New Findings on Difficulties in Re-Programming Yourself

If you are a self-improvement enthusiast, you have almost certainly read books that tell you how to reprogram yourself, how to replace “bad thinking” with “good thinking.”

You may have had some success in implementing the methods taught in these books, but you may also have noticed that the methods just didn’t work as advertised. Sometimes it may have even seemed as if they made matters worse.

Well, some new research is shedding some light on why such self-help programs are not always so helpful:

• The superb magazine The Economist recently had an article subtitled for some people, optimistic thoughts can do more harm than good. This is an article that you not only need to read for yourself, you need to read it for your children, so you ensure you don’t hurt their self-esteem by improper use of “positive talk.” Update: World of Pyschology has an article that disputes this research. After reading both, I’m not sure anyone knows whether positive self-talk works. As the latter article says, though, if it works for you, then keep it up.
• In an article entitled Who’s Minding the Mind, New York Times author Benedict Carey similarly describes examples of where our “minds do not do what they are told.” This article somewhat gently tears down the concept of a subconscious mind, replacing it with our “reptilian minds” that reside below the prefrontal cortex. During in thought process, apparently the reptilian brain gets the first cut at decision-making, with the prefrontal cortex taking a secondary role. Because the reptilian brain has evolved to respond to fears our ancestors had, it will sometimes make decisions that are opposite to what we want them to be (more “animalistic” in nature, for example).

So, if you have read, as I have, that the subconscious can be programmed, and that it cannot distinguish between a lie and the truth, you have read something that is wrong. In fact, there is doubt as to whether the subconscious, as classically defined, even exists, as discussed in this Wikipedia article.

Does all of this mean that we cannot reprogram ourselves? Of course not. We have all done some reprogramming, at least to some degree. We now know, though, that there are limits to this reprogramming (shouldn’t be too surprising, when you think about it), and we know a bit more about the mechanisms involved.

Your thoughts on this?