Rich Bello breaks down how the brain runs on autopilot through habits and instincts, both subconscious programs that save energy. Instincts are hardwired from birth, like fear of spiders, while habits are learned through repetition. The habit loop works like this: a trigger, a behavior, a reward, such as smelling pastries at a bakery.
Chapters
The Great Architect developed an elegant system to conserve our energy while improving our chances of survival by developing habits and instincts. Habits and instincts are repetitive patterns of behavior subconsciously programmed to run upon stimulus. These programs are created when the subconscious mind observes either physical or mental repetitive activities. The programs conserve energy for your conscious mind to focus on other things, but presumably for survival. The conscious mind is an energy hog. If you had to think about every time you did something like walking, right Think about. You have to think about walking each time you did it consciously. So it would take up a tremendous amount of energy that's needed for other functions of survival and to build your mental model of how we survive. Best Instincts and habits are two different types of programs. They're both wired into our brains, which anytime we have a repetitive action, they have similar characteristics, but the big difference is timing. Instincts are pre programmed repetitive physical or mental actions. They're with us from birth. They're built into our genetic code and have basically been pre wired into our neural network. As a species has evolved over time. As humans progressed over time, they encountered problems along the way and developed new ways of thinking to solve them. Rather than recreate the wheel each time, which would be a very inefficient use of energy. These ways of thinking and acting are passed down genetically throughout the species. Now, habits are like instincts. However they are learned in this lifetime, they're not part of our DNA. We're constantly improving our mental model with respect to survival. Even in the current lifetime. This is kind of akin to artificial what artificial intelligence does. Constantly improving the model for whatever the mission is. Humans are constantly learn, constantly learning and improving the survival model over time, adding new habits. And over time, if these habits are widely adopted by the species, they become instincts for future generations of all humans. We're even evolving our brains, adding additional layers to the brain. Our instincts. This is the instinct process. Our instincts are embedded deep into our memory bags. This is how the process works. When we're faced with a stimulus, our subconscious mind engages a retrieval process to search our memory banks for the best match of the times we faced this situation before it then examines all the actions we took in response to this particular stimulus, looking for the action resulting in the best outcome. From the lens of survival. This whole process is done within milliseconds. These ways of thinking, including warnings about possible dangers and threats, were pre programmed deeply into our brains so that future generations wouldn't have to recreate the wheel, so to speak. For instance, studies have shown that phobias of spiders and snakes are Instinctual. A small child is afraid of them without ever having experienced them. So it's clear that this isn't a habitual fear from this lifetime. They haven't seen it before. The evolutionary reason is that in the old days, humans had to survive in an environment that was densely populated with poisonous reptiles like these spiders and snakes. We learned that we needed to spot these insidious little creatures to protect ourselves. This phobia was passed down to alert future generations to both spot and stay away from them, as they represented a threat to our prime directive survival. Let's look at an example now to see how instincts work. 50,000 years ago or so, my great great grandfather, ancestor Bello and his family were just chilling out in their lovely home, which is a cave, by the way. And my great grandpa spots a tiger outside the cave in the bushes. Not just any tiger, but the great saber tooth. So what happens? The stimulus. That's a saber tooth tiger perched outside the cave. The retrieval process starts. Looks for memories. Where? Where is this situation? Happened in the past, right? Not just even in this lifetime, but in previous lifetimes. It's our DNA. Remember our genetic code. Memories from previous lifetimes. Okay, I found a few. Let's proceed to the best program. Memory match process. So it looks. It's like. Okay, found one from a previous lifetime with the same stimulus in one lifetime. I figured maybe if I'm nice to the big cat, he'll let us go. So I call him over. Here, kitty, kitty. Big mistake, right? Kitty ate me for dinner, but first ate my wife and kids in the cage. I won't forget that in the next lifetime. Right. That's going in the genetic code. Okay. Next program found. I run fight or flight. Flight. Right. Darn. He catches me. But only after he has my wife and kids as an appetizer. Nice kitty. Gave me a head start. Thanks, kitty. Right. That one didn't work either. Put that one in the code. Next program found from another lifetime, one of my ancestors. I grabbed a log from the fire and threatened the big cat. Right? He runs away. Success. That's a keeper. Keep that program. Make it an instinct. The next time a saber toothed tiger attacks us, we. We fight. In reality, all this happens over the course of milliseconds. And the program that worked the best will automatically be chosen. That will be your instinct. Saber toothed tiger equals fight. We know instinctively we can't outrun it and it'll attack us if we do nothing. If it's stalking us, we need to take action. The habit process. This is the process that ingrains any repetitive action into your subconscious mind. So the action becomes automatic and. And can even be unconscious. You don't even know it's happening, right? It happens every time the trigger occurs. So what happens? Number one, you get a trigger, right? This is a reminder to your subconscious mind about a particular behavior. It's like, oh, the trigger. What do I do when this trigger happens? Behavior, the action you take as a result of the trigger, that's what you do. And then there's a reward, right? Some type of benefit, right? It can even be a perceived benefit that you get from doing the behavior. This reinforces that behavior and reinforces the habit. More you do it, the more ingrained it becomes. Okay, let's take a look at an example of a physical habit. Remember, habits can be physical or mental. So you're walking to work, and you pass the bakery each day consciously. You see to yourself that morning and every morning for the past few weeks. I'm not going to go into the bakery today because, you know, it's getting close to summertime and you have to get into that bathing suit today. You close in on the bakery, you get close, and what happens? You smell those pastries. Trigger, right? You immediately walk in, buy it and eat it, right? You're rewarded. Instant gratification. Dopamine released. You'll probably do it again tomorrow.
