Innercise

Life, as they say, is what happens while we’re making other plans. Your progress won’t always follow your plan—that’s normal. In fact, things almost never go exactly to plan.

It’s easy to be fooled into dismissing what Caroline was doing as just wishful thinking. But there’s more to this than that. At a neurological level, Caroline was training her brain through an Innercise process we call “cognitive priming.”

Goals as Means, Not Ends

Make the Change Too Small to Fail

even see some of those legendary “abs” that you hear people talk about. On Day 1, you get up early and go for a long walk. It’s the first time you’ve really exercised in years, and you feel energized. You eat a healthy breakfast, and then head for the bathroom. First stop, the scale. Wait a minute, you think. Something’s wrong. My weight hasn’t cha

Step 2. Sit quietly. Take five minutes and read your story as you visualize and emotionalize yourself ALREADY living the life that you just wrote about in Step 1. Go into as much detail as possible. For example,

On this last point, use your imagination to feel what it’s like to truly be in this new reality. Emotionalize your vision. Don’t be discouraged if you can’t immerse yourself in this exercise at first. It takes practice to focus your attention through spaced repetition over many days. The objective is to practice until the vision feels normal. Don’t

your brain. In particular, your whole brain is heavily dependent on visual information. To hunt, forage, mate, and survive, vision was absolutely critical in prehistoric times, and even with evolution, today, your brain is still picture-crazy. It needs a clear mental image of what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Without it, your brain is limited

Now close your eyes and think of one goal you want to achieve. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is but make it something you truly want to accomplish. As you continue breathing calmly, in through your nose and out through your mouth, imagine that you’ve actually achieved that goal. • What are you feeling knowing that you’ve arrived at this poi