Well Designed Life: 10 Lessons in Brain Science & Design Thinking for a Mindful, Healthy, & Purposeful Life

218 Pages·2015·3.46 MB·English

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Copyright © 2015 by Kyra Bobinet All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by engagedIN Press,
offices in Walnut Creek, California.
www.engagedin.com
This book is not intended to take the place of medical advice from a trained medical professional. Readers
are advised to consult a physician or other qualified health professional regarding treatment of their medical
problems. Neither the publisher nor the author takes any responsibility for any possible consequences from
any treatment, action, or application of medicine, herb, process, or preparation to any person reading or
following the information in this book.
Book design by Katie Benezra
Editing and Neuroscience consultation by Stephanie Shorter, PhD
Copyediting by Ruth Strother
ISBN 978-0-9967345-7-8 (print)
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For my husband, Josh Leichter,
My kids,
Shara, Memphis, Ethan, & Alecsa
And in loving memory of
Irene Shuster
Preface
Chapter 1: design the change you want to see in your life
Chapter 2: compassion is king and queen
Chapter 3: fast brain, slow brain
Chapter 4: me, not me
Chapter 5: finally, the truth about motivation
Chapter 6: design for lasting change
Chapter 7: track your damn self
Chapter 8: future self, past self— BFFs or frenemies?
Chapter 9: got relapse? press reboot!
Chapter 10: freeing from attachment
Afterword
Endnotes
References
About the Author
W
hy can’t people change when they say they want to? And how can
they?
I believe that unhappiness and suffering stems from not being able to
change ourselves or our lives for the better. We may get stuck in grieving the
loss of a relationship. We may feel stuck in a dead-end career. We may get
injured or disabled and struggle to adjust. We may be a compulsive eater and out
of control. Or we may have not achieved the peak performance we know is
within us.
At one point or another, every person I know has been pinned down by life
—unable to wriggle free for a time. Developing the ability to affect what, when,
and how we want to change is a universal struggle. Regardless of our worldly
success, we all share the very human experience of trying to change our
behaviors only to sometimes fail, relapse, or get lost.
But there is a way out.
I am writing this book because I have tried to help people change. I have
done this as a physician, volunteer, corporate executive, product/intervention
designer, public health professional, nonprofit founder, faculty instructor,
mentor, friend, mother, and wife. Sometimes I’ve succeeded; other times I’ve
failed. This includes when I was working on myself. And after decades of
iteratively changing my own life, as well as playing those many roles as change
maker and innovator, I have discovered a universally reliable solution that draws
on the rigors of science and the creativity of the human spirit. This book is about
sharing what I have found so that others may benefit.
Notice that I said iteratively? Making real change in your life requires
repeating something over and over, iterating, to make small changes each time.
In Silicon Valley where I teach, iteration is a creative practice of design.
Designers iterate on many versions of a product, tweaking to improve it and
make it more successful. Likewise, I am proposing that we can change and
improve any part of our lives through constant, unrelenting iteration. Iteration in
this case means that we try and try and tweak and tweak the design of our
behavior changes until we transcend.
There are two main points to this book. First, you are the designer of your
life and your behavior change. Second, designers iterate their way to success—
life and your behavior change. Second, designers iterate their way to success—
and that is how you will also succeed.
You may be surprised that I just called you a designer—it may not be a
familiar term to you or maybe you have never thought of yourself as one. In my
eyes, every human is by default a designer of their life because we all have one
thing in common: choice. We choose our relationships, we choose our responses,
and we choose how we solve problems. And what else is design but making
choices consciously? You are in the role of a designer any time you shop for
groceries, help a friend, make an appointment, or clean your house. In each case,
your actions are communicating to the universe who you are, what you want to
experience, and how you want to live. You design all of this—whether
consciously or unconsciously.
The level of consciousness with which you do these actions is another
matter. As the designer of your life, you may not act like it sometimes, maybe
even often-times. Instead, you may give away your power or play a victim to life
—we have all been there—until you figure out how to stop. That is where I
believe thinking like a designer brings empowerment.
The mindset of a designer is one of actively creating and problem-solving—
iterating their way out of sticky situations. In this book, I hope to prove to you
that you are already doing this and to give you the tools to do it more often, with
more awareness and skillfulness, and with greater results. I want to make it so
that you can choose not to ever be a victim to anything or anyone anymore.
Years ago when I used to see patients, I noticed that there were two types of
people—those who were actively controlling and iterating on their health and
those who were not. This was my first hint that there is a solution for those who
were not taking the reins—could it be better for them if they were more like
those who were taking control? In fact, the last patient I remember treating was a
57-year-old gentleman who came in with a gouty toe. He shared with me that he
took methamphetamine three days prior (which made him dehydrated, which in
turn gave him gout). As I wrote the prescription for his gout, something turned
inside me—this was not the conversation I wanted to have with people. I was far
more interested in the behavior underlying his meth use. I wanted to go to the
source of why he was not in control of his life and health.
So, I pivoted. I withdrew from pursuing residency and instead went to
Harvard to study public health, behavior change, decision science, and
population health. From there, I became a corporate executive, creating large-
scale behavior change programs and products for millions of people. Then in
2013, the brilliant Dr. BJ Fogg invited me to Stanford to study in his lab and
opened a whole new world to me—behavior design, a field he pioneered. From
there, I started a design firm, engagedIN, as a practice that translates behavior
and neuroscience into helping people to be the designers of their health,
relationships, and lives.
This book marks a 20-year journey. I have been a geeky neuroscience
hobbyist for decades—voraciously reading every new study that could offer
insight into why we do what we do. With my insatiable curiosity, as well as my
own 16 years of practicing meditation, I have compiled a number of reliable
patterns that I believe define human behavior. In particular, I have found that
how our brain operates determines whether we change our behaviors or not.
In just the past 10 years, researchers have discovered unprecedented
insights into human behavior and brain patterns. This confluence of knowledge
has offered a new opportunity to change our behaviors based on what we now
know to be our irrational, impulsive, distractible, emotional, and complex brain.
I have picked my 10 favorite brain science concepts to share in the 10
chapters of this book because I want you to know what is really going on with
you—what your brain is doing while you go about changing your life. I want
you to be able to use hard, cold science—not just whimsical theories or
inspirational quips from some author—as the basis for becoming a better
designer of your life and your behavior.
To that point, I have simplified these brain science concepts for ease of use.
In many cases, this reduces the science down to a metaphorical level because
what I care about is that they can be applied easily toward design. As a former
bench scientist and primary researcher, I respect the trade off between true
neuroscience and applied neuroscience design as presented in this book. And
while I may pick specific brain regions that are known for a certain function, like
emotion, as a scientist I personally favor the emerging point of view that these
functions are conducted across integrated, multi-focal regions of the brain.
Designing behavior is equal parts art and science. Steve Jobs once said,
“Design is not just what it looks like or feels like. Design is how it works.”
Adopting the mindset of a designer puts you in the driver’s seat of making life
work. Grounding yourself in the science of how we see the world and how our
brain responds helps you design behaviors that work—in real life, for real
people. This is 100 percent about you acting on what you always wished you
would do. It’s about stepping out of any areas of helplessness and into creative
self-direction. You have a choice: design your life or let it design you!
I want to acknowledge a few key mentors along my path, as I did not get
here alone. First is the Great Spirit. Whatever or whomever that is to you, I fully
acknowledge a mysterious, compassionate intelligence that has awakened me to
serve the deeper patterns of life and behavior and be a codesigner with this