How to outsmart the “I don’t wannas”.

I have a confession to make. Every week, when it’s time to sit down and write my newsletter/blog, I don’t want to do it. Every cell in my body resists. I sometimes even grumble aloud about the task as though it’s beyond my control and I am not the exact person who designed my business to include this particular work. 

Don’t get me wrong - I love y’all, and I love sharing my thoughts, teachings, and stories with you. And I love writing, too. 

So then why do I "not want" to do this thing that I love so much every single time it comes up? This is a question you may have encountered in your own life - if I want to finish that report, do the yoga class, drink less, why don’t I WANT to do these things when the time comes?

Turns out, there’s actually a reason for that, and that reason ISN’T that you don’t truly want these things. (This is what I used to think - I used to think that if I didn’t WANT to do something in the moment, that must mean I actually didn’t want to do it at all and that I’d been fooling myself. Luckily, I was wrong about that.) Here’s the real culprit: the primitive brain. 

The primitive brain, often called the lizard brain, is unconcerned with your life goals and your lofty ideals. All it wants to do is keep you alive and keep the species going, and it did NOT evolve for our current way of being, as you will see. The primitive brain has three main imperatives: seek pleasure, avoid pain, and conserve energy. 

Evolutionarily, the drive to seek pleasure meant that you would eat food, prioritize staying warm, and procreate with other humans, thus keeping you alive and creating more of you to follow in your footsteps. The focus on avoiding pain would keep you away from danger and potential death unless a situation was dire. And a drive to conserve energy would give you the best shot at being able to respond in a crisis situation, like being able to run if a lion tries to eat you or being able to capture prey if it happens to saunter by. 

Basically, your brain developed these patterns to help you, but in our current existence, they can do just the opposite. Here’s what it may look like: you want to finish that damn report today, even though it’s not due til next week. But you also think it might be hard or annoying, so your brain categorizes it as “pain” and encourages you to avoid it. Your brain is super smart, but it’s not always smart enough to slow down and see its own miscategorization. Instead, it keeps saying “AVOID AVOID AVOID” and it tries to divert you to seek some pleasure instead by inviting you to have a chocolate bar or take a nap. It’s not actually helpful to avoid the task, but your brain doesn’t know that. It just wants to move you away from discomfort because it's afraid it’s not safe there. 

What about the yoga class? If you think it’s going to be hard, pain avoidance might be at play here as well, but even if it’s not, your brain may try to avoid this just on the basis of energy. Yoga, and other movement practices, take energy. We have a lot of science that says spending energy this way can give us more than it costs us, but to the primitive brain, this is just you using all your energy and then not having enough left over to run away from the lion later. We can override this brain functionality, and I’m going to get into that in a bit, but for now, just let yourself be relieved that it’s not YOU. It’s just your brain, behaving normally. 

How does the primitive brain come into play when it comes to drinking? The primitive brain loves pleasure. This part of our brain didn’t evolve for alcohol, though. It evolved to help us ensure that we get adequate food, sleep, warmth, human touch, etc. Because of how alcohol interacts with our brain, our brain finds it very pleasurable, and it thinks that this means the alcohol is very important to our physical survival, when it is, in fact, not. A brain that really likes alcohol, weirdly, is actually a brain that is operating properly - it’s just not encountering something it evolved to encounter. So, you may want to drink less, but part of your brain wants to drink more. Not because it actually loves alcohol that much, but rather, because it misinterprets alcohol. 

At this point, you may be throwing your hands up in the air, like WHAT, even my brain is against me, how will I ever get anything done?! But fear not, I have good news. When it comes to the primitive brain, knowledge is 90% of the answer. 

Let’s go back to my opening example. I never want to write my blog/newsletter when my calendar says to do it. And yet - here I am, every week, writing it. And I am not even hating the writing of it. Because, the truth is, as I said, I like doing this. I chose it as part of my business plan on purpose. Yes, I get that feeling of “I don’t wanna” right before I start, but it doesn’t stop me.

What’s my big secret? I know that the “I don’t wanna” is just my primitive brain. Now, y’all, I am not a saint, so sometimes I also fall for my primitive brain’s BS for a while. Today, for instance, I am writing this blog/newsletter on the weekend, because I fell for my primitive brain yesterday when it said I was too tired and that I should relax and then writing would be easier later. This is not a one and done, and it doesn’t need to be. 

The gold is in knowing that the “I don’t wanna do what I said I’d do” isn’t actually you and is instead your primitive brain being totally normal (if also totally unhelpful). You’re normal. Your brain is normal. There’s nothing wrong with you. Even if you just fell for your primitive brain ten minutes ago, that’s fine. Because as soon as you realize, you can just be like, oh, it’s you again, thank you for trying to keep me alive, but actually I *do* wanna do this. That’s why I put it on my calendar in the first place. And that’s the truth, yeah? On some level, you do want to do it. Whether it’s because you want the joy of doing it or the joy of having done it, it’s YOU that wants it. Anything can be a drag when we look at it with the “I don’t wanna” frame. And everything looks better when we’re like, “WAIT, I DO WANNA” or at least “oh right, I am choosing this for a reason.”

Sound too simple? A lot of coachy stuff does. But it also works. Try it, and blow your own mind. Then report back and let me know what you accomplish. 

If you want to learn how to handle your lizard brain the fast way so you can get shit done already, I can help you with that. I’m currently accepting 1:1 coaching clients for August and September start dates. I’ve also got a few spots open for corporate speaking engagements. Learn more here.