You can have better control over yourself

Sometimes we make very bad decisions that ruin our lives for some time. We stay in the wrong job or toxic relationship for a long time. We hang out with the wrong people and make risky investments that go wrong. Our mistakes and failures can be traced back to certain decisions or events that took us off course.

And our personal and professional inertia can be attributed to the small, almost imperceptible ways we do ourselves every day.Life: That is, our habits-and the skills that govern them: I’m talking about sElf control (or lack thereof).

We often come to believe that the lack of self-control in the form of carelessness, procrastination and laziness is inherent in who we are, but in fact we think Has more agencies and power than you have.Far from being just a victim of our habits, according to Stanford University neuroscientists Andrew HubermanImpulse regulation is a skill you can train.

Be aware of your “go” vs. “go” function

In an interview with Knowledge projectHuberman describes the effects of parts of the brain, called the basal ganglia, on our daily lives. The ganglia responsible for integrating thoughts and behaviors are regulated by dopamine and can be either a behavior-oriented “go function” such as eating breakfast and making a bed, or a “no-go function” that inhibits behavior. Drive us.

As children, we learn many “off-limits” behaviors, such as sitting still and not disturbing others, but as we get older, our lives focus on going, going, going. doing. It alternates between 17 windows open in email, phone, instant messaging, and computer docks, and usually multitasks as if our lives depended on it.

As an adult, you will have less opportunity to practice interrupting this “go” function, Huberman says.. “We rarely rehearse off-limits features solely for the purpose of restraining behavior.” But restraining our few.than-If you want to keep your plans, complete difficult tasks in a timely manner, and reach your long-term goals, you need to be productive.

How to bend a “no-go” muscle

In his own life, Huberman puts 20 to 30 “no-go moments” throughout his day to reinforce the circuits that control his impulses as he is about to begin his reflexes. I will try to create it. “Understanding neural circuits means that they are common,” he says... For example, if you establish a no-go circuit to avoid biting your nails, it will be passed on to other areas where you want to have greater self-control.

Huberman gave some examples of how to create a “no-go” (which may be trivial) in everyday life.

Resist to grab your phone: How many times a day do you reach for your phone? (Don’t answer that, I don’t want to get worse about my addiction.) Then you get bored, confused, procrastinated, unknowingly scrolling social media or news If you feel the urge to check, resist. At least for a while.

Implement a regimen (also known as sticking to your plan): For example, if you’re planning an exercise routine in the gym or the order in which you do your errands, you’ll complete it as designed, rather than defaulting to something more voluntary and switching on the fly.

90 minutes work block: Work for 90 minutes at a time and resist the urge to get up and get something other than the task at hand, such as coffee, snacks, and folding laundry. Create a focus on tunnel vision and keep your hips in your seat unless there is an urgent need to interrupt your work.

Managed snack break: Delays getting the snacks you need when the urge or thirst first arrives. (Huberman states that this is not a great option for those who eat-Recovery from failure. )

meditation: Enforcing all kinds of mindfulness exercises when you want to get up is a way to train your off-limits muscles.

Huberman warned against being nervously obsessed with these no-gos, Rather, it is for use as a practice, such as lifting the weight of the brain. No one oversees us as adults, so we train neural circuits that hinder unproductive behavior, such as wasting scrolling time of the day or jumping between projects without completing anything. It is our responsibility to do it.

“We need to continue training these no-go circuits. Today, there are so many opportunities and rewards to’go’ that we do not train off-limits routes. In the era of instant access to smartphones and information, Huberman adds, “Immediately run out of unstructured day time.”