Brain Predictions, "Do They Like Me?!" & Distracted Self

Amigos and amigas...

I'm currently stood at my desk typing this.

The birds are chirping outside the window like kids playing on a school playground. The grey weather is lazily beaming in through the window and I feel...

Chill AF because I've just had a cold shower.

In other news...

The first big 3 newsletter of December is here! 🎅🏼🎄

- 1 mental health tip

- 1 social skills tip

- 1 personal reflection

Let's begin with this week's mental health tip...

1.) Brain Predictions

Imagine a soldier walking slyly through a forest, gun cocked and ready to kill the enemy.

The enemy is the leader of a rival army who's been reported to be close by.

Halfway through the forest the solider hears some movement. So he turns to the left and sees an army of men walking behind the leader who's holding an AK-47.

So the soldier inhales and aims his gun towards the head of the leader but then his friend taps him on the shoulder and says "hey, don't shoot. It's just a kid."

Confused, the soldier looks up and gasps at what he sees; a young kid walking with a stick in front of a herd of 10 cows.

Perhaps you've experienced something similar before...

• You've looked into a group of strangers and saw your friend. But as you begin to wave your vision comes to and you realise that person isn't your friend, it's a stranger.
• Or you've felt your phone vibrate in your pocket, pull it out and see no notifications at all.

In moments like these you might think your brain is malfunctioning.

But it's not.

Your brain is working exactly as it should. And to understand why, you need to understand lesson 4 of neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett's 7 and a half lessons about the brain.

The bottom line...

Your brain predicts (almost) everything you do.

It does so by looking into your past when you experience something and asks: "when I last faced this situation, what did I do next?" Then it gets you to repeat that action.

Through a negative lens this is what keeps you doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

For example:

• You've always responded anxiously to talking to strangers, so your brain predicts strangers as threatening and sparks anxiety whenever you leave the house.
• You've always binge ate when you feel lonely so your brain predicts that as the most viable response whenever you feel lonely.

Going back to the example of the solider in the forest, his brain asked:

• Based on what I know about this war, and given that I am deep in the woods with my comrades, gripping a rifle, heart pounding, and there are moving figures ahead, and maybe something pointy, what am I likely to see next? And the result was Guerrilla fighters. In this situation, the stuff inside and outside his head didn’t match, and the inside stuff prevailed.

So your view of the world isn't a snapshot of reality. It's a fluid, moving construction your brain crafts in each moment that appears real.

Your brain does this because it has a very complex job.

Think about it...

Your brain sits as the command centre for the rest of your body and it operates within a dark room called your skull. It's getting constantly bombarded with chemicals, signals and visuals from the external world so in order to make sense of this, what neuroscientists call sensory data, it relies on your memory to make meaning of this information.

As Lisa Feldman Barrett says...

• "Your brain asks itself in every moment, figuratively speaking... the last time I encountered a similar situation, when my body was in a similar state and was preparing this particular action, what did I see next? What did I feel next?... The answer need not be a perfect match for your situation, just something close enough to give your brain an appropriate plan of action that helps you survive and even thrive."

So your reality is a combination of the external world and how your brain responds to it. And your experience, in each moment of your life, is a direct result of your brain answering the above question.

In other words, your life is a carefully controlled hallucination.

Why does this matter?

Because if you can control this carefully controlled hallucination (update your brain's predictions) you can drastically improve your life and radically change your behaviour.

Go deeper...

Before reading anything else, and to demonstrate this brain mechanism further, take 30 seconds to look at the images below and think about what you see.

What do you see?

As you think, screw faced to find the answers, billions of neurons are firing in your brain to make meaning of some lines on a page.

But what if I were to tell you what the images are...

1.) A submarine going over a waterfall.

2.) A spider doing a handstand.

3.) A ski jumper looking at spectators far below before pushing off.

"Ahhhhhh! Of course!" You now say.

Your brain now changes the firing of its neurons to accommodate for the new information.

That shift of change you felt inside as you looked at the images again with the understanding of what they are was your predictions being updated.

The photos haven't changed. You have.

In art this is known as the 'beholders share'.

The artist only does 50% of the work. It's up to the spectator to bring their brain's predictions (from their memories) to the artwork and interpret it.

In other words, you only see humans in Picasso's cubist paintings because you have the memory of what a human is.

Here's the neuroscience of what your brain does when it predicts...

1.) A bunch of neurons make their best guess about what will happen in the future based on the past and present.

2.) Those neurons announce that guess to other neurons in other brain areas (changing their firing).

3.) Your brain also gathers sense data from your body and the world which either confirms your prediction or not.

In other words, predictions are your brain having a conversation with itself, then the validity of that conversation is confirmed or not by the outer world.

But your predictions aren't always accurate.

In Buddhism this is known as the double arrow problem.

• The first arrow you're hit with is experience.
• The second arrow you're hit with is interpretation.

For example:

1.) You wake up late. (Experience)

2.) Your brain predicts you'll now feel low mood because that's what you've felt before after waking up late. (Prediction)

3.) You now start to feel low mood. (Prediction is confirmed)

4.) Because you feel low mood, you have less energy, convincing yourself you're in a low mood because you woke up late. (Interpretation)

1.) You're invited to go to a party. (Experience)

2.) Your brain predicts you're going to feel anxious at the party because of bad memories from your past. (Prediction)

3.) Because you're rehearsing the feeling of anxiety, your body releases adrenaline, increasing heart rate, giving you the feeling of more anxiety. (Prediction is confirmed)

4.) Your brain concludes that parties make you feel anxious. (Interpretation)

So the vicious cycle highlighted in the examples above largely stem not from the experience itself but from faulty interpretations and predictions based on your previous actions.

The bottom line...

If you're wondering why your brain creates such faulty predictions it's because your brain isn't wired for accuracy, it's wired to keep you alive.

By making predictions, whether right or wrong, your brain saves energy.

Additionally, whatever prediction the brain makes that wins will become the action you take.

When your brain makes a good prediction, your neurons are already firing in a way that matches the sensory data. So that data (your external world) once confirmed, no longer has any use. Now your brain is literally constructing a hallucination in your head.

However, if your brain's prediction is wrong, and your experience turns out differently than how you predicted...

For example:

• You wake up, get showered and continue your day as normal despite your low mood and instead of curling up in bed for longer.
• You imagine smiling faces at the party and the great conversations you could have instead of focusing on everything that could go wrong.

1.) You internalise that new external sensory data, update your prediction and create a better map of the world (this is called learning).

2.) You stick with how your brain created reality before.

• "When your predicting brain is right, it creates your reality. When it’s wrong, it still creates your reality, and hopefully it learns from its mistakes."
  • Lisa Feldman Barrett

So how can you practically apply this knowledge to improve your life?

To apply this, you have to know the order in which predictions are formed...

Prediction happens backwards.

We think we sense, then act.

But we actually act, then sense.

Take a moment to consider the implications of this...

If predictions are formed in the sequence action (first) and then sensing (second), that means your predictions are being formed based on how you act now.

Also, if you act before you sense that means most of your responses are unconscious. You mostly become aware of them in retrospect. This means you can't change your behaviour now to alter the past but you can change your behaviour now to alter the future.

To illustrate this, think of the last time you did something without realising.

• You said something you regretted.
• You binge ate loads of food.
• You scrolled your evening into oblivion.

You wouldn't have been able to do those things if your brain didn't know how to do them in the first place.

If you'd never learned those words you said, ate that food before or ever used a phone you wouldn't have done those actions.

• "It’s impossible to change your past, but right now, with some effort, you can change how your brain will predict in the future. You can invest a little time and energy to learn new ideas. You can curate new experiences. You can try new activities. Everything you learn today seeds your brain to predict differently tomorrow."
• Lisa Feldman Barrett

Everything you learn today seeds your brain to predict differently tomorrow.

So to improve your life, you need to take your sensory experiences and reinterpret them to form new predictions by choosing different actions.

For example:

Imagine you have a public speaking opportunity coming up. But your brain has always predicted public speaking as anxiety provoking because of one bad experience of being on a stage when you were 10.

Instead of experiencing your body's sensations as anxiety, you can reexperience it as energised determination. Thus, updating your brain's prediction for next time.

The next time you feel angry in a conversation, train yourself to sit down and spark empathy for the other person. Thus, updating your prediction for the next time you feel angry.

The next time you feel the urge to escape boredom and scroll on your phone, surf the urge and direct your attention elsewhere. Thus, updating your prediction of what to do the next time you feel bored.

Dare to rethink your brains predictions.

What you choose to put effort towards today becomes automatic tomorrow. Your brain will rewire itself to what it experiences right and now then update its predictions.

I'm not saying this is easy.

Remember, your brain predicts to save you energy and keep you alive. So altering your ingrained predictions will cause friction.

But with this understanding you can catch yourself the next time you automatically respond to something and reason...

"I might not be able to change my behaviour in the heat of the moment. But I can change my predictions before the heat of the moment. Now is an opportunity for me to do so for next time."

Go deeper...

You might like to check out this newsletter I sent a few weeks ago which adds another practical layer to this brain lesson with a concept called "spawn points".

Now, because that part was longer than usual, let's cover this week's (short) social skills tip...

2.) "Do they like me?!"

You likely enter your social interactions with the assumption that other people will misjudge your character.

But whether people like you or not is dependent on what you do. Not on who you are.

Realising this allows you to socialise with a "clean slate".

Understand: regardless of what you think of yourself, how many social mistakes you've made in the past or how many relationships you've blundered, people's opinions of you are formed based on what you're doing right now. And you have the capacity to do many things.

(I've just realised this ties into the brain prediction point above. By changing what you do now you update your own and other people's predictions of you.) ;)

Now let's finalise with this week's personal realisation...

3.) Your highly distracted self.

This week I listened to Dr. Andrew Huberman's podcast with writer Cal Newport.

Cal spoke about the importance of "creating an inner citadel of focus" in order to do deep work and live a deep life.

He also suggested a brilliant exercise called "the competition with your highly distracted self" that can help you avoid distraction.

Huberman opened a conversation by saying, when he was doing a science competition, he'd suggest netflix series for his competitor to watch. Hoping his competitor would watch them and fall behind in his work.

Laughing about the slightly sadistic nature of this, Cal suggested doing this not to other people but with yourself in reverse.

Here's what you do...

Think of a version of you who is competing with you in everything you do.

• Work
• Fitness
• Finances

But imagine you have a magic wand and you can change the life of this alternate you so they become the most distracted version of you possible.

What distractions would you add to their environment?

What habits might you hope they develop so you can speed ahead of them in the competition?

Then once you've highlighted them, don't do those things yourself.

Replace them for more fruitful tasks and imagine yourself speeding ahead in the competition.

What's next?

Course update: I've been restructuring the social skills course this week after a great call with a friend of mine Elmo. I've realised it was too broad. I was trying to cover everything about social skills. So now I'm going to work on keeping it focused to solving a few specific problems.

Current ideas:

• Social anxiety
• Charisma
• Conversation
• Connection

But I'm not sure yet.

What do you think?

What do you struggle with most when it comes to social skills? (Feel free to respond to this email and let me know).

After all, the course is for you guys!

Other research...

My research this week has been the evolutionary psychology of emotions.

Fascinating stuff.

That's all for a video titled: "why avoiding your emotions is holding you back."

It turns out "negative" emotions are a lot more helpful than you think.

I'll also be recording a video about how to optimise serotonin release, how to persuade others without forcing them to see your point of view, how to trick your brain to like doing hard things (slideshow video) and 10billion more videos!

I've been loving the whiteboard videos but I want to add some different types of videos in here and there.

So stay tuned for those ;)

Thanks for reading.

Until next week!

Lew

Ps. I went out with my family to eat pizza the other day in a barn. Awesome pizza, even cooler barn though. The barn was a warehouse and I thought how awesome it'd be to live in a warehouse, surrounded by whiteboards and just living a minimalist life. What say you? Sound like a plan?

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