One hypnosis practitioner outlined three ways you can “rewire” your brain to enjoy the boring tasks you normally loathe.
Emilie Leyes, 28, from New York, has more than 916,000 followers on TikTok, where she shares brain training and mindfulness tips to improve your life.
The content creator, known as @emilieleyes.hypnosisrecently revealed how you can do that change the way your brain looks at certain tasks to make them more enjoyable.
“My life completely changed when I learned these super easy little brain hacks to actually enjoy the boring parts of my day more,” she said.
Emilie Leyes, 28, is a hypnosis practitioner and brain training specialist based in New York
In a recent TikTok video, she shared three brain hacks to help you enjoy boring tasks
From boring to brilliant: The three hypnotist hacks that will make you enjoy boring tasks
Force yourself to laugh your way through a boring task Give reasons why the task is good Imagine yourself enjoying work
Leyes then gave a short neuroscientific lesson on why the brain associates certain tasks with boredom in the first place.
“In neuroscience, neurons that fire together are said to be connected. That means when multiple experiences happen at the same time, they become physically connected in the brain,” she explained.
“When we feel bored or frustrated in the middle of chores, doing laundry, or completing certain tasks of the day, our brains have linked those associations and our brains work like prediction machines.”
‘[Our brains] Use past experiences with a specific task to learn how we should feel in the future. So if you’ve been bored doing laundry your whole life, your brain will predict you to be bored while doing laundry.”
However, according to the brain-training specialist, you can “rewire” this association to learn to enjoy dreaded tasks more.
The first trick she recommended is to “cultivate positive emotions in the midst of this boring task,” which will help you change your perspective.
Leyes said one way to achieve this is to practice “laughter yoga,” which involves prolonged voluntary laughter.
“It’s based on the idea that the body doesn’t know the difference between real laughter and fake laughter,” she explained. “So when you start mimicking laughter in your body, it becomes real so quickly, and you feel good almost instantly.”
‘[Our brains] Use past experience on a given task to determine how we should feel in the future,” she explained
“When you do this while doing your laundry, doing your taxes while commuting to work, your brain begins to associate experiences of joy, laughter and excitement in the midst of that task.” She added.
Leye’s second tip is to tell yourself, “That’s good because…” and fill in the blank.
The hypnotherapist said that when she’s doing something she usually finds boring, she lists reason after reason why it’s good.
“What we put our attention on gets amplified in our mind.” So if we put our attention on the parts of that experience that are calming, good, comfortable, etc., that will amplify the positive experience of that task,” she explained.
“For example, when I wash my hands, I could say, ‘That’s good because I love the feel of the water on my hands. This is good because the water is the perfect temperature. That’s good because I do.” I love the smell of the soap.
The first trick Leye recommends is to “cultivate positive emotions in the midst of this boring task.” She said one way to achieve this is to practice “laughter yoga,” which means laughing voluntarily
Leye’s second tip is to tell yourself, “That’s good because…” and fill in the blank. She also recommended imagining how to enjoy work
She noted, “The more things we can focus our attention on that are comfortable in this otherwise mundane moment, the more our brain gets a new perspective on the task.”
Leye’s third and final trick was to imagine having fun at work.
“The subconscious doesn’t know the difference between imagination and reality,” she said. “So if you have a task that you procrastinate or just don’t want to do, take some time to close your eyes and imagine what it would be like if that task was so much fun.”
“Ask yourself, ‘What if it was fun?’ And imagine yourself laughing during the process, really enjoying every second of it and really paying attention to every single detail, to the sights, sounds, smells, Tastes, sensations and emotions.
‘Your brain processes this as a real-world experience and begins using that experience to inform how you will feel in the future. So if you do this task in real life, it will be more fun,” she concluded.
