How To Train Your Brain To Realise Your Goals

By Paul Moore
Published April 6, 2010

Photo: John Segesta
Photo: John Segesta

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Forcing your brain (and more specifically your subconscious mind) to let you achieve your goals is more important than putting in all of those hours of training. But how do you do it? Ben Greenfield offers some interesting scientific answers that will help you develop both your triathlon and, indeed, life outside of the sport.

Photo: John Segesta

By Ben Greenfield
Certainly the thought crossed your mind that an article about triathlon New Year’s resolutions should have appeared in our January issue. But by this time of year most triathletes’ lofty objectives have been long forgotten or deliberately forsaken. And it is now that the realisation sets in that making a resolution involves far more than simply creating a vague goal.

The problem is that either for lack of true belief in the resolution or for failure to mentally prepare to fulfil the resolution, most resolutions are doomed to fail. Think about typical triathlon resolutions: My eating will improve. I’ll learn to swim a straight line in the open water. I will run faster. I’ll start working my core. My cycling will become stronger on the hills.

Most of these statements are resolutions to fix a perceived weakness. But as Jennifer Sage, a coach based in Vail, Colorado, says, “There is a big difference between wanting something and being prepared to receive it.” In the beginning of January, were you prepared to receive your resolution? Or did you just want it?

CONSCIOUS VS. UNCONSCIOUS
To answer these questions, and to understand why most resolutions fail, you need to understand the concept that our conscious minds have very little control over our day-to-day actions and perceptions. As a matter of fact, the conscious brain makes up about 17 per cent of total brain mass, but only controls about two per cent to four per cent of our perceptions and behaviours. But the non-conscious brain occupies 83 per cent of total brain mass and controls 96 per cent to 98 per cent of perception and behaviour.

The actual neural impulses in your conscious brain travel between 120 and 140 miles per hour, while unconscious impulses travel at nearly 800 times that speed. This allows the unconscious brain to process information at 400 billion bits per second, compared to the measly 2,000 bits per second of our conscious brain. Therefore, to fulfil your resolutions and truly change the underlying beliefs that control your everyday actions, you need to be able to access and influence the incredible power of your subconscious brain.

John Assaraf, the author of “Having It All: Achieving Your Life’s Goals and Dreams,” gives fabulous insight into taking control over the subconscious by accessing a part of our brain called the amygdala, which he refers to as a “psychocybernetic trigger.” Every complex vertebrate has two amygdalae, which are almond-shaped clusters of nuclei located within the inner-front portion of the brain. Think of the amygdalae as subconscious thermostats that detect any efforts to change your current situation. When you are threatened with change, the amygdalae sense potential and real stress and respond by causing a release of neurotransmitters that result in anxiety, doubt and fear about the potential change.

In evolutionary terms, such a response might have kept a caveman from entering into unknown and potentially dangerous territory, or from consuming an unrecognisable or poisonous food. But this same cautionary, subconscious mechanism that once acted to protect humans can now hold us back from pursuing our goals and dreams. When you feel anxiety about achieving a new goal or treading into unknown territory, you are likely to forsake that path of change, no matter how much you wanted it. Think of the amygdala as your internal thermostat that holds your body’s set-point at one steady temperature, keeping you safely inside your comfort zone of swimming slowly, running a sub-par marathon, or granny-gearing every hill climb, even if that’s not where you feel like you want to be.

THE SUBCONSCIOUS WILL ALWAYS WIN
The power of subconscious doubt and the fear of moving beyond your comfort zone can effectively paralyse you into returning to your old patterns of behaviour, or never changing them in the first place. And this is why most people fail at resolutions: They unsuccessfully attempt to overpower the subconscious mind with a conscious will to action, without realising that in a mental tug-of-war, the subconscious will always win.

Therefore, unless your conscious and subconscious minds are in alignment, no change will take place. You might consciously make a resolution to run faster, but your subconscious mind will still picture you as the high school clarinet standout who could never run faster than a seven-minute mile.

Perhaps you are determined to speed up your 100-metre split in the pool, but your subconscious mind has a firmly fixed mental picture of the clock reading 1:45 for every split, no matter how hard you push.

You might resolve to become a hill climber on your bike, but your amygdalae will sense that you’re surrounded by flat training ground and convince you that you just can’t make the change without a high degree of discomfort or an extreme change in your training patterns.

If you’re truly serious about achieving your resolutions, you must literally re-train your subconscious mind and create new images to replace the state of mind that is holding you back. This process begins with the practice of mental re-training, which first requires you to clearly determine your goals and then develop the ability to state, mentally visualise and affirm them.

Photo: John Segesta

SETTING YOUR GOALS AND ACHIEVING THEM
The first step, goal determination, is straightforward and simple. In this process, you must be very clear about what you want, make your goals specific to a certain skill, include intermediate steps to reach your goal and ensure that your goals are realistic, achievable and measurable.

Let’s say, for example, you are a triathlete who wants to race a faster half-iron triathlon three months from now. First, break down the event into specific goals. One such goal would be to become faster in the 1.2-mile swim. But you must not simply set a resolution to become a better 1.2-mile swimmer, as this goal is not clear or measurable. Instead, you should make a resolution to, for example, develop the ability in the next 10 weeks to swim 1.2 miles in less than 30 minutes by improving your threshold pace in the pool from a 1:40 100-metre pace to a 1:30, and be able to hold this pace for a 2K time trial.

Now that you have a specific, quantifiable goal, you must include the intermediate steps to reach that goal. For example, you cannot simply jump in the water and swim harder next week to reach that 1:30 pace. Instead, your intermediate goals may involve shaving one second each week over the course of 10 weeks, and swimming a 2K time trial in less than 32 minutes at the five-week mark.

Now that you have clearly determined your goal, you must be able to state it. This usually means writing it down and posting it prominently, such as on your refrigerator or in your training book. For example, “In 10 weeks: Swim a 1:30 100 metres and a sub-30-minute 2K.” Make sure that your written goal is easy to remember, so that you can see it in your mind’s eye during the mental re-training steps below.

MENTAL RE-TRAINING
Next comes the most important component, with which you may be less familiar: the process of mental re-training through visualisation and affirmation. Although you have a clear, specific and measurable goal, your subconscious is still not prepared to accept that goal as achievable reality. Joe Dispenza, the author of “Evolve Your Brain: The Science of Changing Your Mind,” describes the process of goal visualisation and affirmation as a type of mental and emotional workout that involves stating each desire, then acting each desire out in your mind’s eye with passion and emotion, at least twice daily.

Using the same swimming example, the mental re-training process would begin with finding a situation in which you can concentrate, such as in your bed early in the morning, during the car drive to the pool or the in sauna in the changing room. You would then use your powers of creativity to imagine yourself swimming long, smooth and strong through the entire 100 metres. You are completely relaxed, but swimming faster than you ever have. See the clock in your mind’s eye. Where does it start? Where does it end? Literally picture the 12 at the top, and the six at the bottom when you finish. See yourself pumping your fist. The entire imagination process may take you only 30 to 60 seconds, but you should repeat the scenario four or five times through, and if possible, do it again at one other time during the day.

As you engage in this process, it is important to remember that through PET scans, brain researchers have found that the brain responds in a very similar manner to actual and imagined events. As you mentally re-train your brain, it will develop neural pathways that reflect what is being impressed upon it, and through the process of habitual mental re-training, you will actually create a neural infrastructure to support and process your new goals. Your brain will literally accept the fact that you can and will swim your goal pace and emerge in less than 30 minutes from the water in your next half-Ironman.

However, you must understand that it is not an instantaneous event. As a matter of fact, a NASA study on astronauts shows that it takes approximately 26 to 30 days of daily mental re-training for the subconscious mind to accept any new data as fact. In this study, astronauts were fitted 24/7 with goggles that inverted their visual field, turning their entire world upsidedown. To monitor the stress of constant inversion, physiological responses such as higher blood pressure and heart rate were tracked. It was not until 26 to 30 days after first beginning to wear the glasses that the astronauts began to mentally accept their altered world and show the physical signs of being unstressed and comfortable in the new environment.

The researchers hypothesised that after this amount of time experiencing changed visual information, the astronauts’ brains had created a neural connection or thought pattern based on consistent new data that was eventually accepted as truth. This is the same strategy that you will use to prepare your body to receive your resolution. The upside-down glasses will be your mind and imagination, and the astronauts’ inverted world will be whatever new physical state you are attempting to reach, whether it’s swimming a sub-30-minute 2K, running a marathon PB or achieving a podium finish at your next race.

By engaging in about a month of daily mental re-training immersion that focuses on achieving your resolutions, you can successfully reset your internal thermostat and smash through the barriers that are holding you back from achieving your goals. But in a triathlete’s busy schedule, mental re-training has the potential to become yet another hassle, another workout or another planned activity in your already hectic life. So try to find a way to make your visualisations fit into your schedule, such as during your long run, easy bike ride, drive to work or morning stretch. By habitually seeing your goal and believing your goal, you will achieve your goal, and you will never again be the triathlete with a forsaken New Year’s resolution.

This article was taken from Triathlete Europe’s Swim, Bike, Run 101, which can be downloaded for free here.

FILED UNDER: Features / Training TAGS: belief / Ben-Greenfield / conscious / control / mind / psychological / subconscious / Training