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How to Tame a Wild Brain 3 – Reframing

by Mike Kirkeberg

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Third in this series on Taming the Wild Brain. You maay also want to take a look at …

How to Tame a Wild Brain

How to Tame the Wild Brain 2 – Taming

Reframing

Mind-y

When we are mind-y (right, above), we are wrapped up in a rigid thinking process that leaves us open to the power of the rascal amygdala. Your experience may be different, but when it happens to me, I feel like I am in a battle with life. I fight the waves of emotion and thought. In this mind-y state, we are very attached to rules, shoulds and shouldn’ts, and lose the psychological flexibility needed for mental fitness. In this state, when someone (or something) breaks on of those rules, it is a signal for the amygdala to go into battle mode and start pumping out chemicals that, while great in the short term (if we are faced with a velociraptor), but also block learning and successful problem solving.

Mindlessness

On the other hand, sometimes we are simply mindless (above, left) and moving along on automatic pilot, swayed by the wind buffeted about by waves and currents of feelings and thoughts. According to Ellen Langer, mindlessness is thinking, feeling, and acting on precategorized thoughts; she describes it using one of my favorite phrases, “premature cognitive comittment.” This leaves the brain wide open for an amygdala hijacking.

Mindfulness

In mindfulness meditation (above, center), we are able to slow things down, notice those things that affect us, and see our sometimes insidious minds in a different light. We ride the waves of stress, anger, fear, challenge like a surfer riding waves of water.

Aikido for Your Brain

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Meditation is Aikido for the brain. We can step into habitual old reactions and reframe them with nes perspective. By stepping into meditation we are able to step back from reacting mindlessly or in a mind-y manner. Powerful emotions we often consider “negative’ lose their hindering power on our own personal development and mental fitness.

Anger becomes a red light on your mental dashboard that both tells you to slow down and to take a look under the hood. It gives you the opportunity to have second thoughts on the urge to charge ahead.
Stress circles around from being a never-ending burden and focuses our attention on “getting things done’
On the other hand, when we lack motivation to move forward, we can find values and goals that jump-start the amygdala

Doing the opposite, reframing, and an open mind all start with mindfulness and awareness.

What are your mindfulness strategies?

What’s worked? What hasn’t?

Your turn to respond.

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