Neurologically, I am essentially an angel grafted onto a caveman. On the one hand, we have this capacity for creation and future-thinking and self control - rooted in the capacities of our prefrontal cortex. But on the other hand we have a very old brain - the limbic system - which registers basic emotional reactions.
And we're answerable to both. Pretend you're 100% angel and you end up ignoring your inner caveman/woman. At worst that leads to compulsive acting out, and at its most benign yields that inner "mismatch" between how we're living our lives and how we're really feeling.
Awhile back I blogged about the neurological loop connecting these two important parts of the human brain. I called it the reward and planning system, and suggested five cognitive tasks from goal inception to completion:
- Anticipate the end-goal
- Identify the tasks and subtasks
- Sequence and problem-solve around likely obstacles
- Block out distractions
- Get the reward
Then, in the next two postings (here and here) we asked "so why aren't I getting exactly what I want every minute of the day?" If you're a parent or teacher, or you're self-coaching through important goals, it is esential to determine exactly where along this sequence the support is needed. I shared here some of the feedback I've received from readers about their typical goal-setting flubs.
In those postings, we reviewed common challenges to steps #1 - 3 in the reward-and-planning system. Let's pick up where we left off, then:
#4 - Block out distractions
Dan is no slacker. He's a comedian who has performed at three presidential inauguration events and a TED conference (www.nainan.com). But like a lot of bright students and adults with restlessness and inattention, he carries around a sense of underachievement. The feeling that he's doing OK but could be doing more. In his own words:
"I may seem successful from the outside, but being distracted has got in the way of further success. The main problem is that I am distracted by the Internet, e-mail mainly, and I'm having trouble focusing on important tasks."
There, he said it. The I-word. Sure there was ADHD long before the internet, but 4G access to unlimited games, videos, and social connection, in the palm of my hand? It's a recipe for an off-task life. A frustrated reader named LeeAnn asked "How DO I stay focused with so many interesting distractions and information overload?"
Let's say that through some marvelous combination of social support, perspicacity, and intelligence you have made it to this point. You know what you want, you've come up with a great strategy for getting there, and you've sketched out a step-by-step roadmap avoiding the likely obstacles. You're still faced with most cognitively demanding challenge of all: sticking with something important to you - even when parts of it are hard or dull, and even when there are alternatives which are easy and fun.
Your brain screens out the vast majority of sensory stimuli available to you at any point in time. Right now, how aware were you of your left and right foot (before I asked you to draw your awareness there?) How aware are you of the smells around you, the lighting, and the sounds in the room? You cannot pay attention to all of it, or most of it, or even half of it. The work of deciding in advance what warrants your attention prepares your sensory systems to determine what's salient - what's important and goal-related for you. So you can disregard everything else.
But oh the colors! The sparkly and textured and rotating and varigated sensory options out there! Madison Avenue is busy right now creating hundreds of distractions to pull you away from your core purpose. What you know, deep down, you're here to do and be and have.
Blocking out distractions along the way to our goal is a challenge for anyone with attentional or executive limitations. If that sounds like you, or the students you coach or teach, you'll understand why these individuals are described as more "field dependent" than their same-age peers. They get up early, just like the most goal-oriented and ambitious among us. And they determine what they want, how to get it, how to work around the obstacles in their way. Then they walk out the front door and into a world of a bazillion competing novel stimuli. It's not uncommon for these individuals to wind up in the psychotherapist's office at age 45 or so and say something like "crap, I meant to get married!" or "I had a great idea for a screenplay and now somebody else already made the movie!"
So if that's something they really wanted for themselves, and they knew that, then what did they do instead? There is no one answer. There are bazillion sparkly and novel and shiny answers. And our quotidian (but brutal) battle is to resist these distractions and stick with our plan.
#5 - Get the reward
If we've picked the right goal, then this final step is the icing on the cake. Well, it's the cake and the icing on the cake. It's that boo-yah moment when you get what you were aiming for. The acceptance letter, the proposal, the promotion, the check. That deep down feeling of all-that.
But even here there are ways things go not-quite-right. For a tiny minority among us (we might call them sociopaths), what really feels good is something that will land us in jail for a long time. There are some individuals for whom "what do I really want" will never lead to a good outcome. For the rest of us, though, pursuing that which drives our passions and keeps us engaged and happy will almost certainly benefit everybody around us as well as ourselves.
One banal, but heartbreaking, problem is that we find we have picked the wrong strategy. Nothing wrong with wanting to feel relaxed, wanting to check out of a tense and worried state. But if the chosen strategy involves an addictive substance, my money's on that not working out well. And it's a fine thing to desire social approval - to be well-liked. But if your way of getting there is to join a clique of mean girls, the odds are against that actually bringing any deep and sustained positive feelings for you.
This is why step #1 is so critical. Get clear on what you really want to feel. Consider each possible strategy: how likely is it that this will get me where I, really, want to be in my life? How I want to feel in my skin?
Another challenge here is the issue of "satisfaction control." How much reward or punishment do I need in order to reach satiety? How much is enough? Parents of students with ADHD have sometimes said to me "Oh, we tried reinforcement and it didn't work." Well of course it "works" because this is how our brains work.
But these parents are more than half-right: one of the genetic risk factors for ADHD has to do with post-synaptic dopamine sensitivity. Literally, there are some among us who are less sensitive to reward. If you coach or teach or love someone with inattention and distractibility, you might have noticed that he or she is less tolerant of down-time, and seems to need more stimulation. So we see, then, the imperative for these individuals of consistently "getting the reward."
