How Can We Better Remember?
If you’re like hundreds of millions of people around the globe, chances are you’ve made a New Year’s resolution to adopt healthier lifestyle habits earlier this year. While it is safe to say that there is no weapon more fearsome than our own will, for which even an Excalibur is no match, the chances of us sticking to the exercise resolution long enough for it to become a daily habit are statistically slim.
For some of us, the tendency of actually sticking to the workout plan for weeks might just be equivalent to the chance of looking for a horse in an abandoned stall. Along with the daily dwindle, we become hopelessly tangled and confused. But there is nothing alarmingly odd about such an occurrence. It might really just be the fact that we feel unmotivated all the time.
The upside is that we have an explanation and a solution to such a problem.
While it appears on the surface that a lack of willpower is the prime culprit for us being unmotivated to stick to a workout regime, it is not necessarily the case. There has been scientific research indicating that abnormalities within one’s dopamine binding receptors may explain why some of us are more prone to being couch potatoes than others. Dopamine receptors help to trigger feelings of reward that make our brains say “do it more.” This is helpful in hardwiring positive lifestyle behaviour that gradually turns into lifelong habits. However, if there is no proper dopamine signalling, activities such an exercise would not feel like a pleasurable or rewarding experience on a neurological level.
This is why some of us cannot associate exercising and feeling good together.
Although willpower is often invoked as a way to modify behaviour, we need to understand the underlying physical basis for our behaviour. The scientific evidence of abnormalities occurring in our dopamine receptors indicates that a lack of motivation to exercise goes far beyond simply being lazy. The good news is our dopamine receptors are malleable and can be reshaped and rewired. This can be done by sticking with slight improvements to diet and exercise long enough to create an upward spiral within the loop-circuit.
This is where reminders come into play.
We’ve all had the experience of intending to do something then forgetting when the time arrives. We may have planned to buy our favourite bottle of milk along the way home after work, only to realise that we’ve completely forgotten about it when we land our foot onto our doorstep. One reason we forget to complete an action we intend to do is that we are not reminded to do it.
A reminder helps us to remember.
This helps to kickstart the process of creating an upward spiral within the loop-circuit, especially when we lack the willpower to exercise. When we have the inclusion of distinctive reminders to perform an action, there is a high tendency to increase the chances of following through on our intentions. It is such an underrated technique. Even though all of us are aware that reminders are immensely effective, some of us deliberately choose not to use it as it somehow reeks of incompetency and uselessness. But it doesn’t. In fact, the lack of reminders only bring us closer to a state of being jostled and shaken. Let’s bring out the sticky notes and spread them around our homes again. “Go for a run!” Let’s bring out the virtual sticky notes onto our phones and laptops as well. “Watch An Episode of Ted Talk!” It starts off as a reminder, and it’ll gradually turn into a habit before we even know it. The key is consistency.
