This Exercise Will Rewire Your Brain (in 30 days or less)
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YouTuber and a lifetime learner. Intention without action only leads to regrets.
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This Exercise Will Rewire Your Brain (in 30 days or less)
I successfully rewired my brain in 30 days. I plan on doing this next month as well. Probably every month. Why wouldn’t I?
The ability to rewire your brain is an absolute superpower. It takes a task, skill, or behavior that used to be hard, and makes it effortless. So it happens automatically.
Sounds too good to be true, right?
Let’s dive in. First of all, we need to clarify a few things.
What does it mean to rewire your brain?
Trust me, it sounds way cooler than it is. And no, you can’t press your thumb into the back of your neck for 5 seconds. Those thumbnails are clickbait. Sorry.
Your brain is kind of like a supercomputer. It runs an incredible amount of processes every second—more than you can imagine. In fact, the majority of your daily behavior is done automatically, without you even realizing it.
Wait, why don’t you notice? Because these are performed incognito. Under the radar. Stealth mode. Ok fine, the subconscious does them. But making your brain sound like a Navy Seal is much more accurate once you realize what it does.
These are like programs that come on, do their thing, and then fade away into the darkness until triggered again. They put you into autopilot mode, so you can focus on chewing your bubble gum while walking.
You guessed it, they are called habits.
But let’s be honest, most people hardly know what a habit actually does. Besides, “rewiring your brain” sounds way cooler and it’s basically what you are doing.
Also, I wasn’t joking when I said your brain runs most of your daily processes. Some estimate that habits control around 95% of your daily behavior. That’s a lot. That means anytime you aren’t specifically focusing on something, you’re running on autopilot. The program comes on, you keep functioning like normal and then it gets seamlessly passed off to the conscious mind. That’s how you can be driving, start pondering why you thought lions were inside traffic cones as a child, then return back to the present moment of driving, having no idea what your subconscious did to make that possible.
The purpose of habits
Your brain doesn’t do this for the awesomeness of it, it does it because it’s an energy hog. Sorry, there’s no other way to put it. It mostly cares about saving you energy, which is what these programs do.
Remember the first time you drove a car?
Hyperfocused.
Gripping the steering wheel with a death grip.
But a few months later? No problem. You’re driving, changing lanes, and eating a bowl of cereal all without skipping a beat.
What changed? Suddenly this thing that took enormous effort barely takes any. This is the power of habits. They take something that at first took loads of cognitive energy and reduce it to the minimum, all without you even trying. How cool is that? Your brain saved you about 70% of your mental energy by building you a habit.
What takes the most energy in your life right now?
Going to the gym?
Admitting you’re wrong?
Reading a book?
Imagine if you could program your brain to do that without even thinking. Just like driving. As easy as jumping into your car and going to Piggly Wiggly. Wouldn’t that be a superpower? To choose something at will and make it almost effortless to execute.
It takes around a month if you do it daily.
It’s worth it.
Here’s how.
How to rewire your brain (start to finish)
The first thing you do is make two lists.
List #1 - Write down all the little behaviors you do on a daily basis.
List #2 - Write down little behaviors you want to add to your day.
A little note on the first list. It can take time to think of these little behaviors. After all, these are done without you realizing or thinking about it, so give it time. I carried a list with me and added stuff when I caught myself going into autopilot.
As you work on the second list, don’t just think “What should I do?” Think about yourself a few years in the future. Who do you want that person to be? Now think of the little behaviors you can build that will take you towards that person. Little actions compound over time. A simple habit can turn you into someone unrecognizable in a few years. Who do you want to become?
Now compare the two lists and cut out some of the current bad behaviors or habits you have, and replace them with the behaviors you want to add. The reason we do this is you have to pull from somewhere. These take time, even if they are small, so it’s important to replace them, not just stack them on top. I went as far as to write down how much time each habit, good or bad took, so I knew how much time I was working with.
Once you’ve decided on the list of new behaviors to automate into your life, we can move to the next step.
Building the habit
Here’s a list of the habits I chose. I chose a lot, you only need 1-3 to start with.
The list of improvements
Devotions - 30 minutes
Read - 15 minutes
Active recall/public speaking practice- 15 minutes
Online writing - 15 minutes
Spanish practice - 10 minutes
Journal - 5 minutes
Whatever your list looks like, make sure you do a few things.
First, define how much time you want to spend on the habit each day. It can’t be less than 5 minutes a day.
Second, break each habit into the shortest possible amount of time to start. To build a habit in a month, you must be able to start that habit within a minute or less and it must have a crystal clear routine. “I want to spend time journaling each night” is not a clear routine.
My routine is this:
Open journal when getting in bed
Write “What am I grateful for right now?”
Answer the question.
That’s it. Clear and simple. That process takes less than 30 seconds. That’s a good habit starter.
Third, link each behavior to existing habits or durations of time. If you link it to an existing habit, make sure it’s one that doesn’t move, like lunch, showering, or going to bed. Either do it right before, right after, or during. For reading, I listened to an audiobook while making lunch, and then used active recall right after lunch. If you link it to a duration, it looks like this: “Between 7 AM and 9 AM, I will spend 15 minutes writing online.”
Last, you must have a checklist you review at the end of each day. I created a “to-do” list on my calendar app with each of these behaviors and set it to repeat each day. You can also get habit-tracking apps. But seriously, nothing fancy is needed. Here’s one I use. Free and simple.
Feedback Friday
Ok, you don’t need to do this on Friday, it just rhymes so I like it. Pick a day to review how you did that week. Set aside at least 30 minutes for this, it’s probably the most important part of this whole process.
Here’s why. Habits are incredibly resilient to change. That’s a good thing, that’s kind of the point of a habit. That aside, we are trying to change this resilient, incognito brain program, and for that, we need feedback. And lots of adjustments.
As you review, ask yourself if there’s a better plan of attack. “Trying harder” isn’t a better plan of attack. If you find yourself not doing a particular habit, figure out why. Each week try a new strategy. Do it first thing in the morning, do it while you shower, or ask someone to help you with it. There are lots of angles you can approach it from.
But I’ll be honest with you. Almost all of it boils down to what I mentioned earlier. How long does it take you to start your habit, and how clear is the routine you have established to get you started? You need at least 3 consecutive actions for it to be a routine and something must trigger it.
Example
When (trigger) then I will (action 1, 2, and 3).
When I (get in bed) then I will (pick up journal, write the daily question, and answer it).
Boiling a habit down so you can start it in less than a minute and making it clear is really hard. Each week as you evaluate, you will get better and better at figuring out how to do this. This builds a crucial skill, which is the ability to analyze feedback and make adjustments accordingly. That’s why feedback Friday is so important.
The habit of starting
Let me tell you a secret if you do this exercise. You are actually building a habit you didn’t realize, in addition to the other habits you're working on. The habit of starting. Because what you are really doing, is training yourself to start. You’re training yourself to do something when and how you said you would do it. To start despite feeling resistance to the behavior.
If you do this exercise for a month, you’ll realize some interesting truths. In the first two weeks, you’ll discover that it’s significantly hard to do a task every single day, even if it’s only for a few minutes. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard. Read for 15 minutes each day? Easy! I was amazed at how resistant to change we are.
Why is this? It’s actually quite simple. The hardest part of any behavior is essentially the first 5-10 minutes. It’s the starting process. We hate it. Ever notice how a task feels terrible until you’ve been doing it for a few minutes? This is why this exercise is so brutal and powerful at the same time. By doing these behaviors, you’re doing the hardest part of the process, over and over. You’re programming yourself to start.
A task that feels boring or overwhelming, is often only boring or overwhelming to start.
The next thing you’ll discover comes in week 3 and 4. You’ll find yourself benefiting from the habit of starting. So when 9:30 PM rolls around and it’s time to turn off your phone, you’ll find the level of resistance considerably lower. It almost feels like you’ve gotten stronger. So now when you say “do it” you just do it. There’s less hesitation. Less resistance and negotiation.
The best part is this also begins affecting other areas of life. Now that you’ve built the habit of starting, you’ll find yourself taking action on things that before, you procrastinated on.
Conclusion
There you have it.
Rewire your brain in 30 days.
This is a superpower. It’s hard, a bit boring, and not overly exciting, but it’s worth learning. Once you teach yourself this, there’s almost no limit to the things you can program into your brain. Anything that is hard, or challenging, you will have the ability to teach your brain a program and run it with significantly less effort and energy.
So, will you learn to program your incognito super-brain to do incredible feats?
Or you could stay stagnate. That’s always an option.
I’ll let you choose.
Wrap
Thanks so much for joining us today Austin.
We really enjoyed reading and listening to your post!
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This is a great post, so much value. Really in the thinking mode right now. Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for sharing 🙏