Sarah is afraid.
She's afraid she isn't smart enough, fast enough, motivated enough. Not thin enough, pretty enough, tall enough, shapely enough. Not ambitious enough, not disciplined enough, not creative enough. She's afraid of not being a good enough wife, a good enough mother, a good enough business owner, a good enough entrepreneur. Afraid of not being happy enough, rich enough, loving enough, loved enough.
Why is Sarah afraid? What started these fears of not being "enough"?
We did. We all did. We live in a culture where there is an emphasis on being more, becoming more, doing more, creating more, displaying more, saying more, reading more, listening more, storing more, spending more. There is an incessant push from all sides to "be all you can be" (all you are is not enough, obviously).
What are the effects of this push to be/do/have more?
It creates a current that sweeps us along in its wake and prevents us from ever feeling that we and our lives and our loved ones are ever "enough". It makes it hard to savour what we have, love who we're with, and be who we are.
It forces a "future" focus of how we want things or others or ourselves to be that also creates anxiety, worry, and fear about that same future if we can't measure up.
It leads to a "past" focus on how we haven't measured up, how we haven't "played big", how we've been mistreated by others who weren't enough for us. That same past focus can create a miring in depression, guilt, shame, resentment, and regret.
There is a way out of this search to be "enough", out of the focus on past and future and the angst that can bring.
The Way of the Brain
Our brains have so much they can teach us about ourselves and how we "work", how we are intimately interconnected with the world around us in every way imaginable.
Learning The Way of the Brain will not take us into methods and techniques for "fixing" your brain or "improving" your brain function or even "enhancing" your brain. That's more thinking that will take us back to thinking about ourselves as "not enough".
Nor will it take us into an examination of the brain's anatomy and its interconnections between structures.
We don't need to focus on these "parts" when our goal is to understand how the Whole emerges in each moment and how to work with our Whole instead of trying to change it.
Where The Way of the Brain will take us is into the meeting place of the physics of systems like our brain, the underlying brain patterns that create our shared experiences, the findings of positive psychology about how we can experience a more positive life, and the spiritual paths that have been shared for millennia.
Where these paths converge is what I call The Way of the Brain - and they can lead us to a different way of seeing ourselves, of expressing ourselves, of being with others, of evolving toward the kind of people we deeply want to be.
Not "improving" who we are, but deeply and truly experiencing who we are right now and allowing ourselves to become who we are naturally becoming. To feel “enough” and thus to allow ourselves to unfold into the most joyous selves we can be.