Back-to-school, back-to-work… and sometimes back to old predictions.
There’s a particular kind of energy emanating in the world for many of us right now..
Back to school. Back to work. Back to routines, schedules, meetings, classrooms, drop-offs, inboxes...
Even if your life doesn’t follow a school-year calendar, there can be a collective feeling of ‘going back’ to something that can happen during the fall.
'Going back’ is an interesting idea…
There can be comfort in ‘going back’ to something we know ( a routine, a place)..
But this can also carry an energy of ‘going back’ to old predictions.
A certain room, person, role, time of year or type of interaction can spark old brain-body patterns.
Without fully realizing it, our brain might start to buzz with old, familiar activity, like:
‘I get overwhelmed when things get this busy.’
‘I never have enough time.’
‘This is the part of the year where I lose myself.’
‘I’m not good at ___.’
And because those predictions can change what happens in our physiology, they can begin to feel like Truth.
This is why it's hard for me to talk about regulation without talking about mindset.
And it's hard for me to talk about mindset without talking about regulation 🙂
Because our beliefs about what something means literally - neurochemically - changes what happens in our nervous system. In our blood flow, hormones, electro-chemical activity inside the brain.
And the state of our nervous system changes:
- what we can actually perceive in our environment, and
- what we predict about what we’ll be able to do about it.
Two people can have the experience of a faster-beating heart when they walk into a room full of people they don’t know yet.
One brain predicts:
Something is wrong. I'm not ready for this.
The other predicts:
My body is mobilizing because something important is about to happen.
Similar physiological input. Very different meaning.*
*this example comes from multiple studies and one of my favorite books, Cameron, O. G. (2001). Visceral sensory neuroscience: Interoception. Oxford University Press... and older book, but helpful ideas to explore...
The meaning we make about what happens in our body (and environment) becomes new input for our nervous system.
This is one reason it’s so hard for me to teach about mindset with an idea a simple as: ‘Think differently.’
A mindset is so much more complex. It is a reflection of our brains as prediction machines.
Our socio-mind-brain-body uses past experiences to anticipate what's most likely to happen in each scenario we enter.
And those predictions influence:
- where our eyes physically move to in each scene,
- what our listening systems pick up on.
- And how our brain associates and process all of that information.
Which means an old prediction can start to feel like ‘reality’.
The ‘reality’ of me is that…
‘I'm someone who freezes.’
‘I can't handle conflict.’’
‘People like me don't do that.’
‘I've always been this way.’
But neuroscience can offer us hope…
a prediction is not reality.
The brain can update.
It CAN take new experiences and allow them to become new evidence, that feeds its algorithms of what reality means for us…
So lets pause for a moment during this Going-Back-To-Season..
You can got back to an old place, an old routine... and not necessarily* go back to the same prediction of who you are inside it.
*unless it serves you! Predictions can also be incredibly positive and empowering! 🙂 “I got this”.. “This is where i get to really shine…”
Sometimes the most transformative thing we can help someone understand is that what currently feels like a fact about them
may actually be an electro-chemical firing pattern their brain is used to and uses to predict something that doesn’t have to keep being that way…
That interpretation can create some new, wonderful electrical sparks of activity in the mind-brain-body..
And sometimes those sparks can be a beginning of a new trajectory..
–
P.S. This is why Teach Mindset Science goes much deeper than “growth vs. fixed mindset.”
I teach the biology underneath prediction, meaning-making, neuroplasticity and possibility.. so you can understand why mindset changes what people are able to perceive and do, and teach it without making it sound like just another motivational or pop psychology idea.
→ Explore Teach Mindset Science
