We have all done it. I mean every last one of us. We have all looked at a situation or another person and thought I am right and they are wrong. We add up the reasons why we are clearly the winner by being right. It feels good in that moment to know with blinding clarity our superiority, our rightness.
What’s interesting about the brain biology that goes with that thought process, is the ancient brain (survival mode) is most satisfied with this dynamic. After all, if you choose right, you get to stay alive. So when we default to this pattern of thought we are letting the oldest, and frankly the simplest, part of our brain take charge.
There is nothing wrong with the thought pattern; in fact it has helped us survive through the centuries. In some cases, not just survive but thrive. After all, we look at the success stories and we pay for books, systems, and expertise all to learn how to do it “right.” There is powerful insight in learning from others’ mistakes rather than making them all yourself. Wisdom even!
But I am taking issue with the wrong-versus-right model of thought processing as being the last stop in your thinking. The progression of that thought line is that inevitably there is a fear of punishment, loss, or worse if you are “wrong.” If you let this simplistic approach be the end point, being right is then unconsciously linked to survival. It drives up emotion around the choice and draws out “survivor” behavior in the extreme for some people. A bar fight over football teams or political adversaries going for personal bloodletting to win are just two examples that come to mind.
Since fear is such a strong component in most right/wrong thinking, continually being right is like trying to build on quicksand. It requires more and more and more “right” choices to keep what you are building above ground. You never get to enjoy being right for long before the survival drumbeat sounds and you need another win to keep moving forward.
It also screens out the possibility of another person’s perspective. When they are wrong, you don’t want to encompass their thoughts or process – you want to discard it. Wrong is bad, therefore they cannot contribute to what you are measuring, doing, creating.
Therein lies a missed opportunity. I can’t tell you how many times I have disagreed with someone and yet learned from his or her point of view. It actually added great perspective to mine even though we disagreed on the outcome and actions required.
So you can start harnessing and directing the ancient brain using the frontal lobe—the part that learns from experience. The opportunity is to translate “wrong” as an absolute judgment into “wrong for me,” as a personal absolute. By mentally choosing something that can appear wrong to many others but you know is right for you, you may at first stir up that ancient brain who will kick in to high gear trying to get you to conform. It is very effective in fact at working to undermine your choice and getting you to fall into lockstep. It will stack up all the reasons why you can’t possibly succeed unless you do what has always been done. This was part of the survival mechanism in our brains and is not easily trained.
But train it you can, with steady calm reasoning where logic talks back to instinct.
Allowing yourself your choice and someone else his or hers, actually can eventually free up your ancient brain to trust the frontal lobe and eventually, permanently bring down anxiety. It takes repeatedly reinforcing those opening those of seeing more choices as possible then selecting what works for you. Bucking the status quo can bring up a tremendous amount of anxiety if that’s what the choice you make can do. So it puts you in the pressure point of having to self-soothe your ancient brain. I highly recommend support like yoga classes, simple audio self-hypnosis, or Holosync to help calm some of the stress it can bring up. These activities can further effect long-term change in your brain biology.
