What’s the story you’re living in?

The brain tells you stories all damn day long and then creates dreams to catalog those stories.

The human brain creates a version of reality for you based on a cumulation of past experiences, surroundings, selected memories, and stories we tell ourselves. The brain has evolved to keep us safe. As our brains got bigger and our muscles smaller (relative to the beginning of humanity and other animals), the brain needed to find ways for safety while also being able to digest information from our environment or surroundings and our body quickly.

The brain’s job evolved to keep us safe and also has limited capacity to take in all the new information all the time, so it creates a reality based on expectations and past experiences.

In The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr shares that “to help us feel in control, brains radically simplify the world with narrative. Estimates vary, but it's believed the brain processes around 11 million bits of information at any given moment, but makes us consciously aware of no more than forty. The brain sorts through an abundance of information and decides what salient information to include in its stream of consciousness.” p. 49

WHAT! If you’re like me, your brain just flipped.

I see this a lot in my work with folks especially when they are interested in 1:1 work. We go through what all is possible. We talk about the big picture. We talk about the details of the work. They are excited. They can taste the potential. Then I tend to see two things. (1) Scare-cited (scared and excited). The person steps up to self-invest their time, resources, and focus. Or (2) Fear. The person knows they’re on the edge of ‘this can’t continue on like this,’ but the brain isn’t prepared for change.

The stories in the brain can cause people to feel shame and then they go MIA from the change they want. And I get it, too much all at once causing the brain to shut down and revert to lizardness.

Neuroscience shows that the brain can only see what the brain can see. It has created a story for safety. Cool. Thanks, brain. But you see, we’re aiming for a greater alignment of behaviors to values and vision. We all get into a lot of stuck stories. These are the ones that make us feel shitty - they come with knotted stomachs and anxiousness. We all have those stuck stories - it is just another part of unlearning and then relearning on the path to a truer, more alive you.

How do you create the changes you want in your life, then?

You have to get the brain's attention to change, but without signaling overwhelm.

Embodied Action - it is the momentum and accountability of continued movement or nudge work as I call it. Nudges are the small embodied actions or steps you take regularly and consistently to keep you moving forward. This helps the brain feel safer with the changes rather than too much too soon, causing the frontal lobe to shut down and thwart all efforts.

Your story can be empowering and will impact your next steps.

What’s the story you’re living in? What do you like about that story? Or where do you want to change it?