How Fear, Imagination and Your Lizard Brain Conspire Against You

Have you known mechanics who always have parts left over after they’ve finished the job?

I have, they explain themselves with excuses like…

“Oh, we don’t need those.” Or… “They were extras.”

When I was a kid, I was always digging into my dad’s tools. My favorite thing was to dissect my toys… then put them back together. Sometimes my mom and dad would watch me do it.

To this day I’m grateful they never intervened.

They never stopped me because of their fear that I wouldn’t be able to put something back together.

For the record, I never had parts left over.

But fear is the point here.

Fear messes with us almost every day of our lives.

I’ve heard it called the principal output of our lizard brains. Aptly so. And yes, we make most of our decisions with our lizard brains.

If you haven’t heard that term before, it’s the part of our brains that has served the sole purpose of keeping us alive and out of harm’s way since the beginning of human kind. It has entirely avoided adaptation and er, excuse me… evolution into modern times and needs.

Its origin had to be soon after Eve was duped by the serpent. I don’t know about you, but if I’m walking by an apple tree… um, no, any tree and a snake shows up and starts talking to me I’m getting the hell outta Dodge!

So, as I’m told, our lizard brains do serve a purpose.

When we were kids, we were afraid of the threats hiding out under our beds or in the closet.

Imagine that. As kids we feared imaginary creatures, never visible in daylight, entirely created through imagination.

If you think about it for a moment, we “grownups” fear the exact same creatures. They just look different to us in our mind’s eye. Most all of them are still imaginary.

Even with the monsters dwelling underneath beds and hiding out in closets, as kids we were never afraid to try new things.

Failure was simply an opportunity to try again.

This was known as a “do-over.” Remember do-overs? In my neighborhood, anyone could call an audible do-over at any time.

Yes, sometimes you’d get overruled. But that didn’t stop anyone. Did it?

We embraced experiments and experimenting. Unless you’re a bona fide scientist, you are apparently not allowed to conduct experiments as an adult. At least you can’t admit that you’re experimenting in most cases. Think twice before saying to most bosses, “Don’t worry, I’m just experimenting here.”

But in the end, what’s the problem? What are you afraid of?

You’ve still got to find some use for those extra parts you found on the floormat. You can’t just throw them away.

What?? You DO throw them away?

 

Be untucked, my friends…

 

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