Your brain doesn’t care if you’re happy, it cares if you’re predictable.
Your brain doesn’t care if you’re happy.
You brain doesn’t care if you’re happy.
It cares if you’re predictable.
Our brains don’t optimise for joy, they optimise for survival. And to your nervous system, familiarity = safety.
Which means that even if something makes you miserable, your brain will probably do it again (and again), because as far as it’s concerned at least it knows how to do it and deal with it.
Which is why people repeat the same relationship dynamic, run the same emotional patterns over and over again, indulge in the same cycles of self-sabotage.
It’s not because you want to suffer, it’s because (predictable) suffering is still easier for the nervous system to handle than (unpredictable) uncertainty.
This is why mindset work alone isn’t enough. You can’t just tell yourself to want something different. Your nervous system has to experience it as safe before it stops pulling you back to the familiar (suffering).
So if you keep repeating a pattern that doesn’t serve you, the question isn’t: “What’s wrong with me?” The question is: “What about this feels safer than the alternative?”
And then: “How can I start proving to my nervous system, in small ways, that something else is possible?”
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