It’s funny the things our minds worry about.
They’re all out of proportion, aren’t they?
For instance, our home is built on a slope and we have some steep metal steps outside the back door.
Every single time I clip-clop down them gingerly in my cycling shoes, my mind conjures images of me tumbling down them head first… breaking my neck… life in a wheelchair… or worse.
Thanks mind!
🙄
I suppose the mind's prime directive is to keep the organism alive, but jeez, it’s a bit bloody twitchy, isn’t it?
I always say it’s got two jobs:
- Predicting future situations (really badly)
- Predicting how we’ll feel in those situations (even more badly)
Neither are remotely ‘true’ - it’s just our conditioning, being made visible.
A mind, doing what minds do.
We don’t get to choose what it says, and between you and me, I’m not sure we get to choose how we respond to what it says either (otherwise—don't know about you—but I'd choose not to be bothered by anything it said, ever)!
In her brilliant book Just a Thought, Amy Johnson points out that in the early days, when there were a bazillion ways of the organism dying, early-brain false positives (e.g. thinking the neighbouring tribe are coming to slaughter you, when in fact they’re not) were naturally selected over false negatives (i.e. not thinking they’re coming to slaughter you… when they are)!
😬☠️⚰️
Explains a lot.
It’s a far cry from me mincing around in lycra, mind.
But I guess we’re lumbered with 40,000+ year old software, long overdue an update.
Anyway, every time I’m very carefully making my way down those steps in my cycling shoes—Thanks mind! 🏆🧠🙌🏻—I’m endlessly amused and bemused by the fact it’s slavishly devoted to this particular concern, but can’t ever really be arsed worrying about:
- riding in super-busy traffic, or
- careening downhill at 80kph on a few millimetres of rubber.
Minds. How bonkers can they get?
Let me count the ways…
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
You know, it's perfectly ok to think any thought. You do know this, don't you?