Your Brain Is Saving Calories...But Is That Good?

Hey,

Creataholics!

I want to talk about something that's pretty cool and it's based in science and it's less woo-woo than some of the other stuff that I've talked about on here but it's kind of a cool concept.

It's called emotional reasoning.

Emotional reasoning is fascinating because what it means is that as we've gone through life and we felt emotions and emotions are stored in our body,

We start habitually wanting to feel the same emotions.

Just like it takes less effort to brush your teeth with your dominant hand than it would take with the other hand.

Because what's happening is if you feel the same emotions,

Your brain is wired to have pathways,

Neural pathways,

That if the same emotion is happening constantly and we know it,

Then it's easier for that pathway.

So what that means is as the brain functions throughout the day,

It's trying to make things habitual in your life so that it takes less calories.

Your brain is a calorie hoarder and it does not want to have to do certain things that take calories away.

So if you have a family member that always triggers the same emotion in you,

That pathway is rooted deep inside of you and your brain goes,

Okay,

Anger,

Got it,

Done.

Now if you take a moment and pause and have awareness and ask yourself,

Why am I angry?

Your brain goes,

Oh crap,

We need to pay attention to this and it all of a sudden rushes these calories to this other way of,

Wait a minute,

This isn't what we normally do and it doesn't like it.

So it wants to push you back into your anger and this frees you up so much.

Just take a moment to think about that.

You're so hard on yourself for getting angry.

You're so hard on yourself for binge eating cake when something happens.

You're so hard on yourself for a habit that literally your brain is doing because it's trying to protect you and make less calories burned.

That's literally what's happening.

And if you can separate yourself and understand the science of that and say,

Wow,

That's so interesting.

Thank you,

Brain.

And instead of shaming yourself for whatever it is or getting frustrated,

Just start asking yourself,

What is the pattern behind this?

Why do I feel this way?

Then what happens is a beautiful thing called neuroplasticity.

Our brains have the ability to change.

And the way that I like to explain neuroplasticity,

And there's so many people that explain it so beautifully,

Is it's almost like ski hills.

Imagine a ski hill.

I don't ski,

But I can imagine a ski hill.

I like mountain biking.

Let's imagine a mountain bike trail.

Every time a bike goes through the trail,

It makes the trail deeper,

But deeper,

Deeper.

And every time somebody uses that trail,

It becomes more visible.

It becomes a little wider and it becomes more easily moved through.

Now,

If you want to take another trail,

That's a lot more difficult.

It's scary.

It's uncharted.

And you're gonna have to pay a lot more attention because you don't want to hurt yourself.

And you have to go down this trail.

But once you go down the trail once,

You go,

Hey,

That's pretty cool.

These other trails are fun,

But I like this trail.

This trail actually makes me feel better.

This trail actually,

It's more me than this trail.

What happens is as you route this new trail,

Hopefully in a more joyful direction and a more aligned direction,

Not happy,

But more aligned,

Then the other trail starts to have grass grow and starts to get higher.

Before you know it,

This new trail that you've carved is just as easy as the old trail.

And the old trail now is gone.

So that old trail of anger to a family member turned into compassion.

And anger gets smaller.

Compassion gets deeper.

Anger gets smaller.

And all of a sudden,

This anger trail has all these weeds grown up over it.

And you have this beautiful new trail of compassion.

And it takes calories to do that.

It takes calories and it takes self-awareness.

Now,

How do we develop self-awareness so we're not reacting all the time?

To me,

It's through meditation.

And what you're doing is you're working on your self-awareness muscle.

And I've talked about this before.

It's that gap between the event and the reaction.

In that space is what's going to allow you to use neuroplasticity to change your brain and change the habit to a better habit.

This old habit of being angry doesn't serve you anymore.

This habit of compassion is going to make you vibrate higher.

It's going to allow you to show up in the world differently.

And it's going to cause less stress,

Cortisol in your life.

It's going to cause more joy.

So what we need to do is we need to practice that muscle.

And what that muscle is,

Is when you're sitting in meditation,

It's sitting there and knowing that you are not what you're thinking.

You are not what you're feeling.

You are just present.

You are just in that present moment.

And you practice being present.

You practice realizing that these thoughts from your past are just thoughts from your past.

They're worries and they're concerns that you no longer can control.

These feelings that you're having,

You don't suppress them.

You allow them to come through.

You allow them to process.

You are not your anger.

You are not your joy.

You are not your happiness.

It's just a feeling that you're feeling in that moment.

And sometimes we have suppressed feelings that need to come up.

But the process of meditation is sitting with those thoughts and those feelings and allowing them not to disarm you,

Allowing you to not be them.

You are not your thoughts or your feelings.

They are just what they are.

And you practice and you realize that when you are triggered or something happens where you have a neural pathway that is very,

Very deeply rooted and you're mountain biking through this pathway,

You can stop at the top of the mountain and say to yourself,

Oh,

That pathway is anger.

I don't want that.

And I appreciate you brain.

And I'm grateful for you that you don't want to burn these extra calories,

But I think those calories are important.

Let's go this way.

And I can tell from personal experience during COVID,

I really decided,

As I've said before,

To go inward.

And what I said to myself was,

If I'm going to do an inner workout,

I'm going to allow myself grace.

And I would be so exhausted after an hour and a half meditation that I would just take a nap.

I'd go lie down.

Some days I'd wake up at like two o'clock p.

M.

After meditating the night before because I was so exhausted.

And I was so exhausted because I was burning so many calories quickly to change my brain,

To reroute it to different ways.

And it took practice.

It took practicing,

Practicing,

Practicing.

And finally,

I was able to get to a point where I wasn't practicing the rewiring.

I was starting to deeply root these new pathways and the mountain bike trail got a little more fun.

And then all of a sudden,

If I had these pathways done in a more joyful way,

I could take the energy that was flowing and now manifest it out and change who I am from the inside.

And that's really how I believe it happens.

It takes a lot of work.

And that's the reason a lot of people want to come to this work is because it's like you're going to the gym inside.

It really is.

It's like you're going for a run inside.

You're lifting weights inside.

But to me,

Of all the things that you can be doing for yourself,

The inner gym is the most valuable of the options.

It's good to look nice.

It's good to feel good.

And hey,

I love running too.

And I love going to the gym.

And it's really makes me feel great.

But nothing makes me feel more joy and more energetically lifted and how I show up in the world than looking inward and doing that extra step and burning those extra calories to take a different pathway.

So I would urge a meditation practice if you can.

I'm going to have some tools that I have available coming soon that will allow you to help develop those new pathways.

But it can be as simple as in your day asking yourself the question of why am I reacting this way?

Just imagine now your brain is doing something good for you.

It's saving calories and it's wired to do that.

And that's awesome.

But there's calories to burn and you can stand at the top of that mountain with your bike,

Your helmet,

Your gloves,

And you can say,

I'm going to take a different path.

And today it's going to change.

And thank you,

Brain.

But we're going to burn the extra 15 calories it takes to trudge through this grass.

What happens is your brain says,

OK,

Cool.

We'll allot it for that.

Let's do it.

And then it may take 15 calories and then it takes 12 and it takes nine and it takes the two that it used to take on this path.

And this is way more in line with who you want to be.

How you show up in the world is going to be different.

So that's the first thing.

And the second thing is go easy on yourself.

It took a long time for me to realize that you have to learn to love the process that your body takes you through.

You have to learn to love the fact that your brain is doing the best that it can.

And just know that science proves this.

Science tells you that it's doing this.

So now that science tells you that it's doing this,

You can let yourself off the hook because it's trying to keep you alive.

Now that you know this information,

You can choose to move forward and you can choose to work that muscle of that pause between the event and the reaction.

That is the muscle.

That's the magic muscle.

Not this muscle.

That muscle.

So go forth and change who you are because it's possible.

Peace and love.