Do an Internet search for self-help programs and prepare to be amazed. I’m also a long-time self-help guy, and I’m amazed at all that’s available to buy.

I think you can find a self-help site for anything, which is a tribute to both American ingenuity and marketing.

It seems that we are experts at finding a problem and creating a program to solve it.

The problem with some of our self-help programs is that they are sometimes very light, which means that it is very easy to achieve a very short-term solution.

When I think of self-help, I think of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, or I think of the market for weight loss, divorce, marriage or relationship aids, anger management, or an emerging market in when it comes to the brain. physical aptitude.

All of those programs involve the regular practice of certain behaviors, and there are three behaviors that we humans can hope to manage or control, our thinking, our feelings, and our behaviors, or how our body moves.

If you have read Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s book FLOW, which is a treatise on the psychology of optimal performance, then you know that we process sound, visual, tactile, olfactory, and taste information at a rate of seven data bits every 1/18th of a second. . therefore, self-help programs must be learned and implemented in a very short period of time. (1/18th of a second is twice as fast as I can blink.)

So self-help should be a process of awareness and management of sensory processing done very quickly and very often.

I like my clients’ anger management process for driving a car, you make thousands of small adjustments to the position of the vehicle on the road and pay attention to hundreds of variables at any given time, traffic ahead, behind, traffic lights, children, the police six blocks ahead, etc. By doing this, you keep the vehicle heading in the direction you want, at the speed you want, safely for you and other drivers. You avoid potholes.

So the self-help process should be similar and involves your awareness, attention and perception first, which can only happen in your brain incredibly fast.

Can you imagine paying attention to your attention?

Put another way, conscience gives me options.

So self-help programs in their most basic form will give me the ability to choose a new thought, which will lead to a new feeling, which can motivate different behavior, and all of this will happen thousands of times a minute in my brain. very quickly, just like I make many small adjustments to the steering wheel of my vehicle.

Remember that neurons can only do a couple of things, move electrical energy and neurotransmitters, which leads to all my options, including a very basic cognitive behavior tool/rule.

Change the thought to change the feeling.

Any self-help program will give me new thoughts to think about on this particular topic.

I need to practice this thought to make it a habit, so that the new habit is stronger than the previously established neural habit (think codependent behaviors, for example) and then the new thought can be recalled in 1/18th of a second in case of emergency. and by that I mean that I remember my new thought to replace my problem thought very quickly.

So self-help, as I describe it, begins with an awareness of how your brain maintains and retrieves memory. It is very similar to the process you use to drive your car. Certain thoughts are a habit.

Change the thought to change the feeling, and the problem behavior manifests, because I changed the thought before my body could move.

So how can I increase my awareness of my thoughts?

Let me recommend some self-help tools that I have found very useful.

What makes self-help more effective is not hard effort, but relaxation, believe it or not.

Stress hormones like adrenaline or cortisol were designed to help me prepare my fight physiology flight for that 1/18th of a second when I sensed danger (happens in the brain!) and needed to run for my life, fight for life or freeze to maintain myself. my life. When that physiology comes online, I only have those three behavioral options. And every time my problem thought comes up, because it’s now part of a pattern I’m trying to change, I’ll create stress, which makes it hard for self-help to manifest.

It is very difficult to think of solutions from the physiology of stress, so calming down is the way to create mastery of the self-help program.

Deep breathing over a period of time is the cheapest and best self-help tool available to us humans, and if you’re like most adults, you’ll nod your head and continue to breathe very shallowly into your chest, causing that annoying stress. physiology.

So try the heart rate variability program to learn how to contact the self-help brain in your heart. What you will do is the first right thing for any self-help program to be effective, which is to relax, and not just in the moment, but on demand. Heart rate variability biofeedback is learned because it is a biofeedback process, and after a little practice, your body will learn to stay much closer to this new baseline. A consistent heart rate will open up higher perceptual centers in your brain where you will continue to think the thoughts associated with your new self-help program, whether it’s AA or your favorite weight-loss program.

The best brain for self-help

I am not aware of any self-help creators who are looking closely at how brain fitness affects self-help success.

We can now do a lot to make our brains fitter and healthier, which is where self-help happens.

Not long ago, no one knew how plastic our brains were and are, how my neurons connect and establish those new habits.

(Neuroplasticity happens in minutes, not hours, days, weeks, or months.)

For an excellent resource on brain fitness, read Brainfit for Life by Simon Evans, Ph.D. and Paul Burghardt, Ph.D. who are neuroscientists at the University of Michigan.

They provide a wealth of easy-to-digest information on how to get your brain set up for self-help.

They discuss the ‘pillars of brain fitness’, physical exercise, nutrition (including omega 3 fatty acids), sleep, stress management, and challenging learning experiences, including the use of computerized brain fitness programs.

The other aspect of self-help brain fitness is neurogenesis, or the daily growth of new neurons if I don’t have toxins like stress hormones or ethyl alcohol in my brain too often.

New learning experiences enhance neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

Very useful brain fitness programs that I have used? Programs involving dual n back task research or Michael Merzenich’s neuroplasticity research are excellent.

Self-help programs have been a huge part of my life, and I keep trying them when I’m convinced there’s some research to back them up.