197. Brain Software

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 197, Brain Software.

This podcast is for people who know that living an extraordinary life is not easy or comfortable. It’s so much better than that. This is Better Than Happy, and I’m your host, Jody Moore.

Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 197. My daughter was in the womb when I started this podcast and she’s going to be four this fall. I was like, wait a second, have I really been doing a podcast for over four years? I guess I have, pretty awesome. It doesn’t feel that long to me because you know what they say; time flies when you’re giving fun.

I love, love, love doing this podcast, so thank you for listening. It wouldn’t be nearly as fun if you weren’t listening and telling me how much you’re getting out of it. I genuinely appreciate it. If you want to share it with a friend, do that. I would love it if you did that.

Today, I’m going to talk to you about brain software. I’m going to talk to you about the software program running in your brain.  Now, we’re going to kind of take a step back into maybe it’s the 90s, maybe the early 2000s. No, I think it’s more the 90s, when we used to use those terms hardware and software a lot. At least that’s when I remember hearing them the most frequently. I don’t feel like I hear people talk about things in terms of hardware and software any longer, but we used to, right?

So, we would talk about computers as being the hardware. And I remember when computers were pretty new and they were gigantic and they couldn’t do nearly what they can do today. I remember the first computer we had as a family. It was a Commodore 64. Anybody else remember the Commodore 64?

It was pretty exciting. And then you could go down to, like, the book store and purchase software for your computer. So you had to have the hardware first of all, and then you had to buy software, which would be different programs that you could run on your computer. And the software program I remember being most excited about was called Print Shop.

And it enabled you to print cards and banners and things like that, all in black and white, on that printer paper that had, like, the little holes punched on the side to feed it through the printer, that were perforated and you would tear those off and hang up your happy birthday sign or use your card. And this was pretty exciting times.

We’ve come a long way since then, but anyway, today I want to talk about the brain as your computer. The brain is the hardware in this analogy. And your brain has software, in other words, a program that it runs on the regular. And the main title of that program is something-is-wrong.

Now, your brain does a lot of other things as well, but I just want you to imagine that there’s a program that runs nonstop in your brain that’s called something-is-wrong, okay? Now, just like if we think about computer games today or Xbox games or whatever your kids play, there are a lot of things going on in that game. My kids play Mario games, Super Mario Brothers, all different kinds of Super Mario Brother games, which are nothing like the Super Mario Brothers game that I used to play growing up.

But anyway, one of those games – I don’t even know which one – one of them has a bunch of different worlds. I think it’s Mario Party or something like that. So there are all these different worlds they can visit within that game and that’s kind of how the software in your brain works, right. So there are different things going on that fit within the software of something-is-wrong. But there are two main things that happen in the brain under something-is-wrong, two main categories that I want to visit today.

The first one says, “Something is wrong with my life.” Okay, the brain is constantly looking for reasons why this may be true, and then we find it everywhere because we’re very efficient at this software program. We notice that the people around us are not behaving how they should, they’re not doing it right, they’re not being the way we expect them to be in certain ways, which fits really nicely into our program of something-is-wrong.

We notice that our life is not how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to be married by now maybe a thought that your brain offers you. When I clean up the house, people shouldn’t come along behind me and mess it up. This fits very nicely under the software, something-is-wrong, right? My child is supposed to be on that soccer team. He’s got to get on that team. Or I didn’t get invited to go on vacation with my friends, I got left out, something is wrong. I have to make the right decision – we put so much pressure on ourselves about decisions that we’re trying to make because we believe that if we don’t make the right decision, it’s going to fuel that idea that something is wrong, so I have to choose the right school or buy the right house or move to the right city or decide whether or not I should have a baby, because any one of those things going wrong, along with a number of others, could mean that something has gone wrong.

Our brains like to go to the past, to notice what has gone wrong in the past. Maybe you believe that your parents didn’t do it correctly, your parents should have been different or you should have had different parents in general. Maybe you believe that you shouldn’t have had to endure some kind of a trial that you’ve had to endure, you shouldn’t have done some of the things that you did in your past.

So all kinds of opportunities here for the brain to notice that something is wrong with your life, and the brain is constantly looking for that. It’s so fascinating to me as a coach because I get to talk to people in all different scenarios and I get the privilege and honor of hearing people and the things that they’re struggling with, and what I notice is how that software program runs for everyone.

They tell me, “It’s just really difficult to have a mother in law who doesn’t help out and I just wish that she was more helpful or that she wanted to see the kids more.” A lot of people tell me that story and that’s their version of something’s gone wrong in my life. And then I have just as many people telling me that it’s really difficult to have a mother in law who doesn’t give them more space and always wants to be over at the house and always wants to be included in everything that they do.

And I’m always fascinated, like wait a second, how could this be? It’s because it’s actually not the mother in law or how much time she spends with you or your kids; it’s just your brain running that software program, something-is-wrong.

I have clients who tell me, “I am having a hard time coming up with ideas for my business,” or for something that they’re working on, “I feel stuck.” And then I have clients who tell me, “I have too many ideas. I can’t be present with my family and just focus on other things I need to do.” This is because it’s really just your brain; it has nothing to do with whether or not you have ideas.

I notice, for myself, I actually just had a conversation the other day with a good friend of mine, and we were talking about hiring staff on our team. We’re both entrepreneurs. We were talking about whether or not that staff needs to live locally or virtually you can work with them. and I made a comment saying, “I just really miss having coworkers around me to kind of hang out with and kind of bounce ideas off and go to lunch with and I miss that from my days in corporate.”

And my friend who has staff around her said, “Do you know what I miss? I miss having alone-time.”  It was so fascinating. I was like, oh see, there it is. Both she and I have the hardware of our brain running the software program something-is-wrong.

Now, the second area I want to explore and talk about a little bit is that the brain is looking for proof that something is wrong with me.  Now, where should I begin there? There’s so many levels in this world, right? I mean, endless opportunities to notice that I don’t look right, my body doesn’t look right, my hair isn’t right, my clothes aren’t right, I’m not smart enough, I’m doing it wrong.

Some of you have like one main thought under this umbrella of something’s wrong with me and then you find it in so many areas of your life. I see it when I coach you, especially those of you that I get to coach multiple times. I’m like, oh there it is again. Your software program of I’m-doing-it-wrong, you’re finding proof for it in so many different areas of your life.

Maybe it’s, I’m not a good mom, I’m not a good wife, I’m not a good husband because it’s supposed to look a certain way, right? Or is it just that program in your brain?

We notice that other people don’t approve of us and then we use that as proof that something is wrong with us. It fits really nicely into that program. And we start believing that if I were right, if I were doing it better, if everything were right then those people would like me and approve of me. Except that what we’re forgetting is their brain is running the same software program of something’s-gone-wrong and noticing it in you in some way.

We start thinking, I need to earn or prove something in my life. Like, I notice some of my clients really have this underlying belief, like I have to earn the right to be here in some way. I have to contribute or do something that will make me valuable and then I can believe that I’m enough, and they’re frantically trying to take action and accomplish things in their life in order to believe that they’re enough, because that program is running on repeat.

Because many of my clients are religious, right, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I see a lot of them have this idea; I’m just not righteousness enough. Maybe I’m not doing what the Lord wants. If your brain is running that software, you’re going to constantly find reasons to believe that you’re not doing what the Lord wants and you’ll start using your religion against yourself in that way.

Many times, once I start teaching thought work and these tools to my clients, then they start using that against themselves. They’ll say, “I was so frustrated with my kids and I know, Jody, you’ve taught me I’m frustrated because of my thoughts and so I shouldn’t be frustrated.” And that’s just the brain software saying, “Something’s wrong with you. You shouldn’t be frustrated because frustration is caused by thoughts, so therefore, you should be able to think something differently and never be frustrated.” Same thing we’re doing with religion to beat ourselves up instead of using it as a tool to gain awareness.

It’s so fascinating to me how my clients tell me these things as though they’re just observing something true. And by the way, I totally relate to it because I do the same thing to myself in my own life. Like, we want to be better or we want to make our lives simpler or happier or more enjoyable in some way, but the truth is, we could change that thing about us or change that thing in our lives, but the software would still be running and we would then find something else that’s gone wrong.

So if this is true, if we’re all running this software in our brains then what’s the objective? What am I trying to tell you? Why am I pointing this out to you? Well, honestly, I just want you to start observing your brain observe this program making things wrong, looking for what’s wrong in your life or in yourself, because the observance of it, the awareness of it puts you into that space that Eckhart Tolle calls being the watcher of your thoughts.

And it’s separates you just enough that you’re not as affected by those thoughts. you’re sort of watching yourself from one step back, which is a really, really powerful healthy place to be. But do we want to change up the software in our brains is the question.

I don’t know that I know the answer exactly, but I’ll tell you my thoughts on it. I don’t think that we want to get rid of it altogether because the truth is that according to all of the experts, we actually need this software program running in our brain. There’s a reason why and if you also think about that we evolved this way, it’s helped us get where we are.

I heard a story on another podcast once about a woman with some brain damage who never felt fear. And it was actually really dangerous. She nearly died many, many times because her brain software was a little bit messed up. She never had the thought that anything could go wrong in her life.

And so she exposed herself to some pretty dangerous situations. That’s probably not useful or healthy, right? they say that people who never experience shame, who never question whether or not anything’s wrong with them are considered mentally unhealthy, that’s a mental illness actually that can show up in a lot of different ways.

So, we don’t want to get rid of the software program altogether, but I do want you to become aware at it so that you’re not just operating at the effect of that software. I want you to notice it. And then I want you to ask yourself, is it true?

Is something wrong with my life and or is something wrong with me? I think this is an interesting question, and I’ll tell you, I think that, to a certain extent, it is true. There are opportunities to have an amazing life and there are things that we can do to improve upon our life experience, and there are some events in life that are a lot harder to handle than others.

And for us to seek for comfort and happiness and be driven towards that is healthy. And at the same time, it’s not true at all because nothing outside of us is causing our feelings, and again, no matter what, we will find reason to wonder, question, worry, or fear if that’s what our brain is doing. And so, in the end, really none of it matters at all and even when it comes to our thoughts about ourselves.

It’s true, something is kind of wrong with all of us. We’re all in a fallen state here on this earth, we’re all a mess in some way. None of us are perfect. We’re all capable of growing and learning and improving and doing better. And that drive to do better can be really useful, and at the same time, it’s not true at all. Our value is set. We’re all perfect just as we are. We’re all 100% lovable no matter what.

And so I think, in the end, the reason I, again, really want to bring this to your attention and the way I use this tool to serve me is just to make sure that our motivation to change our lives or ourselves doesn’t need to be so heavy. It really doesn’t matter, and therefore, it can matter if we choose to allow it to matter.

Like, it can matter just because why not, because why not push ourselves and see what we’re capable of and see what we can create in our lives, not because it really matters to the extent our brains think with that brain software we have running.

So, let me just sum it up this way; the brain software is the reason for our negative emotion, all of it. It’s the reason for all of our pain and suffering. And this program isn’t wrong, but you get to be the one to direct it if you just are willing to notice it.

The noticing of this program is where I feel I’ve gained the most confidence in myself and in my life. It doesn’t mean that the program doesn’t still run. It’s also where I’ve gained the most compassion for others, because I’m able to see, oh it’s just their brains and my brain does the same thing.

And sometimes, other people aren’t as aware of it as maybe you are, but that’s okay, right? We can just be compassionate and understand where they’re coming from. Alright, you guys, thank you so much for joining me today. Have an amazing rest of your week and I will see you next week, bye-bye.

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