How our brain finds excuses for the things we care about and what we can do about it

Do you know this? Sitting at your desk and wanting to create this project but instead looking at your phone and scrolling through content? Minute after minute and hour after hour until at the end of the day you ask yourself what you have done?

DALL.E — Prompt is the full article, 16:9 article header image

If this is you, believe me, you are not alone. I am there a lot of times as well. And many others are there too. This can be a comforting thought, but it should not be. Because when we do that, we throw our life away (we only don’t when we want to become a phone-scrolling-expert).

Why do we throw our life away with that?

Well, maybe you don’t, as you love to be that phone-scrolling-expert, because it gives you pleasure, you love to indulge in it, you love to talk about it, you are getting high-over-heels-excited about it. And you are proud to call yourself a phone-scrolling-expert. If that is the case, then please follow along exactly that path. Stop and don’t read on.

But what if not? What if you do the phone-scrolling for hours a day and when you look up, you see the clock showing three hours later than what you expected, your goals for the day have been vanished to the backdrawer of your mind and you are feeling de-energized and empty?

Then it is a clear case of you spending time with something that clearly and utterly is not the right thing for you to do. How can it be? It gives you some short-hand pleasure, your mind is pre-occupied, loving the visuals, loving the interactivity, so excited that it cannot pull itself out of the wings of the screen, but it does not give you those feelings of being proud, of having achieved something you like, of the feeling of being energized after the activity, of sparkling eyes, energy and joy.

So why are we doing it then? Why are we getting so pre-occupied with stuff that clearly is not doing us good?

A simple answer is: our mind loves the short-term pleasure over the long-term pleasure, so we take the shoprt term pleasure. And often that is the only answer we need, but let’s decipher it into smaller chunks of what that actually mean and why we do it.

Our mind loves the short-term pleasure. Yes, our mind wants to have things the easy way, to find shortcuts, to use the least energy possible, to just going into a mode of “doing nothing” or “consuming” (even funnily there is research showing that our mind is as energy-draining in relaxed-mode than it is in non-relaxed mode).

In this mode, there is no worry or risk or problem with failing, with something not going as planned, with feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and more. So the easy way for our brain is to stay were it is. Pushing for solutions and activities that are constant dopamine, constant excitement, constant “oh, that is easy”.

How our brain finds excuses for the things we care about — some examples

The situations when our brain goes into short-term pleasure vs long-term growth are long. Here are some examples in addition to the one I shared above that I experienced myself.

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How I almost threw away my dream of public speaking

Several years ago, I wanted to learn how to speak better. I was this person that could not look other people in the eyes, that was turning around, that was not sure how to act in front of other people, that would become silent, hide away and shy away. For that reason I decided that I want to change that and learn how to do public speaking. I researched a public speaking club in my city, I found out when they meet and planned to go there. I planned to go a bit earlier so I can examine the area, get comfortable around it and bring up enough “hop over my anxiety power” when walking in.

I arrived there and looked at the door. I was mentally prepared, I felt strong, but the more I went towards the door, the more my mind started to produce thoughts: “oh God, they will love at you, you look so insecure”, “ah, these people are so good, they have many years experience, why do you even bother”, “why are you even there, let’s go back to the comfort of our apartment or eat something, that is better”, “I don’t want to feel that weird feeling of standing there and then realizing that I am wrong and weird, let’s better go away before even having to deal with that”.

Well, you may already imagine what happened. I did not go to that meeting. Instead I went home. To the comfort of my home. I spent the rest of the evening being disappointed in me, deeply disappointed, scared, unhappy and was phone-scrolling for an extensive period of time. My mind told me “oh, that feels better though, you can go another time, don’t worry”, “today just wasn’t the right day, there were weird people at this place, you would not have felt great”, “I can understand that you are disappointed, but are you sure, this is really what you want? Maybe you could do something else instead.” And so on. I felt a bit better the more these thoughts popped into my head. But over the course of the next weeks, the itchy feeling of “not having gone” popped up from time to time. And that soft voice that I should give it another try.

And even though it took me several weeks again to build enough strength to do it again, I was able to manage it. I went to that door and the entrance of the meeting three times before at the forth meeting scheduled, I finally went. And guess what: It was fantastic. I fell in love with it immediately. And I went to these Toastmaster ( the public speaking club’s name) meetings each week for 4,5 years, finished various certifications, took part in public speaking tournaments, was responsible for club leadership roles and built exactly that confidence in speaking that I always dreamed of but was missing beforehand.

A dream that almost died simply because my mind found a thousand excuses of why the first moment of standing in that room would be awkward and thus it would be easier and simpler to instead go back to the comfort of the walls called home.

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How I gave up travelling the world

This may be a bit of a more drastic example, but I believe that one part of why we have fears comes from our way of seeking comfort in the current moment versus going through that moment in the direction of what we value and care for.

So what happened? Since my teeny years, I was afraid of flying. I would scratch my fingers in the person’s arm next to me, I would put my hands over my ears to not having to listen to the sound of the airplane engine and I would hold my feet in the air in the hope of not sensing unusual movements below me. I would search the cabin for weird behaviors of guests and I would be unable to watch out of the windows of the plane. One could say, I was afraid of flying. And the moments of being in the air were pure stress for me and I disliked them strongly.

Because I disvalued them so deeply, whenever I would have to book a flight to visit friends, go to reunion parties or visiting far-away destinations, I would do everything to not having to use the plane. I would tell myself “Oh, this is going to be such an awful moment, please just don’t do that”, “you will be all over with your fear, this will be terrible”, “something bad will happen, please just don’t use this form of transportation” and so on. I would sometimes, out of pleasentness book a flight, but deep down I already knew, that I would note be able to fly. In the rare moments when I would go to the airport, my way would be plastered with anxious thoughts “you will die”, “you won’t be able to do all the cool things you want to do still in your life”, “you will be so afraid of it, it will go wrong”, which often led me to turn around and not fly. and when I would eventually fly, the full flight duration would be plastered with thoughts like “Oh, no, this sound is different than it normally is”, “this person is acting weird”, “this is so bumpy, I don’t like it”, and so on. And the moment I landed i would already be thinking about the flight back.

You probably guessed it by now, it was pure stress. Any travelling that had a flight involved in one way or the other, was full of thoughts of what could go wrong and many times I chose the comfortable way of turning aorund and staying at my apartment and doing phone-scrolling and feeling bad at the same time that I would let go of beautiful moments with friends, new connections being made and cities being visited.

My mind did not wanted me to fly. It knew how stressful it would be for me. It would try to keep me from this in-the-moment pain and thus give me all these thoughts as to not do what I inteded to do. Well, it likely meant good, but it again chose comfort over dis-comfort, it chose in-the-moment feeling relaxed and safe, but at a very high price.

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How I failed to apply for my dream job

Several years ago, I was working for a tech company in a client-facing role. I loved my role, the team and the work I was doing. But the product did not fully excite me. I came to like it to some degree over the course of my work there, but I was constantly glimpsing at another product line within the same company. Soon after, a similar role opened up in that company. I read the job description and was in awe. That was exactly what I wanted to do, what I was looking for. I read the job description several times and the more I read it and the more I thought about it, the more insecure would I become. “What would my team think about that move?”, “Woudl they like it?”, “What if I would fail in the new one and would not be able to go back?”, “What if it was not mine after all and the comfort of the current one would be better to do as I already know so much about it and build my reputation?”. My excitement got lower. I started to doubt that it would be a great idea. But still excited did I wait some time. “Wait a bit more, be sure it really is what you want!”, my mind would tell me, and “you can apply tomorrow, no need to do that now”, “let it sink a bit more, an you know what, we have to re-do your CV and write a cover letter, and talk to your current manager, that is a lot of work”, and the more these thoughts popped into my head, the least motivated I was to apply for that role.

And guess what. After some weeks of thinking, making sense, and thinking again, starting some times of applying but not finishing it, the role ad was taken off the career platform and the application process was finished. Without me having applied. So much could have gone wrong, and so difficult was it to do all these steps. So I chose the comfortable way of not applying. But the uncomfortable one of having to deal with the pain of not having applied later on.

Enough time has passed that it does not bother me anymore and new experiences have shaped my life, but the more those moments happen the more they will leave this itchy feeling of “why did I choose the comfort in that moment instead of the discomfort of going through that insecurity, that moment of stress, that moment if unclearness, the moment of simply feeling uncomfortable to end up on the other side, the after-feeling of being proud, to being excited, to feeling the spark, the energy, the curiosity and the damn great feeling of “I just did it!”. And often these moments then turn out out to be much less uncomfortable than our mind made us believe they would.

What do we learn from these examples and how can we choose what we care about more often?

It is not an easy feast to choose uncomfortable moments. They are in and by themselves uncomfortable because we make them so. It is this tiny moment of “urghh, really, this is what I have to do now? I really don’t want to!”.

So what can you do about it? Often a very simple thing: just do it anyways. Well, I know, this is a rather unsatisfying answer and often won’t lead to real change and overcoming that pattern.

Some better and more detailed practices that I use are the following ones.

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Cutting Off The Thoughts

One technique I love to use is the “Cutting Off The Thoughts” technique. It is about differencing you and the thoughts that are constantly talking to you before an uncomfortable moment and telling you that it is too difficult, too hard, too stress-inducing, too weird, too dangerous or whatever (there are exceptions in case of real danger, but these are a view and you often will know when there are there).

When I realize these thoughts, I tell them in my mind that I value their input but that I will do what I planned to do anyways. And then I go ahead to do that. Does it always work? No, it does not. But the more I become aware of these thought patterns, the better it works. And I realized, I also have to do this technique throughout an activity. When I for example want to record a video and in the editing phase, my mind tells is uncomfortable or does not know how to do something, it also comes up with several excuses of why I cannot continue right now. So the exercise is not only great for the initial decision-making and action moment, but also for the little moments in between where the mind tries to escape.

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Fuck-Off Relaxed Light-Heartedness

This technique brings me into a similar mindset as with the “Cutting Off The Thoughts” technique, but from a slightly different direction. It is simply letting go of the thoughts like shutting them off completely. It is quite difficult to explain, but it is as if I would have a switch-off within me that now says “No thoughts today” and then using this idea of “Light-Heartedness” by simply going along and doing the things. It is a bit like going on a self-imposed auto-pilot.

For that method to work, it is helpful to have practiced the “Cutting Off The Thoughts” method a bit already and to use them in conjungtion. Then, when you have a rough plan for the day of activities you plan to do, you get into that mode: wake up, make your bed, go running for 30 minutes (have your running gear ready to move almost automatically), take a shower, make tea, sit down, write an article (one already planned for that day), record a video (already planned for the day), eat lunch at the Vietnamese place, .. and so on. The method normally works for some part of the day, but not all of it. As at one point it becomes more difficult to keep the thoughts from coming in. What I like to do then is to take a break from the Light-Heartedness, let my mind float, let it experiment and get excited about new ideas, thinking, gaining perspective, to then building up momentum to follow that state of Light-Heartedness again later that day.

When you start with that practice in the morning, by lunch-time you already have done many of the things you love to do every day and it will give you a feeling of accomplishment and excitement that you can carry with you to the next day.

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Imagining the Outcome (for In-the-Moments-Only)

This method is great when you are in the moment and it feels itchy, your brain finds a thousand excuses of why you cannot go on with the task at hand. It is an alternative and add-on to the methods above and it is more focused on feeling and imagining the outcome at hand instead of working with the mind through the mind.

What I do is to take a mini-break from the task (like 1 minute), just sitting in the pose I am in anyways and imagining how amazing it will feel when I have finished that task that is related to something I want to do and feel excited about. I would for example imagining me at the destination I am travelling to while sitting in the airplane, I would imagine how it feels to put my feet into the sand, how to feel the breeze in my hair and the tropical food I would eat in case I am flying to a warm, sunny, holiday location, or I would imagine myself working with clients at this job I was applying to and the excitement I would feel when talking about a product I love and sharing all the things it could benefit the clients.

Make sure though to only use this method for a short period of time (1–2 minutes) and during the task itself. If you use it in out-of-moment situations, you may easily fall into a similar pattern as having thoughts constantly. It is a similar pattern, but with dreaming and imagining great or awful things to happen connected with feelings, which is great if you just want to let it happen, but not helpful, when you are in the moment to trying to live through an uncomfortable moment to come out proud and joyful on the other side and dreaming along for hours.

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Feel It

And then there is one last technique I want to share with you. I call it the “Feel It” technique. It is about over-feeling the uncomfortableness. It is about standing still and letting all that sadness, anger, anxiousness, fear and shyness being felt deeply. Be careful though, if you are not comfortable with this method, ask a therapist or doctor to help you with it. I realized that this method works great for me. Especially when starting with small things my mind runs errands about and then layer by layer taking on bigger “feeling-through-uncomfortable-moments” situations, until the uncomfortable feeling kind of disappears. The good feelings that you have afterwards of being able to go through it, are worth a lot and help you tackle that situation more easily the next time you come across it.

What I normally do is feeling it, all of it, and — if the situation allows for it — self-extending my uncomfortableness and over-extend it to feel the full blow of all the things that come up in that moment. What it does is to show me, “hey, that was awful, but I still survived and in the end it wasn’t even that bad, I can do that again, I have trust in me that I can handle that again”, and with that it becomes easier the next time that situation arises.

Also with this one, it won’t work all the time, it takes practice, it takes the willingness to allow for these feelings to spread our body and mind, to feel the sadness, the anger, the fear, the loneliness, the anxiety, the whatever comes up in these moments (and based on the feelings you see, often many more and diverse feelings arise when you deliberately make them stronger), but it is worth it. It gives you the confidence that you can tackle them and allow you to convince yourself and your mind that it is less uncomfortable than it makes you believe it is.

And if that is the case, then you will be able to much more often choose the uncomfortable moment over the comfortable short-term safeness feeling that feels great but does not allow you to go for the things you care about.

Going through the uncomfortableness of these moments, building the trust in you that you can go through them more and more often allows you to go through more of these moments, and more frightening moments and soon will you be able to tackle things you thought not even possible for yourself. I for sure would not have believed to be able to give presentations in front of hundreds of people before joining that first public speaking club meeting. But soon I did and it was the most amazing feeling.

What are you going through today that feels uncomfortable and itchy and fearful, and anxious, but where you want to achieve what lies on the other side that you take that leap forward, feel it, block off your thoughts, imagine the result, fuck it off and go with it?

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I would be excited to learn about your experiences and techniques that work for you. And if you like what you read, I would be delighted for you to subscribe to my articles. :)

Enjoy your day and see you soon!

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