Did you know that your brain is a bit of a “drama queen”?
Our brain is wired for our survival and to save energy. So it likes it when we’re immersed in the drama of a situation, lost in familiar thoughts about it, spinning in the problem, because we’re not taking risks.
Here are some examples of drama queen thoughts:
– I’ll never be able to do this, it’s too hard.
– This is going to take forever to learn.
– There’s no point in doing this if I can’t say it right.
– I’m such an idiot.
– I should be better at this by now.
– I’m sure I’m going to mess up.
– She must be thinking I’m a bad speaker.
We call these dramatic thoughts “cognitive distortions”. We only focus on what we believe and filter out the rest.
How do we deal with a drama queen brain?
We take away her crown 👑!
We remove the drama (opinions/distortions) and look at the real data & facts.
Like a ruthless lawyer, we look at the evidence and find the holes in the arguments:
– What concrete evidence do I have to support this?
– What are the assumptions?
– What benchmark am I using to measure this?
– Says who?
We soon realize that these vague, blanket statements can’t stand up to questioning.
We can then start to “unbelieve” them by finding evidence to the contrary.
And then, we’re ready to create new believable thoughts and feelings on purpose to take us where we want to go.
Ready to start?
Photo courtesy of Unsplash: Ashton Mullins, S-Sky