There is a scene in the incredible movie Taxi Driver where the main character is holding his hand above the open fire of his stove, in order to strengthen himself, or perhaps to prove to himself how tough he is. The power of this scene is that the character, who is completely psycho, holds his hand above the stove without flinching. Stone faced. The reason this is such a powerful scene is the audience can’t help but to imagine how incredibly painful that must feel.

Psychological experts know that the only two fears humans are born with are heights and loud noises. The rest we have to learn. How long do you think it took you to realize that fire was dangerous? A second? Less? Have you ever drank too much of a certain liquor (for me it was Tequila) and then later just couldn’t even stand the smell of it? How long do you think it took your brain to learn that liquor is poison, and you should stay away from it? (Or at least too much of it.) Probably not very long.  How long did it take to learn that speaking in public could be a dangerous thing? Probably not very long. Probably all it took was once in second or third grade when you spoke out in class and the results weren’t quite what you expected.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones that can feel really comfortable whenever you stand up and speak persuasively with confidence and charisma as if you were Cicero speaking to the Roman Senate. If you are that confident, I’ll be sure to vote for you when you run for congress. The rest of us will have to continue hiding behind our 3×5 cards. 

The reason we learn so fast to be afraid of things is naturally because it is matter of safety.  If you’ve read the article on memory, you know that pain, or potential pain is one of the key elements of forming a strong neural connection.

But what about learning skills that are enhancing? How cool would it be if we were able to learn new habits as quickly as we learned our fears?  What if we could unlearn false fears, and replace them with feelings of safety as easily as we learned real, physical fears?

In order to do that, we need to charge our neural pathways with the same strong emotions that we charged them when we learned it was dangerous to stick our fingers in a light socket. (It only took me once to learn that was a bad idea.)

Let’s take exercise as an example. You get up in the morning. Look at the clock. Ugh. It’s cold outside. If you didn’t get out of bed and go for a walk like you were hoping to, you’d get an extra hour of sleep. You could always starting walking tomorrow, right? But if it didn’t have to be that way? What if you could train your brain to automatically feel motivated when your alarm went off? What if the idea of going for a walk made you feel as good as the prospect of polishing off a bucket of ice cream?

The emotion to use when training your brain for good habits is appreciation. We humans like to worry. Whenever something good happens, some of us have a voice in the back of our heads saying “I don’t know, this might not last very long.” I’m sure that’s happened to you at least once, right? The key to increasing appreciating for something, is to quiet those voices that silently nag you. And the way to do that is through simple practice. The more you focus on your appreciation, for anything, the more it grows. It’s just like exercise for your brain. It doesn’t take long. Take a deep breath, and really feel appreciation for the air as it comes in your lungs. Feel appreciationthat you can use the internet to read email from your friends, read cool articles, and learn fascinating stuff.  Feel appreciation for anything. The more you practice this, the more you will naturally notice that it gets easier and easier. 

Experiment with this for the next week. Pick a color. Lets say red. Everytime you see the color red, appreciate something. Anything. Only for a few moments. The more you practice, the stronger it gets. And when you develop the natural ability to feel appreciation, you will realize something amazing. I’ll leave to you to find out exactly what that amazing discovery is.

You can relax, and feel comfortable, because I’ll be posting many more articles on exactly how to use your new versatile skills of appreciation in the near future.

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