Habits, games and learning: How your actions can shape your mind

Thoughts lead on to actions
Actions form habits
Habits decide character
And character fixes your destiny.

- James C. Hunter

Imagine getting up. You look at yourself in the mirror and thinks:

"Will I back to sleep again or I wash my face?"

X

Going to the nearest bakery. When you ask for something to drink, you are questioned:

"Coffee, juice, cappuccino or water? "

When arriving at work:

"What's the first thing I open in my browser? Email, schedule, or social media? "

When arriving home:" Do I Study? Sleep? Relax? Read ? Watch something? Social media? Or randomness navigation on the internet? "

Your day is surrounded by decision-making, these are responsible to lead you to actions. Often practiced generates your habits.

And “to do” makes you.

Where do you want to go in awhile? Or weeks from now? Months? Years? Do your results match your estimation? With your action? With your habits?

It is not new that habits are important for productivity, books have already been written about this topic. One with good scientific basis and accessible language is:

Learn good habits, remove the bad and reuse the lost when chaos was established requires resilience.

But let’s go beyond productivity and practical results?

What if every action, habit, form of learning and execution shaped not only your future, but the way you think, the way your brain biologically forms, and how your mind will become psychologically "es" or "ins" -table?

According to neuroscientific studies [1-2], habit formation dictates much more of your sanity than you can imagine.

The study [2] shows that when we are going to make a decision, many processes in your brain happen. One is a competition between sequences of connections (pathways) that exist.

This competition shapes which pathways will stay stronger in the brain, influencing thoughts and actions. The interesting thing is that they are manipulated by the form of execution your action.

These pathways (medial dorsal striatum and dorsal lateral striatum) are responsible for "goal-directed control" and "habitual action control".

In goal-directed control, you have a purpose / problem / goal that will be solved in the short-term, in a explosion action of doing. In the habitual action control, you have a purpose / problem / goal that will be solved in blocks, with extended time because it requires solving several small challenges to reach the ultimate goal.

How does it apply? Imagine that you must deliver a work within 1 month. In goal-directed control, you resolve it in one day like overnight and in the habitual action control you break this work into small successes each day has to follow and when you reach 1 month you will end. In the end, the result is the same, the work will be delivered, but your brain was shaped in different ways depending on how you performed it.

It is known that goal-directed control can induce neuropsychiatric problems such as obsession,  compulsion and addictive disorders [1-2].

Studying this competition, they found [2] the pathways are antagonistic because in the brain one is hyper-activation of neurons (goal-directed control) and the other a low activation, essential for learning with easy capacity to be recycled.

The study shows that one of the molecular mechanisms of the brain involved is the endocannabinoid system that also regulates motivation, reward and addiction. Hyper-activation is associated with more reward, potentially this brings you more sense of pleasure and also a capacity of your brain addicted to excess. So it is so hard to build good habits initially, they are structured in the brain in low and constant neuronal activations, with little feedback of pleasurable rewards. The connections with low activations are good for learning because they require little energy to activate or change you connectivity, what is essential to lapidate habits until they become good.

If we look at your life as a gamefication, are you a player that makes decisions based on the moment or in the prospect of small positive results that will lead you to a better future?

No matter if they are macro or micro decisions, they all have a "butterfly effect" in your brain.

If the universe were a school and your life simulated into a virtual reality in the form of a learning game, as used in several research to increase the ability of students to learn faster [3]. What would be your favorite game modes and qualities?

Extrated image from reference[3]

What kind of execution would you be training?

Explosions of results? In the adrenaline and addiction of tomorrow?

Or small results that lead you to great success? Those responsible for bringing you better planned and bigger steps?

What kind of mind your circuitry is forming in your brain in the acts of your day to day?

It only depends on you, the secret reside in the way you see and seek the execution of your doing. Your sanity is subordinate to your mind. Empowering your mind makes you capable of seeing, feeling, and performing better actions in the slice of universe alive inside ‘inmind’.

[1] Dias-Ferreira, E., Sousa, J.C., Melo, I., Morgado, P., Mesquita, A.R.,Cerqueira, J.J., Costa, R.M., and Sousa, N. (2009). Chronic stress causesfrontostriatal reorganization and affects decision-making. Science.

[2] Gremel, Christina M. et al. Endocannabinoid Modulation of Orbitostriatal Circuits Gates Habit Formation. Neuron.

[3] Dimitrios Vlachopoulos and Agoritsa Makri. The effect of games and simulations on higher education: a systematic literature review. Springer, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education.