Balancing a Brain that’s Fighting Back

Your brain will straight up lie to you. There’s no way to sugar coat that, friends, there just isn’t. 

But your brain also creates beautiful ideas and inventions, and well, everything you see that surrounds us. It’s the power of the AND. Your brain is the king of the “and.”

• The first step in finding balance is recognizing this.
  
  
• The second step is discerning the beautiful part of your brain from the beast.
  
  
• The third is not reacting to, judging or negotiating with the beastly part.

It’s tough, tough work. It’s lifelong work. 

And even if your friends start calling you things like the “definition of balance” (a term so kindly bestowed on me by some friends recently). You’re still gonna have to work your a** off on this part for the rest of your life as you sway back and forth, in and out of balance. 

Does it get easier? Yes and no. The beauty of understanding the feeling of balance is that you don’t have to rely on your brain so much. You know how it feels to be in a place of solid, grounded peace, no matter what your brain is shouting you “should” or “could” be doing.

The harder part is that the more you find balance, the more likely it is that you are upleveling your life. Your focus and pure presence have likely brought about more of whatever you define as a successful life--mentally, physically, or materially.

That uplevel can mean those brain lies cut a little deeper, make you question every decision you make to protect your peace. If you’ve learned to sit with that pain in your belly, it might fight a little harder to make you pay attention to it. It might put up a bigger fight to try to force you to listen to those untruths. 

This is when you have to remind yourself, your brain will straight up lie to you. 

Under no circumstances should you negotiate with these thoughts. That’s where spiraling lives, that’s where lack of balance lies.

Sometimes holding hard to your balanced routines will do the trick.

But sometimes you’re going to have to fight harder.

Sometimes you’ll have to get down on the floor for 3 to however many minutes it takes to fight back against those thoughts. Go deep into that breath, focus on the belly rising and falling off the floor. 

Remind your brain that you simply will not accommodate or negotiate with those thoughts while remaining compassionate and loving. 

Treat your brain as a child acting up. Firm yet loving, holding true to what you know is best. Because you know what balance feels like and you know these thoughts aren’t gonna serve that.

This is the practice, friends. 

And a reminder, growth comes from this- the practice, not the outcome. Hold on. Keep fighting back with compassion and love, and that groundedness will come back around again.

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