All too often I’m asked what inspires, motivates, and drives me forward. After all, there are mornings when I, if I let it, I could be paralysed by fear of failure, of ending up homeless again. Yet I drag my near lifeless carcass out of bed and move on about the day. Sometimes I work through the day with trepidation, other times with boundless enthusiasm for the journey.

 This back and forth is perfectly normal and human.

Pick up any sociology, psychology, or ethnography of any part of human culture, and you’ll see this is true. This is because our neural highway builds on pathways that are already there. We literally build on stored experiences without deleting them. Cortisol produces the negative feelings that warn us. Your response to these feelings depends on what it’s paired with during the chemical release. For example, you might feel anxiety when you sense danger or face a difficult situation. These feelings have evolved with our species as it often saved us from predators and other dangers. We are hardwired to recognize danger and seek ways away from it.

Neural pathways form a mesh, with yellow representing language and connecting the frontal lobe on the left to the temporal lobe on the right, and the purple curlicue representing Broca’s area, which coordinates speech. Courtesy of VJ Wedeen and LL Wald, Martinos Center, Harvard Medical School, Human Connectome Project

All mammals have a reptilian brain at the base of our limbic system. This is part of our evolutionary heritage as our reptilian brain alerts us to danger. It releases the cortisol when electricity flows down a neurological path that your brain has made in the past. However, it doesn’t know why, so your cerebral cortex tries to make sense of the jumbled mass of neurochemicals.

Your cortex and reptile brain are always working together to keep you out of harm. When we are born, our brains see the world as a mass of details. As we get older, we form reactions to the experiences we’ve had, and we label them as good or bad. Our reptile brains release the cortisol to scream of danger when we subconsciously sense it. A big burst of cortisol is associated with fear; small drips are associated with anxiety or stress. Our cortex analysis the crisis, identifies the problem and can help us react appropriately.

Granted, our happy neurochemicals are harder to come by and create a vicious cycle. When we do something that makes us feel good, we routinely repeat it to trigger this good feeling. However, we are also hardwired to avoid “too much of a good thing” because it might distract us from the potential dangers in life. Eventually doing the activities that make us feel good will start to produce cortisol in effort to deter us. This, in turn, causes us to seek out our happy chemicals. The cycle of addiction and avoidance is set in motion.

You can’t move forward if you are tied to the past.

It is possible to forge new neural paths and reap the rewards. It takes time, discipline, understanding, patience, and work. The first step is to recognise the natural pattern of our brains: We might want to avoid stress, but we want to avoid harm more.

The pathways we made in our past are the result of our experiences, so dangers feel very real to you. Change your reaction to them means accepting bad feelings that may pop which can help you avoid the worse alternative of vicious cycles of happy and unhappy chemicals. Accepting the feeling the unhappy chemicals create is a good step to breaking the cycle. After all, it’s our reptile brain that has released them without really knowing why, but we can rationalize and strive toward a different, healthier future reaction.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Not at all, actually, and the older you are, the harder it is. We are used to sticking to the same paths we have forged over our lifetime of experiences. Our experience tells us that drinking a few drinks with friends, going out shopping, or other activities make us feel good. When we do them and don’t feel so good, the cortisol has kicked in saying we are doing too much of a good thing, and it’s time to change up our behaviour a little.

Illustration by Igor Morski.

All we have to do stop the cycle is resist reacting to the cortisol and feeding the cycle. It takes adults at least 45 days for the old, familiar neural pathway to start dying and your body to be ready to start creating a new one.

Stepping out of your comfort zone isn’t easy.

As noted, stepping away from the fear and anxiety isn’t easy. However, with the right support and cheerleaders to your cause, it is possible. Find people that will listen, find others that can help reign in your anxiety, and others than can help you find a path that corrects your behaviour. For me this meant telling people that I was worried about finances, and that I didn’t want to over spend. It meant being honest about where I recently came from, followed by opening up my fears of ending up there again due to overextending myself.

That was the easy part, believe it or not. In today’s society there is a huge pressure on business owners to sacrifice everything for the good of some others. Every day I face scrutiny because I don’t give all my possessions and money to those that would have me support every one else’s plight. Instead, I found a path that works for the current conditions of my company. Sticking to it despite the harsh criticism is the harder part. There will always be those that disagree with you on your journey. It doesn’t matter if it’s weight loss, financial, or just going a different direction. Seeking out those that understand and support your change is what will help you make it through the rough patches. The rest is all on you.

Resource for understanding your brain chemistry: