Doing what you don’t want to get what you do want

April 16, 2014  |  ibrainmapadmin

I had a bingle with some techi stuff yesterday. No stuff, not staff. All the staff are lovely and helpful, even when I’m activated, for those who don’t know the language of i-brainmap, read – angry, frustrated, impatient, grumpy. Yes, technology is one of my biggest triggers for lower brain activation because I feel powerless. But that’s not what I’m here to write about.

Here is my wanting dilemma.

I’m not a techy and I want to write. Not only do I want to write, I want to get my writing to my audience, which is scattered across the globe. This is fabulous that someone in Spain or China can read my blog or subscribe to a program but it means I have to understand technology to do it. And just when I master one thing another hurdle appears that is between me, and the thing I want. Hmmm sounds like life really.

Because I’m on the “what do I really want? challenge,” this month – all this techi stuff got me thinking about wanting and not wanting. I took a scan of my life and I realize that when I really want something there are things that I need to do that I don’t want to do, or that I want to avoid, to get what I want. What a tongue twister!

I think I need to dive down into that with another example perhaps more common than the technology one. Let’s say being fit and healthy is something I really want.

If I really want to be fit and healthy I’ll eat salads and lots of vegies, and avoid eating things that aren’t good for me, like greasy chips or sugary drinks, or alcohol. And I’ll want to exercise regularly.

But what if sometimes I feel too tired or I can’t resist that glass of Shiraz?

So now we have two conflicting wants; the big (long range) want of being fit and healthy and the immediate want of the pleasure of food and wine or avoiding the discomfort of exercise. And they clash. I’ll call this the clash of wanting between a long-range want and a short-term want.

As I delve deeper into this clash of wanting I see that it isn’t just about short and long terms wants but also about different parts of our brain-body-mind system and how these relate, or not, to each other.

I’m not going to do a full investigation here because that would take me forever – I could write a book about it (perhaps I will) – but I would like to invite you to get curious about your wanting style and how you want, what drives your wanting, and who wins in the clash of wants.

Let’s take a quick look at some of these different orientations to wanting.

Wanting up and wanting down

Our wanting can be driven by our lower-instinctive brain, which is a more immediate impulse hooked up to survival and perhaps evolution. This could be a need such as, I’m hungry I need-want to eat. Or it could be a craving or addiction that helps distract, minimize or avoid internal distress, such as any addictive behavior. For those who have read my book i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness, addictions or compulsive wanting is more associated with secondary activation. We could call this wanting up, because it is associated with the lower-instinctive brain.

In wanting down we decide with our mind to do something such as lose weight or get fit. Our big smart brain tries to override all the other (lower) functions of the brain in its quest.

But if the two aren’t integrated we might get a clash of wanting.

The big brain says, don’t eat that you’ll get fat or sick (aka not healthy),” and your lower brain says…. “ I don’t care I want it now,” and the more your big brain tells you “no you can’t” the stronger the urge to eat the sweet thing, perhaps a sugary donut or a piece of apple pie, cheese, wine, hot chips, fill in the blank…… becomes. The more intense the battle in the clash of wanting the more your system fixates on that sweet thing. And around and around you go in the clash of wanting.

You have entered the pink elephant zone. More precisely the, don’t think of a pink elephant zone. The brain doesn’t read the not but only gets pink elephant, which is why diets don’t work, because they keep the focus on food so that all you do is think about food, well trying not to think about food. I could keep riding around this pink elephant loop but I’m sure you’ve got my drift.

Until the wanting between lower brain and big brain is integrated you are likely to find yourself in this push-pull clash of wanting. So what is the solution I hear you calling down the i-line. Well, you need an integrated brain but that is a book, i-brainmap, freeing your brain for happiness.

There is no quick fix for this dilemma, the clash of wants the best thing you can do is to become curious about your immediate experience, during the clash. When you feel that internal battle going on, step inside your brain laboratory (the one inside your head, linked to your body) and take a good look at what’s going on from the inside.

If you want to change your brain, including this clash, change your experience. Most people think changing experience means changing behavior but that is like the biggest catch 22 of the human race, a kind of cosmic joke. If you don’t get the punch line yet ….. stay curious.

One of the most powerful ways to change experience is shift attention. This is at the heart of mindfulness and why science (and the guy who started the whole thing – the Buddha) has found it to be such a profound tool in psychological change and freedom.

For our purposes in this clash of wanting instead of jumping from the big want of being fit and healthy to the immediate want of eating that donut, which is an either-or orientation, get curious. Find out what is really going on inside your body and your mind. Instead of focusing on having (the donut) or not having, check in with what is arising in your brain-body-mind and become a curious observer. As simple as it seems, and strange because we think change is about doing rather than learning to change orientation, this interrupts the cycle or clash of wanting.

Make it an experiment and see what happens, because being curious and approaching something as an experiment is a particular orientation that creates optimal conditions for brain change.

So, next time I’m faced with my clash of wanting between wanting to communicate with the world and having to deal with sticky technology I will become curious and try some experiments from inside my own brain lab. Like right now.