Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 375 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! What’s going on out there? Are you feeling good about where you’re heading? That’s the important thing right? Even if you don’t love exactly where you are, are you doing the things that put you on the track to where you want to be? It’s a good question to ponder. We aren’t always gonna love the situation we’re in but if we know we’re on a good track, it feels optimistic and hopeful, which allows us to make peace with where we are and be optimistic about where we are heading. Your feet aren’t set in concrete, one shift in what you’re doing can change the trajectory of your life in a very big way.
One little shift in thoughts, one little shift in habits, one little shift in your attention. Im constantly reminded that we can do so much more by our thoughts and energy than we can by pure effort and action. Because our thoughts direct all of our actions. So where your heads at, is where your life is going to go.
Now I’ve heard from some of you how relatable a lot of my experiences are for you and that doesn’t surprise me at all, like attracts like so no surprise there. So this episode may not be relatable to everyone but some of you will think it was written for you. But at the very least, you have someone in your life that it will be relatable to.
Ive talked in several episodes about us having two parts of our brain. The intelligent frontal brain which is basically the human brain the part where we use logic and reasoning and then we have the more primal brain which is our survival mode brain where we are emotional and usually unreasonable, this is what some call the monkey brain. We are constantly working from one of these areas of our brain. The more you work from the intelligent human brain the better of you are. It’s that way for everyone. But we all go back and forth. I read an article recently that said every single person we interact with has the rational brain and they have the monkey brain, so it’s good to know what state of mind they are in when you’re dealing with someone else. In this article they said these are the different scenarios you have when dealing with other people.
- You’re acting rationally and so is the other person
- You’re being rational, but the other person behaves like a chimp.
- You’re the chimp, while the other person is rational.
- You’re both monkeying around, which is worst case scenario because no-one is bing rational.
I bring that up because it’s so good to remember this, not so much for other people but mostly for ourself.
Since I was a little girl, I have felt like I’m a chameleon in a way, trying to change my colors so that other people feel good. Sometimes I would downplay how good my life is to make someone who was down and out feel a little better about their life. I would try to be a good girl, or do the things other people thought I should in order to be seen as good even when I didn’t want to. So the chameleon effect is when we change our attitudes and behaviors in order to better interact with other people. In a way, I grew up adapting myself to the situation in order to make people feel good that I was like them. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but sometimes you can just lose who you are altogether. So I feel like if something goes wrong for someone in my life or they are not happy for some reason, it’s my job to fix that or in some way it’s my fault they feel bad even if it has nothing to do with me. I will do this with perfect strangers. Perfect example, We have new neighbors that rented the home we bought next door. They are the most precious family and we are so grateful to have them there. Now, they have 3 precious daughters that are young, which they homeschool. Now, they love the house and have been looking for somewhere in this area for a while so they are excited to be here, but there are no other kids that live on this cove and so I found myself worrying about the girls not having friends to play with here and who do I know that has friends that we could invite over and introduce them to and I was creating all these things in my head like it’s my fault there aren’t other kids and how was I going to fix it. But then once I realized I was doing that I stopped and just reminded myself that we created this beautiful home that they have been looking for and that’s the only role I play here and the only thing I need to do is be the best neighbor I can be and they will figure out the rest from there. I put my monkey brain to sleep and allowed the rational brain to take over. When Im in my monkey brain I create imaginary problems in my head that gives me unnecessary anxiety, but once I let my rational brain take over I realized that’s not my job. I don’t have to solve for imaginary issues that I’m creating in my head. Im visual so I picture actually walking a real monkey on a leash and that’s when Im being emotional and irrational, but when I put the monkey to bed, my rational brain takes over. My monkey brain creates imaginary problems.
But what if there are problems that aren’t imaginary?
For instance, my family’s religion has them in a bubble they aren’t really supposed to associate with non members of their religion. They don’t cuss, they don’t celebrate any holidays, they don’t watch movies that are rated r, things offend them pretty easily because they are very sheltered and I know that. This is not imaginary, it’s real. So when Im around them, Im constantly worried about their feelings. So in other words, Im constantly walking the monkey on a leash, my monkey brain is running the show. We were going to a movie together and in my mind I was worried that something in the movie would offend them and then recently they were at my house spending the night unexpectedly and my sister in law and her boyfriend were coming over for dinner with their step parents. Now none of them go to church at all. Which is fine, but They kept talking about living together before they were married which my parents think is a big sin, and they were talking about the military which my parents think is a no no to be part of . And I noticed myself trying to manage the conversation and manage my parents and sister to make sure they were having a good time and not being offended…..which was making me crazy. That monkey was dragging me all over the place, until finally I put him to bed and my rational brain took over and I thought, you know what…wait a minute they’re grown ups…I’m not responsible for their feelings, anymore than they’re responsible for mine. Once I let that go and I relaxed into if they get offended it’s on them, I was able to notice my mom can handle her own at one point I heard her say God was happy you finally made an honest woman out of her….and I realized at that point I had basically been trying to heard cats here and it felt good to let it go. Allowing the rational front brain make decisions is way better because the monkey brain will literally drive you crazy. More recently though, I have been practicing letting them just feel the way they are going to feel without my needing to solve for it or apologize for it. The monkey brain will have you apologizing for things that you have no need to apologize for.
My husband and I got home from dinner with friends the other night and it was about 9:30 which is past my bedtime….I took our little yorkie out and then I was heading upstairs and Eric asked if I was going to bed, I said “yes, I’m sorry, I know Im no fun…Now first of all ” Why would I talk about myself like that? There’s my monkey calling the shots….when my rational brain is in charge, Me going to bed at the time I want to go to bed does not mean Im not fun, it means I just like to go to bed early. Eric likes to stay up a little later then I do, and I realized that I often apologize for going to bed early when it doesnt matter to him at all. He prefers to stay up later Now on the flip side, I notice he doesn’t apologize for sleeping in even though I get up much earlier. Of course he doesnt, he’s very logical, it’s rare for him to be working from his monkey brain, even though it does happen. But if he did have a problem with me going to bed early, that is something he would need to manage, not me. That’s the difference between the rational brain and the monkey brain.
When my monkey brain is in control
I Apologize for things that are in no way my fault. I try to manage everyones happiness. I blame myself when things go wrong even if I had no control of it. How is me going to bed early putting anyone else out? It’s not. Why do I have to cater to grown adults to make sure they don’t get offended. I don’t. And why is it my problem that our neighbors don’t have other kids in the cove to play with? It isn’t. This is the difference between living and breathing from your rational brain and living and breathing from your monkey brain. Now you may do different things when you’re living from your monkey brain, you may get mad at the waiter for the food coming out slow or rage at the car in front of you for cutting you off or want to eat every thing you see or drink every drink available….
Living from your monkey brain may be the automatic knee jerk reaction but catching it before it gets out of control, that’s your job, that’s the work, making more decisions from our rational brain, that’ the work. For me I just say to myself, there you go walking the monkey again. It’s a little hack to get me thinking from my rational brain.
I was not put on this earth to manage the chaos and happiness of other people and neither were you. I was not put on this earth to manage other people at all.
But that’s what happens when I let my monkey brain make decisons., when I take my monkey out for a walk, that is what happens.
My challenge to you is to ask yourself what happens when you take your monkey for a walk, better said…what happens when you are making decisions from your monkey brain? How do you act? How do you react? And how do you wake up so that you transition from making more decisions from your rational brain? When you feel yourself losing control or you’re making decisions that are emotional and irrational how do you wake yourself up? You can borrow my visual….there you go, walking your monkey again. Share this with 3 people who have a brain. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days!
