Archive for the ‘GrayBall-the-Brain’ Category

Yesterday’s News

Tuesday, March 26th, 2019

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image691204The story of our Now is eventually Yesterday’s News.

If we enacted even half of our mental patterns—the stuff we do in our heads—out in the real world, we would immediately see a kind of insanity taking place. Here’s one example of what I mean.

Imagine you’ve decided to get a ticket for a highly rated show. You go to considerable lengths to ensure your future experience. You camp out in line for hours, endure freezing weather, and then pay a small fortune for your ticket.

You’ve waited weeks for the big day to arrive, and finally it’s here!

Now, you drive through a snow storm, wait in another long line to get into the event, and endure the occasional rude person before finding your seat. You sit eagerly anticipating a wonderful show, only to discover it’s the worst experience you’ve ever had. Baahhh!

Okay, so you’re hugely disappointed—maybe even a little sad, betrayed, or angry—that THIS PRESENT MOMENT EXPERIENCE is not all that you want it to be. But eventually, not soon enough for you, the show ends. You leave the venue a little older, a little disappointed, but none the worse for wear.

I have a question. Would you—after all of this—eagerly buy a ticket to attend the same event again the next day? I’m imagining your answer is, “Of course not! Why would I go back? That would be almost masochistic!

That’s because no one in their right mind would willingly purchase a ticket to re-experience an unhappy event. And your old ticket will soon wind up in the trash—and out it will go—along with yesterday’s news.

But here’s where it get’s interesting.

Why then, upon leaving the event, do some of us feel immediately compelled to call or text our friends to tell them what a terrible experience we just had? Metaphorically speaking, buying a mental ticket to an unhappy event we only moments ago said we wouldn’t re-purchase a physical ticket to experience again? Clearly, we’re psychically reliving our misery, aren’t we?

And for some of us, for the next few days—maybe even months—we’ll repeatedly re-purchase a ticket by narrating the story of our unhappy experience.

It was the worst night ever! I can’t believe I wasted my time and money! I’ll never go to another show by that group again!

Blame it on GrayBall, The Brain. Our ongoing complaint is GrayBall’s desperate—and totally ineffective—attempt  to make right our past (this should never have happened to me) or defend our future (I’ll never let it happen again).

It fools us into believing that the solution to our unhappiness can be achieved in regurgitating our past—that somehow we can right the wrongs and avoid future failure. So, it takes yesterday’s news and writes today’s, and sometimes next week’s, headline with it.

You see, Brain likes to make up rules that the world should live by. That way it can know what’s going to happen next; it’s a survival thing. Unfortunately, Brain’s version of “how things should be” often conflict with the reality of “how things really are.”

Here’s GrayBall’s logic: “I had a rule for how this was supposed to be. It wasn’t fair that this should have happened to me. Therefore, I need to complain and get people to agree with my point of view. This way I can feel triumphant—as in, I win”—when someone agrees with my self-generated unhappiness. And, I need to reinforce my unhappiness so that I can avoid future unhappiness. After all, if  it happened once, it can happen again; and I wouldn’t like that one bit! Making myself unhappy is my way of reminding myself that I don’t want to be unhappy again.

Poor GrayBall! It can get so confused at times. It believes the only way it can feel “okay,” is to try to correct the past and/or make safe the future.

This is why, when we’ve had a bad experience, GrayBall encourages us to replay it over and over again in our mind. So, we repeat unhappy stories to ourselves and to anyone willing to listen. GrayBall’s reading yesterday’s news as though it were today.

GrayBall’s tricked us into believing that we can make ourselves feel better now and in the future with this crazy strategy. We keep on repurchasing tickets to bad memory shows we would never physically choose to attend again. Because we don’t question this mental habit, we never uncover the truth about how crazy it actually is.

Is this beginning to sound familar? It should. We all do it. We don’t realize we’re buying a mental ticket to unhappiness. By remembering and reciting an unhappy history, we’re reliving it. And GrayBall makes it all too easy to get caught up in our own stories. But nothing changes when you’re reliving it. It’s just the same old, same old—yesterday’s news.

But, take heart. Time doesn’t exist in the way GrayBall would have us believe. It’s simply a strategy that helps us measure the Great Unfolding of Life—in other words, change. There’s no Big Ben in the Universe’s Living Room ticking off the hours. The reality is that we’re carving up the Infinite Is-ness to accommodate our sense of personal history within it.

And—then again—even within our personal history, the past is gone and the future hasn’t happened yet. All we have is Now. And paradoxically, The Now is an eternal constant that is constantly changing. We are in fact on the edge of Creation. This moment—right now—has never in the history of Creation existed before. That is, of course, unless you get caught up in GrayBall’s version of Now, and imagine it’s still  yesterday!

So here’s an interesting perspective shift to consider.

Your What Is will soon become your What Was—a history you can’t change. And once it’s gone, you can only report from it, like yesterday’s news.

Try instead to learn from it. Your past experiences can become an opportunity to make new choices, develop new skills, assume new perspectives, and create new responses. Essentially, you get to rewrite the news of yesterday with a new story line. And that can give you a different kind of history that actually might be worth repeating.

So the next time you find yourself complaining about your past experiences, stop for a moment. Put down that paper and check the date. This moment is the only moment in time there actually is. Otherwise it’s yesterday’s news!

 

 

 

Making Friends With The Enemy

Thursday, August 15th, 2013

http://www.dreamstime.com/-image23775237A few days ago, GrayBall, The Brain and I started the day out as enemies. No worries. It all turned out in the end. Here’s how it happened.

I was determined that I should buckle down and use my regularly scheduled block of time to finish editing my new book. Brain thought a day in the sunshine was a Much Better Idea.

Although I could hardly dispute that  a sunny, comfortable 75 degree August day in Rochester was cause for celebration, my resolution to keep my self on track was too important to dismiss. I was conflicted. I had a part that wanted to do one thing and another part of me with an entirely different opinion. I see-sawed between the joy of being outdoors and the satisfaction of following through with a personal commitment to myself.

In the past, this would have started an argument between competing purposes. I would have labeled Brain’s attempts as a sabotage. I’ve since learned better. I’ve realized that GrayBall is sometimes a misguided friend.

Here’s how it all worked out in the end …

I assumed a positive intention and negotiated a truce. Here’s how I did that.

I began by asking Brain, “What’s the positive intention behind wanting to be outdoors?” Brain quickly responded by pointing out how lovely it would be to be in the sunshine and breathing in the fresh air.

So I asked, “And if I did spend time outdoors today, what would that get me?” To which Brain responded, “relaxation and enjoyment.” Well, I had to admit that that sounded pretty good to me. I wrote the answer down.

Then I thanked Brain for it’s positive intention and asked if it would be willing to help me understand it’s intention even better. It agreed; so I asked, “and if I had relaxation and enjoyment (it’s intention) what would that get me?” When Brain gave me the next answer, I wrote that one down too. Then I kept asking the same question of Brain, substituting each additional intention it gave me into the question, until Grey Ball ran out of answers.

When we finally arrived at “peace,” I asked GrayBall if there was anything more important than experiencing peace. To which it responded, “No.”

I next asked Brain, “Are you congruently creating peace by pulling my attention away from my project?” GrayBall had to admit that creating conflict, when what it wanted most of all was peace, was not congruent.

Having reached the end of that line of inquiry, I then asked Brain, “What’s the positive intention behind wanting to follow through with my personal commitment to finish the edit on my new book?” Brain—now eager to play along— answered that it would give me “a sense of accomplishment.” I couldn’t argue with that one either; so I quickly thanked Brain for wanting that for me. And I wrote it down and followed the same process of inquiry that I used the first time.

So I continued to ask, “and what would that get me?,” until GrayBall ran out of answers. Lo and behold, it’s highest intention for “us” was—one again—peace.

Now I asked GrayBall to notice that both choices were moving “us” toward the same intention. It said, “Yes.” So I asked it, “If we get to peace, then it really doesn’t matter how we get there, right?” Gray Ball was beginning to get the point.

So I next asked GrayBall to notice that peace was a state of being. In other words, it wasn’t a doing. It didn’t have to do anything to acquire it.

I directed it’s attention toward the fact that it could simply decide to “step into a state of being at peace and experience what that would be like to be there already.”

Once I could connect to the feeling of peace in my body, I asked it, “What happens when you begin in  a state of peace as a way of approaching this project?” and “How would that affect your ability to complete this project more efficiently and effectively?”

By now, GrayBall was getting the point. Since it already had what it most wanted, it no longer felt the need to distract me away from my work. Finally I asked GrayBall whether it would be willing to maintain a sense of peace for me while I continued to craft a new intro to my book. Because—after all—that was it’s highest intention, right?

Gray Ball happily agreed. And it turned out to be a Very Sunny Day indeed.

So the next time you feel conflicted—when part of you wants this and another part of you wants that—ask your GrayBall what positive intention it has for you. You’re bound to be surprised how easy it is to make friends with the enemy.

P.S. Thanks to Connie Rae Andreas for developing the process I used above, called CoreTransformation.

 

GrayBall, The Brain – a/k/a “The World’s Worst Terrorist”

Wednesday, November 28th, 2012

I’m convinced – at least on some days – that without a whole cadre of anti-terrorism tactics in place, GrayBall would be burning and pillaging it’s way across the entire  landscape of my future life right now.  After all, it was an experience  all too familiar from my younger years.

And I know that I’m not the only one. Admit it.  You know who you are.

Do you have a potential or a possibility for the future, but . . .

Are you anxiously asking yourself “what if questions” about your future hopes and dreams?

If so, you’re being terrorized by the ‘world’s worst terrorist.”

What is it with GrayBall anyway?

Why is it – just when we should be feeling excited and passionate about all the possibilities in front of us – does it begin to terrorize us with thoughts of failures past, broken dreams and disappointments?

Well, chalk it up to GrayBall’s wonderful self-preservationist attitudes.  It often thinks it’s under attack, and feels the need to defend itself against future failure.

GrayBall loves to lob bombs from the past and create all manner of chaos and mayhem into our soon-to-be future.

Have an upcoming presentation?  You’ll suddenly remember the time in the 3rd grade when, in a panic, you forgot the only two lines you were required to remember for the school play.

Have a prospective first date?  You’ll start to reflect on how badly your last relationship turned out.

Trying to land that new job?  Rejections, rejections, rejections are all you can think about.

It’s hard to believe the future will turn out anything but badly.

How could it? As you’re inching ever closer to the inevitable doom of stepping on that landmine out in the future that GrayBall has so loving placed there.

Yep, I said lovingly.

Because Gray Ball really means well.  That’s why it’s a bad terrorist.  In fact, it’s the world’s worst.  Because it’s trying to help us … not harm us.

It’s trying to protect us by helping us to pay attention to what might happen that we don’t want to have happen.  But this is like trying to help you navigate a mine field by laying down more mines so you’ll remember they’re there.  Kinda crazy, huh?

Here’s another reason GrayBall is the world’s worst terrorist: all the bombs are really duds.  They don’t really exist.  They’re memories from the past…. things we’ve already endured and lived through.

That alone should convince us that our ‘not yet successes’ in the future will turn out okay in the end … because they always do.  We can learn, grow and evolve.  You aren’t the 3rd grader who didn’t remember your lines, you’re an adult fully capable of stringing two sentences together, your past relationship taught you to stop trying to change people and look for someone who already possesses the qualities you’re looking for, and you’ve endured enough rejection to realize you’ll live to fight another day.

So while GrayBall is rooting around in the past for those duds to toss out into your future ask yourself, “What have I learned that will help me achieve my not-yet future success?”

And more importantly, GrayBall is simply a misguided friend.  Not a foe.  But, more on that later.

 

Truth or Consequences? Pick One

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

“When it comes to The Truth, all of us are liars.” (sayings by lp)

Truth can never be measured in absolute terms of truth-y-ness (yup, I just made that up).

Truth is relative … it’s not absolute.  What is unquestionably true for any one individual or group is often questionable to another.

Just ask Republicans and Democrats.  They can look at the exact same evidence and use it to support their own version of The Truth.  Which is just their way of saying what they believe to be true.

You might ask, “How does this happen?”  Well, chalk it up to the fact that GrayBall the Brain is a meaning making machine.  It’s constantly evaluating situations and circumstances to assess what they might mean.

When we’re children, these meanings are almost exclusively about who we are, and our relationship to the world around us.  These meanings later come to shape the Truths we come to live by . . . in other words, our beliefs.

Unfortunately, all this is taking place at a time when Brain is woefully lacking in “executive function,” not to mention life experience.  It’s not able to assess whether any given meaning is healthy or toxic.  Keep in mind that it’s essentially making the meaning up in the first place.  And the meaning it’s making up?  That’s what makes this so crazy – because it’s no more true than any other meaning it could be making up, if only it knew to make it.

Are you beginning to see the problem here?

But wait . . .  it gets even crazier.  Because once GrayBall makes up a meaning, it then looks for evidence to support it, which it then uses as a way to ‘make true’ its meaning.

So, although we might think that our beliefs are founded on evidence, it’s really the other way around.  We believe something is true; therefore, we see evidence that it is.  There’s a saying, “If you walk through the world with a hammer, you’ll find a lot of nails.”

Did you catch the fundamental flaw in all of this?

That’s right … Brain doesn’t look for counter-examples that don’t support it’s meaning. Like a heat seeking missile; it’s only looking for what it’s looking for … never what it’s not.

And, because it didn’t look for counter evidence to begin with, it will never look for it in the future.  That’s why people continue to carry a felt belief that they are not capable, or good enough, or (fill in the blank) even after accumulating of a ton of life experience (evidence) to the contrary.

GrayBall makes up the meaning, finds the evidence, and then convinces itself that the meaning it only made up in the first place is – in fact – the only possible Truth.  Ultimately creating a situation in which no other meaning can then exist.

And if that’s not crazy, I don’t know what is.

This is why it’s nearly impossible to have a sensible discussion about what’s True and what’s Not True.  And it also explains why it’s a futile endeavor to try to talk someone out of a belief… especially when it comes to themselves.  GrayBall has tricked them into believing that what they think about themselves is verifiably true.

So depending on how you look at it, unfortunately, there is no Truth-o-Meter.  There’s no way to measure absolute Truth.

But fortunately, there’s something we can measure.  And that’s the result any particular Truth has on our lives.

Simply stated, we can measure the consequences of holding onto a belief.  Rather than focusing on whether or not something is True, we can ask whether it was ever useful to believe it in the first place.

That’s why I am always more interested in the consequences of a Truth over its relative truth-y-ness.  One I can measure.  The other?  Well, it just starts arguments.

So here’s a challenge for you.

What Truths are operating in your life?  What do you think is true about you?

And, more importantly, what do these truths cost you in terms of happiness, fulfillment, passion, enthusiasm, or optimism?  Are they supporting your success or are they undermining it?

Because if your Truths are questionable, the results of hanging on to ones that don’t support you are not.

So pick one.  Truth? … or … Consequences?