Alright, folks! I promised you science in my last post, and so science you shall receive! Are you ready to completely rethink how you’ve been going about self care? Then strap in! We’re going for a ride.
The method I’m going to be teaching you will require a complete rethink about how you organize your life. But not in the ways you’re used to. I’m not talking about time management or some way of setting reminders for yourself or rewarding good behaviour with froofy foot baths etc etc. This is about managing your nervous system. For that, you’ve got to understand how your brain works. It’s not what you’re going to expect.
Our brains are these marvellous Frankenstein’s Monster of evolution. We have different parts that have evolved for very different reasons all kind of mashed together in this barely functional, completely contradictory, totally unreasonable way that honestly, it’s amazing we’ve managed to come so far as a society. It’s like trying to access Facebook on a computer built in the 70’s. We’re actually not at all wired for most of what we ask our brains to do and yet, somehow, it mostly manages. It shouldn’t. But it does. That means each and every one of you is a miracle.
You’ll understand what I mean in a minute.
The first thing you need to understand is that you and your brain have vastly different goals.
We are basically earthworms that grew arms and legs to get us closer to food. That’s how most of our physiology is still arranged. We then developed a system to detect and assess threats to our ability to accomplish that task. We call this thing our brain. This is why our brain nervous system - our central nervous system - is different than our peripheral nervous system (the arms and legs bit), is different from our gut/enteric nervous system (the earthworm bit). And that threat detection system itself has grown and evolved over time, mashing together different areas - the brain stem, the cerebellum, the limbic system, the cortex - to do different functions for the overall threat assessment and management of this whole giant complicated thing. And most of that operates subconsciously, meaning, you don’t have much say in how it runs. It just operates in the background quietly influencing everything you do. You think you run this ship, but nope. You sure don’t.
Consciousness is this poorly understood, difficult to localize, totally nebulous concept that we still haven’t quite pinned down. We’re not sure how it works or why it works, we just know that it’s a thing.
Think of it like a piano player versus the piano. The piano is the brain and body. The piano player is your consciousness. You can have an amazing piano player with a crap piano, and they’ll still be able to play some pretty amazing music. You can have a crap piano player with the best piano in the world, and that’s still going to sound like badly played hot crossed buns.
You with me so far?
So, again, the first thing you need to understand is that you, piano player, might want to do a bunch of stuff, but your piano actually has a separate system all of it’s own with it’s own rules and those rules pretty much run completely counter to what you want. Your goal is to get stuff done. But your brain’s goal is to keep you safe. Often, these two goals conflict, leading to procrastination, which leads to you having to use your stress response to override your brain to get things accomplished. This leads to burnout and, ultimately, you not doing the things, which is what your brain wanted. The more stress response required to overcome your brain, the faster you burn out. And as soon as you give in to the burnout, your brain actually gets a dopamine hit.
Think about that for a second.
Your brain gets rewarded every time you quit doing stuff, because it accomplished its goal of keeping you safe.
I’ll give you a for instance.
You might want to go outside and meet up with friends for a walk. But outside is where the bears are. People are where diseases are. And home is where the food is.
Your brain is hardwired to absolutely fear predators, famine, and disease.
Which one of you - your consciousness or your brain - is going to win that scenario?
The answer to that is actually, ‘it depends’. It depends on how safe you convince your brain that that walk is going to be. The end. That’s what determines how likely it is you’re going to actually make it out of your pyjamas and into the world.
How difficult or easy it is to convince your brain how safe it is is determined by your past experiences, your general hyper-arousal of your nervous system (this is actually based on a number of factors outside of your control including genetic and epigenetic information you inherited from your parents and ancestors), your current stress levels, whether or not you’re trying to avoid a larger stressor (something else you want to get done but your brain has decided that that is actually a bigger threat so the walk seems safer in comparison), etc etc. You get it.
We often blame ourselves for things like procrastination, lack of motivation, mood states, etc., but those things have way more to do with a lot of other factors than us just being lazy. So if nothing else, please quit ever shame spiralling over what you aren’t getting done and instead realize that there are A LOT of WAY more productive things you can do to take control over your nervous system than just sit and feel bad about yourself.
What are those things?
You’re going to have to come to the World Record Tour Event on Saturday, April 20th from 1-5pm at the Mic Mac Amateur Aquatic Club to find that out. I’m not making this THAT easy on you. ;)
The 2 for 1 sale ends this Friday, and they’re half gone already, so make sure to get yours while they’re still cheap and available! This is the ONE show we’re going to be doing in the Halifax area. After that, the only way to get this information is to come for a one-on-one appointment, at a cost of $145 per appointment, for at least 12 appointments. Or try to catch a show in another city. Your call.
You can get your tickets here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dr-stephanie-the-world-record-tour-tickets-876639240567?
See you there?
Till next time, folks!