The Flip of Discipline

How can it be that some people love exercise, can’t live without it, while others see it as equivalent to medieval torture?  This article explores why people have different perceptions of the same behavior and how we can undergo The Flip of Discipline to change our inclinations.

To set the stage, I want to tell you about three of my friends.  Each has a different relationship to exercise and is at a different place on the discipline spectrum.  To keep things simple, we will use exercise as the example of a desired behavior.  The same reasoning applies to any behavior.

My friend Ryan craves exercise, and when I say crave, I mean the same way Elvis lusted after another barbiturate.  Unlike Elvis however, this strong desire serves Ryan well.  He is in peak physical shape and enjoys the health and happiness benefits that come from his exercise habit (Demers, 2013).

My coworker Janet on the other hand detests exercise and would seriously consider an hour on the medieval rack before tying up her running shoes.  She is overweight and depressed and would benefit enormously from regular exercise, but instead she gravitates towards an evening bottle of red and a xanax, Elvis style.  Occasionally, Janet will become motivated and go for a run or two, but the motivation doesn’t last.  The pain of running seers into her mind and reminds her of all the past times when she has tried running and found it detestable.  Within a week or two she is uncorking another bottle of Pinot and trying her best to forget the whole experiment.

Our last case study is my friend Josiah who has started going to the gym recently.  He goes to a climbing gym that is on his way home from work.  The gym also has weights and cardio machines next to the rock walls.  Josiah doesn’t crave going like Ryan and doesn’t see it as torture like Janet.  He falls in the middle of the spectrum. He has to apply some willpower to get himself to go after a long day in the office, but he is always happy he went.  He is gaining momentum, and with a few neuro-hacks, will be quickly approaching The Flip of Discipline.

So, what is going on in these peoples’ minds?  Everyone knows exercise is good for your health and happiness.  Not sure?  A recent meta-analysis suggests that exercise is 1.5 times more beneficial for your mental health than medication or cognitive therapy (Singh, 2023).  So why don’t we all just crave working out like Ryan?  The answer lies in the fact that we are not simply Spocks running rational optimization calculations for our health and well-being.  Our brain circuitry is running a far simpler program that worked excellently for our caveman ancestors.

When an idea arises in our mind, our brain predicts two metrics and seeks to minimize both of them.

1. Pain

2. Effort

The software of our brain doesn’t run these calculations to optimize our health and happiness.  It runs them to optimize our survival and reproduction.  For modern Homo Sapiens seeking to maximize their well-being, our brain software has some bugs.  It tries too hard to minimize effort, i.e. conserve calories, and it tries too hard to minimize pain, failing to appropriately weight pleasure.  The third bug lies in our weighting of time.  Our brain weights things that are about to happen more heavily than things that will happen further into the future, even when those future events are guaranteed outcomes from the previous events.  We have to understand these three bugs in our brain software so that we can begin to take advantage of them.  We have to hack our brain.

A simpler way to say this: our default brain doesn’t like doing hard things.  Our software prefers easy to hard, pleasure to pain, and now to later.  It tries to minimize calories and minimize pain (even at the expense of pleasure). It weights the near term as a guarantee and the subsequent events as a mere possibility.

Ok, ok you get it - we’re not wired to be Arnold Schwarzenegger in the gym every Monday morning.  Now what do we do about it?!  The good news is that this same brain circuitry that is sabotaging Janet can equally be used to empower Ryan.  Let’s explore exactly how to do this.

We need to use awareness and wisdom to flip each bug in our neural software on its head.  Our brain tries to minimize effort.  To make any activity appealing to this algorithm in our mind, simply Spark the Habit (click here to read the article), and focus solely on the first step.  Don’t negotiate with your brain about going for a 5 mile run, big expected caloric output.  Negotiate instead about running 10 feet, low expected caloric output.  Once you get started, you’re highly likely to run your full distance anyway.

Your brain wants to avoid pain more than it cares about accruing pleasure.  There are two ways to counter this bug.  The first is to simply focus on the pain of not exercising.  Letting our muscles and cardiovascular system unnecessarily stagnate and then decay is terrifying when viewed from the right light.  Missing out on a therapy 1.5 times as effective as Lexapro or CBT is a very risky move.  The second strategy is to focus more on the pleasure and benefit of the activity.  When I tell people that I take cold showers most mornings, their first reaction is always the same, a look of horror mixed with disgust.  They are thinking only about the pain.  To get myself to engage in this habit, I focus as much as I can on the pleasure.  A two minute cold shower releases an enormous amount of dopamine and endorphins into my system and feels very much like a line of Kurt Cobain’s favorite pastime.  And, it’s good for you - what a deal.  With that focus, I actually start craving cold showers just like our friend Kurt.

The last bug we need to address is our brain’s preference for now over later.  It is true that to get the rewards of a cold shower or a jog, we first need to endure some discomfort.  The problem is our brain software doesn’t properly recognize that the reward waiting on the other side of effort is guaranteed.  We always feel better after a run or a cold shower.  Despite it being a sure thing, our brain thinks it's only a probability.  The solution is simple, reassure yourself that the rewards are certain.  I run, I get guaranteed pleasure.  I turn the nozzle to cold, I get a certain reward.  By hacking our brain in these three ways, something remarkable begins to happen.  We initiate and accelerate The Flip of Discipline.  We start to like, even crave, what was once hard.

Let’s make this concrete and practical.  We think about going for a run after work.  Our brain flares up with its current programming.  This could be the craving of Ryan, the repulsion of Janet, or the indifference of Josiah.  But we don’t stop there.  Now we’re equipped with the tools to flip our brain software to work for us.  Instead of running 5 miles, we negotiate only the first 10 feet.  This drastically decreases our brain’s perception of the effort required and makes our neurons far more likely to get onboard.  We think about the pain of not running, gaining weight and losing the mental health benefits.  We reassure ourselves that the pleasure from the activity is guaranteed, a certain outcome of our decision.  With that three step process, it will be hard to stop us from tying up our laces.

Like Pavlov's dogs, as we condition ourselves with repetition, our brain starts to make new and natural predictions about exercise.  When the idea enters our mind, it seems easier and more pleasurable.  As we get over the hump in the formation of any new habit, we even begin to associate the discomfort of the habit directly with the reward.  Just as Pavlov’s dogs began to salivate when hearing his bell, before any food was around, we can anticipate the endorphins, improved physique, and happiness that follow the strain of a jog while we are running.  This is when we begin to “love the burn.”  This is The Flip of Discipline.  We start to like the things that we previously saw as a chore.  We start to look forward to our morning meditation rather than dreading it.  We start wanting to do what is good for us rather than being slaves to our base programming.

When we hotwire our brain’s predictive circuitry, we make doing what is hard seem easy. We start craving what is good for us rather than what was good for our hunter-gatherer ancestors.  Working out becomes as attractive as Ben and Jerrys, ok well almost.  The Flip of Discipline is what happens when we simply take advantage of our brain’s tendencies and use them to get the healthy outcomes we really want.  The best part is, as we practice this, it requires less and less effort.  Our brain is actually capable of craving exercise.  All we have to do is train it.

Footnotes

Demers, 2013. https://library.ndsu.edu/ir/bitstream/handle/10365/27187/The%20Relationship%20Between%20Exercise%20and%20Mental%20Health%20in%20College%20Students.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Singh, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/02/exercise-is-even-more-effective-than-counselling-or-medication-for-depression-but-how-much-do-you-need#:~:text=We%20found%20doing%20150%20minutes,care%20(such%20as%20medications).