If you have recently been asked a question and your response was I don’t know then you might have a case of lazy brain. Your brain doesn’t really want to do the work to think about it. It would much rather just get by with I don’t know.  Remember your lower brain wants to expend little energy and if it isn’t something you have put much thought into then your brain truly doesn’t know. But, it could. If you gave yourself that push right after your brain offers I don’t know you are actually giving your brain a work out.

As a life coach, I am like a personal trainer for your brain. Just like a personal trainer I find the areas your brain needs some work in and then we go to work strengthening and improving those areas. One way I can see what needs work is when I get a lot of I don’t knows as answers.

So right now as we are in a space where some tougher questions are being asked this may be a great indicator for you of the work your brain actually needs to do. This may be an area that you need to do some training.

So how do we do that?

We sit with the response of I don’t know and then we press into it. I often then ask my clients, but what if you did know? What do you think you would say?

It is amazing just that rephrasing stretches the brain a little more. It is like it gives your brain the freedom to try and it is okay if you get it wrong, just try. Waiting until you get a response and sitting in the moments of silence are huge. Sometimes your brain will give a fight and dig in its heels that it really truly does not know.

Remember your brain is a processor. It wants to solve problems. Its job is to go to work answering, computing, solving. So asking it quality questions on a regular basis gets it in the habit of doing those things. You want to use your brain to grow and just like our bodies we can improve it by using it for what it was intended for.

Some of you may say I don’t know a lot. I know I was always accepting that answer from my brain and never questioning it again. I was often just okay with that and would move on. But now I know better. I know that I can stretch it a little more by taking that one extra step.

But once you get an answer don’t judge it. Just accept the response. That may be your brain doing its best to get something started.

I know in the last few weeks I have started asking myself some really good questions and ones that if I am honest I haven’t asked my brain before. So, with some of the questions my brain is taken off guard. And I am unsure if I want to have my own thoughts about them. It makes it easier for me if I think that doesn’t pertain to me or doesn’t affect me. I am the queen of being naïve in an area, now I know it may just be my brain wanting to be lazy. I don’t want to think about it because it may challenge some of my old beliefs or easier ways of thinking about a circumstance or situation.

As I have paused and gotten quiet it is easier to distract myself with other things than to ask myself these questions and start allowing myself the freedom to answer. Sometimes I am amazed at my response. Sometimes I am met with I don’t know and that is even better because it is an indicator where to spend some more purposeful think time. Seeing areas that you want to spend more time allowing your brain to sit with is great, but don’t fill that think time with distraction. Train your brain to think on the subject you give it. This gets easier when you have done thought downloads and are good at allowing your brain the freedom to just unload.

This is also the same practice I would use to work on having your own thoughts. Too often we just take on other people’s thoughts as our own because it is easier. If we don’t have to do the work than we can just be done with it. Too often we let them do the work and then just regurgitate without really believing what we think or without deciding if we want to think that way. This can be a bad habit to get into because you start to lose integrity with yourself.

You may be doing this to please other people or you may not like conflict and don’t want to oppose what other people think. You might not want to rock the boat or actually don’t know what you think and haven’t put any effort into what you do believe.

Being willing to question your thoughts and asking yourself why you believe what you do believe is so good for your brain. You are going to improve your brains ability to process and create when you take the time to find the areas that it is lazy in and do the work to challenge it.

I am doing this same work too,

Angie