Lizard Brain

Waiting For Confirmation

Garth Beyer

2392520183_405635fcb6_nI’m getting bombarded with calls about whether students are confirmed scholars – that they will get the grant.

I’m talking to a close friend about a possible relationship. She just wants confirmation that the guy feels the same way.

Confirmation is like expecting a genie to come out of a lamp without rubbing it.

My shortcut to overcoming fear’s defensive method of convincing you that you need confirmation is that the feeling itself is confirmation enough.

Outside of typical fears such as a fear of height, being afraid means that you are thinking about something risky, special, and all-so-worth-it. Cut yourself a break and realize that the desire for a confirmation is confirmation.

If it wasn’t worth it, if you weren’t right, if it wasn’t meant to be, then you would never need or ask for confirmation in the first place, now would you?

 

Stay Positive & Go Make It Happen

Garth E. Beyer

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More On The 2nd Part Of Being Scared

Garth Beyer

There are two parts to everyone being scared.

The second is my favorite because it has the potential of making you feel better than you ever have before. At my work, I have evaluated applications from students that have put in more than 2,000 hours of community service over a span of four years. But when I think of the second part of fear, I can’t help but realize that more empowering results can be created by talking to someone for two minutes.

Online example

Despite Twitter’s popularity, it’s far from perfect. In fact, I gave their ads a try and was revolted. They gave me $50 to start running ads and I quit before it was spent.

They also required you to have a debit/credit card on file before they gave you the money. Once I quit my ads, I wanted to delete my debit card information. I could not find any place to do this. So, I emailed them.

Within a day I received an email saying that the feature I requested was not available and that they would work on it – in the mean time I would basically have to deal with it.

Since then, a few weeks have passed. The other day, I opened my email to find this:

Twitter

There is always room for improvement

Whether the person, company, or client you’re talking to follows through with your suggestion – or in Twitter’s case, takes your unfulfillable request and turns it into something real – it’s still your responsibility to make that suggestion.

Out of the millions of Twitter users, I have no clue how many will be happy that they can delete their card from their account. I have no clue how many employees it took, how much red tape it had to go through, or how successful their actions really were. What I do know is that they took a request, an idea, and made it happen. And for that – although I still can’t stand the ads, – I will stick by Twitter’s side.

Personal examples

An old friend of mine wanted to start a blog about teen dads. I gave him roughly five lines of hard encouragement. I told him exactly what he needed to do. He never did. I didn’t let fear get to him, he did.

Another friend of mine was applying to law school and asked if I would review his personal statement. I gave him a few suggestions but explained more about human personalities and how those reviewing the application are real people. He understood, realizing that there was fear that the person reviewing his application might misjudge him. Because of fear, he wrote a safe statement. Once I called him out on it, he made some changes and while he has yet to hear back, I’m sure he will get in.

I shared a speech I wrote with a respectable entrepreneur. She critiqued the staleness and boredom out of it. Because of her, my speech became more remarkable. I also gave the original draft to a friend who said it was good, providing a couple grammatical corrections. You can guess which one had more of an impact.

Criticism is tough work

So is encouragement, accountability, and inspiration – all of which are required to back up another’s dance with fear. I’ve always thought that doing your own work is easy, well, maybe not easy, but always easier than helping someone else do their own work.

I suppose that’s why I love giving people feedback. Maybe, just maybe, they will see how valuable it is to them, that they give feedback to someone else.

 

Stay Positive & Let Others Know What You Think And Feel

Garth E. Beyer

You Have A Follower

Garth Beyer

If fear follows you home. You didn’t work hard enough.

Of course, by hard enough, I don’t mean that you left too early. You just didn’t give fear a good enough fight. You didn’t win. You didn’t beat the lizard brain.

And I know you can. I know you know that you can too.

 

Stay Positive & Fight Back

Garth E. Beyer

Are You Up For It? (A Bit About The Lizard Brain)

Garth Beyer

When you consider taking a risk, taking an action for something you want, you have twenty seconds to act before the lizard brain fires up. Once the lizard brain realizes you’re about to take a risk, it will make you think of every reason not to take it, not to do what you want.

If you don’t know already, it’s referred to as the twenty second theory: you have twenty seconds to act on your thought before the lizard brain kicks in. After the twenty seconds, it only gets more and more difficult to make the leap, to take the risk.

I’ve recently wondered if it’s better to – after the twenty seconds and the lizard brain is going – to just completely forget about the action you want to take. Why fight the lizard brain? There will be more opportunities, right? Or is it better to fight the lizard brain and see if you can beat it. From experience, I would say that you will win 1 out of 10 battles against the lizard brain. But is the stress of having to go through the other 9 battles worth it?

By not fighting the lizard brain, you feel a sense of relief. There’s no stress, no nervousness, no adrenaline rush, no anxiety, and most importantly, no regret that you considered something so deeply but never followed through.

But what if you end up challenging and beating the lizard brain; wouldn’t the success of whatever you were risking be glorious and euphoric enough to counter any of the hardships you have had to face in the past?

What if I had a solution for you? I do. (HT Keegan Morgan)

After the twenty seconds are up and you don’t act, ask yourself this important question,

are you up for it? Up for the battle with the lizard brain, up to the risks, up to the possibility of still being rejected after following through? The lizard brain can’t infiltrate this thought process; the beauty of knowing exactly what you want (and making the conscious decision to go after it) will make the lizard brain back off. The lizard brain is strong, but it has nothing on will power.

The next time you miss your twenty second window, the next time you catch yourself getting anxious, thinking of dozens of reasons not to send the email, make the phone call, ask that someone for their number, or make that committment, ask yourself, are you up for it?

 

Stay Positive & It’s Alright If You’re Not! But… Keep Track

Garth E. Beyer

Missing Your Shot

Garth Beyer

There’s two variations.

The first is when you take the shot and you miss it.

The second is when you miss your chance to take the shot.

It seems that the world gives us a sin wave of a life with the first variation above the line and second, below. We smoothly transition from taking a shot and missing it to passing up the next shot we can take.

It’s painful to get rejected, turned down, thrown back, kicked around, or left behind. The feeling is terrible and as a result, we think we’re better off not taking the shot at all. But, let’s make this realization together. Knowing that you missed your chance to take the shot feels a thousand times worse than taking it and missing.

Maybe you don’t feel that way at first, another one bites the dust right? And plus, it’s easy to say that more opportunities will come your way, not taking your shot on this one is fine. The thing is … your reactions to each type of “missed shot” accumulates.

The more times you take a shot but miss, the more likely you’ll be to make it next time you take a shot. Eventually reaching success.

On the other hand, the more times you miss taking the shot, well, that’s it, that’s a lot of shots missed. You’re no closer to success. You haven’t learned anything. You lost. Lizard brain 1, you 0.

I’ll challenge you to keep track of all those shots you don’t take. When fear sits next to you, tells you to wait, tells you to be patient, or tells you that now just isn’t the right time, record it.

1 for the lizard brain 0 for you.

No matter your type of personality, no matter the situation, no matter your goals in life; when anyone sees that the lizard brain is up 5 to 0, that provides all the motivation to take the shot with the next opportunity. Sure, it’s a way to cheat the system, but, hey, it works. Trust me.

 

Stay Positive & Keeping Track Of Shots On Goal Can Make You Feel Pretty Good Too

Garth E. Beyer

How You Know That You Are Doing What You Need To

Garth Beyer

If this is at all confusing, it’s because you have a difficult time accepting it. The same went for me at first.

***

When there are things that you would rather be doing or that you just want to do, perhaps going to the art museum, hanging around the park more often, or reading more, you know that you have to keep doing what you’re doing.

That craving – when you are actually busy – to do other things (and sometimes even to do nothing) means you’re on the right track and that you need to keep going.

Our minds direct our attention towards things that we would rather be doing because what we are doing is hard work. Our brain wants to distract us, wants to pull our attention toward something more entertaining (and less productive). Often referred to as the lizard brain, this subconscious mental effort for distraction is a cloak of fear. The more we get on the path of productivity, reaching our goals, putting in emotional labor, and putting ourselves and our art out there, the more fear sets in and the lizard brain starts working in every way possible.

The most popular way clearly being the desire to do something more fun than what you are currently doing.

When really, if what you have to be focusing on now didn’t exist, you wouldn’t really be doing what you think you would rather be doing now. You’d be doing nothing.

 

Stay Positive & Outsmart Your Brain. Push Through

Garth E. Beyer

Imagine Better

Garth Beyer

What you deserve is a challenge to your imagination.

If you don’t know already, to use your imagination involves working nearly every part of your brain: the cortex, hippocampus, neocortex, thalamus, […] and worst of all, the amygdala.

It’s hard to work every part of your brain to produce something remarkable. But it must be done if you want your work to be just that – something remarkable.

The challenge lies in your experiences. Everything you have experienced to be the “best feeling/event/thing” in the world, you have to imagine something better, bigger, and more ridiculously great. Once imagine things being just a bit better, go make it happen.

To live a fuller life, you have to stretch your

spongebob_imagination_by_kssael_display

Stay Positive & If You Can Imagine It, You Can Have It

Garth E. Beyer

Secret recipe: work