“Why Can’t I Follow My Calendar?!”

Is something you might ask yourself.

One of the big reasons we don’t follow our calendar is because we feel like we want to wait until we feel like we want to do the thing.

But what if… we never want to?

The truth is, our primitive lizard brains are not wired that way.

So if you are waiting to want to do it…

…You’ll likely (if you have a human brain!) be waiting for a while…

Why?

Our primitive brains will always try and get us to:

• conserve energy (so don’t do the report!),

• seek pleasure (which is not doing the report!) and

• avoid pain (which is what the report is!).

That doesn’t make you lazy or useless or incapable (or whatever other lie your brain wants to offer you).

It just makes you the owner of a human brain.

A lot of times we fail to account for that humanness when we plan the things we want to do: we just expect the future version of ourselves to “at some point” want to do the things.

But as we saw, this strategy doesn’t set us up for success because it expects our primitive brain to not act like it was designed to.

A lot of times we also criticize ourselves for this.

What if instead, we acknowledged that we were probably not going to want to do it and that was totally normal and ok?

This is why I love the process of calendaring: because it allows me to make my decision ahead of time when I have my best interest at heart, rather than in the moment when my primitive brain is trying to help me survive (and not do the thing).

When the time comes and I don’t want to do what’s on my calendar,

This is what I tell my primitive brain:

“Thank you Primitive Brain for trying so hard to keep me safe. 

You just want me to stay alive.

But I’m here now, and we are safe, and I’ve got us,

And we are going to do this thing because I love us.”

How do you think you would show up differently if you had compassion for yourself and loved all of you (including your primitive brain)?

If you want to take this work further, I would love for you to email me at alana@alanaschramm.com to set up a free consultation.