Perspective glitch challenge

Did you know that our brain is predisposed to look on the dark side - not the bright side?

Although we are human, we actually have a reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and only then, on top of all that ancient architecture, do we have the pre-frontal cortex.

In order to keep us safe, the brain will send us worst-case scenario thoughts. Why? Because if we weren’t aware of the worst-case scenario, we’d go merrily traipsing down foreboding dark alleys, and leaping gleefully into caves with glowing eyes.

You see, our brain is just trying to keep us alive. Thank you, brain!

The other thing our brain does, in its own wisdom, is to automate everything it possibly can. That means the unconscious takes over, leaving bandwidth free for our conscious.

We already know that things like breathing and heart pumping are unconscious, but the brain is even more efficient and intrepid than that. Anything that we do habitually consciously the brain will actually automate.

That’s why we can drive home from work without paying attention at all! And that’s why, if we have an errand on the way, and we’re lost in thought, we’ll actually turn towards home instead of towards the store, unless we’re paying attention.

Put these two things together and you get: the brain is serving us worst-case scenarios all the time - about all kinds of stuff, people, situations, future events, future conversations - unconsciously and automatically - we’re not even aware of this bias.

So we have to hack the brain a little bit. Hence this challenge!

In this challenge, you’ll be training your brain for a week - imagine your brain is a Pokemon (or don’t lol).

You’ll be doing two things:

Interrupting your brain when you notice it serving you a worst case scenario.

And you’ll be consciously asking, “What’s the best case scenario?” about some things.

Or: “How can I see this person as their absolute best, resourced, willing, good-at-heart, self-appropriately quirky self?” about certain people that you’ve trained yourself to expect trouble or stress from.

(I’m raising my hand because this was me and my co-parent for the longest time and this little challenge shifted things more than couples therapy ever did.)

What neuroscience has shown us is that the brain follows the mind, not the other way around. But this is good news, because if we consciously begin shaping our thoughts and our perspective, we can actually change neural networks in the brain.

How do you interrupt your brain when it’s giving you lots of worry or stress about how bad something might go?

Let me illustrate, using myself as an example. I had a trip planned to Hawaii with my mother and daughter. All I could think about was how the plane was definitely going to crash. It obviously didn’t. But I wasted so much time worrying and stressed my system out unnecessarily.

Had I had these tools then, I would have interrupted that thought loop with a disrupt question. I like this one: What’s everything I’m not noticing that’s not this?

And then, after the unwanted thought loop derailed, I would have asked, what’s the best case scenario? If I could wave a magical wand (and sometimes you have to literally use the word magic so your brain can let go of the grip it has on the worry), what ideal perfection and amazingness can I imagine about this event? If it were to go absolutely as I desired, what would that look and feel like?

And here is the secret, so listen carefully.

As you are imagining the best case scenario, your brain will try to offer you all the ways in which it’s not possible, in which it will fail. If you let your brain do this, you will never achieve lift-off with your best case scenario.

What you actually want to do, to get the best, strongest, update for your brain, is to marinate in the juicy, unedited goodness of the actual, magically enhanced (if necessary) best case scenario.

Let it unspool. Actually float into a future memory of you living the best case scenario. See it vividly, let yourself get lost in it. What are you seeing? Wearing? Hearing? Doing? Feeling?

Let yourself daydream a good daydream. And keep knocking down that voice that wants to interject worst-case or any “but-but-buts” or “what-ifs.”

Now - the real honest-to-goodness magic happens when you do this with people in your life. One of the leaders in this work, John Overdurf, says:

“The way you see someone in your mind is the best that they can be in your presence.”

Make no mistake, your mind is filtering and coloring things like crazy.

So you have to consciously update the filters and colors, and what happens is nothing short of miraculous.

If you see your partner as spiteful and disrespectful in your mind, that’s how you’ll perceive them in reality. If you see your child as ungrateful or anxiety-producing, that’s how you’ll receive them in real life.

So this is a practice that changes everything. Seeing people as their best versions, as their best selves.

Approaching hard conversations with a partner with a generous and benevolent expectation of how they’ll show up.

Believing the best of your people. Wouldn’t you want them to do the same for you?

And watch how things change.

So, for just one week, we’re expending a lot of conscious energy and mental bandwidth glitching our perspective over to best-case scenarios, best versions, and best selves (do this for your self too! See your own self as the best possible version!).

And this will update your programming in the best way! I want to hear how this changes things for you! Tell me what shifts!

Love this challenge and everything it’s doing for you?

Want more disruption? More glitching? Jump on my email list - just signing up for it creates good change.

Every email contains a bite-sized piece of paradigm disrupt coaching.

And if you sign up here and now, you’ll also receive a FREE audio hypnotic trance induction where you can continue the Perspective Glitch work by visiting a future you in a future memory and seeing what resources and wisdom future-you has for now-you around any issue you want to disrupt with good change.

Never done trance-work before?

omg, it’s sooo yummy! It’s like speed meditation with an agenda.

It’ll leave you feeling deeply relaxed and profoundly resourced.

How does it feel in your body and in your mind? In your body, it might feel like savasana after a nice yoga session. In your mind, you’ll be focusing on specific things so it’s like a guided meditation - with the subtle addition of heightened suggestibility and subtle removal of the inner critic. You might notice your conscious and your unconscious running in parallel. You can easily come out of trance at any time just by deciding to. You do not lose your self-control or your conscious awareness. Did I mention how good it feels? Try it out!