Your brain is magnificent.
I love learning about how it works, and there is still so much to learn.
A good portion of my life has been spent listening to conversations about the brain. My husband is a Neurosurgeon that specializes in tumors of the brain.
Sometimes these conversations entail my husband explaining a complicated case and how they will use inter-operative monitoring to ensure they don’t get into areas that are critical to personality, speech or motor function.
Other times it is hearing about the time he he performed a craniotomy on a patient while they were awake. I find it fascinating that he can put a patient under, open up their skull, expose their brain, and while he still has instruments and his hands in the brain, can wake them up and have a conversation with them.
What?
It is really remarkable.
What I also find remarkable is that this organ that is so refined, elegant, and efficient can provide us with information that is false.
But it is true. It does it all the time.
Like when your kid misbehaves in public and you automatically think “I must be a bad mother”.
Wrong.
Or when you try to eat healthier and then end up in the pantry with a bag of cookies, you hear yourself say “this is too hard, I can’t do this.”
Wrong.
And my favorite, “if my husband had just been interested in finance instead of medicine, this would all be easier!”
Wrong again.
These are just a few examples. But I could give you hundreds of similar thoughts that seem like your brain is just doing the math and coming up with the only possible answer.
It’s not.
You are a good mother.
You can do this.
Your spouses job doesn’t make things easier or harder.
Your brain does a great job at keeping us alive and functioning. But it doesn’t always do a good job telling the truth about ourselves, the people around us, and our life in general.
I like to think of these misinformed thoughts as “thought tumors”. They may not be causing you problems right now, but like a brain tumor, they grow and eventually manifest symptoms.
Researches estimate that we have 65,000 thoughts a day. Odds are you have hundreds, if not thousands, that could be wrong.
Pay attention to your thoughts.
Question what you believe, especially about yourself.
The difference between have a good life and a great life is all in your thoughts.
