251. How to train your brain to do hard things

things bring about the best rewards. That kind of gist. However, as I have gotten older, and I was thinking about that quote the other day, and this is what has inspired that episode. As I've gotten older, I've sort of revived there is my thinking around this. You know, yes, definitely, some of the best things in life do demand a lot of our effort, time, energy, attention, But does that necessarily mean that they need to be unenjoyable or difficult.

Does it always have to be such like a mental slug? I think those words and like concepts tend to get or melted together when we talk about doing hard things, we imagine that they have to be almost painful. I also think, you know, with that quote, there is also this underlying secondary sense that maybe you and I we don't deserve success if we don't almost suffer for it, if we don't strive for it, for it, if it came to us easily today. I want to talk about that.

I want to talk about this idea of how we can train our brain to do hard things by offering you a different approach, a different formula or understanding, one in which hard things become easier using some of these principles of psychology that mean that we find difficult tasks less mentally taxing, we find it less difficult to start,

We appreciate the rewards more. You know, all motivation, our desire to do anything big or small, even the most mundane of tasks, it all starts in the brain, and it all starts with how we perceive how difficult the thing in front of us is, and how we perceive the outcome and the rewards of our hard effort. That

is actually something that we can influence. We can influence how our brain kind of perceives all of these components and mean that the hard, difficult things that all of us have to do in our twenties, like the things that are just so frustrating and annoying that we often put off, become less of mature.

as humans. That is something that actually we do need more of in our lives. It all comes down to this thing known as the effort paradox. The more effort we put into something, the more we value it. That's why you know, you value the crappy mug that you made at a pottery class over the perfect mug that you got at ikea. The end of a hard project is valued more than the outcome of an e one, and it actually does make our life feel more fulfilling.

We feel proud of ourselves, and we just reap the rewards. So today, let us break down exactly how we can use the principles of behavioral psychology mainly but also neuroscience to do the hard things, to start the hard routines, especially in our twenties, when we can reap a lot of lifelong rewards from getting into the habit, from biting the bullets. So, without further ado, let's break down the psychology of how you and I can train our brains

to do just that. The journey to completing or starting anything hard all actually has the exact same start line, and the start line is going from doing nothing to doing something. And I think a lot of us know that that transition, that jump from doing nothing to something is the hardest and it stops a lot of us from ever really beginning, even if we really really want

to see where something's going to take us. That is why my first biggest tip for how we can train our brain to do hard things is the five minute rule. You know, after you begin, the first five minutes of anything is going to be the hardest because you have to dig deep and find the motivation to just begin and to deal with that tension from going from doing

nothing to doing something. And a big part of why that is so daunting is that it feels like when we begin a new task, or we begin a new routine, or we're like, Okay, I'm committed to going to the gym every single morning, or I'm committed to in this moment right now, finishing my assignment and I need to work on it in this moment right now. Absolutely have to do it, even though I don't want to do it. It often is like, Okay, by telling myself that I need to do that, I now am committing to a

lot more than just a couple of minutes. I'm committed to a whole process, a whole period of time where I have to be focused on this task. And it's that huge mountain and the idea of climbing that mountain knowing it's going to take a while. That means that we put things off because of the time burden. Instead, we want to overcome our brain's natural tendency to want to avoid discomfort that comes with the beginning of the task. By saying I will just do this for five minutes.

It's not actually a trick. You are only going to do the thing for five minutes unless after you have, you know, lasted that period of time, you feel better about the thing. You feel better about doing it. If you're five minutes into your run and you're like, okay, I've done five minutes, I can stop. I am allowed to stop because I've done better than doing nothing. But you know, maybe I'll just do another minute. Maybe I'll do another minute. After that, you see that you have

overcome the first mental barrier. You've overcome that first point of tension. This is just such a simple, accessible, cognitive behavioral strategy, and the reason that it works so much is also because it essentially tricks us into not being able to procrastinate. Now, one of the foundations of procrastination A lot of people think assume that it's laziness. It's actually not. Its perfectionism. If you are an overachiever, you

are a big thinker, you are a perfectionist. The beginning of a task is always going to be the hardest because it's in that moment that you realize how much opportunity in space there is to fail, how much space there is to do it wrong, how much space there is to be criticized, to not live up to your expectations. That is scary, and that is what's causing you to procrastinate and causing you to put off this reality that

you're so fearful of. But the five minute rule that cuts that because it looks at this perfection as part of our brain and says, actually, like, you can clock off for this because anything that I do in five minutes is not going to be perfect. So great, I know that that's amazing. I can just actually ignore my perfectionism for this moment and just give it a go. It doesn't have to be perfect, It definitely doesn't have

to be done. And by the time you have gotten that momentum, suddenly your perfectionism is kind of like trying to play catch up. It's like, hey, wait, you tricked me. I thought that we were like not actually going to

do this today. I thought that we were going to like give it a break, Like I thought that, you know, I'd stopped you, it's like, actually, no, when you start giving it a go, when you get on like the fast train, you start seeing that it's easier, you start seeing that actually you're doing better than you expected perhaps, and you also start realizing that progress is it's just important. You've already made a dint and now you have something

to work with. So the five minute rule. Anything that you know is going to be hard, just say you have to do it for five minutes. And like I said before, you do only have to do it for five minutes. So if you're at the end of that period of time and you're like, okay, I want to stop, that's fine. You're allowed to stop, but at least you did it. My second tip, and this one is possibly one of my favorite strategies. I use this all the time.

When I know I have to do something that is daunting, that is challenging, that I don't want to do, I picture the best person I know at that thing. I picture them doing it. I think about them, I think about how they hold themselves, I think about how they would go about it.

lot more capable. It's almost like I actually, don't you know, I don't have to do all of this myself. Someone else that I know, who I respect, who is great at this, has already done it for me. All I need to do is emulate them. All I need to do is copy them. I also, I will say, do this at the gym all the time, like as a way to stick to the hard parts of like my

gym workouts and my gym routine. But instead of thinking about the best person I know at the gym, which to be honest, would probably also be my mum, which is crazy because she's just a legend. But instead of thinking about someone I really admire and copying them and thinking about what they would do, I actually also visualize this person in my mind called Jim Gemma or Elite Gemma. And Elite Gemma is like this really focused version of myself that I've created, and I think about what she

would do. I think about how confident she would be. I think about what moves she would do, what her routine would look like, how she would go about it. Would she care about those other people looking at her? Know?

I love this amplifier. It doesn't give you all the motivation to begin with, but it takes that tiny bit of sensation in you that wants to do something and says you are capable, you are able to do this. So this study, it showed that when participants visualized themselves doing hard activities or hard things and then being successful or finishing the task, this was associated with higher activity completion compared to those who were just given a task

and told to go about it. The other reason, and I guess the other way in which I think mental imagery is really important here is that it is a great source of bravery, and it is a great way to fake it till you make it. And I'm going to give another example here of how I used a very similar visualization technique when I was trying to get over my fear of flying. I would imagine that I was someone famous, and I would really picture being this famous person who caught all these planes all the time.

This was like a part of my fast, luxurious life. And just rehearsing that and thinking about that over and over again, creating that mental loop and repetition, I am this person, I am emulating this person. It made me feel insanely powerful, insanely insanely capable, and it was a complete game changer. So that is a way that you can use your ability, your very amazing special human ability, to create mental images in your mind. You can use

that to trick yourself into feeling more capable. You've got to remember your mind is the source of all your beliefs about how able you are, and how brave you are and how courageous you are. So if you feed it all of this like artificial confidence that is based on how someone else does things, or how a future or an amazing version of yourself does things, it's gonna eat that up and it's not going to know the difference between that and a negative or self doubting thought.

So it's an incredible technique. Let's move on from this and talk about mood, talk about emotions. So if you have got something on your to do list, then you have been avoiding for a while because it is hard, because it is boring, because you just simply don't want to do it. You have got to choose the right mood to start tackling that. You've got to choose the right mood to implement your five minutes. A twenty sixteen study found that when people are upset, they are less

likely to try and do hard things. Very common sense, I understand. Sometimes we do just need like a good old fashioned psychological study to prove what we already know. And the explanation behind why this is the case is also quite simple. When you're in a bad mood, all of your mental resources are at a lower point, they're all kind of plummeting, right, So you're not going to feel as motivated, You're not going to feel like you

have any energy. You're also your mind is going to look at this hard task and it's going to make it feel a lot bigger and a lot more difficult, a lot more challenging. As a way to convince you to rest, convince you to get yourself back to a positive mental state by not putting any more pressure on yourself as it is during those times, that is not the time when you want to start doing the hard thing. That is not the time when you want to start

doing your chores. That is not the time when you want to, you know, suddenly handle your taxes after you've had like a really long day at work, you've missed your train, you're having a fight with your friend, there's

not enough food in the fridge. No, because also another element of that is that you will end up resenting the activity even more when you have to do it when you're in a bad mood, and if you're trying to train yourself into a habit, but every time you go about doing the habit or practicing the behavior that is associated with it, every time you do that if you are in a terrible mood, Guess what's going to

become associated the terrible mood and the behavior. And it's going to become almost like this pattern or this link or this relationship in your brain that when you think about the task, when you think about the whatever it is thing that you need to do, your brain's going to be like, huh, every time we do that, we're in a bad mood, and it doesn't see like the correlation or the causation points. Sorry, it doesn't see like the chicken or the egg problem, which one came first.

So it's really important to build positive associations when we are doing hard things. I'm going to use the gym example again and just think that it's like the easiest because it's like a behavior where you go to the same place, and it's like a something that a lot of us are probably going to be focused on in the new years. If you are in a really bad mood, I'm going to tell you something that is probably counterintuitive.

If you are in a really bad mood and one of your long time goals is to go to the gym more often, actually don't go to the gym during those times. Some people would argue that the endorphins are going to make you feel better, YadA, YadA, YadA. In some ways, I think that is the case. But if you're going to go to the gym and just do a really crappy workout and you're not going to feel like you push yourself, you're not even going to get

to that place of an endorphin high. Actually, what you're doing before you even get there is associating the bad mood.

would I do that? But actually completing a hard task when you are already in a good mood has been shown to elevate that mood even further, and there is a continuation, So you feel really good in the moment, but then you also continue to feel good in the minutes, hours, even sometimes days afterwards, maybe in part because of relief, like oh gosh, finally I did it. That's done, but also in part because of a sense of pride. You know,

how often do we actually challenge ourselves? And seriously, when was the last time you put a lot of effort into something and it took a lot of commitment from you, and there were times when you doubted yourself and you didn't really want to do it. When was the last time you did that? Because as an adult, I do

think that that's not as common anymore. It might be in like a workplace environment, but when it comes to your personal life, we very often are very We don't tend to often you know, just jumping all over my words there. We don't often tend to changing it up again, We don't often tend to to actually push ourselves. So I think that it's really important to actually give yourself the opportunity to do that, to give yourself the confidence booster,

to give yourself that further amplifier to your mood. Already, we're going to take a short little break because obviously I need to have a drink of water since I am just tumbling all over my words here, But when we return, we're going to talk about how you can fall in love with the process and the different kinds of extrinsic, intrinsic and integrated motivation that you can use to do hard things. Stay with us, we'll be right back.

There is a psychological theory that when we don't just fall in love with the result, but we fall in love with the process, we actually perform better and we get further. And this theory is known as learned industriousness. Here's the thing about doing everything for like the big golden in finish line, right, anything hard. You are just thinking about what it's going to be like when it's done, when it's over, when you have the reward. It actually

takes a while to get there. And along that path, along that route, there's probably not going to be a lot of, you know, encouragement to spur you on. People might not believe in you. The thing that you're doing might just be very mundane. No one's going to be celebrating you shouting like yay, you've got this. Maybe there's not like any reward that you can even provide yourself during that time. So if you are doing it all for the final outcome you are going to unfortunately probably

lose steam. So what this theory says is that individuals who are reinforced for exerting high effort on a task, they don't just fall in love with the outcome. They actually, in some ways get hooked or get addicted purely to the sensation of performing highly, purely to the sensation of exerting themselves. So we flip the whole narrative away from the physical, tangible outcome and towards a love for like the everyday hard actions that get us there. So how do we do that? Well?

very stressed. But instead of being like, oh my god, this just sucks and I'm just so tired, I would like imagine that I was Ernest Hemingway or like a famous author working into the night in Paris on my book with a glass of wine. And I was like this tortured author poet type, and I created this whole image that made me really feel like it was like fun. It was fun to not so much suffer, but it was fun to strive. It was fun to work hard.

There was like this glamour associated with it. There was this romanticism that made it special and fun, and like I have actually like very fond memories of those times.

feeling really great about yourself. The feeling of seeing I don't know, your art get better, seeing your writing get better, seeing your grades get better. That is a way of bringing about learned industriousness. It's why I really One of the things I really recommend and that I love when people do this is when they set up Instagram pages for their projects, like their marathons or an art project

or the like. When they're learning your language, or when they're renovating their house, like setting up a progress page or a project page. You can really see how things get better and improve and get bigger and larger and dreams come true.

As humans as creatures, as people with brains, so we are wired towards things that make us feel good, and we are wired to avoid things that make us feel uncomfortable. Super simple principle, right, But an easy way to make an uncomfortable thing feel good is by maximizing the pleasure and the reward we get from it. So the more candy I don't know, like, the more candy you offer to a child, the more excited they're going to be to go to the dentist, even if they hate the dentist.

The more treats you give a puppy, like, the more obedient they become. Allegedly, that's always backfired and made my puppies and dogs super fat. But you know what I mean. You can also do this for yourself by providing like physical rewards, artificial rewards that you give yourself in lieu of the bigger reward. One way we see people do this is by creating a schedule for positive reinforcement. That's an incredible behavioral change strategy. So people do this for

savings goals lot. I see this a lot on like TikTok and Instagram, and I love seeing these every like one two hundred dollars, one thousand dollars, they save, twenty dollars, fifty dollars, whatever it is goes into buying something that they really really want, so that there is that reinforcement that's going along with the hard work.

you finally get the reward. We see like studies on this with rats all the time. You know, the more that they are reinforced in a structured way, so you know, they finish a task, they get a treat, They finish the next task that's a little bit harder, they get a treat. The more that there is that structured reward, they end up performing better. They're more efficient, they tire

less easily. And let's just say this that it's not like a factor to do with energy, like the reward is sometimes like they get to see their friend, or the reward is like a pat like it's not always food based, but they actually keep going for longer. The reason this is the case and scientifically neurologically, the reason this is the case all comes down to dopamine. I think we all know like dopamine is the happy chemical. Dopamine is also the motivational chemical. It is the chemical

that gets you to do things. So if you want to increase the dopamine that you are accessing when doing hard things, you've got to provide some form of catalyst for the release of that, some form of trigger, some of reward. It will make you happier, but it will also make you more motivated.

because you just like doing it. And one way that we can make it so that we enjoy doing something, which is the highest form of motivation for actually doing it, is by associating positive experiences and reward with performance, determination, commitment with you know, doing the thing with being persistent. Now, I know what you're probably thinking, how do I fall in love with doing something that is just actually so frustrating and annoying and something that I.

So this occurs when a behavior is performed to gain both an external reward, but it also inlignes aligns with your sense of identity, your sense of your internal sense of value and interests, and who you are as a person. We can make our motivation to complete a task attach

to our identity and it's super super powerful. You know, I clean the toilet because I am someone who is conscientious, and I'm someone who cares about cleanliness, and I care about having a nice environment, and because I am someone who cares about the details. Even though I don't enjoy this, I'm going to do it because it reinforces something that I find important about my identity. I go through IVF treatment even when it's painful, even when it's hard, because

I want to be a parent. That is something I have always felt is a deep part of my life purpose. So I will endure the hard part of this journey because the outcome is something that is significant for my identity. The second best way that you can do hard things is to get super clear on the why and make a really really big picture, like give it a meaning as big as life itself. Like I study because I believe in creating a better life for myself. And I

someone who is a hard worker. So this behavior, although it is hard, is something that reinforces what I believe about myself. It reinforces myself concept, it reinforces my confidence. This is who I am. So who would I be if I didn't do this behavior? Who would I be if I didn't do these hard things? This is just so so powerful for taking something that is just you know, a random thing on your to do list, or maybe not taking something that you have, you know, mixed feelings towards.

It's uncomfortable, it's difficult, and it becomes this thing, this gateway to being a more true, authentic version of yourself.

thing that you have no meaning attached to. Finally, you know, if that doesn't work, if the intrinsic motivation doesn't work, and the like integrated motiv systems don't work, you can always rely on extrinsic motivation, and that is basically doing things publicly, doing things in a public setting in front of others, promising others that you're going to do it as a way to make you feel like you're accountable, make you feel like their eyes on you. This is

all rooted in social psychology. When we think that people are watching, we tend to behave better, We tend to put on our best behavior. You can use those same principles to force yourself to do hard things. One of my friends does this in an excellent way. She studies in very public places because it makes her feel almost embarrassed to go on her phone, like the acknowledgment that someone could be watching her and someone might be like, oh god, she's going on her phone, Like that's not good.

the process. Secondly, you can find a way to make the activity a part or a reinforcer of an important part of your identity. And then if all all that fails, you know, the flood gates roll open. You can rely on the judgment of others less and ideal, but sometimes important. I really hope that this episode has given you some motivation. You know, we've got one month left of this year. We've got so much going on. We have a lot of goals that we might want to achieve and we

also might be like preparing for next year. So I think these strategies are really really doable, and they're not about discipline. They're not about like working yourself to the bone, They're not about burnout and exhaustion.

Make sure you were following us on Instagram, at that Psychology podcast, And until next time, stay safe, stay kind, be gentle to yourself, and we will talk very very soon.