How to be the boss of your brain

Everything starts in the mind, and there is great power in making the time to understand and work with yours, not against it, so that everything you want to be, have and do is within your reach. The power specifically lies in the gaps.

Every time we catch ourselves in the act, or rather in the thought, we help shift our thought pattern from unconscious to conscious, and that in itself helps you take charge by interrupting it. By understanding more about your brain, you raise your awareness, which leads you to create the gap for growth. Let’s do that by identifying and learning how to manage 3 of our mind gaps right now.

Power Gap #1: Managing your situations

At a time when the external narrative is so strong all around us, it is important to consciously identify the power we have over our situations. Here the gap stands between the situation and your reaction of it. You have the ability to influence how you experience any situation. By changing the frame – that is, the meaning of the situation – you are changing its narrative. This leads you to shift how you view things, finding a different and more positive interpretation of the adverse situation, thus impacting your next move. Some situations and events are out of your control, but you do control your reactions, and letting these impact you is your choice.

Power Gap #2: Managing your feelings

There is a gap between your emotions and your feelings, and, again here, by consciously identifying it, you can manage it to your advantage. You might have thought that both of these are the same as many people do use the words interchangeably, but they are different. Your Emotions precede your Feelings (it is E before F in the alphabet). Your emotions are made of internal experiences and involve chemical releases throughout the brain and body, while your feelings are your perception of these internal experiences and are very much subjective. You are deciding what you are feeling: you interpret your emotions into feelings.

Power Gap #3: Managing your expectations

Last but not least, our 3^rd power gap lies with our expectations. Expectations are beliefs that things will unfold a certain way. They help us to make sense of our world. And, whether or not you had realized it before now, you expect things to turn out a certain way for absolutely everything you do. This is a behaviour of ours that we most often do not realize we do – most of our expectations are formulated at an unconscious level. The shift here is to manage your expectations so they are not managing you. See this as data research that helps you collect the data so you can alter and adjust your behaviours as necessary to set positive, realistic and successful expectations.

The more you focus on these growth gaps, the more in charge you are, thus becoming the boss of your brain. This is how you become a confident self-directed learner and achiever, where you, the boss, direct your brain to go up the path you want to lead it to, using the power of your mind to rewire your brain for success as you lead beyond the edge and achieve extraordinary results.

About the author

Frederique Murphy is a leadership mindset strategist, keynote speaker and author of new book, Lead Beyond The Edge: The Bold Path to Extraordinary Results.