Are you feeling stagnant in your life or business? Like you are creeping toward your goals or not moving forward at all?
You might be caught in your brain’s Distraction Cycle™.
It’s your mind’s way of discouraging you and keeping you stuck.
Your brain thinks that change is dangerous.
The way things currently are feels safer to your brain than trying something new, even if you are currently feeling overwhelmed and burnt out or unhappy and unfulfilled.
So your mind will try to convince you NOT to make a change in order to keep you safe.
It knows the dangers of the situations you are currently in. It’s familiar with the possible bad outcomes from the habitual decisions you typically make.
But change brings in the unfamiliar and the unknown.
That feels dangerous to your brain and makes its job of keeping you safe feel much harder.
Your mind likes when things stay the same, because the same-old, same-old feels easier to manage.
So when you are about to make a change that will get you unstuck, your brain will come up with a thought to discourage you. (Typically, something to be afraid of or to worry about.)
If you are not familiar with its tactics, you will be caught up in the thought and distracted from making the change you had planned.
Meaning, you will stay stuck in familiar patterns, no matter how bad they feel.
The brain will give a sigh of relief and go back to living its easy life until you work up the courage to try once again to get unstuck and change the things you don’t like.
And then the Distraction Cycle™ starts all over again!
The first step to breaking this never-ending cycle is to become aware of it.
If you know the thoughts your brain is going to offer to try to distract you BEFORE they even come up, you can interrupt the cycle!
The good news is that you don’t have to be psychic to know what distracting thoughts will pop into your mind. Because your brain uses the same basic thoughts over and over again. It has a small handful of distracting thoughts that it picks from every time you try to get unstuck.
As soon as you learn what your brain’s favorite distracting thoughts are, they become signposts that you have once again entered the Distraction Cycle™.
When you hear yourself saying a thought from the list, you know your brain is trying to distract you from your plans for growth or change.
And instead of unconsciously reacting in a way that keeps you stuck, you become conscious of the cycle and can get back in control.
In a future newsletter I will share how you find your brain’s favorite Distraction Cycle™ thoughts (Hint: it’s somewhere in your design!) and what to do once you notice them in order to regain control.
In the meantime, be kind to yourself and your brain. You are both doing your best!
