Imagine your brain as an Iceberg – there’s only the smallest bit visible… but loads below the surface, out of sight.
It’s the perfect image, because you’re only aware of 5% of your brain (what is called the conscious brain), which means 95% of your brain (or the subconscious part) is totally out of your awareness. You live from the 5% which is conscious, yet the 95% is also guiding how you behave, act, make choices and decisions.
Brains are brilliant… except when they’re stopping you from doing what you want, or leading you to make decisions which are contrary to your intentions.
If you’ve found yourself wondering why you’ve done something (possibly more than once) which you didn’t plan to do, or not done what you really really wanted to… that 95% is probably at the root of it.
It’s usual to think of this perceived failure as being down to laziness, a lack in focus, not being motivated enough, even weak… but what if it’s your brain’s belief there’s a threat to you, and it’s keeping you safe by putting up blocks?
Here’s another image – think of your brain like a loving, but over-protective parent.
The brain has many functions, but the most important of them all is to keep you – its human – safe, and that can lead it to behave like a loving, but over-protective parent.
Whenever something happens which causes you to feel a strong negative emotion, the brain marks the memory as a threat. From that memory grows a belief which – no matter how unfounded, unhelpful, or even downright irrational – results in your brain using every tool at it’s disposal (and it has a whole heap) to prevent you from putting yourself in that position again.
So when you decide you want to do something, yet find yourself doing anything but… this is why. Your loving, over-protective parent of a brain is tripping you up.
This means there’s no point using those tools which engage with your conscious brain – all the ones we normally use – instead you have to go digging into the 95% (or the subconscious) bit of your brain, to find out what the belief is, and where it originated from.
Then, and only then, can you offer evidence to your loving, but over-protective parent of a brain…. that a particular belief need not be true, that you have in fact got this, and it can step down.
© Debs Carey, 2024
DEBS CAREY 