Mel Robbins says the first step most people skip is writing down exactly what you want. Using Stanford neuroscientist Jim Doty's research on how the brain wires together what fires together, she outlines a five-step routine: write your goal, read it silently and aloud, visualize it vividly, and attach emotion to it. This multisensory approach makes the goal feel real enough to actually pursue.
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Decide what you want and write it down. And now you're gonna be like, Captain freaking Obvious, decide what you want and write it down? Yeah, believe it or not, this is the rule that almost everybody misses because you manage your goals in your head. And think about it, you can't hit a target that you don't see. You know, I remember Oprah once, somebody asked her, Oprah, why do you think so many people get stuck? Stuck? Her answer: because most people never take the time to get clear about what they want. Which, if you can't get clear with yourself, if you don't know what's important, you're going to get swallowed up by everything else. You know how I always say if everything's important, nothing is? If you don't declare what's important, nothing will seem important in your life. The late Dr. Jim Doty, who is the renowned Stanford neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, has done extensive research on what happens when you name what you want, when you write it down, and then when you add in one other thing that I'm about to explain to you. In neuroscience, it's called Hebbian learning. What fires together wires together. And Dr. Doughty explained that the fastest way for you to wire in the importance of this goal is to bring online as many sensory systems as you can, like smell and taste and emotion. Dr. Dottie said, if you have a goal, he wants you to take a pencil. I'm holding a pen. It doesn't matter. You take a pencil, you write it down, and when you're writing it down, you're doing something physical, tactile. Then you're gonna read it silently to yourself. So you look down and you read it silently. Then you read it out loud. Okay, you're gonna volunteer for hospice, you're gonna write that book, you're gonna put yourself back out there and meet the love of your life. Then you visualize and you ask how you can get certified to volunteer, and then you visualize yourself going to the meeting, and then you visualize yourself driving the meals or sitting bedside with somebody and see what you want in your imagination. And as you do this, your brain builds the circuitry to make it easier in real life. So you're not just thinking about it anymore. You have encoded it into your brain. And now your brain's like, oh yeah, we're doing this. We think, like, I can visualize doing this. You see how powerful this is?
