Sometimes having a developed frontal lobe (being a human) seems to be more of a disadvantage than a gift. Generally, animals lack some of the cognitive abilities that humans possess and rely more on the instinctual intelligence built into their bodies. Animals tend to go about their business without all the self-judging, procrastination, doubt and worry that humans of the 21st century seem to drown in.
Socrates said, “the un-examined life is not worth living” and I totally agree. Time spent evaluating how your current plan, beliefs, knowledge and behaviours are serving you is time well spent. What I am suggesting however is dropping the secondary value judgement that most people tend to add on to their initial analysis. It is this secondary, extra judgement that is often debilitating, and the main reason people come undone. Let me give an example…
Let’s just say you have embarked on a cardio plan to trim up. After a month of doing 30 minutes of cardio each day you have only lost 3kg (but you were expecting to drop 6kg). At this point you now have a few options on what to do with this new information.
Logical Evaluation Approach: This is the part your frontal lobe is actually designed for… Let’s pretend we are commander Spock from Star Trek – the only logical conclusion to be drawn here is that at this current rate another 4 weeks are necessary to get me to my goal. That’s it. Every other thought after this point is the ‘Add On’ part that only exists in your mind.
Can you do another 4 weeks cardio to get your goal? Yes, ok now JUST GET ON WITH IT! But that doesn’t always happen.
The Add-On Extra Garbage Approach: Here is where most of us make it personal and add a judgement or belief onto the situation. The first one usually is good or bad – “I didn’t deserve this”, “I deserved better” or some connotation. Sometimes we don’t stop there and add another layer like “I’m a failure” or worse “I’m not worthy”. These value judgement are not inherent in this or any other situation. You unnecessarily added them, identified with them and are now allowing them to inform your next move (quitting, sulking, depression?).
The Disappointment: Most of us are never going to be as logical as Commander Spock, and emotions such as disappointment are going to arise. Don’t try to suppress your emotions, feel them fully. Your disappointed, that’s ok, just sit with that for a while. How does it feel? CRAP, ok how about we re-frame this experience and simply look at it a different way. What if we refer to this experience as an opportunity to gather more intel for future en devours Or My first attempt? Both of these sound and feel so much better and will serve you better moving forward.
Back to the cardio/fat dropping example, what if instead of feeling disappointed you chose to feel optimistic and come up with a new game plan? Disappointment is stagnation, which always feels crap! Having a plan is moving forward/progress which has a vitality to it. You haven’t supressed any emotion, quite the opposite, you mindfully chose which emotion you wanted to feel.
Sometimes things don’t always go according to plan, however we always have the option of coming up with a new plan and choosing how we wish to view our lives. If this is a habit of yours, make an appointment to see Stephanie, our NLP/Neuro-semantics facilitator, to discuss how you can begin to see every hurdle for what it really is…a launch pad to bigger things.
Dream big… now go out and get it!