There is good reason why many humans love ice cream. This high fat high sugar sustenance means survival to our brains. For existing hunter gatherer tribes, finding food — especially meat or honey — means happiness. This wonderful mechanism helps us survive by building in intrinsic motivation and immense reward in ensuring we live.
For those living in areas where high fat high sugar foods are abundant and contributing to our poor health and shorter lifespan, we know we should not trust our instincts in eating this food. Relying on willpower alone is not effective to override the brain’s assurance that we should eat that ice cream. It is just too strong — we have to reteach our brain what is good for us.
Checking in with my body and paying attention to what makes me feel energized and happy versus lethargic has been a quick way to retrain my brain to want certain foods and feel more ambivalent about those that don’t make me feel good. Many of us have this experience when drinking too much where our body insists we should never have alcohol again in our lives. While many forget this sensation, we can use these cues to fundamentally rewire what we crave when we pay attention and reinforce the feeling. There is a transition period, where we long for the richness of ice cream against the boring bitterness of carrots…but this passes with enough attention to how good the body feels after the nourishment and lack of inflammation. Our habit forms and our brain follows suit to want the carrot. We don’t have to force ourselves to eat vegetables and avoid ice cream out of sheer willpower, instead we align our desire and our need with attention and patience.
Similar to food, we must do the same mental retraining when it comes to innovation and freedom. Our brains give us rewards when we find belonging and agreeableness — and similarly our brains rebel against conflict by giving us a great deal of discomfort or fear. This evolution helped us to survive as a group.
But we know now that going along with the masses can have detrimental consequences. And we logically see many examples of people who stood alone for truth and changed history for the better. We must examine ourselves to see where the mental slavery of requiring acceptance and belonging from others keeps us back from living our true selves and offering our true wisdom. These are often blind spots. Look long enough and find there are beliefs we hold and corresponding behaviors that we actually aren’t able to explain why or how we have them.
Standing alone and being rejected from the group was at a time deadly. It is now essential when the group is wrong (the masses are often wrong). We must teach ourselves to like what is good for us. Mental freedom and a commitment to honesty is good for us. It works again here to notice in our bodies when certain interactions feel bad and when they feel good shortly after they have taken place. Incessant gossiping about co-workers can feel liberating in the moment (like eating ice cream). But shortly after there is the sense of heaviness or emptiness. While standing up for oneself and setting a boundary is difficult at first, it becomes extremely rewarding as we build trust in ourselves. These are signals we can hold onto to remember that mental freedom and honesty are good for us. We have to teach ourselves to like them and seek them out, over habitually choosing acceptance or approval of the group.
Start today. Teach yourself to seek out and enjoy what is good for your body, mind, and spirit.
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