Our communication with other people is generally done through thoughtful words, conversations and text messages; but also the sighs we hide, the nervous laughter we stifle and the subtle arching of our brows.

Looking at the bigger picture, how we react to the events which take place around us is the way in which we interact with the world. The sum of these daily encounters and outcomes shapes our lives.

We control most of our verbal communication, but how we communicate nonverbally proves that most of our reactions are out of our conscious reach.

In fact, psychology, as well as neuroscience, have shown that we don’t fully control our reactions. They don’t derive from our conscious thinking patterns. In reality, our reactions are automatic responses monitored by our subconscious minds.

The story I’m about to share with you is a walkthrough to understand how our automatic reactions are generated and how to actively change them.

One cold night in November 2019, I was chilling on my sofa finishing up an application to speak at a TEDx event.

In the last section, I was asked to leave a personal note. It’s where you’re supposed to make a good impression.

I asked my best friend who was sitting next to me to proofread my text before I submitted it.

As she went through my first sentence, she gave me her infamous “surprised-but-not-in-a-good-way look”.

She explained that where I’d written:

“I’d understand if you chose an expert with a degree in neuroscience to breakdown such a subject but I am passionate and motivated.”

actually meant:

“Hey guys I know that I’m not good enough, and it’d be natural not to pick me but please do so anyway.”

I thought about what she said and realized that my self-deprecating statements derived from a deep-seated belief of mine:

“I don’t deserve success because I’m not good enough.”

I was about to sabotage a project that I care deeply about because I was going to allow the manifestation of my subconscious mind to take over my conscious actions.

I am already aware of this limiting belief, and yet — I still somehow was about to let this belief to seep into my day to day communications with others.

I was lucky enough to have a friend point my potential faux-pas out to me.

With this being said, I couldn’t afford to keep on relying on luck, or having a friend around to let me know when I was about to make the same mistake again. I considered that night as a call-for-action to make changes; tangible, scientifically-based changes.

I focused my approach on:

Decrypting decision-making and subconscious responses based on the latest discoveries in neuroscience and psychology.

Finding ways to actively hack my reactions instead of watching them taking over my life. Then test them.

In the following sections, we’ll uncover how our minds operate to generate our reactions. Then, we’ll dive into the mechanisms behind them. That way, we’ll identify the levers to pull in order to consciously reshape our innermost reactions.

Section 1 — Our reactions are based on our beliefs.

When we react, we make an instantaneous decision followed by an action. The decision that we take derives from our life experience. The latter shapes a set of beliefs that monitors our thinking patterns in both conscious and subconscious ways.

In other words, we interact with the world according to our past.

Here’s an example:

My father has spent his whole life working as a policeman. During one of the arrests he made, the man bit off part of one of his fingers. He spent a couple of days in the hospital. The first thing he did when he got out was dropping the charges against the guy that attacked him. He said: “maybe it’ll do him good, plus I don’t want to carry the weight of grudge”. #🔴

During the medical leave that followed, we spent hours playing cards every day. We are both pretty good players with equivalent skills. However, he has this trick of card counting. It’s not considered cheating because it’s extremely difficult to master, not to mention tiring.

You have to memorize the cards and make mental calculations throughout the whole game which allows you to guess the three cards that your opponent is holding in the last round of each game. The only return on investment for my dad was, at the very best, one point per game.

His technique seemed worthless to me. Obviously, I was naive.

These “insignificant” points gained from some of the games we played kept on stacking up over the global scoreboard that included more than 50 games. Needless to say, he won. #🔵

These experiences carved specific beliefs in my mind. They later become the foundation of certain thinking patterns of mine.

Being kind is self-satisfying and liberating. #🔴

Doing small, smart things consistently pays off in the long run. #🔵

How have I applied these teachings to my own life?

Whenever I jump on a train, I always make sure I’m the last to get on. I feel good about giving away a seat to someone who may need it more than myself.

When I see people sitting down I think to myself: “maybe it’ll do them good”. Perhaps, being seated during a commute would allow them to send a nice text to their family or to a loved one. Maybe, it might soften their mood since they won’t be swinging across the wagon at every subway turn, and they may feel inclined to pay the good deed forward. #🔴🔴

Additionally, I always stand near the door, meaning that I am the first to get off. That way, I can save time while switching from subway A to subway B.

This small trick allows me to save up to one hour per day on my commute, by optimizing the time it takes to make platform changes. #🔵🔵

As you have seen, my behavior in public transport: #🔴🔴 and #🔵🔵 derives from two beliefs tied to childhood events: #🔴 and #🔵.

The same pattern applies to all our ways of reacting to the world.

Our beliefs dictate our thoughts which dictate our actions and reactions alongside the emotions that come with them.

Our actions, stacked over time, shape our behavior.

Now, the subway story highlights positive behaviors, both for me and my fellow commuters.

Unfortunately, the same logic applies to negative behaviors as well.

As I explained in another story, I was a strong believer in the “no pain, no gain” philosophy.

I used to decline a lot of invitations to hang out with friends and co-workers. I’d work myself into oblivion on personal projects instead.

I used to go to the gym even when I was injured. Because, hey, no pain, no gain, right?

It goes without saying that these behaviors were no good for my physical or mental health.

The recurring feelings of loneliness and shoulder aches were a testament to that.

Yet, I kept doing the same things over and over again for years because my own beliefs wired my brain to lean towards pain.

Even after noticing the origin of my self-harming conduct, I couldn’t change it because “the need for pain” was still deeply rooted in my mind.

🔸 In this section, we saw that our past experiences shape our beliefs. Then, our beliefs shape our thoughts and behaviors. However, this does not explain why the same patterns keep on happening.

Section 2 — The self-sustained loop of our reactions.

When it comes to our reactions, history repeats itself for two reasons: survival instincts and neuroplasticity.

According to neuroscientists, the limbic system is the one in control of emotions and other brain functions related to our instincts and memories. You could picture it as the hardware of our subconscious minds.

Amongst other things, our subconscious minds mainly strive to keep us alive. After all, survival is our primal instinct.

With that being said, it often gets tricky, because our subconscious minds do not distinguish the good from the bad.

Our limbic brains are only interested in distinguishing lethal from non-lethal things.

Therefore, as long as what you are doing doesn’t present an immediate risk of death, your subconscious mind won’t protest via its famous fight, flight or freeze response.

For example, smoking a cigarette or eating an apple every morning are the same things for the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind doesn’t take into account the long term benefits of eating fruits nor the harm caused by regularly inhaling small doses of poison.

Both routines don’t immediately put you in a deadly situation so both are “safe”.

On the other hand, our brains are addicted to efficiency and automation. In fact, whenever the brain gets used to any behavior or reaction, it rewires itself to get better at doing it. Step by step, it consumes less energy and less time. This optimization process is carried out by neuroplasticity. That’s how habits and specific conducts are shaped.

The drawback of neuroplasticity is its resistance to change. It makes sense since familiar automatic responses are cost-effective and easier to carry out. By contrast, changing our behaviors translate into rewiring our brain circuits. The creation of new brain patterns needed for new routines cost time and energy. Naturally, our brains prefer the path of least resistance, even if it’s harmful.

This is exactly why we have a hard time changing our habits; whether they’re bad ones like smoking or good ones like taking morning walks, no matter the weather.

In a nutshell, our subconscious minds are blind to good and bad behaviors, as well as the long term impact these behaviors entail. They are also keen on efficiency, therefore, they hate change. As a consequence, our limbic brains favor the devil they know, rather than the angel they don’t.

Because of all this, we subconsciously stick to the same patterns as dictated by our deep-seated beliefs. Naturally, we end up with the same outcomes as the process repeats itself. The experiences that result take the form of validation — a big plus for our beliefs as well as our brains.

Applying these findings to my own experiences, the gratification I get from my behavior in the subway validates my beliefs regarding kindness and the importance of taking small, smart and consistent actions in the long run.

In the same way, I feel pain when I overwork myself, or when I spend a lot of time alone, and overtrain myself at the gym. These behaviors are followed by results such as publishing more articles, delivering successful projects in my consulting job, and gaining more muscle mass. Therefore, the “no pain no gain” motto deeply entrenched in my mind gets approved continuously.

“ I had the same reaction, I observed the same outcome and I am not in a deadly danger. So let’s keep on doing the same thing” My Limbic Brain.

That’s how we found ourselves stuck in self-sustained loops of reactions and behaviors regardless of their benefits and harms.

🔸 In this section, we saw that our survival instincts and neuroplasticity form self-sustained loops that repeatedly generate the same reactions and outcomes.

Section 3 — The reaction loop modelized.

We now know that our reactions follow the same cycles based on our beliefs.

For us to hack this sophisticated loop, we need to understand each one of its functions. To that end, we’ll use simple analogies inspired by common technologies.

In that sense, you could picture a reaction as the output of a machine endowed with intelligence. It responds in a specific way depending on the input: the situation.