The publisher of The Little Book of Big Change asked me to write something for their blog about the lower brain.
I was a little hesitant.
Not because an understanding of the brain isn’t super interesting. It is.
And seeing how the brain works in a deeper, more insightful way–beyond the mechanics–can be incredibly freeing. It was for me.
The reason I was hesitant is because I never want people to think that the brain is IT. There’s much more to see beyond the brain and how it works.
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Like, a lot more.
Before-the-brain…what powers the brain…is where it’s really at. But the brain is pretty incredible too, so I wrote the article below that I’m sharing here with this rather large caveat.
The brain is a machine. The wisdom that created this machine–that powers this machine–is miraculous and it’s where I beg you to look…
…after this short, insightful article about how habits live and die in the brain.
***
Your brain is the most remarkable machine on earth.
It is capable of incredible feats of intellect, memory, and logic. It keeps your body humming along by habitually beating your heart, breathing your lungs, and digesting your lunch while you get to focus on which shoes to wear, finishing that work project in time for the meeting, and voting for the winner of America’s Got Talent.
The sole purpose of your lower brain is to keep you alive using as little energy as possible. You get to use that extra energy for more fun, optional things in life.
It’s an incredibly kind design, isn’t it? And your lower brain is amazing at its job. As far as machines go, it’s the best. But because your lower brain is a computer it has some limitations too.
The biggest limitation is that while your lower brain is really smart, it’s not all that wise. It is great at machine-like qualities like consistency and efficiency, but it is not so good at determining which habits it should keep around consistently.
Your lower brain doesn’t distinguish habits that keep you alive from habits that hurt you.
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It is a habit-creating, habit-maintaining powerhouse with little discrimination. So things like drinking, smoking, overeating, shopping, hoarding, and gambling done consistently can begin to look necessary for survival to your lower brain.
This might sound like bad news for you. But it’s actually not bad at all when you understand how it works.
See, just like your lower brain is smart but not wise, it’s also loud and persistent but not powerful in and of itself. When it comes to activities that require more voluntary choices and coordinated muscle movements, your lower brain can’t coordinate those.
It is all bark and no bite.
The best it can do is create urges and pulls toward various behaviors. It can’t make you actually act though because your higher brain is needed for that.
When you don’t know better, your lower brain feels extremely powerful. You innocently give into the urges and cravings it produces because it doesn’t feel as if you have a choice. But when you understand how it works, you see that your lower brain is
powerless. You don’t have to give into its demands.
When you don’t, it eventually stops demanding.
My favorite metaphor for how this works is that of a backseat passenger screaming at you while you are behind the wheel of a car. That loud, persistent guy in the backseat can scream all he wants, but he can’t do a thing—he’s in the backseat. You are the
driver.
Can you begin to get a feel for the freedom there is in understanding how your lower brain works?
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Anything can show up in your experience…thoughts, feelings, cravings, urges…and you don’t have to act on any of them.
When you see them for what they are, you see that they never had the power we thought they did.
We’ve been free all along.
Please enjoy the animation below as an illustration of how your lower brain works.
