Power of the ‘Aha’ moment

How to make New Year’s resolutions stick

Want to make your New Year’s resolutions stick? Now’s your time to shine by summoning the potent

power of the ‘aha!’ moment.

If you talk with people who have lost a large amount of weight and kept it off, or who have quit smoking, they’ll almost always trace their success back to a single revelation. They often remember that pivotal instant when, after years of being stuck on autopilot, or trying and failing to slim down, something ‘clicked’, enabling them to see things in a new light and forge a path to long-term health.

These ‘aha!’ or ‘eureka!’ moments are like sudden, exhilarating glimmers of insight that allow us to see something familiar with new perspective or to finally connect seemingly unrelated dots to solve a problem. Historically, such moments have been of scientific interest because of their potential to spark innovation in business. More recently, researchers and therapists have begun to appreciate the power of the ‘aha!’ as a catalyst for losing weight, battling addiction and making other life changes.

“These are quantum leaps of thought that can serve as shortcuts to positive personal change,” says neuroscientist John Kounios, co-author of The Eureka Factor: Creative Insights and the Brain. He and other experts who study these pivotal moments have begun to slowly unravel how and where in the brain they happen – and what we can do to encourage our own breakthroughs.

PINPOINTING THE SPARK OF INSIGHT

When Kounios first started his research into ‘aha!’ moments 15 years ago, he brought subjects into his lab, attached electroencephalogram sensors to their skulls, and observed electrical activity in their brains as they grappled with a mind-bending riddle, word game or visual puzzle. Then he and his colleagues repeated the experiments using MRI technology to observe blood flow in the brain.

Time after time, their studies revealed the same phenomenon: at the precise instant when the test subjects solved a puzzle – the moment that the answer “popped into their head” – a small patch of neurons above the right ear, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus, switched on. “We found a neural signature of the ‘aha!’ moment – literally, the spark of insight,” explains Kounios. E

We do not change from intellectual

insights alone. The ‘aha!’ moment is essentially the sweet spot where

you don’t just know it, you feel it.

It’s no surprise that the region – now sometimes playfully referred to as the ‘eureka spot’, or ‘E-spot’ – resides in the right side of the brain. While the left hemisphere tends to be focused and analytical, methodically screening out solutions that don’t quite fit to arrive at the one right answer (important when we’re, say, doing a maths problem), the right hemisphere casts a wider net, allowing random, seemingly unrelated ideas to gather and gel (ideal when we need a more creative solution). Although solving complex personal problems with many variables and potential answers isn’t the same as solving puzzles on a page, the same basic mechanisms apply, says Kounios.

There could be another reason an ‘aha!’ moment is so effective. Therapists suspect that deeper regions of the brain, often called the emotional brain, are also engaged in such moments, adding deep feeling to cold, hard facts – a number on the scale, a pair of pants that don’t fit – that may have been ignored or rationalised in the past.

“We do not change from intellectual insights alone,” says Courtney Armstrong, a counsellor and author of The Therapeutic ‘Aha’: 10 Strategies for Getting Your Clients Unstuck. That’s why people can often go for decades knowing that they would be healthier if they lost weight, yet not be motivated into action. It’s only when those moments coalesce in a visceral, emotionally charged light that the path to lasting change becomes visible. “The ‘aha!’ moment is essentially the sweet spot where the emotional brain and the rational brain finally integrate the information,” she says. In essence, you don’t just know it. You feel it.

MAKING YOUR WAY TO THE ‘AHA!’ MOMENT

While you can’t intentionally force your brain to pop out a breakthrough, you can coax a creative solution or emotionally charged epiphany to the surface. Kounios’s research shows that one second before the E-spot ignites, neurons in the visual cortex in the back of the brain start firing much more slowly, ‘downshifting’ into idle mode, as if the brain is ‘blinking’ to block out distractions, so it can latch onto a novel idea. That’s why researchers believe ‘aha!’ moments are famously common in the shower, where our eyes are often closed to keep out the soap, and the white noise of the water blocks out distracting sounds.

You can’t make your brain blink, but you can allow yourself some time alone each day to take a walk, meditate or otherwise escape the sensory overload of life.

Getting adequate sleep also primes the brain for the ‘aha!’ by cleansing it of progress-halting thoughts (I’m too busy to work out!) that make us feel stuck – a phenomenon known as ‘fixation forgetting’.

Studies by psychologist Mareike Wieth show that moments of insight also tend to be more common at non-optimal times, such as when we’re groggy in the moments between sleeping and waking up, when our analytical brain isn’t yet doing its job to narrow our focus.

TURNING INSIGHT INTO ACTION

Noticing the light-bulb moment is one thing. Keeping the light switched on to make your New Year’s resolutions stick is quite another.

“Motivation is a process that can wax and wane,” explains clinical psychologist Cindy Nour, director at Sydney’s MINDFRAME Psychology. “When you have an ‘aha!’ moment, you want to gain momentum.”

Her advice to strengthen your resolve? “Tease it out. Explore how your life will be different if you accomplish your goal, and what might get in the way of you fulfilling it.”

“Ask yourself why, until you start to cry,” suggests Dr Helena Popovic, a Gold Coast GP and author of the book Neuro Slimming: Let Your Brain Change Your Body – when you tap into a strong emotional reason for wanting to change, like keeping up with your grandchildren, you’ll feel more inspired to take action than someone suggesting you ‘should’. “If you don’t have a powerful enough reason to drive you to get fit, lose weight or leave an unfulfilling job, you’re not going to stick to it,” Popovic says.

A clear vision, coupled with new, healthier habits, create new circuits in the brain. “When you rewire the brain, all the behaviours you used to struggle with, like exercise or sticking to a meal plan, become easier,” says Popovic, showing the way to lasting results.