I’m a wee bit type-A. And by a wee bit, I mean my first 3 years of college were planned down to the minute every Sunday or Monday when I sat down to look at my week. If my planner didn’t have a month view and then a week view that was vertical with every day right next to the other so I could block out the same time every day for sleeping and eating, I wouldn’t even consider buying the planner. Looking back, I can tell you that need for control down to the minute was due to my intense anxiety about the future and anything that was uncertain. Seriously, I was almost physically ill the whole week I was finalizing my decision to not go to grad school – but that is a story for another time.
While I am at work, most of my day is spent starting at a computer screen with only the noise of typing and clicking in the background so I have started listening to podcasts while I work. I started with sermons, basically binge-listening (is that a thing? I definitely did it regardless) to several pastors for a few weeks straight, then for a change of pace I switched to motivational speakers who just talked about their life experiences – I love people’s life stories. One of these podcasts, called The Refined Collective Podcast – go give it a listen, had a guest on who is a neuroscientist focusing on how to train the brain to be successful. And she does it with a faith background which I love and think is awesome! So for the past week and a half, I have been binge-listening (I am going to make this term a thing y’all) to Dr. Shannon Irvine of the Epic Success Podcast.
Dr. Shannon speaks a lot about training your brain to do what you want it to do and about rewiring the neural pathways in your brain. It is really cool. But, what I think is even cooler than that, which is hard to beat because um…the brain rock, is when she reminds us that this isn’t new information – the Bible has been saying for years that as a believer of Christ you are called to take our thoughts captive, to the constant renewing of your mind and to think upon what is true, good, and lovely. To retrain your neural pathways, you have to take your thoughts out of the subconscious and into the conscious part of your mind, continuously correct the negative stories, the lies you are telling yourself, and to instead consciously think about the things that are good and true for at least 60-67 days to fully rewrite those neural pathways. That perfect alignment with what was written hundreds of years ago is amazing.
It gave me a lot of comfort to know that 1) the thoughts I have right now that shape my current reality (80-90% of your daily decisions are made by your subconscious trying to keep you safe based on prior experience) can be completely different with a bit of work in 2 months and 2) that I don’t have to be who I am today for the rest of my life. I can make decisions every single day that compound into transforming who I am into someone even better. Dr. Shannon has mentioned regularly that the brain doesn’t know the difference between the past and the future. If you envision the future with enough clarity, often enough, the brain begins to think the situation has already occured. I don’t know about you, but I tend to replay events and conversations over and over and over in my head. That doesn’t change anything. So I have begun trying to envision what I want my life to look like and have begun to make that the event my mind dwells on. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that what I imagine my future to be is 100% accurate, but it does mean that I have a clear goal my brain both conscious and subconscious can work toward. So that is my current plan of attack – make my brain work for me.
I am type-A. But I not an obsessive workaholic control freak who plans her day to the minute. I am a recovering control freak, a recovering workaholic, who is working to change her mindset and what defines her one thought at a time.
If it only took 2 months to change how you are setting yourself up for the rest of your life, what would you change? Leave your answers below! I can’t wait to see how you are going to transform your brain to transform your life!
