Meet Your Auto-Brain
Did you know that approximately 95% of what you think and do happens without you even thinking about it? Here is an example of how your auto-brain works – read the following paragraph:
Aoccdrnig to a research sduty at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in what order the ltteers in a word are, the only iprmoetnt thing is that the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can still raed it wouthit porbelm. Tish is bcuseae the human mind does not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe.
People are often surprised how easily they can read the paragraph above (try typing it…that’s very strange too because your brain can understand what the word is supposed to say and automatically wants to correct it.)
What’s critical to understand is that when our thoughts or behaviors become part of our automatic processing system (which Dr. Jim Loehr estimates to be about 95% of what we think and do), they are pretty easy to maintain. They don’t require a lot of energy. We would call these our habits, and the good ones are ingrained so that we can rely on them to support us. But not all of our habits are good (obviously), and those darn bad habits are also very difficult to change because they too happen automatically after years of training them to do so, whether we are trying to or not.
Everything we do in life has a training effect. If you find yourself grabbing fast food on a regular basis, you will soon feel pulled in that direction when you start to feel hungry. Stay up late several nights working (or writing a book), and you will train your brain to see this as the norm, making falling asleep at a decent hour much more challenging.
Unless we consciously make an effort to change bad habits, our brains keep these pathways “well-paved” and we keep repeating them. With such an amazing operating system that can help us automate processes in our life, why not train our brain to move us in the right direction making our auto-brain our ultimate resource.
