Our Brain’s Automatic Narrative
Posted on July 16th, 2011
A most important tip: hijack the brain’s automatic hijacking.
Here's a little example of how our brain can automatically hijack us:
We're walking along a pathway that runs around a beautiful lake. It's a gorgeous day, not too hot, not too cool, with a lovely breeze. We're not thinking of anything in particular when all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, we feel a little twinge of sadness.
We start wondering WHY we felt that little twinge of sadness, and we remember that we had made a comment recently to someone… and (now we're thinking) that comment could have been perceived as rude or inconsiderate… and (now we're thinking) this person is really angry with us… and is telling all of our mutual friends how rude and inconsiderate we were/are/always will be… and all of those friends will believe/agree with that person… and everyone will begin to avoid us and talk behind our back… and (we're still thinking) we will not get an invitation to any of the parties being planned for the summer and we'll have no one to be our friend…
And now we are not aware at all of the gorgeousness of the day or the lovely cool breeze or the stunningly beautiful lake. Instead, we are being pulled down this spiral of negative emotions and feeling sadder and sadder.