited by, our emotional - pain receptive - neurosis susceptible human selves. And most humans are terrible at consciously programming ourselves. However, we have been programmed and programming UN-consciously our whole lives.
Emotion and Programming
Emotion is the most powerful programming tool we have.
Much like training a puppy, the human condition is wired to respond to punishment and reward. However, in many cases in the first world, that is less about delicious chewy treats and more about feeling ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotions. (Although if you’ve ever been hungry for a length of time then you’ll know how quickly you would respond to behaving a certain way in return for food!)
Emotions, or how we feel about something, create our habits, many of which were formed long before our logical brain was able to rationalise or recall why we formed the habits in the first place. If our parents gave us food when we cried as a baby, we may have become the kind of adult that comfort-eats after a tough day at work. As an adult we can rationalise it however we like, but the reality is the program was created long before we could think it through or choose it for ourselves as a program that serves our best self.
Consider some of your habits. Do they all serve you all the time? Or are you, for some unknown reason, still drawn to behave a certain way at times that just doesn’t make logical sense?
The emotion-habit relationship is, however, a force that can be used for good. For example, I feel great after going for a run therefore, I find it easy enough to establish a habit to go for a run after work. It is not the running that appeals (in fact it does not appeal at all), but it’s the ‘feeling-good’ that I am wanting to experience and therefore I am willing to sacrifice my immediate comfort for this greater good.
The stronger the emotion, the easier it is to change a program and the more deeply the brain is re-wired.
By using emotion to our advantage we can hack our brain to rewire new habits with relative ease.
One of my favourite brains hacks is celebrating! I make sure to celebrate all of the brain behaviour (thought patterns) that I want to see more of in my life. This leaves the brain consciously or unconsciously trying to replicate the rewarded behaviour, and suddenly I seem to have a lot to celebrate in my life!
How do you like to Celebrate?
If you’re like most people, then you have probably spent a lifetime downplaying your achievements.
‘ahh..it was nothing.’
‘Anyone could have done it’,
‘Thanks, but it was the least I could do.’
Sound familiar? In fact, as Australians, we take a kind of national pride in not standing out above the rest. We’d rather identify with being an Aussie Battler (Red dog, Ned Kelly) than a successful wealthy magnate (Gina Rhinehart, Clive Palmer). We’ve forgotten how to celebrate ourselves, and celebrating is a skill that takes practice.
Do you remember being a child, or do you watch small children at play and see that they are all experts at celebrating?
Look mum! I jumped from this rock to that rock.
Yay! I caught a bug!
I won the race I won the race yeeehahhhh!
Somewhere as we grew into adults, we forgot to practice celebration.
This loss of the art of celebration was made very personal and very clear to me a few years ago. When I graduated 2FTS and those coveted RAAF Wings were placed on my chest it was not elation I felt, but relief. For several personal and family reasons I was at the end of my mental and physical capacity. The whole of pilots course hung heavily on me like the white stained mess dress of the aftermath. I didn’t really consider myself a success. I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I did not get selected to even try. ‘It was so close’ my instructor said afterwards, ‘we considered you, but decided you weren’t quite there.’ The truth was, I had nothing left to give, so I knew it had been the right decision. But the whole experience left me feeling defeated and with little to celebrate.
It wasn’t until many years later someone said to me as I began a journey of personal growth, ‘success without fulfilment is the ultimate failure’ and without warning I pictured the young girl graduating pilots course and my eyes spontaneously filled with tears, and I cried…… and cried…… and cried. I had never allowed myself to celebrate what I did achieve. In fact, I hadn’t allowed myself to celebrate much at all, because there was always a new mountain to climb, or someone doing better, or some other way to justify to myself that it was a less-than-complete victory and was therefore no reason for celebration.
Over the decade of my twenties, I had mentally pushed myself onwards and upwards, from challenge to challenge and success to success but had not allowed joy and fulfilment to be my companions. I had not known to optimise the unconscious power of the human brain to support ongoing successes, and so every challenge left me exhausted in its wake.
Celebrate! Celebrate! Celebrate! The Science
If I can create a feel-good emotion in response to a ‘thing’ then I am teaching my brain to desire and create more of that ‘thing’ – both consciously and unconsciously. If you want more success, celebrate success in every form it comes. You will program your supercomputer brain to unconsciously be looking for more ways to bring you that feel-good emotion.
Not only will this brain-hack bring you more of what you are trying to achieve, but you’ll be a happier and more fulfilled human while doing it!
When this truth hit me, I set out - alongside my willing husband who is always looking for an excuse for pleasure* to celebrate every small victory in our lives.
*(I feel like I say this like it’s a bad thing....and if so…why am I programmed to consider pleasure-seeking a frivolity?)
Now we like to celebrate by sharing a nice bottle of bubbles, or a fine glass of red. Sometimes we take ourselves out to dinner and toast our latest victory, even if that victory is as common as making it through a particularly grueling week. We celebrate each of; buying a new house, completing the renovation, achieving the refinance, and tenanting it. We celebrate pulling all the weeds out of the garden. We celebrate Friday. Sometimes, when we pulled off a particularly harmonious or joyful weekend we celebrate ‘getting it right’ on a Sunday afternoon. We teach our children to celebrate. Often in the form of a dinner table ‘game’ we play; “What’s your favourite thing?” where we encourage them to talk about the best thing that happened to them that day.
We find lots of reasons to celebrate victories, both big and small. Since implementing celebration as a regular part of our lives we have ‘semi’-retired from our jobs, found time for passions and hobbies, built a passive income portfolio, and constantly find ourselves surrounded by beautiful communities of people.
Is this the power of the unconscious programming of our brain responding to the reward of celebration, or did we just get a whole lot better at seeing all the wonderful reasons we have to celebrate our lives? I’m not sure there is a scientist in the world that can answer this question conclusively and quantify the power of the human brain ….but why take the risk….why not try it for yourself?
Congratulations on learning a new brain-programming skill! How are you going to reward yourself for learning something new?
[i] Staughton, J. (2022). The Human Brain Versus Supercomputers…Which one wins? Science ABC. https://www.scienceabc.com/humans/the-human-brain-vs-supercomputers-which-one-wins.html
Fogg, BJ. (2023). ‘Rewire your brain’. Tiny Habits. https://tinyhabits.com/rewire/
Bass, M. (2017). ‘What are Beliefs’. Mind to succeed, https://www.mindtosucceed.com/what-are-beliefs.html
Tracy, B. (2023) ‘Program your subconscious mind. 4 Techniques Used by Highly Effective People’. Brian Tracy International. https://www.briantracy.com/blog/time-management/program-your-subconscious-mind-for-time-management-success-4-mental-techniques-used-by-highly-effective-people/