Humans are terrible at predicting what will bring them pleasure. What we THINK will bring us joy or fulfillment often doesn’t. And, the things we don’t expect to bring us fulfillment sometimes do. The ability to predict what will actually make us happy can help us be more motivated to do tasks we don’t think we want to, find pleasure in places we weren’t expecting to, and to avoid disappointment.
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Last week my three-year-old daughter was in the hospital for several days. As you can probably imagine, she hated all the probing and poking by the nurses and she kept asking to go home. When the doctors finally identified the pathogen she had, my daughter started improving with an IV antibiotic treatment.
Though my daughter had started to feel better, the doctor stipulated that to return home my daughter had to show that she could continue to improve while on an oral antibiotic.
When we tried to give my daughter the large syringe full of creamy white antibiotic, she said, “I don’t want to take the antibiotic.” She turned her head and tried to run away. It was ironic because I knew what she REALLY wanted was to go home, but it first required doing something she didn’t want to do.
I told her, “It’s okay if you don’t want to take the medicine. You don’t have to want to take it, we just have to do it.” In the end, she finally took the antibiotics. She continued to get better and thankfully we were able to return home.
It seemed so obvious that my daughter NEEDED to do what she didn’t WANT to do, but ironically, I found myself struggling with the same thing this week. I’ve needed to redesign my website for some time—it’s important for growing my business, which is what I ultimately want. But I didn’t know exactly how to do the redesign and the more I got into it and tried to deal with all the technicalities it was overwhelming. I didn’t WANT to deal with it. My brain started thinking about how I could hire it out, or if I could just keep the website I had.
But I told my brain the same thing I told my daughter. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. You don’t have to WANT to, you just have to DO it.” I knew that I had to do something I didn’t want to do now, so that I could get what I really wanted in the long run. So, I stuck it out. I kept trying and failing. I kept researching, googling “how-to” videos, and experimenting. I redesigned my website and I’m delighted with it.
Why does the brain often reject doing something we don’t want to do now, even if we know that what we ultimately want requires it? Because these desires are directed by different parts of our brain. The prefrontal cortex, or the higher brain, is where all of our logic, planning, and strategy occurs. The prefrontal cortex looks out for our long-term interests. The limbic system, or the lower brain, is the more “primal” part of our brain that tries to keep us alive—it’s primary goals are pleasure, safety, and efficiency. It keeps us from touching fire, it keeps us eating so we don’t starve, it helps us reproduce, etc. It’s looking for what feels good in the moment—because what feels good in the moment will often keep us alive.
However, while the lower brain will keep us alive, it won’t make us happy. In order to be happy, we have to supervise the lower brain with the higher brain. Humans are the only animal that have a complex higher brain that can override the primitive part of the brain. The good news is, in humans the lower brain can’t do anything without the permission of the higher brain. That means it’s possible to not want to do something with our lower brain, and we can use our higher brain to choose to do it anyway in order to get what we really want.
It’s possible to not want to do something, and do it anyway. Learning this skill is the key to accomplishing your goals and becoming the person you really want to become.
As powerful as grit and willpower can be for getting us going, eventually it runs out! But there is an easier and much more fun way to change behavior without white knuckling our way through it.
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