How to Hack Your Brain

You are not who you think you are. Your personality and identity is significantly more
malleable than you realize. With a few simple tricks, you can exploit your brain's
innate functionality to change just about anything about yourself. Here's how.

You Are Not Necessarily the Person You Think You Are

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You are not who you are, but rather the product of many influences. The saying "you
can't teach an old dog new tricks" exists for a reason: the longer you've been the
person you think you are, the harder it becomes to change. The thing is, you can
dramatically change who you are. It's actually not so much that it's difficult to change,
but that you've developed patterns and habits that make it easier to do things the way
you do them. Trying something in a new way can feel very awkward, it will be
generally less efficient by virtue of being something new to you, and it often lacks
excitement for you when it involves giving up the comfort associated with your way.

That's not to say you aren't born with some inherent abilities, but most of what you
consider part of your identity is a product of influence. While we don't know the exact
ratio of nature to nurture, there is undoubtedly a combination of both that makes us
who we are. We have a tendency to think that change is difficult, but it's really just a
matter of changing your influence. You're probably familiar with Stockholm
syndrome-the term used to describe how hostage victims tend to develop positive
feelings towards their captors. Stockholm syndrome isn't a kind of brainwashing by
the captor; instead, the victim adapts to the poor situation he or she is in. If most
people can adapt to something as awful as being kidnapped, most people can adapt to
smaller positive changes in their own lives. You can even make enormous changes if
you're willing to put in the work and you provide yourself with the proper influences.
We're going to look at how to do that on high and low levels, from priming your brain
to manipulating your own emotions, and also look at how your environment and the
people you know shape your life.

Most of these methods won't make you feel comfortable, and, at times, they may
sound a bit crazy, but it is possible to "hack" your own brain. Here are just a few ways
to do it.

Priming Your Brain

Priming is a ridiculously simple technique because all it involves is talking to

yourself. On the dull end of the spectrum, it's similar to self-affirmation. On the
crazier end of the spectrum, it bears some similarities with neuro-linguistic
programming. Priming your brain involves reciting a given set of words that are
designed to alter your mindset. It is not brainwashing and it cannot make you do
anything you don't want to do. What it can accomplish, however, is putting you into a
state of mind that will be more useful to you with a given situation or task.

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Before we get into the specifics of how to prime your brain, let's talk about how and
why it works. If you were to say the word mustard out loud, and then you were to see
a portion of the word later, you'd be reminded of mustard. For example, if you were to
say "I must have this" you might be reminded of mustard because of the word must. If
you were hungry and liked mustard, you may even want some. It's the same
phenomenon that compels you to buy a particular brand of shampoo that you saw on
television even if you 1) don't remember seeing the commercial, and 2) couldn't care
less what kind of shampoo you use. This is essentially how priming works, and it's all
thanks to your memory.

While you're not going to remember everything you say, that doesn't mean what you
say is gone forever. While everything stored in your recent memory may not be
immediately accessible, all you really need to bring something up is a trigger word.
This is conceptually similar to using acronyms as a memory tool (e.g. Roy G. Biv) but
isn't designed to help you actually remember anything. Instead, the goal is to place
common words that, when apart, have no real specific value, but when together, have
an associative value that make you think of happy things, sad things, specific people,
or ambition. If any of those common words come up again later in the day, you'll
immediately associate that word with the associative value of the group. Here's an
example:

drive
do
go
make
objective
important
create
commitment
purpose
enthusiasm
 eager
motivation

This is a list of words synonymous with or related to ambition. It's designed to be read
aloud to put you in a more ambitious mindset, focusing your thoughts and priming
your brain to react ambitiously when these words, or portions of these words, come up
later in your day.

Another exercise involves taking a shorter list of priming words and making a
sentence with it. Here's an example:

the
smiled
looked
girl
and

These words can form the sentence "the girl looked and smiled," which should bring
to mind pleasant associations for most people. Constructing sentences out of word
lists (which you can create yourself) can help put you in the right mindset.

These two methods can be used to prime your brain. They are not magic tricks that
will instantly make you feel happy, ambitious, or whatever, but they can help to
provide you with the mindset you need to better accomplish your daily tasks.

For more reading on priming, and a look at some really interesting studies, don't
forget to check out the references for this article.

Using Your Emotions

If you've ever found yourself making out-of-character decisions based on your
emotional statesuch as binging on ice cream after a breakupyou know how easily
your feelings can overtake your actions. Rather than letting your emotions lead you
towards poor judgment and irrational behavior, however, you can learn to compensate
for different emotional states and to fabricate emotions to alter your mood. In order to
do that you need to, simply put, get in touch with your feelings. The idea isn't so much
to cry into a pillow about your wasted childhood, but understand what you're feeling
when you're feeling it, what the root cause is, and what you can do about it. We're
going to take a look at how you can dissect your emotional state to use it to your
advantage, and also look at how you can fabricate emotion to change how you're
feeling.

Take an Acting Class

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You can't really control your emotions if you don't understand them, and one of the
best ways to understand them is to take an acting class. To some this may sound fun,
and to others this may sound like hell. Love it or hate it, acting lessons are one of the
best ways to explore how and why you feel certain things. Your goal should be to find
a class that will make you uncomfortable every time you go. In my experience, any
class teaching the Meisner technique is very effective if you put a lot of effort into the
exercises. It can be slow, tedious, and uncomfortable, but it's capable of bringing out
emotion you might not realize you had.

Make Yourself Uncomfortable

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Your emotions aren't in full force if you're not really doing anything, so you need to
put yourself in uncomfortable situations in order to bring them out. This doesn't mean
you should make yourself feel horrible, but that you should go out and do things that
you might resist because you're worried about the downsides. Meeting new people is
something that makes most people uncomfortable, and it's a great place to start,
especially if it's a first date. Try new things that scare you. If you notice you're glued
to the couch and don't want to get up, do the opposite. Spend time with people you
don't like. Go to a movie you're sure you'll hate. Your experiences won't always be
pleasant, but they should incite emotion that you can later analyze and better
understand.

Keep Track of How You Feel

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Like an abbreviated diary, every time you have an emotional reaction to something,
write it down. You don't need much detail, but just a sentence or two noting the
emotion you're experiencing and the (possible) cause. For example, I get extremely
irritable when I'm hungry. I will lose my temper far more easily when I'm hungry, so
whenever I notice myself thinking irrational (and sometimes hateful) things, I always
remind myself that I'm just hungry, I'll eat in a minute, and the "asshole" who
accidentally missed the garbage can and didn't notice is mostly a result of my
frustrated stomach. Until I started to pay attention, I never really noticed that I was a
jerk whenever I was hungry. Instead, I just thought I was a jerk. This is a simple
example, but the point is this: pay attention to how you feel and the other issues
currently present, and you'll find it much easier to manage your negative emotions.

Emote in Front of the Mirror

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Fabricating emotion is difficult. Once you understand your emotions you'll find it a bit
easier, but it helps to be able to recall how it feels, physically, to emote. We all know
how to smile, for example, but you can probably count more fake smiles in family
photographs than you can real ones. If you don't know how to create an authentic
smile (also known as the Duchenne smile), it will be very obvious to everyone around
you.

The easiest way to learn to fake expressions is to practice them in the mirror. You can
try them out to see what you look like and you'll immediately know if they're passable
or not. You'll also note that it feels physically different to create an authentic-looking
emotion than it does to create a fake-looking emotion. For example, an authentic
smile shows more in the eyes than it does in your mouth. When someone smiles a true
smile, their eyes wrinkle (creating "crows feet") because a new musiclethe
orbicularis oculi muscleis used. You'll come to remember this feeling and be able to
replicate it away from the mirror after a little practice.

It's not necessarily easy to emote in front of the mirror, but that's not as hard as you
think. If your goal is simply to learn to smile better, you'll get there if you just stare at
yourself for awhile. Eventually it will get so ridiculous that you'll have to laugh. If
you're less patient, you can try to make yourself laugh by making strange faces or just
being ridiculous. If you're comfortable, have a friend over to help. For other emotions,
you simply need to find a source of that emotion and bring it into play in front of the
mirror. If you've employed any of the previously discussed techniques, you may
already have a reserve. Alternatively, watch a movie that makes you laugh or cry and
do it by the mirror. (Yes, this is absolutely a strange thing to do, but it'll work.) If
you're interested in anger, you should have no problem getting there by just
complaining to yourself or to a friend on the phone.

Emoting in front of the mirror is going to be strange and awkward at first, but after a
few tries you'll get the hang of it and be able to create authentic expressions on
demand. These expressions do surface from genuine emotion, so repeating them can
actually make you feel happier/sadder/angrier/etc. through repetition. If you need to
change your mood and your mindset, the ability to fake it til you make it is very, very
useful.

Consider Your Health

Anything you do is much easier if you're healthyand that goes for mental as well as
physical health. These methods won't be terribly helpful if you're seriously depressed.
If you're not sleeping, eating well, and/or getting a reasonable amount of physical
activity in each day, you're going to find them difficult as well. You can do pretty
much everything better if you take care of your mind and your body, so don't look at
anything you've read here as a panacea for the problems in your life. Everything here
assumes that you take reasonably good care of yourself and generally start your day in
a good place. If you're not feeling good on most days, you need to take care of those
problems before you decide to start playing mind tricks with yourself. Always be
healthy first.