How The Brain Messages Influences Your Actions

Unbeknownst to most of us, the actions we take, and the ones we choose not to take greatly influence how our brain is wired.

The brain is the center of everything we do in life. It plays a current and future role in the choices we make. It keeps data of our desires, feelings, and emotions. These records which date back to our childhood last for a lifetime.

In the book You’re Not Your Brain, the authors explained that “what you do now and how you focus your attention affects your brain and how it’s wired. That’s if you repeat the same act over and over, regardless of whether it has a positive or negative impact on you, you make the brain circuits associated with the act more powerful.”

And that when you avoid something that causes you anxiety like hiding from people that love you when you’re depressed. Or drink to reduce stress, your brain will strengthen the circuit supporting those actions.

Meaning that your brain will be far more likely to repeat the same behavior or habit automatically whenever a similar situation arises.

You’re the programmer of your brain.

It’s the responsibility of the brain to rapidly generate thoughts and desires that will remind you of activities you had prioritized over others.

After I developed the habit of brushing my teeth every night before going to bed, I realized after some time that though I don’t have a fixed bedtime, once I start thinking of going to bed, my brain will automatically remind me of brushing my teeth first before going to bed.

The activity that I prioritized ahead of the one I intended to embark on will quickly surface after I started thinking of going to bed. This is how my brain ensures that I brush my teeth every night before I go to bed.

On the negative side, an individual that’s using a substance to hide from life’s challenges would find that his brain has become hardwired with the uncomfortable sensation and the activity he’s using as a fleeting soothing. Whenever the brain causes those thoughts and uncomfortable feelings to occupy his or her conscious mind, it’d at the same time direct him to the preferred escape route. And the more this pattern repeats itself, the more often the negative messages and images surface. As a result, the cravings for substances will become more frequent and almost irresistible.

It’s the responsibility of the brain to rapidly generate thoughts and desires that will remind you of activities you had prioritized over others. It could be an enjoyable but harmful activity or a positive one. What the brain does by reminding you of these activities is to ensure that you keep doing the things you find enjoyable irrespective of the harmful effects it might be having on you.

This could explain why a particular thought, and feelings would suddenly surface and occupy your conscious mind each time you find yourself at a particular place. Or each time you are with a particular person. The feeling or urge springs up because you’ve in the past sent a signal to your brain that this feels good, or enjoyable. And the dutiful brain which records and saves every data including time and place will unfailingly cause the feeling or urge to surface whenever the signal is triggered.

You can exert some level of control over your reactive response to negative messages.

Charles Duhig in his book The Power of Habit explained that to overpower a negative habit, we must understand which craving is driving the behavior.

The brain isn’t built to discern what’s good or bad. If you find a harmful activity enjoyable, your brain will remind you of this activity because you’ve prioritized it.

But when you identify the cravings driving the behavior and the reason behind the cravings, you can be able to exert some level of control over your reactive responses to false messages by consciously anticipating them, and making consistent efforts not to respond as you usually do. You begin to apply your rational mind to counter and resist false messages and sensations that are capable of getting you addicted to a substance.

This would cause the intensity of the uncomfortable feelings, and sensation to begin to wane. The rate at which the negative brain messages and cravings for a fleeting soothing will also begin to minimize.

At this point, though the false messages and cravings would still surface occasionally, they’d stop being as frequent and compulsive as they once were.

Conclusion

If you fail to understand how the brain messages connect and bind you to the actions you take through the feelings, thoughts, and sensations it directs to your conscious mind, you won’t come close to knowing why you do the things you’d rather not do. And if you overwhelm yourself with negative thoughts or ruminate on things that you have no control over, you’d inadvertently program your brain to keep sending you negative messages and pictures that would exacerbate the situation and cause you to develop a negative habit to escape from the ensuing stress and anxiety.

We can neither have a complete comprehension of how the brain functions nor fully understand its capabilities. But if we can have some understanding of how our enigmatic brain influences our choices through the different messages, feelings, and desires it directs to our conscious state, then we can know when we’ve unwittingly set our brain to mislead us with false messages and cravings. Or when it’s guiding us to continue doing the things that are beneficial to us.

Previously published on medium by the same author.