Our Big Brains Often Sabotage Us
Can We Rewire Our Brains to Serve Us Better?
My husband teases me. He says I run my home like a business. He’s right. I do. I run my life like a business. Always have. From the day I left home, at the tender age of eighteen, I knew two things. That I never wanted to depend on someone else to take care of me monetarily, and that I could never be just a housewife like all the women in my family. From that day on, I’ve honed my survival skills.
I’ve had my own money since I was twelve years old.
I always had a pocketful of change stashed in my closet in a black handbag that hung from a coat hook. I had more money than my mom did by the time I was fourteen. Not long after I left home, I enrolled in college courses and earned my degree. I started building a career as an educator and never looked back. I loved my job.
Eventually, I earned a master’s degree in educational leadership.
I left the classroom and ran the largest elementary school in my region. I was the first girl in my family to earn a degree let alone two. The women in my family who had spent most of their lives with little to no money to call their own didn’t understand me at all. You might say that they weren’t very supportive.
That didn’t deter me.
If I have a recurring motto that describes my lifestyle it might be — I hate cleaning up messes. My husband may be right about me running my home, personal affairs, even my life like a business, because I hate cleaning up messes.
Anyone who runs a business knows that if you must clean up too many messes, chances are your business will fail.
I’ve cleaned up a mess or two or three in my life. Some were mine and some were created by other people. I’m a fixer, so people intuitively knew that if they needed help cleaning up a mess, chances are I’d give them a hand. Eventually, after many years of tending to messes, I stopped jumping up from my comfortable seat to give other people a hand, however.
Instead, I poured my attention into fixing my own messes.
We all appear to be controlled by a set of world views, a fixed methodology, and a drive to repeat certain scenarios. We reside in the world of familiarities even if we’re miserable. Unless we’re very self-aware, and most people aren’t, we end up living the same day over and over again.
Even if you’ve spent a lifetime trying to rewire that part of your brain that sabotages you, unless you’re able to scrutinize your own behaviors, you’ll end up living a life of reruns. Often our brains truly do sabotage us.
Our most valued asset, the big brain, is capable of many amazing things, but it also is the source of much of our personal pain.
So you leave a spouse because you’re unhappy but end up with a new partner with a different face but the same attributes that made you unhappy with the first partner. Or you stay in a job that you hate because you’re afraid to try something new. You work hard to pay off debt only to run out and do impulse buying at the drop of the hat.
Ugh!
You might know that you’re not the best of parents but end up having more children anyway. You hang with people who aren’t really that good for you but find those that might be a better influence to be boring. You enroll in classes because you’re ready to upgrade your skills but drop out before you complete the course. Over time, a pattern emerges and defines your lifestyle. We can be blind to it, but our friends and family see it.
It’s always easier to see what others are doing wrong.
Life is a bumpy ride and once we’re hardwired to behave a certain way, it’s really, really, hard to change. But it’s not impossible. I started trying to rewire my brain from the day I left home.
I was raised in a religious cult so as soon as I left home at the tender age of 18, I knew I had a big job on my hands.
If I wanted to keep from returning to the church, I needed to start rewiring my brain right away. Cult survivors often do return to the cult. Assimilating into civilian society is hard work. Add plenty of trauma and guilt to the mix and many of us cave in. We just can’t make sense of the civilian world after enduring such intense indoctrination.
Thankfully, I survived the painful process of assimilation.
I think one thing I had in my favor was an ability to observe human behaviors. My brain is pretty good at sorting out what I see happening and then trying to apply the knowledge gained to my personal circumstances. It’s almost a gift. I’ve used it to my benefit repeatedly.
I can learn from your mistakes by simply watching you.
This innate skill helped me leave the cult. My escape was not just a case of wanting to sow my wild oats. It was a result of watching my parents and other adults bungle many things in life — over and over again. The very things that they’d beat my ass for doing, they did. They were so hypocritical and weak that by the time I was twelve, I knew that their message to me was
Do as I say not as I do.
That pushed me toward the door and the rest has been history. I was able to use the trauma I endured during my formative years to keep me out of trouble. Consequently, I didn’t get into a lot of trouble either. Often when young people leave a cult, they’re reckless. For the first time, they’re experiencing so much freedom and choice that it’s overwhelming.
I managed to keep from going down that road.
Of course, the road I took instead has been full of pitfalls and troubles. I doubt there’s a road available to humankind that’s a frolic in the park. We’re bumbling along without a road map and even with loads of support and love, we often make big mistakes.
I lacked the support and love because I was disowned by my parents, but my big brain served me well.
Somehow, I knew that people in the civilian world didn’t always practice what they preached either. It took me about 10 years to figure out my own preferences, what I wanted to do with my life, how I wanted to run it, but once I did, life got better with each mile I covered thereafter.
I ended up running my life like a business.
Calculated risks were tolerated. Reckless behaviors were not. Careful consideration of who I let into my life dominated my relationships. Making sure that I had power over my own life centered around making sure I had my own money. I recognized years ago that my mom, grandmother, and mother-in-law, had no power because they had no money. I watched men living lives that included hobbies and personal dreams and I soon figured out that they could do that because they had the power. They had the power because they had the money.
Fixing other people’s messes eventually became a thing of the past.
I’ll make my own messes, thank you. If I made a mess, and I did, I tried to never repeat it. I invested my time and energy in the best choices I had available. It helps that I’m a pragmatist. I never expect to get 100% of what I want. I’m very practical as well. So, when I look at my options, I’m rarely disappointed that there’s no option that gives me 100% of what I want.
What I depend on is finding lots of options, however.
The more the merrier. If I can identify a string of options, I’m good. I can’t imagine not having options. I grew up having zero options. It’s a grim outlook on life to be sure. I’m often still surprised that so many people feel hopeless. I think it’s because they don’t think they have any options available to them.
They’re stuck.
When I look back on my life, I can now clearly identify where I made mistakes and how I could’ve done it differently. I can also identify when I stopped making the same mistakes and how my life improved for the better.
I’m still learning things about myself.
Probably the job will never be completed. Throughout the years, I’ve squandered some opportunities, but I’ve also made a series of smart investments in my life that have paid off.
Thankfully!
I’m independent, have my own money, make my own decisions, am still able to identify options, can use my past experiences to inform my decisions, and hate to clean up messes. There are fewer and fewer messes these days. I’ve learned how to NOT make messes for myself and avoid the messes others have created.
That leaves me with more free time to do the things that I love to do.
Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
