Does your brain have a mind of its own?

We set up goals, things to do, task lists, etc. Then comes short term and long term visions. We motivate ourselves losing weight, learning new technologies, meditations or musical instruments. As time passes by, most of our goals, things to do and task lists simply disappear from our mind or get pushed back further from newer goals, things to do, task lists and instant gratifications. If "selfish genes" were the sole answers of evolution, why wouldn't "selfish genes" fulfill the goals and tasks that are more rewarding?

Gary Marcus answers:

"The fact that evolution is entirely blind, unable to look forward, backward or to the side. As Charles Darwin observed, evolution invariably proceeds through a process called "descent with modification." In lay language, this means that Mother Nature never starts from scratch, no matter how useful an overhaul might be. Everything that evolves necessarily builds on that which came before. Our arms, to take one simple example, are adaptations of the front legs of our primate ancestors.

In practical terms, that means that evolution's products aren't always particularly sound. Truly dismal solutions are quickly weeded out; if someone has a genetic condition that brings them into the world without a functioning heart, they don't live long enough to reproduce. But merely adequate solutions (what engineers call "kluges") -- like the awkward, injury-prone human spine, good enough but far from perfect -- can stick around indefinitely if better solutions are too far away on the evolutionary landscape."

Here is the reason per Gary Marcus our goals get "thwarted":

"Our attempts to pursue our goals are often thwarted by the fact that evolution has built our most sophisticated technologies on top of older technologies -- without working out how to integrate the two. We can plan in advance, using our modern deliberative reasoning systems, but our ancestral reflexive mechanisms, which evolved first, still basically control the steering wheel. When the chips are down, it's those mechanisms that our brains turn to, and that means that our brains frequently wind up relying on machinery that is all about acting first and asking questions later, squandering some of the efforts of our deliberative system.

No sensible engineer would have designed things this way. Why design fancy machinery for making long-term goals if you're not going to use it? Yet the brain is structured such that the more tired, stressed or distracted we are, the less likely we are to use our forebrains and the more likely to lean back on the time-tested but shortsighted machinery we've inherited from our ancestors."

Gary Marcus also describes the way conning our ancestral reflexive system so that goals and visions get realized. How? "Translate those abstract goals into a form your ancestral systems -- which traffic largely in dumb reflexes -- can understand: if-then. If you find yourself in a particular situation, then take a specific action: "If I see French fries, then I will avoid them."

Read this impressively mind grabbing article from following link:
Does your brain have a mind of its own?