New neuroscience reveals 2 rituals that will make you more mindful

New neuroscience reveals 2 rituals that will make you mora mindfulNew neuroscience reveals 2 rituals that will make you more mindfulYou want to get to work but instead you surf the internet. You want to diet but instead you eat enough candy to give an entire 2nd grade classroom type 2 diabetes. Why?You might think you lack self-control. Or that you make bad decisions. But none of these explanations ever seems to get to the bottom of whywhat-you-thinkandwhat-you-doall too frequently dont line up.What the heck is going in your brain that causes these inconsistencies? Sometimes its alfruchtwein like youre 2 different people. Or 3. Or 19.Theres a very simple answer youare19 different people. Or 4. Or 107. But what you arent is one rolle. Yeah, sounds crazy, I know. Stay with meOver 1000 years ago Buddhism - where mindfulness techniques come from - said that there is no singular you. The self does not exist.Sound like crazy nonsense? Im with you. (All 27 of you, actually.) But heres the thingBoth neuroscience and psychology are starting toagree.Sometimesyoudont act likeyoubecause there is no singular you.And this positively perplexing proposition holds the answer to why you do dumb things, procrastinate, cant follow through on your goals, and why some days it seems like everyone including you - is a total hypocrite.Strap in - were gonna turn everything you know about your grey matter upside down and give you a completelynew way of looking at your mind and how it works. Of course, well also cover how to address this issue and start getting your act together.Alright, enough foreplay. Its time for me and you (and you, and you and you) to get to workWalt Whitman, YouDoContain MultitudesThere is no you. There are alotof yous in your head.But do legit scientists really agree with such a seemingly ridiculous statement?HeresDuke psychology professor Dan Arielyour models of human behavior need to be rethought. Perhaps there is no such thing as a fully integrated human b eing. We may, in fact, be an agglomeration of multiple selves.What were talking about is the cutting edge theory of the modular mind. (Okay, its old news to Buddhist monks but cutting edge to the rest of us.)The human brain wasnt built top to bottom as a single project like Apple builds a computer. It evolved over millions of years in a very messy fashion. Various systems (or modules) came about to drive you to accomplish different tasks like seeking food, fighting, reproduction, etc. But heres the problemThey were never integrated.So these systems compete to steer the ship that is your brain. Your mind is less like a single computer operating system and more like a collection of smartphone apps where only one can be open and running at a time.Heres noted science authorRobert WrightIn this view, your mind is composed of lots of specialized modules- modules for sizing up situations and reacting to them- and its the interplay among these modules that shapes your behavior. And much of this interplay happens without conscious awareness on your part. The modular model of the mind, though still young and not fully fleshed out, holds a lot of promise. For starters, it makes sense in terms of evolution the mind got built bit by bit, chunk by chunk, and as our species encountered new challenges, new chunks would have been added. As well see, this model also helps make sense of some of lifes great internal conflicts, such as whether to cheat on your spouse, whether to take addictive drugs, and whether to eat another powdered-sugar doughnut.Now modules arent physical structures in the brain, just like apps arent hardware in your phone. Theyre software the human nature algorithms that Mother Nature coded over thousands of generations of evolution.So you want to diet but you see donuts and your brains hunger module (like the Grubhub app) hjacks control and says, Food Eat it. Now. Or you want to be nice but your minds dorfwiese app (Angry Birds) takes charge and youre sayin g things another app is really going to regret tomorrow. Youre like a walking live performance of Pixars Inside Out.Now this isnt as alien as it might sound. When you do something while drunk or tired whats the phrase you often pull out?I wasnt myself.Yeah. Exactly. Upside you can now use the royal we to describe yourself.(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my new bookhere.)So how do we prevent hijacking by the wrong module at the wrong time and make better decisions? First we need to learn how those inappropriate modules get hold of your steering wheelFeelings. Nothing More Than Feelings.Whichever module has the most emotional kick attached to it at any point wins the competition to be you.You see a pizza commercial and it stirs up feelings of hunger and that Grubhub app hijacks control. Then you see someone attractive, feelings stir in your nether regions, the Tinder app takes charge and your brain is under new management yet again.Under this lens, man y of the confusing and frustrating things about human behavior start to make a lot of senseOf coursepeople are hypocritical. Theyre made up of competing selves with very different goals and different information. Uncle Al is the most reasonable guy in the world - unless his politics module takes charge.Are people good or bad? Theyre both. The metaphorical angel on one shoulder and devil on the other are just different modules in the brain with different motivations.Those emotional persuasion techniques? Theyre an attempt to switch the other persons dominant module. To get them to go from that competitive Chess app to something more friendly like Facebook.Why do you lack self-control? Because now the word doesnt make any sense. Its actually selves-control. Your behavior isnt inconsistent the you in charge is inconsistent.Is it starting to click now?Heres University of Pennsylvania psychology professorRobert KurzbanSome modules are designed to gather benefits, others are designed to deliver benefits, and they exist in the same head, sometimes in conflict. In the same way, this analysis does away with the question of whether individual acts are really self-interested. Different kinds of acts advance the goals that some, but not other, modules are designed to bring about. So, both meanings of self-interest seem to be a problem because different modules have different designs, and are therefore built to bring about different outcomes.I had a girlfriend named Natalia who, whenever she got caught doing something naughty, would smirk and say, That wasnt me. That wasNatasha. I would roll my eyes but it turns out Natalia knew a lot more about neuroscience than I did. (Um, or Natasha did. Whatever. You get the point.)Youre often a slave to your emotional reactions to the world around you. You react to your context with feelings, those give one module more power than another, and that one hijacks decision-making in your brainUntil new feelings are stirred up and another module takes charge.And this happens over and over and over all day long.HeresRobert WrightThe human brain is a machine designed by natural selection to respond in pretty reflexive fashion to the sensory input impinging on it. It is designed, in a certain sense, to be controlled by that input. And a key cog in the machinery of control is the feelings that arise in response to the input. If you interact with those feelings via the natural, reflexive thirst for the pleasant feelings and the natural, reflexive aversion to the unpleasant feelings- you will continue to be controlled by the world around you.Your brain is like a car with a terrible automatic transmission. Any car fanatic knows if you want total control, you want a stick shift. You want to be able to choose which gear is engaged to best suit the current challenges ahead.But you have this horrendous automatic transmission and sooften your brain is in 1st gear on the highway and in 5th gear backing out of a parking spot and t he results are far from what you desired.(To learn the 3 secrets from neuroscience that will make you emotionally intelligent, clickhere.)So how can we replace your automatic transmission with a nice stick shift? How do we prevent your grey matter from being continually hijacked by whatever emotions well up inside you?How To Prevent Brain HijackBuddhism recognized this problem over 1000 years ago. And it also came up with a solution mindfulness meditation.But wait a second - Buddhism is areligion, right? Hold on. You can improve your body with yoga without being Hindu. And you can improve your brain through meditation without being Buddhist. Meditation is a secular tool for strengthening mental muscles.And neuroscience gives it a big thumbs up. Studies show meditation trains your brain to be less reactive to emotional swings and can prevent the wrong module from hijacking control of your brain.FromAltered Traits Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and BodyThe m editators brains were scanned while they saw disturbing images of people suffering, like burn victims. The seasoned practitioners brains revealed a lowered level of reactivity in the amygdala they were more immune to emotional hijacking. The reason their brains had stronger operative connectivity between the prefrontal cortex, which manages reactivity, and the amygdala, which triggers such reactions. As neuroscientists know, the stronger this particular link in the brain, the less a person will be hijacked by emotional downs and ups of all sorts.And this helps you make better decisions.HeresRobert WrightAfter all, one virtue of mindfulness meditation is that experiencing your feelings with care and clarity, rather than following them reflexively and uncritically, lets you choose which ones to follow- like, say, joy, delight, and love.When youre better able to cope with feelings and not just instinctively reacting to them, youre able to stay calm and resist hijacking. Andastronauts, samurai and Navy SEALsall agree that the key to making good decisions - especially under pressure - is keeping your cool.(To learn the 4 rituals from neuroscience that will make you happy, clickhere.)Great. So how do you meditate to get those powerful brain benefits?Meditation 101Dan Harriswrote the most accessible - and most entertaining - book on meditation out there10% Happier. And when I spoke to him,hereshow he explained the dead simple way to build those brain bicepsIt really involves three extremely simple steps.OneSit with your eyes closed and your back straight.Two Notice what it feels like when your breath comes in and when your breath goes out, try tobring your full attention to the feeling of your breath coming in and going out.Third step is the biggie. Every time you try to do this, your mind is going to go crazy. You are going to start thinking about all sorts of stupid things like if you need a haircut, why you said that dumb thing to your boss, whats for lunch, e tc.Every time you notice that your mind is wandering, bring your attention back to your breath and begin again.This is going to happen over and over and over again and that is meditation.By the way, youre going to suck at this. Meditation is the hardest simple thing youll ever do.Dan agreesIts not easy. You will fail a million times but the failing and starting over is succeeding. So this isnt like most things in your life where, like if you cant get up on water skis, you cant do it. Here the trying and starting again, trying and starting again, thats the whole game.But do you need to be in the midst of meditation to get the improvements? Nope. Neuroplasticity to the rescue Over time, meditation produces trait changes in the brain so that the effects persist.FromAltered Traits Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Bodythere are hints in the research that these changes are traitlike they appear not simply during the explicit instruction to perceive the stressfu l stimuli mindfully but even in the baseline state, with reductions in amygdala activation as great as 50 percent. Such lessening of the brains stress reactions appears in response not simply to seeing the gory pictures used in the laboratory but also to more real-life challengesBut getting your grey matter to seriously change itself takes time. A lot of time. Hundreds or thousands of hours of meditating. I know what youre thinking I dont have 10 years to sit cross-legged on a mountaintop. I have a job, pal.I get it. Whats truly fascinating is that recent research has shown a tiny bit of meditation can actually be usedacutely- in the moment when youre having a push-the-red-button-level emergency.FromAltered Traits Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and BodyAs these stressful thoughts were presented, the patients used either of two different attentional stances mindful awareness of their breath or distraction by doing mental arithmetic. Only mindfulness of thei r breath both lowered activity in the amygdala- mainly via a faster recovery- and strengthened it in the brains attentional networks, while the patients reported less stress reactivity.When youre feeling stressed out, when it seems like a hijack might be coming, just do a mini-meditation. By focusing on your breath for a few moments you can get some of the long term benefits of meditation right when you need them.(To learn more about how to meditate from Dan Harris, clickhere.)Weve covered a lot. Time for the yous to gather round. Lets pull it all together and learn how the modular vision of the brain along with mindfulness can lead to that little thing called wisdomSum UpHeres what you and you and you need to know about how to be more mindfulThere are many yous Like apps on a smartphone, different systems in your brain with different goals can take control at different times, which is why you can behave so inconsistently.Feelings are what give a module control You get worked up b y what your buddy said and suddenly your brain is hijacked by Angry Birds instead of Words With Friends.Meditation can prevent hijacking Over time, meditation can rewire your brain to be less impulsively reactive and allow you to thoughtfully respond to your feelings.Mini-meditations help in the moment By focusing on your breath during a tense moment you can get some of the long term effects of meditation right when you need them.Less reactivity means fewer hijacks which leads to better decisions and more alignment between thought and action. Over time, that leads to wisdom. Neuroscience PhD and meditation advocateSam Harrisput it bestOn one level, wisdom is nothing more profound than an ability to follow ones own advice.You dont want your internal Grubhub app taking charge when youre on a diet. And you certainly dont want that Tinder app active when youre with someone you know isnt right for you. (Swipe left)Observe a couple breaths. Stay calm so you can get back to your home scree n. Choose the right app for the situation.Trust me you dont want Natasha running the show.Join more than 315,000 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.Related postsNew Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You HappyNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulHow To Get People To Like You 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior ExpertThis article originally appeared on Barking Up the Wrong Tree.