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David Krueger MD
Victor Frankel was a Jewish psychiatrist in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. While death was certain, he observed that about 1 out of 25 of his fellow prisoners somehow managed to survive. He set about studying the characteristics of those who survived.
He found that it was what the survivors associated to that made the difference in their survival. While 24 out of every 25 focused on their pain and inevitable death, those who survived created meaning – a purpose – for their suffering, rather than accepting their fate and wondering why God was allowing them to die. For example, they constructed a reason to survive so that they could tell their story to their children, to make certain that this kind of atrocity would never happen again. It changed the meaning of their suffering to something that would make a difference – a purpose that provided a will to live. (Man's Search For Meaning).
What you link inside your head – the meaning that you give – determines your behavior. You can change your behavior when you change the meaning. You can reprogram your associations and rewire your brain.
How do you condition yourself to make changes that last?
When you change the meaning of an association (neural conditioning), you change your behavior. There are three key principles of neural conditioning to make lasting change.
1. Recognize what to change.
You must get to the point where you feel you must change something, change it now, and that you can change it. Believe that change will ultimately bring pleasure. Recognize that not changing would be ultimately more painful than the immediate pain of the change process.
Questions to Ask:
- If you don't change your pattern, what will be the consequences?
- What is the pain associated to the current choice?
- What will be the pleasure with changing?
2. Identify the cues/triggers for the behavior.
The meaning you attach to a trigger determines your behavior. Observe the cues (usually emotional) that trigger an automatic behavior pattern. For example, if you want to accumulate wealth, yet do not, you immediately associate money to some pain or negative meaning.
- I'll have to work too hard and won't have time for my family
- Money will keep me from being spiritual
- I'd feel guilty about having a lot of money when so many others don't
Questions to Ask:
- What are the cues or triggers for the automatic behavior pattern?
- How can you interrupt your own pattern once you have identified it?
3. Create a new association that empowers you.
Condition a new, empowering association to the same cue. For example, if you have limited yourself or feel stuck in making more money, link making money with strength, power, and possibility.
Questions to Ask:
- What is the new association to the familiar cue?
- What is the change you want to bring about?
- What, specifically, will you gain and enjoy with the change?
The science of success is the neuroscience of neural conditioning – of reprogramming your mind to attach meanings to what you see that will generate success.
Two upcoming Licensed, Specialty-Certified trainings that integrate psychology, neuroscience, and quantum physics with strategic coaching:
New Life Story® Coaches Training www.NewLifeStoryCoaching.com Begins 2.13.12
New Life Story® Wellness Coaches Training www.MentorPath.com/training Begins 3.13/12
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David Krueger MD
With 64 seconds remaining in the Giants – Patriots Super Bowl Game, the Giants were trailing the Patriots 17-15, and were within striking distance to score. With an immediate Giants score, the Patriots would get the ball back, and have time to attempt a scoring drive. So the Giants wanted to score, but first use up most of the time remaining on the clock. The Patriots needed the Giants to score immediately, so they would have enough time remaining to mount a drive to keep hope alive for winning the game.
The Giant’s Ahmad Bradshaw was handed the ball, reportedly instructed to ground himself a yard away from the goal rather than scoring the touchdown. The Patriots cleared the path for an immediate touchdown. Bradshaw tried to stop himself at the one-yard line – but his brain wouldn’t let him do it. The commentator immediately said, “It’s a big mistake.” His well trained instincts and brain wiring of many years was to take the ball and run across the goal line. Bradshaw later told reporters. “I tried, but I couldn’t do it.”
If this accomplished professional athlete could not outsmart his brain with a world championship on the line, how can we hope to make rational decisions while browsing at Macy’s or making an online stock purchase?
Many high stakes decisions are made at stressful times. Mentor coaching with pro athletes and executives has repeatedly shown me how decision-makers are often under emotional stress, skewing their potential to evaluate options, leading to a greater reliance on emotional decisions and default options. At times of stress, we do two things:
- Our minds reduce decisions to rely on heuristics – rules of thumb. Heuristics work well on a daily basis for simple decisions. They are generally right, and the cost of errors is small. Yet in high-stakes decisions, simple rules of thumb (heuristics) tend to be a poor method of forecasting and decision making.
- Our brains rely on default programming that has been conditioned by numerous repetitions of stimulus – response. This neural conditioning is simple: the meaning we attach to a stimulus determines our behavior.
The neuroscience of high-stakes decisions becomes prominent at crucial times. The paradox is that when time is pressured, the state of mind is charged, so that deep thought, reflection on principles, and contemplative pause all become elusive. Bradshaw simply couldn’t suddenly override years of training and tens of thousands of practice behaviors that etched default pathways in his brain.
A state of mind is vulnerable to emotional contagion, greed, and peer pressure to each trump logic. When you see friends making significant profits trading stocks or flipping real estate, the natural inclination is to want in on the action. As more join the movement, prices rise for a while and it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. But then some event reverses the momentum – bursts the bubble – and turns optimism into panic. Herd mentality then pushes people to join the momentum to buy, or to flee, the market. A hot stock tip, a business deal gone sour, or a family tragedy may create an alarm response with an emotional state of mind geared for survival rather than use of logic.
Habits are difficult to change because of the way the brain functions. Many patterns of thinking and behaving are engrained in circuits deep within the brain. Information processed in the amygdala (the center of strong emotion) and the hippocampus (where meanings are attached) are both in the midbrain and processing in these parts of the brain are not brought to conscious attention.
An instant way of grounding and centering yourself to restore a balanced state of mind to access logic and reason may be to use a mantra. See: Mantras And Self-Regulation
Next blog: The Neuroscience of Change: 3 Steps to Rewire Your Brain
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David Krueger MD
We want more money, but resist examining our money stories. We hit a money glass ceiling, but avoid information about ourselves.
In a recent panel on money stories that I conducted for Financial Coaches, one woman spoke of money being a source of anxiety throughout her adulthood, ever since she had to flee her home country as a child. With a forced exodus from her homeland, she lost her family fortune. Her experience was that money had wings and can be taken away. She indicated that she refuses to eat out of paper plates because it resonates with that traumatic time. She now owns ten sets of dishes.
Research has shown that credit card users underestimate significantly how much they owe on credit cards. Cardholders admit to only four of every ten dollars they owe. Intelligent people willfully disavow 60 percent of their debt.
Most people are secretly dissatisfied with their money stories. This dissatisfaction often stems from either feeling unfulfilled or ashamed of certain aspects of that story. We each have beliefs about money that we don’t speak out loud to ourselves. This avoidance can create a bias; it can preclude taking in essential, important new information. Earlier downloads of certain expectations and experiences about money remain intact and unchallenged despite the passage of years, even decades.
Here are some principal reasons that people avoid new information about themselves.
- It may require a change in beliefs. People seek information that confirms their beliefs, and blind themselves to reasons that disprove them.
- It may cause unpleasant emotions. If we expect bad news, we tend to avoid this information.
- It may require us to take undesired actions. At times it may seem better not to know, such as ignoring a symptom that requires gathering new information. People aren’t scared of doctors, they’re scared that their denial may be confronted.
- Lack of control. If people anticipate a loss of control over the consequences of information, they will stay with what they know and avoid the unknown.
- The brain’s error detection mechanism. New information will trigger the brain’s error detection mechanism, generating a reading that something isn’t right, and should be avoided.
- The information may be difficult to understand. If the information is difficult to interpret, overwhelmingly complicated, and not clear and simple, we may tend to avoid the work of interpreting it.
Two principles are important to keep in mind about considering new information about ourselves:
1. Fate has a way of putting in front of us that wish we most try to leave behind. (Mozzie, White Collar)
2. The key element in writing a new story is to design the story from what is possible rather than what has existed in the past.
Next Blog: Neuroassociative Conditioning: 3 Steps to Reprogram Your Mind
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David Krueger MD
To abstain from the enjoyment, which is in our power, or to seek distant rather than immediate results, are among the most painful exertions of the human will.
N. W. Senior, 1836
Setting goals is easy. The challenge is to sustain the discipline to realize them. Resisting temptation is hard.
The other reason it’s difficult is the unequal battle between your present self and your future self. Your present self is real and in control. Your future self is an abstraction without its own power.
Your present self wants pleasure and to spend now. The pleasure center in your brain opts for a little of something now rather than a lot in the future. Your future self needs planning and savings.
For every three baby boomers, the McKenzie Global Institute predicts that two will not be able to meet their pre-retirement financial needs while they are in retirement.
Commitment devices level the playing field between our present and future selves. A commitment device needs to be structured so that you can’t wiggle your way out of it, or bargain with yourself. We’ve helped our children learn of commitment devices when we gave them a piggy bank.
Rather than have a commitment device as a reminder that you have no self control without it, it can be reframed as a way to make a good decision once. A simple example is a decision to automatically transfer money from your checking account to your retirement account once a month.
Other vivid examples of commitment device outcomes:
- Investing $1.50 per day beginning at age 20, based on the stock market average growth since 1926, by age 65 will be worth $1 million. (Wait until age 21 instead of 20: the difference is $109,000).
- Investing $2,000 per year in an IRA beginning at age 18, then stopping all investment by age 30, by age 65 will be worth $1 million.
We may also neglect our future selves because we don’t – or can’t – imagine what it would be like to be old.
Dr. Daniel Goldstein, a psychologist who studies decision making, uses computer simulation to help people imagine how they will look in the future. When people are shown their projected image at an older age, most significantly increase their retirement savings.
Our future money story depends on both imagining and planning.
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