Pain, Gain, & How We Wire Our Brain
What?? Wire our Brain..!! What's you talking about Willis ? For those of you who remember the TV show. Yes, we do wire our brains in particular ways. We are a product of conditioning. Conditioning that comes in our genes, Conditioning we learnt in childhood, and Conditioning of so many other circumstances.
The first time I really figured this out, and noticed this in myself, I had heard someone talking about "Rewiring Your Brain" in a seminar on "How to Grow Yourself". I was at a cafe afterwards and the light bulb came on. I was the girl standing at the cafe cake cabinet, looking at the cakes inside, carefully choosing the biggest piece with the most cream and icing on it. I would will the server to chose the piece I wanted. I would ask for a large hot chocolate with all the trimmings, 2 marshmallows and the little chocolate on the side. At the time I was struggling in my head and body, with weight gain. The story is more complicated than that, but for the point here, lets just keep it simple.
Once I had finished my calorie packed, huge snack... I would go the rest of the day feeling ill because of what I had subjected myself to. Why would I do this time and time again...? When I heard this about Rewiring My Brain. I wondered how and why I was letting myself get to such a place in my head. The truth is it was because of conditioning.
The Gain was eating the sweet yummy food that my brain was telling me was so great... I would be thinking how nice it would taste and how good I would feel eating it. Which in fact was right. The Pain was the after effects. The high blood pressure caused by the injection of super sweetness to my blood stream. The pain of feeling ill for the rest of the day... The Pain of knowing what I was doing was wrong, because of a health condition I have. This is amazing, why would I subject myself to something that is doing me harm, and yet I felt so strongly about how it was going to feel eating and drinking sweet things. It was like how I think an addict might feel. In fact lets be real... It really is an addiction of a different kind. Lets say a more socially acceptable addiction.
I started working on this idea of Rewiring my Brain. Put simply I would start before I got to the cafe. I would think about how nice it was going to be to have a small size juice, and how a small cookie was going to be much better for me and how good I was going to feel after, and for the rest of the day. I concentrated on this. Then when I walked past the cake cabinet I would look at the cakes and force myself, in a gentle way to think about how bad I was going to feel if I ate that cake or ordered the hot chocolate. In short IT WORKED! I kept this up and after awhile I started doing this with other things as well. My diet changed completely and I lost weight and my condition was easier to manage. My business life became better.
That might seem all too simple but in reality it did take some work. All said though it was worth it. What it means though... I can do it with everything else as well.
More at life stories http://dorothypilgrim.com or get my ebook http://easibuilt.online/travel