Growth Mindset — a Neuroscience Guide
Growth is the objective always, but what stalls us ?
We know what we want or need. What are the requisites and what we have and where we need to improve. All of this we know like the back of our hands most times. But what stands in the way to making it happen ?
This applies to whatever we plan to achieve like a career goal, a financial one or developing a certain quality in ourselves. There are umpteen blogs, posts, videos by motivational speakers helping in doing this.
Positive feedback, when are actually not doing well is not going to carry us farther enough. Being too much self-critical-tough-talks is not going to make us get up either.
Instead we have all the tools and techniques we need in our very own super-processor, just that we are not aware, how to make them work for us, graciously, is explained by Dr. Andrew Huberman.
20 years of his research in Neuroscience, he puts it out in very simple language, making us feel like its totally possible. His speech is just scientific enough for those interested, yet very English in laying out the plan we can follow verbatim.
This is the first speech I listened and went on to get more
Dr. Andrew Huberman’s methods
Speeches by Dr. Andrew Huberman, Neuroscientist and faculty @ Stanford. His speeches hands us tools and techniques which we can use very practically.
Below is the design I did from listening to his dialogue with Tom Bilyeu
The experiences from the world around us are common to all. We see, hear use our 5 senses to experience a thing. But how we perceive it, widely differs based on very many factors. Then comes the feelings or emotions out of the perception, which again is common for us all — like, dislike, neutral, excitement and so on.
What happens next , is what we have to do differently — is what Dr. Huberman teaches, we can use these emotions as a feedback mechanism and nudge us towards what we want to achieve. Every emotion we feel is wired in by nature to safeguard us, to benefit us, there is no good or bad.
Some might call it hacking our brains, but rather would term it developing a “routine”. We have to recognize the emotions as we start to feel them and make them work for us.
Marathon Analogy
Lets say I would love to run a marathon of 10 miles. (I never have !!, but just for the sake of an instance.) I do walk everyday for at least an hour (this part is true though :-)), so it feels like I can try it at least. So I enroll and start.
Again this is kind of a poster Ihave for myself, a visual cue to adjust myself !
Now I am past 5 miles, and kind of half exhausted. Looking around i see people doing it easier than me. The first thing is a feeling of little overwhelm, “Oh am I really capable of finishing it ?”. Most times this is were the first roadblock sets in.
Below is the guide how to retune the feedbacks and glide forward. Yes glide is the word, i personally like, which makes the hard-push-forward-moments enjoybale !
1. Fear and anxiety are good too
Its okay feel a little down, anxious, overwhelmed, apply whatever synonym you feel appropriate. But once I know i have a block rising, I simultaneously do a correction and the new feedback here is, rather than feeling overwhelmed, I can say, “Yes I am a little overwhelmed, but only a little” and remind myself that I have come half way and still we are walking and not gasping, so it means I still got some gas and keep moving.
2. Its okay to get help
Next would be helping ourselves with our social structure. I have bunch of friends who know me very well, that I love to walk and related activities.
I could tell them my plan and they cheer me up, saying I could do it. This gives me a feedback that I am capable of doing it very much, there is no question it is really worth a try to see how far I could go. And I see them wishing me is more than enough a booster feedback, coming from people who know me so well.
3. Focus is the only thing
Then the third would be the focus I need in doing the final stretch, say the last 1 or half mile. When I would probably be totally exhausted and sometimes can’t even think, but merely focusing on the finish line would do now. Keep focusing on it so much that, almost everything — time, our exhaustion and even thoughts freeze and we just do 1 thing keep moving forward and that’s it.
There is much more
We are not perfect, nor making this plan might not happen overnight, but this felt like a clear instruction manual !
This post would not do any justice to his speeches. If you are interested in why this moved me so much go ahead and listen to them. You can follow hubermanlab@instagram
There are lots of his speeches in YouTube too, hope it helps the readers too, like it did to me.
