You know that thing you cannot do?
These next few lines will teach you how you can, in fact, do it.
How the brain works:
- The “goings-on” in the world outside of our bodies trigger one of our five senses [sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch].
- This sense then moves through the body as electromagnetic signals, traveling from cell to cell until they reach the spine.
- They then travel up the spine, entering the brain at the back of the head.
- These signals trigger the emotional part of the brain, to whatever emotion needs to be triggered, as per what we saw/heard/smelled/tasted or touched.
- The brain then sends the information to the part of our brain that decides which action needs to be taken because of this emotion.
But how does the brain know how to react to a circumstance?
How does it know what emotion/action should be triggered?
The brain interprets a response based on the information it has already stored because of something it remembers from the past.
For example, a young child’s brain remembers that ‘running’ is exciting and fun.
What it does not yet know, is that crossing the street without looking is dangerous. That is something the brain still needs to be taught.
So, whereas the brain of a child running into the street will be experiencing the emotion of “excitement”. An adult, watching a child run into the street R”L will automatically trigger their emotion of fear.
Without even having to think through the situation.
***
Humans are ‘Mehalchim’, by nature we need to grow.
Therefore, as we grow older, our brain develops patterns.
We can say that the brain has a baseline story through which it interprets everything it sees.
Once the story is ‘set’, the brain resists revisiting it. Because we just want to move on to the next challenge. Having ‘figured out’ and ‘boxed in’ what we already know.
A healthy brain takes all information given to it and fits it into the story.
(A brain that cannot do that will keep questioning factual events repeatedly to try to make sense of them. This is an illness called OCD).
Let’s take an example of a brain that convinced itself there is something it cannot do. Once it has set that story, it resists changing its opinion (shaking up its story). And so, each time the option to act upon this “impossible” matter comes up, the brain will find as many reasons as possible to prove to itself that it cannot do it.
But what if we could change the story?
What if it wasn’t even very hard at all?
What if all it took was developing a relatively easy new skill?
Let’s imagine the brain working as if it was a computer.
A computer has three parts to it the screen, the keyboard, and the hard drive.
- The screen is what we use to see what is on the hard drive.
- The keyboard is what we use to give instructions to the processor.
- And the hard drive is where the information is actually stored.
Whatever we record onto the hard drive will stay there forever, unless it is permanently deleted.
That is why, once Word is already on the Hard-Drive, we don’t need to re-write all the code and recreate Word each time we want to use it anew. We just need to click (trigger) what is already stored on the hard-drive, and it will come up automatically.
But, to change something broken we don’t always have to delete it entirely.
Sometimes, when turning on the computer a message will come up that the computer is going through an automatic update.
You know, that message not to turn off the computer until the update has ended?
What happened during that update? Did everything get deleted and then put back?
Not at all.
The update added some new instruction (code) to the old (saved) program, and in that way changed it.
In our brain, the hard drive is what we call the subconscious memory.
Subconscious is something we do so naturally that the brain doesn’t have to work any harder to achieve its aim.
For example, a child learning to tie their shoelaces must focus intently, their tongue sticking out just so, to get them tied. Over the years, we become so well accustomed to tying our laces that now our brain does not work any harder to get it done.
[It does it so naturally that were we to take a scan of our brain whist we tie our shoes there will be no sign of activity in the memory part of the brain—the part that has to remember how to tie the laces. (There would be activity only in the part reflecting physical movement)].
This is because tying our laces has become so deeply embedded in our mind that the brain just processes it by itself.
Like walking, talking, even breathing.
Our “stories” are also already in our subconscious memory.
But changing our story isn’t impossible.
It’s not even exceptionally difficult.
It just takes some perseverance.
***
Some things may not come easy, but nothing is impossible.
It may or may not take us longer than others to develop that talent, but we can do whatever we want.
All we need is practice.
It is a question of motivation to ‘practice’ to get it done.
That motivation achieved by changing the story in our brain, reprogramming the ‘saved memory’ on our personal ‘hard drive’.
Doing so is much easier than we think it is.
Because all we need to do is change the story we tell ourselves.
The stories we tell ourselves comprise four categories, two of which are negative:
- I can’t [Limitation]
- By now I should have/I need to [Unnecessary anxiety]
Two of which are positive:
- I never/I no longer [“I never/no longer did/do this harmful thing,”]
- I am [“I can/very good at,”]
Knowing as we do that Eibishter didn’t ask us to do anything impossible, then being able to change our story is merely a question of practice, which is a question of motivation.
We develop continued motivation by seeing success.
The most challenging part of motivation is that very first part before success appears.
They way to do that is by changing our “story”. Doing so opens new channels in the mind, which allows us to reprogram our motivation and our ability to see success.
So, for the next two weeks, take one thing to which your mind has conditioned itself for so long that it “cannot” do, and tell yourself “I can now do it”.
Try it for two weeks, each day picture that one thing, say to yourself, “I no longer enjoy doing___” or “I can do____” and take a small step of action towards it.
If we were to keep up with this, we wouldn’t recognize ourselves in six months’ time…