You are what you practice

I promised I would write about thankfulness today as a counterpoint to the rather depressing excerpt I posted yesterday. As I mentioned, this was triggered by an episode of the Hidden Brain podcast, I was listening to. A podcast I highly recommend if you are interested in why people behave the way they do.

As I see it, there are two really big hurdles we need to cross if we are going to have a hope of perpetuating thankfulness in our lives. The first is that our brains are wired for negativity. It doesn't' sound good up front, but it is actually important that they are. This trait helps to keep us alive. It was especially important when humans had to worry about things such as saber-toothed tigers. In an environment where there are things out there that want to kill you, what is more important... remembering the last time you managed to escape from a predator, including where you were, what you did, what you needed to do better, etc. or remembering the last really pleasant walk in the woods where you spent a good chunk of time appreciating the songs of the birds as you went? I'm pretty sure you picked the predator scenario. Birds can wait if it means you don't get eaten. 

There are no more saber-toothed tigers stalking us and many of us do not have to worry about living in a chronically dangerous environment. (The fact that many people still do is wrong, but I'm going to leave that topic for the moment and address those of us for whom life is relatively easy in comparison.) Our brains still want to keep us safe. Our nervous systems are very concerned with threat and they do not differentiate between a hungry carnivore and having made a huge mistake at work. All this to say, people are already wired to focus on the negative, the stressful, the worrying, the mistakes, the slights, the wrongs. The nervous system believes in always being prepared and storing all of these potentially life threatening things is a way of doing that.

What the nervous system is not so good at is storing away the equal number of really good things that happen to us throughout the day. They are not threat, so little effort is made to keep them in mind. Thus, we are left with the impression that life really stinks much of the time because the negative is being constantly called to mind... sometimes to the point where we actually stop noticing anything even remotely positive or pleasant. 

Moving from the nervous system to the neurons in the brain we run into another difficulty. The more we use a certain pathway of neurons... remembering things or the things we do everyday... the stronger those connections become. It is why habits are so difficult to break. There are well-worn paths in our brain which are connected to a whole host of other input that make it very difficult to choose a different option. They become our default because it is what is easiest. And what is easiest is what gets practiced and what is practiced becomes even easier and so forth and so on. 

When you combine these neural facts with the toxic culture we live in it's not surprising that so many people feel as though they are falling apart. Every day our brains are looking for threats. Every day we are bombarded with messages that imply our worth is in doubt if we don't buy a certain things or do a certain thing or look a certain way. These are definite threats to our worth as a human being and our brain pays attention. Often we will try to mitigate these perceived threats by buying or doing the thing that is advertised, but you and I both know that this is an extremely short lived reprieve (if it is a reprieve at all) and it doesn't take long to go back to square one and worrying about our worth. And so we worry and fret and eat too much chocolate or too much wine or buy too many things and we still don't feel better. Actually we probably feel worse. 

It's a treadmill that seems endless.

This isn't very hopeful yet, is it? But actually, I do think there is hope even if nothing externally around us changes. As I, my non-therapist, armchair brain geek self sees it, there are two things we can do that can have extremely powerful effects. 

(Disclaimer... as I said before, many people live in extreme conditions either due to violence, poverty, or both and to say these two suggestions will help in any meaningful way for those people would be trite and facile. This is for those of us who live a fairly privileged existence yet still find any sort of peace and contentment unattainable.) 

1. Build awareness.

Often when our nervous systems are busy keeping track of all the potential threats that could be possible, we are only vaguely aware of what is going on. Instead, we just know we aren't happy, things feel worrisome, it's difficult to find anything positive or interesting, and we have a vague disquiet through our entire body. We are not comfortable in the world and we are not comfortable in ourselves. But this tends to all be background noise and not something that we actively acknowledge; the most we might do is feel something is not right. 

Now our nervous systems are a two-way communication system, sending information from the body to the brain and from the brain to the body. They can effect each other. My favorite is that if we smile, even if we don't mean it and do so halfheartedly, our emotional system is alerted that smiling has happened so the DEFCON level can go from yellow back down to blue.There is a definitely a chicken and egg thing going on. Does you stomach feel queasy because you're worried or are you worried because your stomach feels queasy?

Often, when I am feeling anxious or upset, these days I'm able to take a pause and take inventory. Is my face relaxed? Probably not. Usually my tension is around the outside of my eyes. Realizing this, the simple act of releasing that tension, broadening my vision, can trigger a huge intake of breath and a release of tension. Are your shoulders hunched up around your ears? Are you scowling? Stomach in turmoil? Do you know why? For me there is often one particular thing that has caused this reaction because as I go through the different possibilities, when I hit on the one that is most salient, my body reacts all over again. That awareness can help me deal with the actual issue. It is hard to feel thankful if your sympathetic nervous system is triggered. 

We can also build awareness when we find ourselves perseverating on only the negatives in our lives. Just the simple act of acknowledging this is happening and realizing we are not taking in the total picture can help change our outlook. Life is a complicated mix of good and bad, the bitter and sweet, but we also only tend to see what we are looking for. If you're only looking for life to be hard and stressful, that is what you are going to find. Which leads me to...

2. You are what you practice. So you want to be peaceful and calm but most days you are anything but those things? You want to be appreciative of the things around you but spend most of your waking moments dwelling on what you don't have? You want helpful children but your only interaction with them is to point out what they didn't do? I think you get the idea. We say we want to be certain ways and do certain things but then spend most of our practicing being the exact opposite. 

What if you viewed being thankful as a skill instead of something some lucky people, most certainly not you, were endowed with? Because it is. The more you practice thankfulness, the easier it gets, not unlike exercising. And like exercising, you are not going to be able to go through your day being aware of the good in your life and being thankful for it anymore than you would be able to bench press hundreds of pounds or run a marathon right off the bat. Start small! To start, along with becoming more aware of your physical and emotional state, list five things you are thankful for. Write them down. After a week or two, do this twice a day, gradually increasing either the amount of the frequency. Choose a certain time of day and set your watch. Stop in that moment and look at the world around you as if you have never seen it before. Appreciate the amazingness of it. Then practice all of this some more. 

You are essentially reprogramming your brain a bit. It will always have a negativity bias, but you can practicing adding in the positive. This is not unlike what I had to do to myself when I was learning to attach to some of my children. Be aware of negative thoughts, slowly add in positive thoughts, upping the ante every so often until it was something I didn't have to consciously push myself to do. 

It is possible to do this, but it will be challenging. Give yourself grace to mess up and permission to keep trying. Be compassionate with yourself as you do a hard thing.