Inconsistency

This latest research in neuroscience shows that our brain is wired to be inconsistent when it comes to physical movement.

If you've ever wondered why your golf swings, fastballs or free throws don't quite turn out the same way each time, even after years of practice, there is now an answer: It's mostly in your head...

It's as if each time the brain tries to solve the problem of planning how to move, it does it anew... Practice and training can help the brain solve the problem more capably, but people and other primates simply aren't wired for consistency like computers or machines. Instead, people seem to be improvisers by default.

"The nervous system was not designed to do the same thing over and over again...The nervous system was designed to be flexible. You typically find yourself doing things you've never done before."

The value of practice and training is that they can reduce the variation in the mind's abilities, but they don't change the variable way the mind plans motion. An analogy might be to doing math problems. Someone who has studied will find it easier to solve a new problem than someone who has not prepared.

If inconsistency is the norm when it come to physical movement, it will be even more so for our consciousness: our mind is a squadron of simpletons, we have many good and bad minds, right and wrong minds, we shift in and out of different minds all the time. It's all too common that nice people could do something nasty and wicked ones show real compassion.

Yet just like practice can greatly reduce the variation of our movement, we count on 'mental practice' to help us be more consistent. By mental practice I mean that we need to habituate ourselves to something we desire: once you've made doing something a habit, you are consistent. So it's the habit, not will power, that makes us consistent, although you do need some will power to develop a habit.

Next time when you joke about that you are consistently inconsistent, you can squarely blame on this SOB(Same Old Brain).