The Grass-Path Method for Rewiring Behaviour
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Dr Tara Swart's working model of neuroplasticity for people who have been told to change and don't know how. She compares a new behaviour to crossing a field of knee-high grass: the first walk flattens some blades, a week of daily walks treads a visible path, and continued repetition is like laying wooden slabs and cementing them until the route takes no effort at all. In the brain, repetition drives myelination, which makes that pathway conduct faster, and eventually the new way of thinking overwrites the old one. Practically, she ladders the reps from the lowest-stakes relationship up to the hardest one, so each rep succeeds and the pathway keeps getting reinforced rather than abandoned after one difficult attempt.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Name one concrete behaviour, not a trait
Executives told her 'be more emotionally intelligent' was meaningless. Convert the feedback into a single observable action, such as listening to someone for five minutes without interrupting.
Pro tip If you can't picture doing it tonight, it isn't concrete enough yet.
- 2
Start with the lowest-stakes relationship
Her first assignment was: go home tonight and listen to your child for five minutes without interrupting them and without your phone on your person.
Pro tip Remove the phone from your body, not just from your hand.
- 3
Repeat daily until it stops feeling hard
Daily repetition is what treads the path. Simple behavioural changes like a new gym schedule take roughly two to three weeks before they stop feeling difficult.
Watch out Sporadic reps let the grass bounce back up; the path never forms.
- 4
Escalate to a friend, then a friendly colleague
Once the behaviour works at home, run the same exercise with a friend, then with a colleague you already have a good relationship with.
Pro tip Each escalation should feel only slightly harder than the last.
- 5
Attempt the hardest case last
Only once the pathway is built do you use it on the person you have not been getting on with at work. By then the behaviour is available under pressure.
Watch out Starting here usually fails and convinces people they can't change.
- 6
Give it the right runway
Attention-intense capacities such as emotional intelligence, intuition or creativity take roughly six to twelve months. Swart's theory is that a focused nine-month period, the gestation period of a baby, can produce a rebirth in your neural pathways.
Pro tip Diary the review point rather than judging progress week to week.
In the wild
Swart was repeatedly brought in to coach senior people who were technically excellent but had, in their employers' words, no emotional intelligence: shouting, going red in the face, making colleagues cry or want to leave their team. They told her change was too hard and that they didn't understand what 'more caring' actually meant. She explained neuroplasticity as building a pathway, then set the ladder: five phone-free minutes listening to their child, then a friend, then a colleague they got on with, and finally the person at work they clashed with. Men and women across different ages reported the first exercise alone was eye-opening, because they had never done it.
→ By the final rung the listening pathway was built well enough that they could hold a genuinely uninterrupted conversation with the colleague they had been in conflict with.
Common mistakes
Starting with the hardest conversation
Attempting the behaviour first on the person you clash with almost guarantees a failed rep, and the failure gets read as proof that you can't change rather than proof that the pathway isn't built yet.
Expecting emotional skills on a habit timeline
Gym attendance or a fasting window settles in two to three weeks. Emotional intelligence, intuition and creativity are attention-intense and run to six to twelve months, so people quit at week three thinking it isn't working.
Practising only when it feels convenient
The path through the grass only forms with daily repetition. Occasional practice lets the old pathway stay dominant, because the old way of thinking is only overwritten once the new route becomes the easier one.
From the transcript
“first time you walk across that field you're going to be pushing that grass down with your feet and maybe some of it would bounce…”
“and so what I would get these guys to do is I'd say go home tonight and listen to your child for five minutes without…”
“when we're talking about things like emotion intelligence or Intuition or creativity we're talking more like six to 12 months”
From the episode
Change Your Brain: The Power Of Neuroplasticity And Braincare - Dr Tara Swart
Dr Tara Swart