How Your Brain Works & How it Holds You Back

Do you ever wonder why you seem to want to take the easy way out, to eat the office doughnuts, to stay in indecision and why you have a hard time making changes in your life? Well, today I'm going to answer that question by teaching you about your brain.

The human brain is a complex organ. It's like a super computer. 

The first part of the human brain I want to talk about today is referred to as the primitive brain, or sometimes the lizard brain. It's the part of our brain that is oldest in evolution and has the most in common with other species. 

All the input that your brain receives first goes through this filter, think of it like the operating system of a computer. It runs in the background to keep the whole computer running. We use this part of our brain unconsciously. The goal of this part of your brain is to keep you alive. 

Our primitive brain has three main objectives:

1. Avoid Pain

2. Seek Pleasure

3. Conserve Energy

This is called the motivational triad. 

Back in cave man days these three things helped to keep us alive, nourished and to procreate. These are three essentials for perpetuating a species. Although we are not trying to escape sabertooth tigers now days, this part of your brain still plays a roll in your every day life.

Let's look at each of these functions and how they pertain to us in modern times.

1. Avoid Pain

This is the survival instinct. It's your gut feeling telling you a situation is dangerous, or not right. It's the reason when you smell mold on your food your brain tells you not to eat it. You probably have heard about this as the fight or flight response.

If you are reading this blog, then you are likely not fighting just to survive each day. For most of us this stay alive survival instinct it frequently manifests in a more subtle way. This part of our primitive brain causes us to avoid situations that are uncomfortable, that seem risky or unsafe. 

This desire to avoid pain is largely what keeps us from trying new experiences. Simply put, we are afraid to fail, we are avoiding emotional pain. It's the reason we stay in a job we don't love because it's risky and uncomfortable to try a new career and start over.

The brain knows that what we have done in the past has kept us alive so far and so it repeats past behavior. If you feel stuck on some issue or have a hurdle that you can't seem overcome, this could be the reason. You have to consciously over ride this primitive brain instinct. 

2. Seek Pleasure

At a very primitive level, this part of the triad helps to perpetuate the species by causing humans to seek pleasure in the form of connections with others as well as a drive to find food to survive. This is also responsible for the instinct to reproduce.

For a modern application, this part of the triad thrives on getting a dopamine hit from things that you like, from a glass of your favorite wine, a sugary doughnut, a double espresso, a thrill seeking sky dive, or even the next hit of a preferred drug. The more we do these things that bring us pleasure the more we build up that tolerance to the dopamine and the more we need of it to feel a high.

3. Conserving Energy

At one point in time humans were hunters and gatherers. We never knew when, if or how we would be able to get our next meal. This primitive thought pattern urges the body to conserve energy in case it is needed in the short term future.

Today, this may be your brain's way of saying, stay on the couch and take it easy, you might need this energy for something, vs going to the gym for a weight lifting workout. It's also another reason that doughnut seems like a good idea, your brain says, hey you might need those calories later. 

It also keeps us doing things the simple way in order to conserve energy. As with the examples above, it requires less energy to do something that you already have done in the past than learn to do something new. This is another reason it can be hard to push yourself to take on a new habit, learn a new language, or to make a big change in your life.

The other part of your brain that I want to tell you about is called the Prefrontal Cortex. Humans have the largest percentage of prefrontal cortex vs any other species. 

This part of the brain is responsible for higher level thinking such as:

• Decision making 
• Problem solving
• Planning and envisioning
• Goal creation 
• Keeping your behavior aligned with your goals
• Maintains and moderates our social behavior
• Suppressing urges

We use this part of our brain to override our primitive brain. That sugary doughnut, which your primitive brain says it is a good idea to eat, your prefrontal cortex may tell you that it's not in your best interest to eat that, as it does not help you to get to your weight loss goal.

It's also the part of our brain that we use to make complex decisions, to plan goals and future. We can use this part of our brain to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and to achieve our dream life.

So the next time you catch yourself wanting to take the easy way out, avoiding doing something new or uncomfortable, or overindulging in something that brings pleasure, recognize that it's your primitive brain driving these things. Use your prefrontal cortex to try something new, to skip the doughnut, to stick to your workout routine and to push yourself to become the next version of you.

Until next time....