Desire, the FUEL for brain change

Desire, the FUEL for brain change

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.

~Confucius

What are some very examples of Desire being fuel? Well, any time you wanted to learn something.! A lot of the things that we learned we learned as kids – percentage wise, we do MOST of our learning  while we are young – we mastered our first language, learned to walk run talk, bicycle, play various sports, musical instruments, how to whistle, draw, colour, blow our nose, etc. 

But just because we are older, doesn’t mean that our brains don’t have the capability for change, and there are some more recent memories that you and I have about these ongoing changes our brain is able to make. First up lets remember our drivers license,  those first moments in the car were brutal  - frustrating, and awkward, but today – driving is second nature.  What pulled you through? Desire. The desire to drive on your own.

Another example would be if we took you and put you into a big rig, as tough as truckers are, those first few moments in a big rig, are uncomfortable, and awkward, but within weeks or months - because we have the DESIRE to learn- we stick to it, and eventually are able to handle most situations with ease.

Same can be said for your first job like becoming a cashier for the first time – there is an initial time of frustrations then because of DESIRE (I want to keep this job), with time and persistence, all of the codes are memorized, we know what the buttons do, and we become successful in learning.

Start any new thing and there is an uncomfortable time while you learn your new role – but you push forward – again with DESIRE, and learn the new thing.

Each one of these simple examples is positive example of where DESIRE precedes actually brain change, and then continues to FUEL it. – the new actions that you are not used to are you brain finding new process maps, and at first this is chunky, but eventually after repetition it becomes second nature. The driving force behind these changes is your DESIRE.  It doesn’t matter if it is learning new job, or how to do a new hairstyle, the frustration followed by success is your brain changing.

But what about negative brain change? What about learning bad habits? What about when you seem to move backwards in life? Or you seem to have the inability to move forward? Well, it is the same basic process, but there are fundamental errors at play- in essence our DESIRE is in the wrong place, and it can lead to being stuck and depressed. In this place – the fundamentals of brain change are still at play, Desire is still FUEL, but it is pulling us in the wrong direction!

Negative brain change occurs when things happen TOO us. In other words when there are circumstances beyond our control, these time too can bring about brain change.

First lets have a list of a couple of example of negative brain change – or things happening to us:

a car accident

Someone bullies us

Someone we care about

Our parents get divorced

Someone hurts us

When something like this happens it is very easy to get “stuck”: into a series of thoughts that seem to spiral round and round.

Basically what is happening is that our DESIRE has changed!

Think about it, when you had the desire to do something ANYTHING, you put yourself through the discomfort of brain change and eventually got to your goal. But when your DESIRE is for wishing “something in the past did not happen” where are you going? You are going around and around the past event as if it is a place to go!

If I drew a picture of this it would look like this:

We are attracted to our DESIRES, we want them, we focus on them, until we have them, right? But what happens when our DESIRE get’s stuck in the past, for something we wish would not have happened? It might even be a mistake we made, but more likely we get STUCK on DESIRES because of things that happen to us. And because we are creatures that focus on our desires, we end up fixated on these thoughts and regrets about the past. The trouble is we end up right back where we started, when our desire is fixated on things we can’t change.

Positive brain change always makes us better, and in essence, so does negative brain change, but, look at what you get better at! You get better at lying, cheating, hating, better at anger, being in pain, better at depression, self loathing, missing out, as you spin around and around your desire for the past to be different, you are not taking yourself to new highs, you are taking yourself to new lows. 

Brain change is always adding to a previous experience, we learn to stand, then to walk, then to run, then to balance on one foot, then to ride a bike, then to ride a unicycle. There are numerous examples of this of things YOU have done, so don’t feel useless, you have done this in the past and you can do it in the future too! First you learn to drive a go cart, then a car, then a school bus, then a big rig. Pilots who learn to fly the largest planes in the sky didn’t get put at the stick of those planes the first day – they started out in a Cesna, just like everyone else!!!

When we do positive brain change continually, the limits are literally endless – when our desires are focused on possibility. However when our desires are focused on inward unchangeable realities we don’t further ourselves positively, we fuel our own downward spiral.

This is compounded when we are alone, because it is very hard for us to self realize the mistakes we are making, and FURTHER compounded when people pointing out our faults feels like an attack.

So what is the way out? 2 things really, a goal, and a change. First the goal, it doesn’t really matter what it is, but pick something, in the future, that you can most likely achieve if you put your mind to it. When you are picking this thing, have a look at what others are doing that are your age, have similar life situations etc. For instance, pick a physical goal, running a 10K, or weight lifting, or picking a job you want, or even a future purchase you want.

A mindset change. This is longer term, but the change I am talking about is a change of mindset. It can be a change like this:

From “I will never get over this” to “I am hurt”

From “I am hurt” to “I want to be better”

From “I am useless” to “I want to find something I am good at”

From “I am ashamed” to “I want heal”

A mindset change, is the idea of changing the way you speak to yourself. The way that you speak to the person in the mirror. Even the way that you “hear” people around you, the real trick is to start slow and build on the experience, realizing that this is going to take months and years, not minutes. When someone says “you are beautiful/talents/strong” how do you respond (if only in your head) do you say, “well except for” or “no not really” or, “not if you knew what I did last night”? Mindset change is difficult, and it often works best by involving other people, who can positively speak into your life.

Find what you want, be it a mindset change, life change or both! Write it down, and repeat it to yourself every day, multiple times a day, every time your initial thought comes into your mind. So if the thought “I am hurt” keeps coming to mind,  all you want to add to it at first is “I am hurt, but I want to be better” later, you start dropping the “I am hurt” part, and slow by slow, your saying becomes “I want to be better, and, I’m getting better everyday” then it can slowly morph into “I’m getting better everyday, I look forward to what I can accomplish,” and “I look forward to what I can accomplish, this is going to be great!”, and “This is going to be great, I am  awesome”

“I am hurt” is a long way from even wanting to believe that “I am AWESOME.” The transition is slow.

The real trick in all of this is finding something positive you can focus on, and reframing our words to be words full of power, and forward movement, of desires that take us forward. Few people, when writing things like this out would write, “I am stuck in this place of depression and anxiety, and fear, and I want to stay here for the next 10 years of my life.” Yet in our daily practice we live this reality out day after day.

The other major component in all of this is the need for other people. The other REAL component of this is the conversation you are having with yourself! Words have power! We all know this intuitively, if  you tell a small child that they suck, that they are useless, and that they should just quit, long enough, damaged self esteems emerge, we all know this! So, why do you keep saying unhelpful things to yourself? And yet it is so hard to see ourselves repeating patterns, this is why we need other people.!

I did this for years, I got into a real bad head space. A space where I woke up asking myself things like “how am I going to screw up today?” My community of friends dragged me out of it kicking and screaming. How, it took authenticity, it took me, saying what I was really thinking. I like to ask people this question when talking about authenticity ; “If you went to a therapist for help with depression, and all you did was lie during the sessions, how far would you get regarding fixing the problems?”

Not very far.

(Authenticity + Desire) x (Brain change) = a brand new YOU

slv2all