Brain
Science And New Year's Resolutions
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Motivational
speaker Jim Rohn once said, "I find it fascinating
that most people plan their vacations with better care
than they plan their lives. Perhaps it's because escape
is easier than change."
Success psychologists
say that 95% - 97% of the people in the world do NOT have
written goals and fail, while 3-5% have written goals
and succeed.
If these statistics
are correct, then Mr Rohn's observation really IS quite
fascinating isn't it?
Unfortunately
for most people, the odds for success are actually even
lower, because out of the few people who do set goals,
most don't take goal setting seriously, they don't do
it scientifically and they only do it once a year.
Goal setting
is so important, that I always teach goal setting and
mind dynamics first, and only THEN, do I teach nutrition
and training second.
It doesnt matter
how much you know about nutrition or exercise. Until specialized
fitness knowledge is linked with goals and directions,
the knowledge is useless and you won't accomplish very
much or keep the changes long term.
In fact, I
devoted the entire first chapter of my book, Burn the
Fat, Feed the Muscle (www.burnthefat.com) to the subject
of goals and constructive "mind programming"
for successful, permanent behavior change.
I've also studied
neuro linguistic programming (NLP) for many years and
more recently spent many months researching the latest
information about neuroscience to see just how much of
the traditional self help and goal setting wisdom is actually
backed by brain research.
As you start
thinking about your goals for 2007 right Now, I'd like
to help you start the year off right by sharing two very
valuable, science based tips on acheiving your goals:
SCIENTIFIC GOAL SETTING TIP #1: Repetition is an effective
way to "plant" a goal in the non-conscious mind
Why don't most
resolutions stick? Psychology and neuroscience today are
giving us the answers.
Thanks to new
technologies in brain imaging, such as PET scans, SPECT
scans and functional MRI's, we can now actually see your
thoughts as electrochemical impulses and we can see the
formation of new neural connections in real time right
before our eyes.
We can also
see where, geographically, in your brain, a particular
type of thought is occuring.
most importantly,
we can see how long it takes to form strong neural patterns
and what types of stimuli cause the patterns to form more
quickly
Here's what
we've discovered:
Setting a
goal once is a conscious activity. Willpower is also a
conscious activity. But research has shown that at least
5/6 of your brain power is in the non conscious mind and
that the information and instructions that reach the non
conscious mind are responsible for your automatic behavior.
Some pyschologists
believe that 95% of our behaviors are unconscious and
automatic... more commonly known as habits.
Long term behavior
changes don't take place when you set goals one time as
with most new years resolutions. There's an old saying
in "self help" circles that it takes at least
21-30 days to form a habit. This has now been proven to
be fairly accurate on a neurological basis.
New neural
patterns begin to form only a fter they've been repeated
enough times. They continue to strengthen with further
repetition. If you make resolutions on January 1st and
you don't continue to repeat and reinforce your desire
for those "goals," no new neural connection
is formed, no new habits are formed, no new behaviors
are formed....
Your resolutions
wither away and die and any results obtained through willpower
(trying to force the new behaviors through conscious effort),
are quickly lost when you slip back to your old ways.
What you repeat
over and over again is programmed into the subconscious
mind and begins to take root. On a practical level, this
means RE-writing your goals everyday and thinking about
them in positive terms and in mental pictures, every day,
repeatedly until the habit is formed and turned over to
"auto-piliot."
In 1956, when
Earl Nightingale wrote "The Strangest Secret is that
we become what we think about most of the time,"
we didnt know what we know now about the brain.
Nevetheless,
Earl was right.
You don't change
your body by trying to change your body. You change your
body by creating new habitual patterns of thinking and
visualizing.
Trying to force
new behaviors with willpower while continuing with your
old ways of thinking will always fail because your automatic
behavior is mostly under non-conscious control.
Its not the
resolution you set once... its the goals (mental thoughts
and images) you focus on all day long that create the
long term (and automatic) behavioral change... when you
change your behaviors, you change your body and your life...
SCIENTIFIC GOAL SETTING TIP #2: Emotion is a goal-turbocharger
Is there any
way around this tedious process of "mental programming"
through repetition? Not really. The fields of NLP and
hypnosis have given us some tools for creating more rapid
changes, but ultimately you have to begin to "run
your own brain" and change your habitual way of thinking.
No one else can do it for you and there's no way around
it.
there is however,
a scientifically proven way to to speed up the process
and that is with the use of strong emotion.
Since modern
imaging technology can see activity in the brain and scientists
have located the seat of emotions in the brain, we know
that the strength and number of neural connections associated
with a thought or behavior are increased when you're in
a highly emotional state.
The neuron
connections are also stronger, longer lasting and it takes
longer to lose a neural connection when it was formed
with great emotion.
With this
knowledge, we see another reason why new years resolutions
fail: They are set casually with no emotion and no strong
emotional "reason why" that gives you the leverage
to you need to make a change permanent.
On January
1st, you may think you're setting "real" goals,
but if you're like most people, you're not only doing
it a mere once a year and then losing focus, you're also
likely to be making flimsy, wishy-washy, emotion-less
"resolutions."
Zig Ziglar
once said that, "A goal casually set and lightly
taken will be freely abandoned at the first obstacle."
You might want
to back up and read that quote again, maybe even write
it down or print it out, because this one hits the bull's-eye!
This truly
explains why New Year's resolutions almost never work,
and why so few people can keep off the pounds after they
get rid of them.
Goal setting
should not be casual or lightly taken. Goal setting is
an important and serious matter. This is not a game -
this is your life, and you only have one life to live.
Goal setting
is also not a one time event - it is an ongoing process
of literally "re-wiring your brain." With the
discovery of brain plasticity, we now know that this is
science fact, not self-help fiction.
Make the time
to set REAL goals, today! Take it seriously, do it scientifically,
re-write your goals every day, think about them constantly,
and then take massive action
Do it and this
will be the most successful year of your life!
About
the Author:
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Tom Venuto is a lifetime
natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal
trainer (CPT), certified strength & conditioning
specialist (CSCS), and author of the #1 best-selling
e-book, "Burn
the Fat, Feed The Muscle. Tom has
written hundreds of articles and has been featured
in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN,
Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise
for Men and Mens Exercise, as well as on hundreds
of websites worldwide.
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