How to Reprogram Your Subconscious to Achieve Your Goals in 2024 🧠

Use this neuroscience backed Narrative Goals process to achieve all of your 2024 goals! (8min read)

TL;DR Summary:

• Importance of Narratives: Stories are deeply ingrained in our lives and brains, engaging multiple brain regions and triggering flow states.

• Neuroscience of Narratives: Stories activate integrated brain networks, including language, emotion, and vision centers, and release neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin.

• Setting Narrative Goals: The blog outlines how to transform goals into narratives, making them more engaging and memorable.

• DUMB & SMART Goals

• Positive Framing and Present Time

• Iterative Process and Rituals: Suggests taking time to refine the narrative and establish rituals for regular review of the Narrative Goals.

Welcome Back

Welcome to 2024! This is our first blog of the new year.

That being said, I want to give you something that I take each of my clients through!

This tool will help you actually achieve the goals and intentions you may have set for the New Year.

It’s called a Narrative Goal, a neuroscience-backed process for taking your goals and turning them into stories that get seared into your subconscious mind!

I’ve created a free copy of my Narrative Goals Template that you may want to make a copy of before reading the rest of this so you can fill it out as we go.

Let’s break it down!

Why a Narrative?

Narratives and stories are the lifeblood of our lives, whether we realize it or not!

Just take a minute right now, I would bet, the things you spend the most of your free time on are story-based in some way.

Reading, watching Netflix, consuming social media content, watching a movie or series, comic books, taking a course, videogames, museums, watching sports, scrolling through any website…

The list goes on and on. Stories are deeply ingrained in our lives because they are deeply ingrained in our brains.

Stories activate more parts of your brain than nearly anything else.

There’s almost no better flow state trigger than a good story!

Jesus, Socrates, Abe Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, Plato, MLK, Winston Churchhill, Morgan Freeman, the Buddha, George Lucas, Walt Disney, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs…

Guess what all of these people have in common? An uncanny ability to tell stories.

Have you ever wondered why actors are some of the most famous humans on earth?

It’s because they are in the stories we read, watch, listen, and engage with constantly.

Their name, image, and likeness are seared into nearly every single area of our brains as we take in the story they are a part of.

Finally, if I asked you to remember something you learned in middle school or high school, the likelihood that that piece of information was tied to a story is astronomically high.

The best lessons in our lives don’t just mystically appear in our brains, something happens to us, we learn a lesson and then a narrative is created so that we never forget the lesson!

Wild right? This phenomenon isn’t random or magic, it’s neuroscience.

The Neuroscience of Narratives

The brain's affinity for stories isn't just a cultural artifact; it's deeply rooted in our evolutionary biology and psychology.

The Neuroscience

Stories don't just activate isolated parts of the brain; they engage an integrated network.

This includes areas responsible for language, emotion, vision, and even motor skills.

The Default Mode Network (DMN), crucial for understanding others' perspectives and reflecting on personal experiences, is particularly active during story processing.

This indicates our inherent ability to place ourselves in others' narratives.

Stories also release a diverse mix of neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, oxytocin, endorphins, and many more!

The Psychology

These effects on our brains also affect our minds & psychology!

Stories enhance our ability to understand others' perspectives and emotions, which is critical as we develop our “Theory of Mind” growing up.

This is crucial for social interactions and was likely an evolutionary advantage in ancestral environments.

Also, when we engage with stories, we mentally simulate the events. This vicarious experience allows us to learn and prepare for similar real-life situations without direct exposure to risks.

To bottomline how important this is, think about how few of us would have survived if we needed to experience being eaten by a tiger, instead of being told the story of Bill, who was eaten by a tiger when he went out of the cave alone…

That being said, stories often fit into familiar schemas or structures, which makes them easier to understand and remember.

Making the story of poor Bill easier to remember & understand quickly!

In fact, next week, I bet if I asked you who got eaten by a tiger, you would remember the name Bill.

The Evolutionary Biology

The way that evolution shaped our minds, brains, and bodies concerning stories is the most interesting part of this tale!

As I mentioned above, in prehistoric times, the ability to share experiences and knowledge through stories was crucial for survival.

It wasn’t just about tigers though, it was about hunting strategies, farming strategies, medicinal plant knowledge, caregiving and so much more!

In our evolutionary past, forming cohesive groups, was vital for survival.

And you’ll never guess what helps form a cohesive group better than anything…

That’s right, stories have always been a way to strengthen social bonds and convey shared values, norms, and identities!

Finally, individuals who could understand and anticipate the actions and thoughts of others had a survival advantage, and still do to this day.

So, it should be no surprise to you that the best storytellers in history are the most famous and influential humans to ever exist.

I’ll Get Off My Soapbox Now

Alright, I think you get it… You know how I get in relation to neuroscience, I have a tendency to rant.

But I want it to be abundantly clear that the human brain has evolved to not only enjoy but to gain from stories.

This evolutionarily ingrained trait underscores the importance of narratives in learning, social bonding, and even survival.

This deep-rooted connection explains why, even today, stories are such a powerful medium for communication, learning, and entertainment.

This is also exactly why goals that are in narrative or story form get achieved more often than just basic goal lists.

So, let’s get to writing some Narrative Goals!

Top 3 Goals

The process is simple, to start, you’ll just need that goals list of yours!

If you haven’t gotten that far, fear not, it’s pretty simple.

What do you want to be different in your life? What are your biggest challenges day to day? What’s something you want to learn?

What’s something you want to start or stop doing? Or something you want to do more or less of? It could even be something you want to continue doing?

All of these questions can help you outline your Top 3 Goals.

Keep them simple, and if you have a headtrash about “never being able to achieve your goals” make them ridiculously easy at first.

If you achieve them early, you can create some more!

Creating Your Narrative

Alright, it’s time to shift your basic goals list into a narrative and a story.

This will be easier than you think, remember, stories are wired into you at a neurobiological level!

I suggest taking 1 crack at it before even reading the rest of this blog.

Just take the goals you wrote down, and turn them into a heroic story about how much you achieved in 2024.

Don’t think about it, just start writing or typing!

Once you’ve got your first draft, read the rest of the steps below.

Make Them SMART & Make Them DUMB

Next, we need to DUMB down your narrative, and then SMARTen it back up!

Let’s DUMB it down first.

DUMB stands for Dream Based, Uplifting, Measurable, and Behavior Based.

For example, the goal “Make more money” isn’t very DUMB.

“Create financial freedom for myself so that I can pay off all of my debt, and set up myself, and my family for life” is Dream Based, and Uplifting for sure, so we’re getting closer!

“Put 10% of my incoming monthly towards my debt so that I can be debt-free by the end of 2024, and increase my income by 5% each month by selling 2 more software deals per month than last year, to ensure that I’m on the path to financial freedom for myself and my family.”

By making it measurable, and behavior-based, meaning we have a specific behavioral goal (selling), this is now a truly DUMB goal!

Notice how this DUMB goal is like its own mini-narrative?

Next, we need to make it a bit SMARTer.

Most people have heard of SMART goals before. It’s a framework to make your goals more Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound!

For example, “losing weight” is a common goal. But it’s not a SMART goal.

“Lose 25lbs by June 1st” is more Specific, Measurable, and Time-Bou

nd.

Finally, “Lose 2lbs per week on average by June 1st so that I can fit in my suit for my brother’s wedding” is now also Relevant, and more Achievable as well.

Again, notice how this SMART goal is like its own little story as well!

Use these mini DUMB & SMART stories with your own goals and narrative.

Most good stories are a bunch of mini stories combined, so we’ll do the same thing with your Narrative Goal Story!

Positively Framed

The next filter we’ll add to your Narrative Goal is making it positively framed.

Let’s tackle positively framed first. How much of your narrative so far is about things you don’t want or that you hate and want to get rid of?

Our brains don’t understand these negative statements.

For example, “I won’t be overweight” or “I don’t have anxiety” are roughly translated in your brain to mean “be overweight” and “have anxiety.”

I’m planning to write a whole blog about the neuroscience behind this phenomenon, so for now, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that framing things in a positive direction is far more effective.

So, let’s try again, “I will be a healthy weight, and able to play with my grandkids again!”

As you can see, I’m starting to add in some elements of the SMART & DUMB goal frameworks we just talked about as well.

Present Time

The final framing for Narrative Goals is often the hardest for people to wrap their arms around, so stick with me.

When working with people, what I often find is that their past baggage shapes how they view the present.

This means, that in the present, their past baggage gets predicted forward by the brain & creates their future based on this baggage.

So, they end up creating the past, in the future...

This is why I’ve structured this Narrative Goals process, and the languages it uses, in the way that I do!

And why the “present time” part is the most important piece.

This turns your narrative from what could happen to what already happened.

This is why the start of every single Narrative Goal should begin with, “It is now [Future Date], and I…”

So, for 2024, it could sound like, “It is now Dec 31st, 2024 and I have accomplished more than I could have possibly imagined this year.”

I know it sounds strange, but you’re creating a new narrative in your subconscious mind with this kind of language!

You’re priming areas like the Prefrontal Cortex and the Reticular Activating System to create this narrative because they don’t understand that it’s the future, they think it’s right now!

This is where the true power of a Narrative Goal comes from.

I cannot stress enough how important this part is!

Putting It All Together

Now that you’ve got all the pieces, it’s time to iterate!

There’s no need to rush this process. Take an afternoon or a weekend to go through this process.

Write your first draft, then add in the parts that we discussed above, and write out another draft.

Review it, and make sure it checks all the boxes above and motivates you to go make the story a reality!

Rituals

Once you’ve got your Narrative Goal Story written, it’s time to create a ritual around reviewing it!

There are lots of ways to do this, here are some of the most common I’ve seen my clients use:

• Record yourself reading your Narrative and then play it back to yourself right when you wake up and right before going to bed

• Print out your Narrative and read it out loud 1x per day

• Review your progress 1x per week

• Rewrite your Narrative by hand daily

• Call a friend and read your Narratives to one another weekly

Whichever ritual you choose, I know it will work. I also know, if you don’t create any kind of ritual, nothing will change.

Happy 2024 & Good Luck!

One of my favorite quotes is, “To get what you’ve never had, you must do what you’ve never done.”

This blog could be just another goal-setting blog that you read and discard, or it could be the one that changes your life.

You could choose to do something different. You could choose to invent a new future possibility for yourself.

It’s up to you.

Until next time… Live Heroically 🧠