Why Your Brain Is Basic AF

Yup you heard that right, yah basic. While we may be complicated beings, with an incredibly sophisticated brain, our overstimulated lifestyle affects our brains at a subconscious level and leaves us running sub-optimally. To un-nerdify, there’s so much sh*t going on around us, that your brain doesn’t do too hot and just stresses about everything. Let me explain.

Also for you homies in a rush, there is a too long; didn't read the section at the bottom that summarizes everything.

Modern vs Caveman Stress

Stress triggers our brain's fear center, the amygdala, to release cortisol and adrenaline from our adrenal glands. This results in better blood flow and oxygen distribution to critical areas, such as the heart, the muscles, and the brain. Stress, in the right situations, can even help you make better decisions. So when our ancestors saw a saber tooth tiger running at them, their stress response would kick in and aid them not only in running away but also in finding the best escape route. A pretty useful system when it works properly.

As you can see, stress can actually be a very useful tool when used properly. It always you to focus on a certain task completely and with all your energy. Ever wonder why procrastinators love leaving everything until the last minute? The resulting rush of adrenaline from the stress allows them to get hyper-focused and pump out something at lightning speed. It is when this stress response is spread out consistently over a long period of time that it starts to have a negative effect.

Our saber tooth tigers come in the shape of late assignments, missed bills, emails from our bosses, a long text from a significant other, or even a traffic jam on the way to work. This results in individuals being in a state of chronic stress at all times. Things that aren't remotely worth worrying about lead to stress and strong emotional reactions. Your body stays in a constant, low-key, state of fight or flight. Not the best place to be if you want to function as an evolved baboon trying to make it in life and earn a paycheck.

What makes our lives so stressful?

This outta be short; It’s technology. I know that this is just tooting a horn that’s been tooted too many times before, but it’s the truth. While technology has connected us, it has also turned people into self-conscious, overthinking, and anxious blobs. Our interconnectedness and the speed of tech development are far too much than our slowly evolving brains can handle. We are bombarded with everyone's highlight reels on Instagram. Connected to our emails in almost every corner of the planet. Facebook spreads misinformation, and don't even get me started with how horrible news stations are now. Holy guacamole it's so much!

Back in the day you come home from work and it’s time to be with the family, and you leave work and stress back in the office. Nowadays, because of technology, if you aren’t working every living second you feel like you are falling behind. If you don't have every degree on the planet, you have been deemed a failure. Furthermore, people are achieving success at such early stages of their lives, whether it's financial, mental, or physical, and naturally, we compare ourselves to that impossible benchmark. It's no wonder people feel like sh*t.

Now you might be expecting this post to turn into a “put down your machines, sit and talk with your families, and go read a book while you are it” but it’s not. While I may point out the negatives of technology and advocate putting the phone down at times. The truth is, our lives are too closely tied to the computers in our pockets, and for many of us putting them down for an extended period of time is unrealistic. So, what can you do? The answer is, to fix the broken filter.

Your Filter is Broken

“There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so” - William Shakespeare

This is roughly how you face situations.

Any Stimulus -> Your brain -> Your Reaction

Your brain is your filter. It determines what can be brought into the forefront of your consciousness, and if it is worth reacting to. For example, the fire alarm going off will be urgent and will make its way through the filter and lead to a reaction. However, the sound of the fan in your room will seemingly disappear into the background. Similarly, situations that arise in your life will make their way through the filter and lead to a response. All businesses now profit from gaining our attention, so they specifically engineer content to make its way past your filter and lead to reactions. Bright colors, cliffhanger headlines, and BREAKING NEWS are written across every news broadcast. With the filter now just letting everything in, you react, often with stress.

This isn't just something that technology does, often our own unrealistic negative thoughts will make their way through the filter and lead to a stress response. This is because your brain has what's called a "negativity bias", you tend to detect the threats in all situations. This is meant to be a survival mechanism, however, nowadays it's a tool used by businesses, and your own negative subconscious, to keep your attention.

All this translates into people having very short fuses, getting stressed or overcome with fear in small situations, and getting paralysis by analysis (ah my dear friend). I once had a full-blown panic attack creating a google sheet where interviewees sign up for time slots. Looking back at it now, it seems silly but at the time it seemed like the end of the world for me.

Our brains have become piss poor at detecting what is actually worth a reaction. We often notice the negatives of every situation and are hardwired to respond with stress and worry. This results in consistent background stress, which as we discussed, is very bad for you. You need to work to train this filter.

Mindfulness

This isn’t advice that is too revolutionary but is worth repeating as often as possible. Especially in a world that is now more stressed than ever. Becoming more mindful, through meditation, and journaling is by far, in my opinion, the most beneficial way to overcome your brain's basic af tendencies.

Being more mindful doesn't mean sitting down every day, listening to ancient hymns, and opening your third eye to see into the future. It is, in essence, you learning how to be more aware of what you are allowing into your headspace.

Much like being aware of what food you are putting into your body helps your physical health. Becoming aware and selective of what you are putting into your mind helps your mental health.

Mindfulness = Meditation + Journaling (with a sprinkle of reading my blog)

How I Journal

My journaling is more of a brain dump rather than a structured practice. I write out whatever has been running through my mind all day. Often you will find yourself thinking about the same thoughts over and over again. This is because your filter has allowed certain info in, and deemed it important enough for a reaction. Since your brain doesn’t want you to forget the information and the thoughts/emotions associated with it. It will remind you of it like an alarm rattling off every few hours to remind you of its existence. Hence why certain negative thoughts stay in your head for a long time. Writing them down allows you to offload these thoughts, or at least unburden your brain to a certain extent, and basically move on and move forward. I have found that when I write down the thoughts that have been weighing me down all day, especially the negative ones, they don’t stay in my mind after that.

How I Meditate

1) Before bed, keep the lights on in your room (so you don't snooze), and sit in a comfortable position

2) Set a timer for 10-15 minutes (less if you want to start slow)

3) Begin to take deep breaths and let your mind do its thing. Every time a thought comes into your head, do not entertain it, but rather observe it

• A common mistake I tend to make is trying to push the thoughts away when they arise. I try to force myself to not think of anything, however, I now realize that trying to push them away just keeps you in contact with the thoughts. You need to, about to sound super voodoo and cheesy, notice them, acknowledge them and move on to breathing.

4) Just keep bringing your attention back to your breath

• You might be a few minutes in and realize you had been daydreaming for the last few minutes, and that is okay. As you become more consistent with meditation, you will become better at pulling yourself out of those tasty imaginations and back to the present.

So try out both meditation and journaling for 15 minutes a day, and do it for 30 days. You may not become as relaxed and woke as buddha on shrooms, but you will learn more about your own negative thought patterns and what sets them off. The pursuit of learning more about yourself has no real downsides. Work on making your brain less of a basic af b*tch.

jk, love you <3 and thanks for reading you, magnificent ass human.  

Too Long Didn’t Read

Your brain is very good at stressing about everything. It is all based around your brain's biological fear center, which at one point helped you run from danger, but now sees threats in everything. Social media and technology are a big antecedent to this negative behavior. However, since we are so dependent on them, removing them from our lives for an extended period is very tough. Therefore, the solution lies in your brain. Your brain is like a filter, it takes in all information, discarding what is irrelevant, and presenting to you what it thinks is relevant. In our current state, people filter in too much information, and since the brain tends to favor threats (called negativity bias), you are flooded with negative overthinky (that is a scientific term) thoughts. To improve your filter, you need to practice being more mindful through meditation and journaling. These two tools will allow you to understand your thought patterns, what triggers them into action, why they occur in the first place, and eventually how you can remove/replace them. Like any skill, it takes time, effort, and most of all consistency. Start with 15 mins of journaling and 15 minutes of meditation every day for 30 days. It is helped me work through my disaster artist of a brain, and I am sure it will help you too. Everyone's brain can benefit from learning a bit more about itself and becoming less basic af.