We are heading toward the end of the year, and it is the season to be jolly. Right? Not this year! Many agree that 2022 has been a very challenging year. It has challenged us to take a closer look and rethink how we function in our endeavors. Reflecting upon the past three years, we can clearly see an urgent call for preparing ourselves, our teams, and our businesses for the inevitable unknown future changes. My latest articles discuss the growing need for self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Today I want to share how our brains learn and how through learning, we can redefine our habits when our old habits don’t serve us in our highly transitory surroundings.
“Learning” is how our brain develops and grows its capacities.
Our entire life span is about continuously learning about new ideas, beliefs, values, attitudes, experiences, knowledge, pleasures, mistakes, ways to handle emotions, and more. To become more adaptive to our environment, we rely on associative learning, rewarding experiences, and how we take action based on experience.
The world is long overdue for a new learning approach to build a solid foundation to handle all the uncertainty our future holds. “Learn from the past to change the future.” A common phrase we have heard many a time. Although this is an excellent view to keep in mind, turning our focus to learning new skills and updating our habits in the now to help us adapt to the current changing times and the uncertain times that lie ahead is vital. The future is becoming increasingly unpredictable thanks to rapid technological advancements taking over jobs, economic uncertainty, increased remote work and learning, ever-changing workplace innovation, and so much more.
Why do learning & change often feel so challenging?
Learning occurs when our brains detect some irregular stimulus that causes so-called incoherence. The state of incoherence is a high-level energy state that can emerge, for example, from taking on a new role that might cause you to run out of energy prematurely. Within this new role, your brain detects many shifts. It needs more energy to store new experiences to fit in with your accumulated knowledge and resources.
So what keeps a learning brain happy?
It’s not our teachers, good grades, job promotions, or pay raises.
The brain creates its own reward system for successful learning.
New habits stem from behaviors that develop slowly through repeated performance. Rewarding experiences characterize habit formation.
In recent years, brain researchers have learned more about the brain’s “reward system,” in which the neurotransmitter dopamine plays a central role. The striatum is a component of the motor and reward systems. It produces striatal dopamine, among other functions. Throughout years of studies on rats performing a sequence of tasks, researchers have found that the dopamine output from habit development forms a rewarding experience.
What we know so far is that these opium-like compounds of dopamine create a good mood under certain conditions: For example, when something unexpectedly positive happens to us or when we finally solve a tricky task, or when we see and experience something new, our reward system fires up the engine of curiosity. The brain’s goal is to convert the state of incoherence into a new form of coherence, and a rewarding experience boosts the process of creating a new habit, and this is where the door to change flourishes.
Nothing predicts success better than your habits.
Developing new habits isn’t a piece of cake. Nevertheless, as we start setting our goals and preparing business plans for 2023, it is wise to include redefining our habits on the agenda to reach these goals and to become flexible enough to adapt to the unexpected. And remember… BE SPECIFIC!!!
As described above, you can understand that learning and integrating takes time, energy and effort. Therefore, you should determine 1-3 habits that are in need to change and list them according to priority.
Redefine one habit at a time!
Trying to develop more than one habit at a time drastically lowers your chance of success and quickly leads to feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. It is essential to give the brain time to convert the state of incoherence into a new form of coherence to succeed with each new habit.
Be sure to find a way to get a new habit-building reminder daily. Sticking reminder notes in your surroundings, setting a daily reminder on your electronic devices, wearing a unique bracelet or ring to represent the new habit, or whatever else helps you to keep your eye on the ball.
You can continue the drill with the following new habit on your list once you have successfully implemented the first one into your life, and you can honestly define it as a “habit.”
Change is inevitable and sometimes even scary, but it isn´t always bad.
Knowledge is power. The more you learn about how to cope with change personally and in business, the easier it becomes for you to welcome it, adjust to it, and upgrade your habits accordingly.
Personal development should be at the top of everyone’s list of priorities by now.
It´s to embrace the new year with knowledge, confidence, flexibility, and emotional strength.
