Basically, when you recognize something is wrong – you made a bad decision, are in some negative cycle that you haven’t pulled yourself out of, recognize your motivation is waning, etc – your brain does the most UNHELPFUL thing – it makes you feel bad (or worse, depending on where you are starting from) about it.

Realizing that was true was quite a shock. See, when you feel bad… it kinda zaps your energy to make improvements.

Now once you recognize the patterns in your brain… you can decide to just set it free. To release it, to let it go. And once you stop feeling bad about making bad decisions or about.. feeling bad, you can start making better decisions and feeling good rather than wallowing.

Are you having negative reactions to the negativity in your life? Just drop it. Allow yourself to feel good… and feel the relief.
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According to scientific studies, our brain never shuts off. When you are in REM sleep, you have vivid experiences and when awoken from them, can recall at least some of it. But even in slow-wave sleep, when awoken, people in studies were able to describe what they were just thinking about.

When I woke up this morning, I caught the end of a seemingly large discussion about marketing online – a topic I had read a lot about in the past few weeks, and seriously started working on yesterday. This wasn’t a dream, but a complex back and forth discussion – I heard the words.

One of the theories about sleep is that it lets our brain sort out our memories. It is very common to have a dream about things that happened that day. Often, people wake up and are clear about a decision they have to make. I am sure you have heard of the recommendation to “to sleep on it” regarding a tough decision. Your brain thinks about things – and comes to a decision on them – while you sleep. Generally, it is a feeling that pushes towards or away from a certain choice.

If you ever wonder where your emotional preferences come from, it may come from decisions made while you sleep. It is scary that some of our behavior is decided while we sleep – but also very helpful – because we can “pre-program” our brain about what to think about, and how to do it.

Our brain processes what we have seen or thought about during the day, especially things that hit us emotionally. If you read or hear the news about financial difficulty, deaths, silly celebrities, or get caught up in a fight with someone – then your brain will keep thinking about them at night. It will pull you in that direction. If you think about things that bother you – and your brain keeps thinking about them – you can wake up very depressed, and not even know why.

On a computer, the rule is that garbage in, garbage out – the computer returns the same kind of information that you put in, it is unable to improve the quality. The same with our brain – if you put in news about tragedies, then you get tragedy. If you put in problems, then you wake up worried. However, if you put in tear-filled tehillim to Hashem (Psalms to G-D), then you get out a closer connection to Hashem. If you ask yourself how to solve a problem, you may wake up with the answer.

Your brain tends to focus on the most recent, most lasting, most emotional memories – they get “extra processing time”. Choose what you put your attention on – especially right before going to sleep.

Review a Torah or mussar (spiritual growth) concept that speaks to you right before you go to sleep and you may wake up a new person!
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In R’ Pliskin’s book Enthusiasm, he mentioned one reason to be enthusiastic is because it is contagious. I got a real kick out of the idea of being enthusiastic for others, and I was more enthusiastic for many days. That was about 3 months ago – I haven’t thought about that idea since. It doesn’t really take me any effort. There is no planning. But I have to remember, or the idea doesn’t help me.

It takes time and effort to choose a goal, such as not speaking lashon harah (true slander).

Next you have to figure out how. If you know the halachos, then don’t say it. You may think of some awkward situations that will come up – so determine a “cover story” now, and visualize to practice it, so that you won’t feel weird using it.

Ultimately, it comes down to noticing yourself and remembering your goal to not say lashon harah. If you don’t notice it, all the discipline in the world won’t help you.

People may try something like checking what you said after each conversation, or wearing your watch on a different arm. Another way to sensitize yourself is by reading a chapter of Guard Your Tongue or The Power of Words from R’ Pliskin each day. (Even if you already read it – the point isn’t the material. But a new book would be better.) But often, we forget or stop being reminded.

What you need to do is remind yourself and actually connect with it, every day. I have 10 post it notes in front of my computer, where I sit and work. They have inspiring messages or ideas that I am currently focusing on. Every week or so, I pull off or consolidate some old ones. But truthfully, I don’t pay attention to them most of the time. I definitely see them, but I never NOTICE them. It might help some people to put post it notes around their work or home, to remind them of what to focus on, but it just doesn’t seem to work for me. My attention is too focused on other things to really notice.

What does help me is making it a habit – a set time or point in your schedule – to actually NOTICE and CARE about my goals. If you don’t care about your goal, then – who cares?! If it doesn’t matter to you, then how are you going to convince yourself to put in the effort? What you need to do is CARE, every day about your goals and what you are trying to achieve. “Because lashon harah is something I should stop saying” doesn’t usually cut it. “Because I lose all my olam habah each time I speak any lashon harah” sounds more helpful. But even as I write those words, it doesn’t emotionally hit me. Stopping for a moment and visualizing all the mitzvos from the day – all the brachos, the learning torah, the kind deeds being deposited in your bank account (ka-ching! ka-ching!! ka-ching!!!) And then saying a few true words and – “POOF!” All gone! The words don’t help – but actually visualizing that gets to me. If you don’t actually CARE about your goal – and keep NOTICING and emotionally feel it, you will be neglecting a major motivational force. Ultimately, you will just forget.

Make it a HABIT to CARE each night about your goal before sleep and/or each morning, or some other set time. Reading isn’t enough – you have to connect emotionally with it. I find the morning and night is easiest because you can actually pause and think. In the afternoon, with the craziness of the day it’s much harder to stop. The most important part is that it becomes a habit. If you stop doing it after two days, the best reasons to care won’t help you at all! One idea is to put it a notebook on top of your pillow. Don’t go to sleep until you have actively cared about your goals. Another is a powerpoint slideshow – with pictures and phrases that speak to you- that you watch at the start of your day/workday and at the end. Instead of letting media brainwash you with cute (or gruesome) pictures, brainwash yourself. (Is it still called brainwashing if you do it to yourself? Sounds more like taking control of your life.)

We aren’t supposed to be robots – ivdu es Hashem bisimcha – serve Hashem with joy. We are supposed to relate to Hashem as our Father – we should have ahavas Hashem – love Hashem. Your emotions are an integral part of your life as a Jew. Consider a servant who grudgingly serves his master, and one who jumps up energetically out of love (or fear). Which one does a better job? Connect to the emotions and let them drive you to grow!

How are you trying to grow? Why do you care? Reconnect, emotionally, every day!
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We all have things we want to do, and things that we want to change. We decide to get to sleep earlier, or to work on some project, but we keep procrastinating or never feel like taking action. Or we try and try, and make some progress, but it doesn’t seem to last.

There can be many causes, but a major obstacle is your beliefs about yourself and the world – beliefs such as “but I can’t go to sleep early because there is too much to handle” or “that project is just SO much work!” “But I have never done that before!”

These beliefs are a huge obstacle between you and what your goals. Usually, they are exaggerations or blatantly false! Some beliefs may not be false, but are unhelpful – not having done something before doesn’t mean you can’t do it now!

To achieve your goal, drop these beliefs. Often they are below your conscious awareness- you may never have actually spoken them before. Once you recognize a belief, you can let it go or install an opposite empowering belief. Don’t believe every negative thing you tell yourself – argue on them!

So how do you find these beliefs? Find a quiet place. Just say softly (or even with some doubt) – “I intend to go to sleep earlier”. Now listen. What comes to mind? What are you telling yourself? Usually, an inevitable “but…” comes to mind. Listen for it – invite it! We aren’t looking for discouragement – we are looking for what has been holding us back! Keep saying what you are trying to change or do. There may be many beliefs that come to mind, some rather minor. When a real reason comes, you will know. Evaluate the beliefs. Do they help you? Are they true? If you try to drop the belief, but feel you can’t – ask yourself why. You may find a whole chain of unhelpful beliefs. Drop those too!

Our limits are largely self-imposed. Your brain doesn’t know you can’t do something until you tell it. Find the unhelpful beliefs. Drop them!

What goals have you been struggling to accomplish? Say your goal. Just listen for why it hasn’t worked, and decide to let it go.
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When something is 100% clear that you must do it now, then you do it. The same for the opposite – if it is 100% clear that the loss is greater than the gain, you won’t do it.

If you are in a rush to cross the street, you won’t jump in front of a truck that you know will hit you. It isn’t discipline to hold yourself back – you don’t have a reasonable choice – it is just so blindingly obvious.

When you have to turn in an essay the next day, and it is 10pm at night, I expect you would have at least started. If you think you can do it the next day – e.g. you may have time the next morning, you are expecting a snow day, the teacher has been out sick, then you may procrastinate a bit more. If it isn’t clear that you must do it now, then you have given yourself an excuse.

If you ever considered speaking lashon harah or onaas devarim (damaging with words, e.g. making fun of or insulting another person. Both are unfortunately quite common.) then perhaps you aren’t 100% convinced that this is actually asur, or perhaps the overall concept of an aveirah doesn’t have proper significance to you. How real is punishment to you? If you viewed speaking lashon harah like jumping in front of a moving truck, then you wouldn’t need any discipline.

While you should use discipline to stop yourself, realize that there is a deeper issue – why did you even consider this action in the first place? Instead of trying to merely overcome the obstacle, look for the root cause. Generally, there is a doubt: is this really worth the effort? Can’t I do it later? Is it really asur? Is the concept of punishment for aveiros something I have integrated, or do I just pay lip service to it?

Yes, using discipline should overcome the issue – eventually, and perhaps with many setbacks. Over time, the correct way of acting will become your self-image and a habit. But that may take quite a long time and remain superficial. Attack the root. Find what the deeper problem is.

When you find and fix the deeper issue, you will probably see this was just one symptom. When you delve deeper, your positive changes can have a much broader impact. Get more bang for your buck when you are working on yourself. Why treat the symptom, when you can treat the cause? 

Why are you resisting doing the right thing? Make the right choice so blindlingly obvious… that you no longer have a choice.
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Just Pause

As mentioned in How To Work On Your Character Traits, our brain works on shortcuts. When a situation comes up – e.g., you miss the bus or someone is telling you that you are wrong- our brain looks for the shortcut for how we should respond. It takes the brain less than 200 milliseconds to find it. It takes 2-3 seconds to consciously come to a conclusion. How do you know the shortcut is a wise reaction – you haven’t thought it through yet! Are you sure you want to feel upset and unlucky after missing a bus? Is it wise to start blindly defending your opinion before hearing the other side out? I should hope not. But how do you stop from following the shortcut?

Pause.
Step outside the shortcut.
Your job is to hold on for 3 seconds.

Just don’t react for 3 seconds. Stop any physical reaction and don’t talk. Let the knee-jerk reaction pass.

Now, ask: What would be the wise choice? What outcome do I want? It will be much easier to respond appropriately because you short-circuited the shortcut, and now you are in control.

Be the Watcher

Your brain is addicted to thinking, like a hyperactive puppy running around. It just keeps going and going. That isn’t a problem if you are thinking about Torah or something that makes you happy, but all too often the puppy strays into negative thinking. It falls into a big muddy pit and can’t get out. This can quickly put you in a bad mood and hardly helps you feel positive and energetic!
However, you are not your thoughts. You hold the leash to this hyperactive puppy. Whenever you see it straying (or fall into a pit) use the leash to direct your brain to more helpful thoughts. Think about something positive. “Gam Zeh Litovah – this is also for the good” What could be good about this? Or, what am I grateful for now?
For more information about controlling your thoughts, read the series on Your Thoughts.

Evaluate the Reaction

After any event that you must deal with, e.g., controlling your thoughts, or someone criticizing you, ask these two simple questions:

• What did I do right?
• What will I do differently next time?

The first question is great because it presupposes (an assumption that we choose to believe) that you did something right. We all love doing something right! “Nothing” isn’t an appropriate answer! At the very least, you noticed after the fact that this is an area that could be improved. Great! We want to reinforce any good habits, and make them stick for next time. Feel good about any progress you make - focus on how up the mountain you have climbed so far.

The second question helps you focus on how to act for the outcome you want. If the situations happens again, how can you handle it better? If you answer that, the next time the situation occurs your brain will say “I know what to do now!” and help you carry it out.

Practice pausing, watching your thoughts, and evaluating your reaction and you can be improving around the clock! When might you use these tools?
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What Exactly Are You Trying To Accomplish?

The more clearly you know where you are heading, the easier you can pursue it. If you want to become a nicer person, you must have a real, tangible idea of what that means to you. Ultimately, any growth opportunity will change our thoughts, feeling, words, and actions. Abstract ideas are hard to grasp because they aren’t related to a physical, concrete thing. If you can’t understand it, how can you act it? Take your goal – for example becoming a nicer person – and make it more tangible. What would your thoughts, feelings, words, and actions be when you reach your goal? Take inspiration from all that you have read and any people in particular that you know. Use your imagination to get a tangible idea of what you are reaching for.

Some examples:  
• Thoughts - What will I be thinking when I see another person, or during a conversation? “How can I help him?” or “What can I do to make him feel more comfortable?” are both good thoughts.
• Feelings - How do I want to feel? “ahavta lireacha kimocha – love your friend like yourself ” seems particularly apt. What does love feel like to you? Recall loving or empathetic moments with family and feel the same emotions now.
• Words - What words will I use? “Good morning!”, “I hope you are doing well!”, “Thank you!”, “That was great!”, “Go for it!” all sound very appropriate.
• Actions - How will I act? Will I hold open the door for people? Smile and wave enthusiastically? Say “Good morning!” to everyone I walk by?

This may seem inauthentic to you. “OK, I should smile at people. But how do I really become a nicer person?” If you think how nice people think and do what nice people do, then you are a nice person. The Ramchal says that your external actions affect you inside – acting like a nicer person makes you a nicer person. With repetition, the actions and thoughts become part of your personality. The Rambam says if you are trying to work on any trait, go to the extreme of what you are aiming for. This helps remove all the shortcuts in your brain that reinforce the old behavior.

Finding Motivation

You may feel raring to go work on your growth opportunity. If you don’t, think of why you should be! It’s great to be motivated today, but how do you make the excitement last?
Find the reasons why you are excited, and why you could be excited, and keep reminding yourself. You may want to ask other people for ideas. You are a salesperson trying to convince yourself to pursue this growth. What is so great about this goal? What are the benefits? Write as many as possible! Having powerful reasons will keep you going.

One of my next areas to focus on is thinking appreciatively and gratefully (one of Rabbi Pliskin’s 9 Happiness Principles from Conversations With Yourself.)
The motivation for this shouldn’t be too hard. It will cause happiness. Happiness also leads to better learning (mitzvah!), accomplishing more, and better health (mitzvah!). I will be thanking everyone around me for their help, so everyone involved with me will feel more positive (mitzvah!) and want to help me more.
Wow, that sounds amazing!

Continuous Thought

If you forget about being a nicer person, or you forget to remind yourself of how great it would be, it won’t help you at all. You can spend as little as 5 minutes a day with this great way to keep yourself reminded.

Get a notebook (or anything!) and write:
• A short summary of what you trying to achieve (“Be a nicer person”)
• The best reasons why it is important to you (“I love seeing other people smile!”)
• The longer explanation (the thoughts, feelings, words, and actions)

Every morning and every night right before sleep, enthusiastically or joyously read what you are trying to achieve and why. The emotion really locks in what you are working on. Picture yourself acting the way you want to think, feel, say, and do. In the morning, write some ideas for how you can apply this today. At night, reflect on the day and see how you succeeded and what you would do differently next time. At the very least, rewrite the goal. The more time and emotion you put into reviewing your goals, the faster your progress will be.

For most people, the only way to make sure you do this review is to put the notebook on your pillow and not go to sleep until you spend the few minutes reviewing. In the morning, don’t leave until you do the review. Each 2-minute review gets your brain involved for many hours! Reviewing at night lets your brain work on the idea the whole night!

Final Thoughts

Plans never survive their first encounter with the real world. Look for what works, and what might work better next time towards achieving your goal. Celebrate any success to keep you motivated to keep working!
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Let’s look at how our surrounding affect us. When you are at a wedding, the joy is infectious. Lively music makes people energetic. When people yawn, they often set off a wave of yawns around them. If a blind person just hears someone yawning, he will often yawn. Even reading the word yawn can make people yawn, which will cause others around them to yawn. (Did I say yawn enough times to get you to yawn?) If someone is happy and smiles at you, it can be hard not to smile back. Your environment has an immediate, deep impact on you.

It isn’t just our mood. Over the past 18 months, I have noticed new beliefs are absorbed by osmosis (such as “we can accomplish”, “things are positive”, “I have amazing potential”). You start believing the messages around you: how everyone acts, what you listen to, and the things that you read in books or online. They just slip in to the way you think. Even if you know you don’t want to think that way, continued exposure just lets it seep in under the radar.

What does the environment include? Basically, our environment includes everything we are exposed to. We have many different environments: home, work, school, where you spend your spare time. Your environment includes what you listen to, the people you interact with, and the material you read.

Whatever we are constantly exposed to becomes normal. Watching, hearing, or reading the news – sick drama about murder and corruption – is junk food for the mind that clogs your brain and can lead to premature brain failure. People react to insults by insulting back, which seems normal, however Chazal tell us of the immense reward for holding your tongue instead of responding. Negative reactions to events fail to keep in mind “gam zeh litovah – this too is for the good.”

Our friends influence us the most. We share our thoughts with them and spend a large amount of time with them. I recall reading a study that said you can predict your future based on your group of friends. Peer pressure isn’t just for kids. It can determine your entire life! Different peer groups in the same locations could completely alter the environment.

This may sound like the “nurture” side of the nature/nurture debate, disregarding free choice. However, the Rambam is telling you to CHOOSE your nurture. The best way to predict the future is to invent it – choose the peer group you want to be like! Rav Aharon Soloveitchik (in Parach Mateh Aharon, on Rambam’s Sefer Mada) said that your free choice is choosing your environment. It is vitally important to shape your environment to be conducive to your growth as a Jew. Anything less is leaving one of the biggest factors to chance. Blaming our environment is just an attempt to shift the blame off ourselves.

Set your environment to work for you! In architecture, form follows function. The function of your environment is to help you grow. Your environment should look like whatever will help you grow the most, possible including:

• A good peer group for positive reinforcement.
• Listen to positive, encouraging audio on an mp3 player when you aren’t doing something else.
• A place that is quiet or loud, private or public to best suite your needs for learning, working, and introspection.
• What is good about your current environment? Get more of it!
• Find people who model the path you want to take. People that are inspiring, have great middos, or know a lot of Torah. Spend time with them. Build a relationship with them. Join them for Shabbos.
• Smile at people. People smile back. Practice smiling right now. You can even blame me if someone asks why you are smiling.
• Put up pictures in your room or cubicle of people you admire.
• Find a nice picture of the world/galaxy/universe and put on top “bishvee-li nivra olam – The universe was created for me!”
• Hang up inspiring quotes.
• Join positive discussions.
• Gather a group of friends and ask how you can encourage each other to be more positive, happy, and growing. Suggest signing up for this blog.

For some people, their main environment would just take too much effort turn into something more positive. Choose a better one, at least for part of the day. It may be time to leave.

Right now: make a list of 20 things you can do to make your environment at home, work, or school more conducive to growing!

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Compare to today, when I finished a (short) 150pg book in about an hour – and I call that slow. That was non-fiction book number 48 in the past 12 months, outside of the school curriculum.

I don’t intend to brag, but to highlight the massive difference between what I did in formal schooling and what I have stated to do on my own. In school, I would learn while someone was trying to spoon-feed me. Now, I hungrily devour books and other material. I have completely changed the way I learn.

The learning transformation began with reading a book on memory 2.5 years ago (Your Memory… by Kenneth L. Higbee.) By now, I have read 10 books on learning, specifically covering: memory, using the right side of your brain, and reading better. I intuitively know if I will remember new material, or if I should use one of the many tools in my toolbox to make it stick.

The Photoreading system for books, which I started using a few weeks ago, is particularly amazing. When Photoreading, I have intense concentration, read very quickly, and have phenomenal recall of the material. But what is really amazing is how those same principals for reading books flow into everything else I learn – the classes, audio recording, and Talmud. Everything just becomes easier, more fun, and more meaningful.

Learning isn’t hard or boring. We have just been taught to learn incorrectly!

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