24. discerning

I am Discerning

This past Saturday's morning meeting had a lot of things I needed to be reminded of, and some amazing insights. We were talking a lot about ego, self doubt, and deadlines. After the meeting I felt very … emotional? reflective? I'm not entirely sure what the feeling was but I was certainly feeling a lot of it. So I started writing this blog to try to get to make some sense of it. 

A while ago I was thinking about motivation and consistency and why sometimes it's so hard. I was struggling to get off my butt, get up and just do something and I asked myself "why does my brain have this automatic opposition to the idea of training?  I am my brain, so logically my brain should want to train, because I want to train, right?  Why is it that before the idea is even fully formed my brain is already insisting later, not now, too busy, too tired" ?And I realized that maybe this comes from the way all brains are wired. Our brains have evolved to conserve as much energy and resources as possible, to achieve the maximum return with the lowest effort input. We're mammals, we're built to sleep, and rest and hunt only the amount of food we need to survive. On some level my brain wants to discourage me from training because it doesn't know if I'll need to fight a bear later, or if I will need that energy to get enough food for another day. Once I tried to understand the source of those thoughts it became easier to dismiss them. 

This brings me back to this mornings meeting. I started thinking about where all my thoughts about self doubt were coming from, what was their source? I think this problem comes from the same place as the motivational issue I just talked about above, from your brain's desire to conserve energy, but in a much more round-about way. 

When you think I can't do this, I'm not good enough, this person is so much better than me how could I ever compare to them? Your brain is trying to convince you that it is something implicit within yourself that is the problem, some fundamental, uncontrollable, unchangeable aspect of yourself is the reason you can’t do it, instead of the completely controllable, and changeable choices you’re making. Your brain is trying to persuade you that nothing you do will change how you are, so there's no point in putting in the effort anymore (because if you're not putting in effort, you are conserving energy). 

In order to challenge these ideas of self doubt I need to understand and acknowledge that skill/progress is only coming from my decisions, there is nothing implicit within myself that is making this happen, there are not some people that are predisposed to having an easier time consistently making good choices, there are only people, and there are only choices. 

I have to start replying "this is not the truth" when my brain tries to start another dialogue of self doubt. I have to be able to discern between the thoughts that stem from self-preservation and energy conservation, and actual constructive thoughts that reflect the reality of my abilities and actions. 

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