Get your brain on your side 🧠

Is your brain on your team or fighting you every step of the way?

If most of us answer honestly, our brain is definitely not on our side. It’s constantly telling us why we’re not good enough or can’t possibly have the things we desire. Why is that?

Well you see there’s this concept called resistance. You can think of it like a principle of nature – whether it’s resistance in an electrical circuit or friction generated by pushing something heavy –

Resistance is a universal reaction to change

In human beings, resistance can look like avoiding doing the things you know make you feel good, like meditating or exercising, in favor of what is comfortable and known, like perhaps Netflix ;)

Our minds are literally designed to resist change because what is known is always safer than what is new. To our brains, the unknown is always where potential danger lies..

To get your brain on board with your dreams and desires, you have to give your brain a chance to voice and vent all the subconscious fears that are currently holding you back.

You can grab a piece of paper and write down: Even though I desire ________ I’m afraid that…

For instance, you might write:

Even though I desire a new job…

I’m afraid that I’ll never find one
I’m afraid I’m not good enough
I’m afraid no one will ever hire me

Keep writing those fears again and again. Props to Carolyn Elliott via Julia Wells for this technique!

The next step is to flip these fears into a new belief. Instead of “I’ll never find one” how about “Even though the job market is depressing, there are literally thousands of new jobs every month, why can’t one of them be just right for me?”

I find it helpful to have a list of affirmations to read to myself after listing my fears, so I can reconnect with my power. Here is a list I wrote for The Radiance Collective that you can try out:

Empowered Affirmations

Read these affirmations to yourself everyday and feel your power, energy, and agency increasing in your body every time you read them. Or maybe you want to use these as inspiration and free-write your own – do that!

To recap, the process is essentially this: give your scaredy cat brain a chance to reveal all the fears it’s secretly harboring and then put your logical brain to task compassionately pointing out why those fears may not necessarily be true and creating new possibilities to believe.

When your brain is on your side, everything is so much easier!

The catch is that this work is a practice. When left to its own devices, our brain has a powerful pull to keep us in the status quo. If we desire to grow, expand and change, we have to do this work regularly.

That’s why it's helpful to have someone on your team to point out when your mindset is slipping and hold you accountable to doing the work ;)

I’d love to hear how this goes for you – get in touch and let me know!

XO Alyssa