Well Designed Life: 10 Lessons in Brain Science & Design Thinking for a Mindful, Healthy, & Purposeful Life by Kyra Bobinet MD MPH

Author:Kyra Bobinet MD MPH [Bobinet MD MPH, Kyra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: engagedIN Press
Published: 2015-10-13T22:00:00+00:00

DESIGNING FOR OUR ENVIRONMENT

Now, let’s figure out how to manage the unconscious attention of our fast brain, what we could call the notion of not knowing that we know. I say manage because, by definition, we do not control it willfully. But we still can—and absolutely must—design for it. Recall that our fast brain implicit memory tracks nearly everything that happens to and around us. It detects patterns before we know there are any and shapes our behaviors long before our conscious mind figures it out. Like a sponge, our implicit memory is constantly absorbing everything our eyes, ears, and other senses take in. It pays attention, even when we consciously don’t.

Our environment grabs the attention of our fast brain. Our house, our community, our technology devices, our friends—they all trigger our unconscious mind constantly. If we ignore this fact, pretty soon our old alpha wolf of bad habits will be leading the pack again! In my own research of health habits of families, I have witnessed over and over again how spouses influence each other and how parents influence their kids. A person with food addictions can drag her spouse down into that world too. On the flip side, a person who is very healthy can pull their spouse up into a healthier way of living. Some people even start to design their partner’s behavior, especially when there is a medical issue like diabetes.

For instance, one man I met shared his struggle with diabetes and how his doctor urged him to stop eating cookies. He told me the only reason he stopped was because his wife stepped in and took control of all the grocery shopping and didn’t buy cookies anymore. He had cut back to eating only the cookies his adult daughter brought when she visited.

What was more interesting was my conversation with his wife. You see, she knew her husband had zero control if there were cookies around and she loved him so much she didn’t want to lose him to an early death. So she secretly bought a box of mini-cookies and stored a small handful of them in sandwich Ziploc bags way in the back of her closet. Then when her daughter would come to visit, she would slip her daughter one of the baggies of cookies. The daughter then walked in, “Hey, Dad! I brought you some cookies.” Meanwhile, the cookies were in the house the whole time, hidden from him all along. The beloved husband felt good because he was getting a treat. He felt supported that his wife, for his health, had banned cookies in the house. And the clever wife designed a way to make him happy and connect him with his daughter in a fun way. This is a perfect example of how important it is to design our environment—to manage the attention our fast brain pays to the everyday triggers, like the presence or absence of cookies.

We humans have always been social animals. In this story and many stories

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