Brain is like a Filing Cabinet
Every decision you make is based on past experiences. Your brain searches through past experiences to decide how to handle the current situation. Whether you are cooking a meal in the kitchen, finding a tool in the garage or any other decision you make, your brain searches through past experiences to see how you handled similar situations in the past and figures out how to handle the current experience. You do not need to look in every drawer to find the spice or tool, your brain knows where things are from past experiences to help you function in the present.
Even when you are experiencing something new, like navigating a city you have never been to, your brain searches similar past experiences on how to handle navigating a new city. Your brain knows streets and avenues, how to read maps and use apps on your phone to get around and it uses this information to navigate your current situation.
Your brain is like a filing cabinet. It stores information from previous experiences in various files. When it needs to know something, it searches files to find the information or similar information so it can make a decision.
Brain Needs Predictability
Because your brain uses past experiences to make daily decisions it needs predictability. If there is something new, something you haven’t done before, it is a blank slate, there is no past knowledge, no file with the information to make a decision so your brain will resist making the decision. People will stay in the same patterns for years because they are predictable, they are their “normal.” Even if this means staying in unhealthy relationships, toxic work environments or even a general sense of misery, people will remain because it is predictable, the brain knows how to handle these experiences. Often, even if a person leaves one unhealthy relationship, they will end up in another unhealthy relationship because “unhealthy” is the norm, it is what the brain knows, it is predictable. There are a lot of files in the brain’s filing cabinet so it will continue to go to and be drawn to these types of experiences.
Change
Predictability and change do not mix. There is no predictability in change or doing something different. There are no files in the brain to tell you how to handle the change so your brain resists it.
In order to be more comfortable with change, you need to make the change more predictable. Create a plan of what the change will look like, and think about the plan, what you want it to look like so it becomes more predicable for your brain and then implement it. Take small steps and practice each step before taking the next step. You need to take time and let your brain create files so it knows what the change will look like. The more the change becomes predictable the more comfortable you will feel in the change and the more you will be able to accept the change.
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