Why You Must Understand Your Brain
And How To Get Started
Read time: 2 mins
Welcome to The Brain and Body Warrior.
A blueprint of lived lesson to help you understand your brain, conquer your body and develop your warrior mindset.
Exciting Update!
For those who missed it, I recently had the opportunity make an appearance on two seperate podcasts to talk all about this project.
Please check them out and support not only me but those who gave the opportunity to speak:
Stories and Stanzas (Substack)
On today’s menu: Why understanding your brain and inner workings matters so much.
The Brain
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” - Marie Curie
For years I lived in fear.
The scariest part?
There wasn’t anywhere to hide. That’s because I lived in fear of my own brain.
It was torturing me, with thoughts and images and ideas that truly terrified me. That made me think that I was somehow defective or, my worst fear, not a good person.
The worst part of it was that I didn’t understand why it was happening. My thoughts were a blackbox and things just seem to be happening to me without reason or rhyme.
And, with years of hindsight, I’ve realised now that’s why I was so afraid.
You see, we are, to our very core, hard wired to fear the unknown. That’s how you survive. Familiar is safe. The unknown, however, could mean potential death. Makes sense.
But, strangely, one of the biggest unknowns that we face is our own inner workings.
I mean, why do you think the way that you think? Why do experience certain thoughts and emotions and not others? How does your brain actually identify you?
Most people, including me in a previous incarnation, simply couldn’t answer such questions. And that’s a problem.
Why?
Because in the absence of understanding, without any real grounding, it’s only natural that fear and anxiety should fill the void, in particular with our hard wired propensity to be negative and judgemental.
That’s what happened in my case. I suspect is happening right now with many others too.
This is why learning about your brain matters so much. It’s the antidote to the fear. It’s pulling back the curtain on your inner workings.
One incredibly powerful, yet simple, insight that relates this to that changed everything for me was this:
Your thoughts aren’t to be feared. They are there to be understood.
If you understand where your thoughts, in particular, come from, and why they arise, the fear around them disappears.
The most important thing to remember is that your brain is designed to keep you safe, not to harm you.
Your automatic negative thoughts (or ANTS as labelled by Dr Daniel Amen) are your subconscious mind trying to draw your attention to something that needs to be dealt with.
Instead of listening, of sitting with them, we go to ridiculous, sometimes even self destructive, lengths to quash them. Because they can be uncomfortable and, as mentioned, sometimes frightening.
But if you want to grow and improve you can’t ignore them.
And if you’re ready to take that first step to really understand your brain, the question to ask yourself is this:
What’s one thought I keep having? Why does it keep coming up?
Want to let the world know your thoughts? Be sure to:
Know someone else who needs to hear this? Why not:
Want more insights and ideas to help to level up your brain? Then:
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