Our brains are doing such a great job of keeping us safe, all the time, scanning the horizon for threats. With our ‘threat brain’ and negativity bias in place, we’ve evolved for survival.
But sometimes our brains can get jammed in this mode, triggering constant over-thinking, what-iffing, rumination, anxiety, catastrophising and worry.
Or, to it put another way, Tuesday.
This is clearly the polar opposite of a bundle of laughs, and to make matters worse most of us are then acutely aware that being stuck in a state of ‘Tuesday’ thinking can also cause further problems for us – in our relationships, at work, with our health – and this can add another loop of cacophonous worry thinking into the already rowdy mix.
No wonder we’re not sleeping at night. (Yikes…there goes another loop.)
Oh, shut up brain!!!
But, sadly, yelling ‘shut up’ to our brains is not an effective way to get us out of threat brain mode. (Have you ever watched a stressed-out parent shout at their kid to stop shouting? Same logic.)
But here’s something that does help.
Once a day, ask your brain to take a minute to find what’s gone well. Then write it down. That’s all. Then do it again the next day. And the next day. Until the moments accumulate.
It’s not magic. But it can be magical.
The action of simply looking for and finding MORE of yourself.
The competent you. The content you. The silly you. The smart-as-a-whip you.
Go look for it. Find it. Log it.
This teeny-tiny practice can open your eyes – and your mind – to another parallel reality where threats don’t need to dominate because things are going…well.
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