Transform your Mental Grooves
Originally published on November 16 2018 on LinkedIn.
Imagine the needle of a turntable rolling along the grooves of a record. The crackles and pops as the needle follows along the record’s groove, a well traveled path, familiar and predetermined.
Our brains are sort of like that. Patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that are defined throughout our whole lives that help us navigate the complexity and sheer volume of stimuli coming at us. Its no wonder we settle into grooves to help us get through the day, programming many things into our subconscious mind, supposedly freeing up executive brain function from the prefrontal cortex for more important things, right? But what if the grooves are not helping us with the most important things and playing a tune that we don’t even know we don’t want to hear?
Last week I wrote about how I quit my corporate management job in my quest for better health and to start a new chapter in my career. I’ve had many conversations with folks since about what it was like for me to come to that decision. Well folks, it was not pretty. Even though my conscious mind had decided that I wanted to put health and a career adventure at the top of the list, my subconscious mind was challenging me every step of the way, urging me to stick with the familiar deep grooves I have traveled for so long.
The grooves in my brain were wired to reinforce decisions and actions that aligned with stability, predictability, reducing risk, being a bad ass woman boss, making a great income, working on airplanes, and leading teams of human beings. I had daydreamed of being an entrepreneur for many years, but this summer it became more than just an idea, as I realized that my body needed a lot more space to heal, and I knew in my heart that I couldn’t continue doing the desk work that had become such a key part of my identity for so many years. As I pondered the concept of quitting my job, I felt all the fear, uncertainty, and self-doubt rush into my conscious thoughts. Was I losing my mind? What about our mortgage? I had been my family’s breadwinner for so long. Was I throwing away my corporate standing? Would people respect me as much if I was a facilitator vs a manager? What about my dream to become a corporate executive and smash the glass ceiling for women of color? I felt completely lost, like all the ground beneath my feet was giving way in a massive landslide. I needed new grooves…
Research shows meditation is one great way to rewire your brain. I started a daily practice in February, using the free app Insight Timer as a tool to help me find guided meditations and stay on track. Over the course of many months, as I practiced my breathing, focused on the present moment, and observed my thoughts, I started to build a picture of how I was using my brain, and how my brain was using me. It turns out I was spending (and still am) a lot of time thinking about things that were not relevant to the moment (debriefing my life in my head, planning my next conversation, worrying about all sorts of things, imagining how I was perceived by others, plotting to be cooler, smarter, funnier, richer, the list goes on!). What I have been able to do is change how I use my brain, and when I encounter beliefs that are unhelpful/unproductive, then something special has been starting to happen. First, I start noticing when it happens more “Oh — there goes that narrative”. Second, when I do notice it, I am now able to stop doing it, and skip the needle to a new groove, a new song.
The new song is about confidence in my abilities, compassion towards myself and others, and the belief that I can contribute to the world in a fabulous new way that connects my strengths with the need for organizations to evolve, through putting people and planet first, along with their profits. I have been incubating my own venture, and while I have some answers, there is a lot that I am still figuring out. I don’t have to have all the answers now, and I can simply be in this place of uncertainty, without impacting my self worth. I am more than enough and all the great things will come to me, even though the future is unfamiliar.
I will say that its much easier to develop new grooves when you change things up. Change anything. Your routine, your job, your environment, your habits. The more you introduce new stimuli into your life, the more you are disrupting the patterns and making way for fresh tracks. Its OK to hit pause. I give you permission! You never know what wisdom you might find in the underused corners of your brain. For me, I had to create space by unplugging from the system, and gifting myself precious time and energy to transform and find peace and clarity.
I truly believe that our ability to recognize our own grooves, and design new ones that align with what we and the world need, is a capacity we need to cultivate in ourselves and in one another. As the world changes so rapidly around us, so we must change ourselves and challenge our own ways of thinking, to give ourselves and our kin a chance to truly improve ourselves and our current future trajectory.
