Adopt a new “normal”

Recall that a calm mind allows us unhindered access to our brain’s higher functions, such as creativity and problem solving. This is our natural state, the normal state.

When we are under stress, we move toward the fight-or-flight state. The blood supply to the brain’s higher functions is reduced in favor of the “lizard” brain, useful in life-or-death situations but not much else.

Unchecked focus on a negative or painful point can trap us in a negative feedback loop that leads to fight-or-flight responses. These feedback loops further diminish the limited resources we have by reallocating them to useless tasks like worrying.

Reversing the fight-or-flight state is difficult until you remove its cause. In a race or a long-distance run, the cause is pain and removing it means quitting. Not an option if your goal is to improve or compete. In other scenarios, it may be impossible to remove the cause. What do we do then?

Our reaction to pain is negative. This is normal. If the pain lingers, most folks will react by worrying and fall into a negative feedback loop, imagining the situation to be worse than it is. But you can choose to change your reaction so that it does not contribute to a fight-or-flight response.

Your pain is not responsible for the fight-or-flight response. Your reaction is. The pain and your reaction to it are separate things. If we can change our reaction to the pain, we change how and to what extent it affects our mind.

We do this by adopting a “new normal”. This is a choice to accept the current situation as your “new normal”, your baseline.

Imagine that whatever is bothering you will be with you permanently. Your previous normal state was relaxed and calm. The new normal is tense and chaotic. This is what you will start with every day. It is the best state you can hope to achieve every day. Forever.

If you had to live with the “new normal” forever, how would you make it work so that you could still finish the race? So that you could still do what you love? So that you could still have a good life?

Faced with this information you have two choices: adapt or quit.

If this were really happening, could you adapt? Yes. We all can. Like all things in life, we eventually get used to it. Consider that every day people all around the world are dealt life changing conditions and injuries. They adapt to overcome their situations. You can, too.

The goal in adopting this less-than-ideal situation as your new normal is to bring back the calm mind and stop wasting precious resources on useless activities like worrying. When we set the current situation as our new normal, the pain and stress we feel become acceptable, commonplace, normal. It stops being interesting; it stops grabbing our attention. It ceases to matter. When it ceases to matter we stop worrying about it.

Instead of focusing our mental resources on worrying, we redirect them to the creative and reasoning parts of the brain. This lets you efficiently allocate your resources and increases your chances at successfully overcoming your challenge.

A conversation you may want to have with yourself is around the question: At what point should I quit? Is it when it starts to hurt or feel uncomfortable? Is it when everything breaks and failure is all but confirmed? You need to decide what is acceptable to avoid injury and danger. Don’t push so hard today that you can’t do what you love tomorrow.

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When I was recovering from my surgery the outcome for my vision was uncertain. I imagined that my present condition would remain, adopting it as my “new normal”. Then I imagined all the ways I would need to adapt to have a meaningful existence. It’s not an easy thing to let go of your way of life, but imagining and accepting the worst outcome opened up new possibilities for a meaningful life I hadn’t yet considered. There would still be interesting and meaningful ways to spend my time. And so I remained calm, eager to get on with my life, come what may.

If you’re lucky your “new normal” will revert to the comfortable situation you previously enjoyed. For those less fortunate, cultivate a strong mind to get you through your challenge. Surrender to the outcome and readjust your “normal”.