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This is the fourth installment in a six-part series by Dr. Jeffery Baker. You can start from the beginning and read all six parts by visiting Dr. Baker’s Rebel Storytellers page.
You are reading my forth article which could mean something very bad or good about you. What I hope is that you are interested in learning the skills and exercises to apply your signature strengths and manage your reptilian brain’s attempt to derail you.
If you can get on track and then simply drift off track over time you need to understand that the brain will do what is in front of it. Out of sight out of mind is true. Other compelling interests can derail your valued behavior. If you get distracted, you need daily activities or cues that connect you back to the valued behavior. Things like a daily devotion at breakfast, logging every meal in a calorie counter, morning commitment to sobriety, a picture of lung cancer on your cell phone, reading a chapter a day related to your signature strength, or friends who will do the activity with you are all ways to keep the activity right in front of you. They are absolutely essential until it becomes a habit, then a style of life, then literally an altered ribonucleic acid molecule pathway. Before an activity becomes a ritual you must have a cue to stimulate your awareness and connection to what is important to you.
Others might have noticed aversive thoughts when you tried to act on one of your signature strengths. If you’re like most people your reptilian brain produced concerns like, “What will other people think?” or, “I am just not ready yet,” just when you’re trying to engage in a valued behavior. When trying to inhibit a behavior, “Just once more,” or, “This time doesn’t count,” will show up. Those thoughts are an influence to relinquish your control of a behavior.
Under some conditions you can identify with an irrational theme underneath the story and confront the irrational perception successfully with a counter rational thought that you can buy into. You can override the irrational belief and win the internal debate. So when the irrational story or thought is triggered you can counter it. But what if the story is true or was true or partially true? And what if sometimes you just do not buy the rational thought completely?
There is tremendous power in acting on a personal value and taking an enormous risk in that direction. Equal to that is the power of the reptilian brain’s response to a threat and its drive to protect you. The reptilian brain’s method is simple and potent; it will construct a story using your negative feelings and negative imagination, memory, beliefs and impulses. The story could be true, or plausible or a completely irrational fantasy. But the fact is YOU BUY IN as soon as it flashes in your head. When you are fully engaged in a story you are no longer a spectator but a participant. Your narratives define who you are, how you see the world, and your future. They have the power to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It has been my experience that most people are vexed by plausible stories or real stories that are used by your brain to stop you from taking a risk. People assume that because a story is real, or at least not delusional, that its power is derived from that fact. This is not true to how your brain works at all; its power is only a result of “BUY IN” participation and engagement. The evening when I first met my wife, as she stepped off the dance floor, I had a powerful romantic story interrupt my conscious mind and I was not in the present moment anymore. I was with her in a passionate embrace. Completely entranced by the story, I struggled to gain the composure to come back to reality to respond to our introduction. I would have asked for her hand in marriage if I had known her name. My fantasy enraptured me because of the depth of my engagement. I was so enthralled with the story going on in my head that I almost missed the opportunity to meet my wife. We assume the potency and vigor of our thoughts indicates truth or God’s voice. The strength of a thought’s ability to influence our behavior is only a product of our participation with the story in our mind. To diminish the influence of the story we must reduce our involvement while it is in our head.
So the better question is not whether the thought is true or rational, but is it helpful? And the solution starts with the qualifying question of, “Is this thought helping me act on my signature strength?” Does it in fact help you act in the direction of a valued behavior? If not, then the skill is to detach from the engagement or participation when it is triggered by the anticipation of risk. Practicing exercises that help us disconnect can unhook you instead of attending to the story in our head.
You have a choice in what you attend to. The mind can attend to the external here and now moment or internal stories and self-talk. Your mind has to choose which to attend to since you can’t do both at the same time. See thoughts as what they are, not as what they say they are. Thoughts are part of the learned behavioral process. Hello, Charlton Heston, not every thought is from God and needs to be obeyed or evaluated for meaning by Freud, or followed mindlessly.
When you are anxious, instead of identifying your anxious thoughts as “just thoughts,” you experience them in the same way that you would if the real-life event was taking place that your thoughts were referring to. We buy into the story as though our thoughts represent truth. Cognitive reasoning is when I believe that because I have a thought it means it must be true.
Let’s say during a marital argument you have the thought “What if we divorce?” While this is only a thought, and refers to the event that may in fact be unlikely, you might feel many of the same emotions that you would experience if it were in fact actually going on in reality.
So I would like to list some exercises that you can do daily that would increase your skills in being able to unhook yourself from habitual thoughts which function as barriers to acting on your personal values. These will help you reduce your thought’s authenticity.
1. Acknowledge the story and name it like a book title and say out loud, “I now notice the … story has just showed up.”
2. Thank your mind; show an appreciation for it trying to protect you but not being helpful.
3. Speak the thought in your mind using your favorite cartoon character’s voice.
4. Speak the thought in your mind and say it very very slowly.
5. Have a conversation with someone while playing your favorite song in the background. Train your mind to focus and attend to the conversation.
6. Write down your thoughts and keep them with you to identify your habit story.
7. Write down your thoughts and a retort as though you were dealing with a bully.
Some people are more influenced by their thoughts; others are more influenced by feelings. For those of you who end up drowning in your feelings and have your feelings direct your behavior, I will address those exercises and skills in my next article.
Photo (Flickr CC) by Jesus Solana
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Dr. Jeffery Baker
Latest posts by Dr. Jeffery Baker (see all)
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- The Best Gift I Was Given - December 12, 2014
- Goals Set on Fire - November 24, 2014