Some people seem to just effortlessly go after their goals and land on them with the greatest of ease. The rest of us chase and chase and never seem to quite get there. According to a neuroscientist, the difference between the two might be as simple as hacking your brain’s perception of the risk involved.
As the saying goes, “No risk, no glory” — it’s pretty hard to achieve anything big and good without some kind of sacrifice and the possibility that it will all blow up in your face. I once had a therapist who would remind me that “every yes is also a no and every no is also a yes” — that is, any time you decide to embrace one thing, you are leaving behind another, and vice versa.
The problem is; however, that our brains are literally wired to hate this. Risk involves danger, and our brains’ primary directives are to keep us safe and comfortable at all costs. For a lot of us, that keeps us from our goals — it’s not that we’re lazy or cowardly, it’s that our brains are simply doing what they’re meant to do.
As neuroscientist and coach Emily McDonald put it in a recent TikTok, “It’s a paradox because we need to step outside of our comfort zones in order to achieve our goals and be successful, but at the same time our nervous system wants to hold us back when things start to feel scary.” And no matter what the goal is, scariness always comes in at one point or another.
“Your brain will subconsciously hold you back from the success that you desire if your goals are not wired in to feel safe,” McDonald explained. But the good news is, you can hack your brain into considering your goals “safe,” and you can do it with three very simple practices McDonald shared.
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These are things like meditation and breathwork, which help your nervous system rest and repair so that you start to feel calmer and safer in general. And before you start: Yes, anyone can meditate, even the most uniquely anxious people on Earth with uniquely broken special snowflake brains that couldn’t possibly ever be still for even one second.
That isn’t real by the way — ask me how I know! OK, I’ll just tell you: I have literal PTSD from trauma so bad it once made my therapist cry and I have meditated almost daily for years. If a brain like mine can do it, so can yours.
Now that we’ve got the tough love out of the way, here’s the thing: Everyone thinks meditation is sitting in stolid, metaphysical silence for hours on end like some great enlightened swami in the Himalayas, but all it actually is, is simply sitting quietly and paying attention to your breath. That’s it.
Your mind is GOING to wander — that’s just normal human stuff. All you have to do is simply redirect your attention back to your breath when it does so. If it wanders every half-second, fine — redirect it every half-second then. Meditation is like working a muscle: The more you practice this redirection, the less you end up needing it.
The “breathwork” McDonald mentioned is a great way to not only calm your nervous system but ease your way into meditation, especially if you are a really anxious person. Breathwork refers to breathing exercises — box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, there are tons of them — that both calm your nervous system and distract you from anxieties by refocusing your attention.
McDonald also noted that just some simple time in nature can be calming and grounding, too. Research has shown that just 20 minutes in nature — without earbuds, by the way — significantly lower cortisol, one of the primary stress hormones in our bodies, which will help your nervous system to know you’re safe.
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Now that you’ve got your nervous system feeling more safe and secure in general, it’s time to tell your brain that “safety” and your goals have a mutually beneficial relationship rather than an antagonistic one.
“You can do this using hypnosis, affirmations, or visualization,” McDonald said. “Visualize yourself being in that ultimate success while also feeling safe, loved, and supported.” This may sound hokey and “woo,” but it also has a neuroscientific basis.
Stanford neurosurgeon and neuroscientist Dr. James Doty literally wrote the book on this subject, “Mind Magic.” In it, he explained that things like affirmations and visualizations not only embed a goal in your subconscious mind, but they activate crucial brain systems that begin to reorient your brain function toward the things you’re visualizing, rather than maintaining the status quo. It turns out that what’s known as “manifestation” is in large part just neuroscience.
Remember how I told you to start meditating a single minute at a time? McDonald said to approach your goals this way too — one single step at a time. If you approach the goal as a whole, it’s like drinking from a firehose. Break it down into steps first, and go at them one at a time.
As McDonald explained it, “You don’t need to know or feel safe going all the way to the top of the mountain from the bottom.” In fact your brain is likely to fight you tooth and nail if you even try because it wants to keep you safe and comfortable.
So if you want to change your career, perhaps step one is thinking about what qualifications you need and then figuring out how to get certified in any you currently lack. Once that’s completed, then you move on to step two — perhaps rewriting your resume. And on and on and on.
As McDonald put it, “All you need to know is the next right step, so focus on that.” It will keep your brain humming along on those new directives you established in step two, and keep you out of your own way.
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John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
