How to Stop Reacting and Teach Your Brain a New Way Forward
We’ve been taught to believe that we are the result of our environment – shaped by our experiences, upbringing, and culture.
But here’s the twist: we’re not shaped by what happens to us, but by how we interpret what happens.
Neuroscience reveals that we’re not simply reacting to the world around us. Instead, we are constantly making predictions. About people, outcomes, even our own actions – based on prior experiences.
“We’re not defined by our reactions, but by the predictions our brain makes.”
This shift in understanding gives us something powerful: the potential to reshape how we respond, behave, and even think. While core personality traits may be relatively stable, our habits, thought patterns, and behaviors are adaptable, and that’s where real change begins.
Moving Beyond Reaction
Let’s say you’re about to present a new idea to your boss or colleagues. Before you even speak, you feel tension rise in your chest. You imagine how they might reject your idea, or worse, dismiss it… Maybe you are afraid of negative feedback. Your body prepares for disappointment.
Notice that your brain isn’t reacting to this specific situation even though you are there at that moment. It’s predicting what will happen, based on past experiences (memory).
Lisa Feldman Barrett’s research shows that our brains are constantly anticipating what will happen next. Our feelings and behaviors are constructed in advance, using past data. This is useful for survival but can also lead us to get stuck in loops that no longer serve us.
What Predictive Processing Means for Change
The good news? Predictions can be updated. And when they are, so is your experience of the world.
Real change doesn’t come from trying harder (which is something we tell ourselves to do all the time). It comes from offering your brain consistent new input. New behaviors, new outcomes, new feedback loops. So that it learns to expect something different.
This is the foundational mechanism behind habit change, mindset work, and behavioral coaching. You are not locked in you’re updating the software.
It’s also the exact approach I teach my clients: we don’t force change, we help the brain expect something new.
A practical framework to shift from unconscious prediction loops to more flexible, supportive behaviors:
1. Notice Your Pattern
Start by simply becoming aware of a recurring moment. Procrastination, anxiety before a meeting, avoidance of conflict, fear of feedback. Ask: What is my brain expecting here? You can’t change what you don’t notice.
2. Pause and Breathe
When your prediction machine is in overdrive, physiological calm helps you be present. Use breath to tell your system “This moment is not dangerous”. This helps create space for a new choice.
3. Offer a New Alternative
If your brain is predicting rejection, conflict, or failure, it’s trying to protect you but it may be using outdated information (irrelevant experiences or memories). To shift this, you don’t need to force yourself into confidence. What helps is offering your brain a new story and allowing it to discover a new outcome. You’re guiding your brain to consider possibilities it hasn’t fully experienced yet.
Try this:
If it’s fear of feedback, tell yourself:
“I’m inviting collaboration. We’re building something together, and their input can help make it stronger.”
If it’s anxiety about performance, try:
“I’m safe. I can show up with curiosity instead of fear.” OR “This moment is new. I can bring curiosity instead of pressure.”
If it’s conflict avoidance, reframe it as:
“Conflict can be a bridge, not a threat. I can enter this with openness.”
Your new alternative isn’t just a new action. It’s a new thought that helps your brain form a different prediction. When you allow yourself to experience the outcome (and realize it wasn’t as threatening as expected), your brain begins to update its model.
That’s how real change starts: not with pressure, but with new evidence and gentle repetition.
4. Practice With Kindness
Habits form not through intensity, but through repetition. The more your brain sees a new behavior lead to a tolerable or positive outcome, the more it updates its model. So allow yourself to learn and to fail in the process of change.
Change Is About Practice, Not Personality
It’s tempting to think, “This is just who I am.” But most behaviors are not fixed traits. They’re rehearsed predictions. And those can be unlearned.
Habitual avoidance, defensiveness, burnout aren’t failures. They’re your brain saying, “Last time, this didn’t go well.” With safe, repeated new experiences, your internal model changes.
This doesn’t mean change is easy. But it does mean it’s possible.
An Invitation to Practice
Instead of thinking about “owning” your growth or “fixing” yourself, try this mindset: I’m teaching my brain something new.
This is not about blame, it’s about flexibility. Change is not a demand. It’s an invitation.
Ask yourself:
What’s one behavior I’m ready to update?
What’s one small way I can show my brain a new outcome?
When you start here, change becomes a process of learning – not forcing.
Curious to explore this further with my support?
I work with professionals who want to shift patterns, improve their work performance, and move beyond outdated internal narratives. Book a session or read more about performance mentoring.
“Sometimes in life you are responsible for changing something not because you have done something wrong but because you are the only person who can.” — Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett
References to other research used in this post
Barrett, L. F. (2017). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Mariner Books.
Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2787
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do in life and business. Random House.
Gross, J. J. (2002). Emotion regulation: Affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology, 39(3), 281–291. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0048577201393198
Ochsner, K. N., Bunge, S. A., Gross, J. J., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2002). Rethinking feelings: An fMRI study of the cognitive regulation of emotion. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14(8), 1215–1229. https://doi.org/10.1162/089892902760807212
Schacter, D. L., Addis, D. R., & Buckner, R. L. (2008). Episodic simulation of future events: Concepts, data, and applications. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124(1), 39–60. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1440.001
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The developing mind: How relationships and the brain interact to shape who we are (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.
