Christopher Reeves

Here’s how to finally change after repeated failures👇 Most people don’t fail at change because they lack information. They fail because they keep aiming at the wrong target. You already know the habits wrecking your body, your work, or your relationships. You’ve read the books. You’ve made the resolutions. Some of you have even paid for therapy or coaching. And you still catch yourself, time after time, doing the exact thing you swore you were done with. It isn’t a character flaw. It isn’t “not wanting it badly enough.” Your bad habits live as automatic, stimulus-driven neural circuits inside your brain’s basal ganglia. These circuits were built to repeat whatever reduced discomfort or delivered reward in the past. They do not care about the person you want to become next year. They care about what worked yesterday. By the time you feel the urge and try to “just be disciplined,” the chemical and circuit conditions that favor the old behavior are already active. Willpower is a late, expensive intervention. It is useful in short bursts. It is a terrible primary strategy for lasting change. This is why so many intelligent, honest people keep breaking the promises they make to themselves. They are trying to change the output while leaving the wiring untouched. Understand that the wanting arrives before the decision. The first time something rewards you, your brain doesn’t just record the reward. It records everything around it: the time of day, the room, how you felt beforehand, even the sound a notification makes. Over time those signals start working on their own. You don’t need to taste the food to start wanting it when you smell it. You don’t need to take a drink to feel the urge when you see the bottle. You don’t need to open the app to feel a tug when your phone lights up. The wanting arrives before the conscious mind shows up to vote. A study led by Gillinder Bedi took 86 adult smokers and asked them to abstain for 7, 14, or 35 days. Then the researchers exposed them to smoking-related cues and measured craving. You would expect the people who had gone 35 days to show weaker cue-triggered craving than the people who had only gone 7. On some measures the opposite happened. Cue-triggered craving was higher at 35 days. Withdrawal symptoms had faded. The learned pull had not. The researchers called it the incubation of craving. Removing a habit does not erase what your brain learned about it. That is why someone can go weeks, months, or years and still get hit by a sudden urge when they walk past a familiar place or feel a familiar feeling. It does not mean they lost their progress. It means learning leaves lasting traces. The good news is that the same learning process that built the habit can build a new one. Old associations can be weakened. New responses can be practiced until they become the default. It works best when you stop treating willpower as the only tool and start working with how your brain actually learns. Despite what you've been told, advice like “just be disciplined” will fail you when you need it most. Take a step back and imagine trying to teach someone to swim while they are drowning. The lesson might be excellent. The instructor might be brilliant. The person is not in a state to learn. They are in survival mode. Your prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that plans, weighs consequences, holds long-term goals, and holds back impulses. It is also one of the most easily strained parts of your brain. Research on stress shows that even moderate uncontrollable stress can impair working memory and self-control. Poor sleep makes it worse. Strong cravings make it worse. In people dealing with addiction, brain imaging studies have reported reduced prefrontal activity during early recovery. Think about when you actually relapse into a habit. It is rarely at 10 a.m. on a calm, well-rested day. It is at 11 p.m. after a stressful week. It is when you are tired, lonely, bored, or overwhelmed, with the cue sitting right in front of you. The moments you need self-control the most are often the moments it is weakest. That is not a moral failure. It is biology and circumstances working together against you. The answer is not more pressure. The answer is to make the right choice easier before the hard moment arrives. "So what actually works George?" First change the environment, not just your intentions. Every cue you remove is one fewer battle you have to win. Delete the app. Move the charger out of the bedroom. Turn off notifications. Use a blocker. Rearrange the places and routines where the habit lives. If your brain has linked 11 p.m. + bed + phone to a reward, fighting that urge nightly is a losing strategy. Changing the setup means the urge shows up less often, and when it does, there is friction between you and the behavior. You do not need to be a more disciplined person. You need fewer decisions to win. Plan the response in advance. Researchers call this an implementation intention: an “if-then” plan. Not “I’ll try to scroll less,” but: “If I feel the urge to open Instagram, then I will stand up and drink a glass of water.” This pre-wires the replacement behavior. You are not deciding in the heat of the moment when your prefrontal cortex is struggling. You decided earlier, when you were calm, and now you are just executing. Replace, don’t just remove. Your brain still wants what the habit was giving you, stress relief, stimulation, connection, a break, a feeling of control. If you only remove the habit and leave a hole, your brain will keep pulling toward the old solution. Give it a competing, healthier source of the same thing. Treat the state underneath. If your baseline dopamine is cooked, you will be far more prone to the old patterns. Health is not optional here. Read this: fitandball.gumroad.com/l/bra… Expect relapse and plan for it. When you stop a habit, your brain does not erase the old association. It builds a new, competing memory: “in this situation, I do something different.” That new memory is real but fragile and context-dependent. An old trigger can bring back an old urge even after months of progress. That is what the science predicts. The people who do best are usually the ones who expect a slip and have a plan for it, instead of treating it as proof they are hopeless. 🚨ALSO UNDERSTAND THIS🚨: Knowing these is not enough. "Knowing" is the easy part. “I already know all this.” Maybe you do. But knowing why you scroll does not weaken the cue-reward link that makes you reach for the phone. Insight is not enough. That link only changes through new learning: repeated practice of a different response in the situations where the old one used to happen. That is the hard part. Not understanding. Doing it consistently for weeks, when you are tired, stressed, and the cue is right in front of you. Most people who “fail” at changing a habit have really failed at a strategy, one that took a brain under stress and asked it to out-resist its own learning over and over. Changing the strategy is different from trying harder. 🛑NOW FOR MOST PEOPLE, THESE ARE ENOUGH.🛑 But on top of these, you can pull a bigger lever: Neuroplasticity Your brain is not stuck with the wiring it has today. For most of the 20th century, mainstream neuroscience treated the adult brain as largely fixed after early development. That view has not survived the evidence. In a recent study, researchers analyzing brain scans from stroke survivors found that in patients with severe motor impairment, undamaged regions of the brain began showing structural signs of “youthfulness,” as if the healthy tissue was adapting to compensate for the injury. London taxi drivers who memorized 25,000 streets developed larger posterior hippocampi, intensive, real-world learning physically reshaping adult brain structure. A 58-year-old woman with a left-hemisphere ischemic stroke that left her right arm and hand severely paralyzed entered a modified Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy program six months later. Therapists restricted her unaffected arm while she performed intensive, task-specific practice with the impaired one. Within weeks she regained meaningful use of her hand. Follow-up scans showed increased activation and connectivity in surrounding and contralateral motor areas, clear evidence of functional reorganization. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s lifelong capacity to reorganize its structure, functions, and connections. It can help the brain adapt after injury. It can physically reshape itself through intensive learning. It can also become maladaptive, which is part of why chronic pain can persist after an injury has healed and why depression and addiction can feel so sticky. We are not doomed. There are targeted approaches, from certain therapies to specific training methods, that can alter harmful neural patterns and promote more adaptive ones. In adults, plasticity is more regulated than in children. It responds strongly to focused attention, the right neurochemical signals (acetylcholine, norepinephrine, dopamine), repetition, and rest. A single session is rarely enough. The adult brain uses a “use it or lose it” rule. You have to show it, through repeated practice over weeks, that the new circuit is worth the metabolic energy to maintain. P.S: REMEMBER THAT YOUR IDENTITY IS THE FINAL THERMOSTAT. “What hols us back isn’t reality, it’s identity.” -Maxwell Maltz Your psyche will keep trying to match your environment to your self-image. People from modest backgrounds who hit one big win and then unconsciously recreate scarcity are common. So are people who finally get in shape for months, then “accidentally” binge and slide back to the old baseline. That is not laziness. It is the self-image resetting the thermostat to match the familiar version of you. Brute-force action can produce short-term wins. Without updating the internal blueprint, the long run reverts. The practical work is not magic. It is mental engineering: awareness of your current self-image and internal dialogue, relaxation so new impressions can land, vivid daily rehearsal of the upgraded self with genuine emotion, identity-focused statements, and small behavioral experiments that create real success memories. Resistance is normal once it starts working. The old pattern will generate every excuse. That is expected. You keep supporting the new blueprint until it is stronger than the old one. Now for more guidance you can go here: fitandball.gumroad.com/l/bra… You will find practical, science-backed ways to interrupt these loops and rewire the circuits that keep the old behavior running. You will discover: -The little-known experiment that changed what we know about the brain regions responsible for cravings and states like rumination -Why drug-related cravings can be much stronger than cravings for survival needs like water and food. -Why a psychiatrist and neuroscientist with years of experience believes literally EVERY addiction can be solved (it’s not just neuroplasticity) and how to use this knowledge to your advantage. -Why some people form habits more easily than others, and what determines how easy or difficult it is. -The experiment showing why asking yourself why you relapse into a bad habit or addiction may not be that useful, and what to do instead. -The little-known reasons people keep doing things even when they know they hurt themselves and the people around them, and how to bring awareness into the picture to stop the behavior. -The simple 3-step framework for breaking a bad habit (number 3 is what most people overlook, making it difficult to break the habit no matter how hard they try). -What animal experiments reveal about a brain region heavily involved in repeated alcohol and opioid use. -Why substance addiction and repeatedly performing bad habits are more similar than you might think, and the little-known yet highly effective way to become addicted to something that doesn’t involve substances but can happen naturally. -Why some habits feel so hard to form while others come easily, including the little-known term coined by a neuroscientist that explains why some habits are harder to form than others, and a technique for using easier habits to build harder ones. -How to finally stop relying on willpower, motivation, and discipline alone (and why these alone often don’t work) -How a normal survival mechanism gets hijacked and can work against you. -What to actually do the next time you feel a craving instead of relying on discipline alone so you reduce the chances of relapsing -The little-known experiment that showed decision fatigue might be real (and how it relates to recovery and how easily you give into cravings) -Why saying “no” to your cravings many times might make you more likely to say “yes” later on (and what to do instead when you feel a craving) -Why relapsing isn’t necessarily a failure (and how to use it to your advantage instead). -How to know if you’re actually addicted to something or not -Why therapy might be useless/not work that well on its own for many people until they do something else that’s essential for recovering from any type of addiction. -Why fighting with yourself over breaking a bad habit or addiction is not a good idea (and what approach to take instead) -Why feeling ashamed of something you repeatedly do might only make things worse (and what to tell yourself instead). -Why you might be addicted to something without even realizing it (and the simple question to ask yourself to see if you actually are) -Why discipline alone doesn’t work. -Why you don’t need to rely on motivation. -How some people broke a bad habit they’d had for years in just 5–15 days. -Why the reason you do something or relapse often isn’t what you think it is. -The little-known driver behind repeated alcohol and opioid use. -Why you probably misunderstand bad habits, addiction, and their relationship with dopamine. -The habit you engage in daily that contributed to a 5% increase in emergency department visits for children aged 0 to 5. -The “slot machine” everyone uses and how it affects your brain. -Why neuroscientists warn that avoiding a negative feeling can be more dangerous than seeking pleasure. -Why the 21-day habit rule is a myth and where it comes from (and what science actually tells us about how long habits take to form). -The real reasons you might keep doing something even when it hurts you and the people around you (it’s not just dopamine or trauma). -What parents should be very careful about even if they’re not addicted to any type of substance (the habit that might put children at risk) -Why you’re not broken and there’s nothing wrong with you if you’re addicted to any type of behavior or substance (what’s actually going on in your brain when you reinforce a behavior and the mechanism around it) -The two opposite states that can result in the same behavior (and how they’re related to you forming a new habit) -What we actually mean when we’re talking about using neuroplasticity to break bad habits and addictions (it’s not as simple as repeatedly doing something) -What scientists injected into rats in experiments that reduced excessive drinking and opioid use (and what these findings can teach you about why you reinforce such behaviors). -The little-known stress-signaling neurotransmitter/brain’s main stress-signaling system that scientists have linked to excessive drinking and drug use -How one of your brain’s essential survival mechanisms gets hijacked every day. You’re one decision away from feeling healthier and happier than you have in years. Here’s your link: fitandball.gumroad.com/l/bra…

I've been meeting more and more Zoomers who do great but don't realize it. Usually, the two reasons why are very annoying (because they are simple) and are either: -Because they are on the spectrum and don't realize that a lot of people lie about everything all the time to present a favourable exterior "These people are narcissists". Sometimes yes, but the disproportionate difference you feel when you encounter an actual narcissist is the difference people on the spectrum feel when they encounter everyday social games. -They have been conditioned to believe that progress is faster than it actually is. So simply, objectively look at the data and create an opinion based on it.

Having any mental condition and not practicing gratitude is like not having muscle and skipping the gym. Let's say that you struggle with anxiety for example. Then, when you consciously focus on gratitude, prefrontal cortex activity acts like a volume knob, directly downregulating and calming the overactive amygdala. And because your brain has limited processing resources, it struggles to heavily stimulate the prefrontal cortex (appreciation) while simultaneously keeping the amygdala in a state of high alert (fear). Basically, gratitude overrides anxiety. fitandball.gumroad.com/l/bra…