Stories

Your brain tells you

Photo by Ali KILINCAY from iStock

Don’t believe every story that your brain tells you.

Sometimes it lies to protect you

Sometimes it’s wrong

Every time it’s guessing

Your brain is a prediction machine

That’s its job

To take data from your surroundings

And predict what is going to happen

So that you won’t be totally blindsided

By the next thing that happens to you

So that you might be slightly prepared

Based on what has happened before

And while your brain is generally good

At predicting what is going to happen.

You can’t always believe

Everything it tells you

There are biases galore

(Google says from 50-400)

That sway the stories it tells you

You have to look behind the story

You have to question the story

Hell, you have to identify the story first

Then ask it questions to verify how true it is

And whether or not you should base a decision on that story

Good luck out there

You and your little storytelling brain

It’s a harsh world

But you’ve got this

10-24-25

I wrote this poem when I was in a flurry of trying to decide what to do with a new bump in our medical road. I could tell my brain was making up stories about what would happen next. Writing the poem helped me remember that my brain wanted to know what would happen when we still needed more information. Mostly what I needed to do was breathe and trust that all would be well.

When was the last time that you felt like you were telling yourself stories? How did that work out?