How To Make Self Reflection Energising
It Just Requires Two Powerful Hacks
Read time: 2-3 mins
Welcome to The Brain and Body Warrior.
A blueprint of lived lesson to help you understand your brain, conquer your body and develop your warrior mindset.
But before we dive in…
If you haven’t seen yet, I recently had the opportunity to speak on two seperate podcasts all about this project, my thoughts and ideas on the health and wellness space and my story
I encourage you to check them out. Not just to support me, but also the incredible work that both Daniel and Abhra do.
Stories and Stanzas (Substack)
On today’s menu: The two powerful hacks to make self reflection suck less
The Warrior
Self Reflection is f*****g hard.
It’s not surprising really.
With a brain that’s designed to look for short cuts, that’s often fuelled by ego, the idea of turning the microscope on ourselves is an anathema to the core of our being.
So, yeah it sucks.
And yet…
We also understand that, in principle, that we cannot be our best selves, or live the life we truly want, without examining the oddities of our own inner workings.
We know that if we do not take responsibility for anything, we’ll never feel in control of your own life. That life will simply happen to us.
That outcome also f*****g sucks.
So, the question we really need to ask ourselves is this:
How can we get our brains on board with the hard work we want/need to do?
The answer is simple:
Dopamine.
Recently, I discovered, purely by accident, that tapping into the dopaminergic circuits of your brain is all that’s required to make self reflection actually feel good.
In order to do that, you need only take advantage of two things:
Curiosity and momentum.
Both of these, for different reasons, are closely related to dopamine.
When it comes to curiosity, novel experiences and discoveries, including learning something new, actually releases dopamine in our brain.
And what is self reflection if not learning and discovering new things?
If you focus on the act of actual discovery, of learning things about yourself, rather than dwelling on your perceived flaws or failings as most people do, suddenly self reflection becomes exciting, even energising.
Questions like “What will I uncover next?” or “What other interesting things will I find buried in the depths of my psychology?” will actually motivate you to keep digging.
It’s a positive feedback loop.
Momentum, the other powerful force in this biological equation, also flushes your brain with dopamine, which tricks your brain into hard work it usually doesn’t like.
In this case, however, it’s more firmly about the future.
You see, dopamine isn’t about reward necessarily. It’s anticipation of reward. The excitement of the pursuit. The build up. It’s very much future focused.
This is what you can hone in on.
Once you’ve started to experience some of the rewards that come with looking at yourself, you can actively begin to anticipate the amazing growth that awaits if you continue (which your brain absolutely loves).
Basically, you can begin imagine the growth and rewards you will experience in the future as a result of the hard work you are doing on yourself right now.
When doing this, I found myself asking questions like “how will this help to me become an even better version of myself?”. Having tangible questions like this in your mind can really help you tap into the right brain circuits.
But that, in essence, is really the key.
It’s about finding ways of tapping into the brain’s natural circuits in an active and purposeful way to turn them to your advantage.
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More people need to call things out verbatim like you are…
Self-reflection IS INDEED f’ing hard!