Episode 03: Telling your Brain “No” may actually be a “Hell yes”. Try this instead.

I think we’ve all been the young kid in the store walking through the isles with an adult and our first instinct is to start touching and looking at EVERYTHING. Sure enough we soon hear, “Dont touch that!” or “Stop touching things” and the sound of restriction starts to sound more like permission, and suddenly we cant stop touching things.

Science tells us that our brain actually works in a very similar fashion. As we are very curious, challenge-driven, creatures, our brain will immediately try to challenge a restriction. This phenomenon is significant when we discuss healthy ways to self-regulate because negative thought triggers negative talk and our first instinct is typically to tell our brain to “stop thinking like that”, or “think about it this way”, which is quite counterintuitive.

In this episode, I discuss a method that doesn’t force you to go against the grain but actually work with the various mechanisms that are already set in place.

Instead of being told “dont touch anything”, we can train our brains to be the parent to our bodies that says “touch this instead”.

Stay tuned for the video version of this episode.