You don’t like huge changes.
It’s not your fault. The responsibility lies firmly with your brain. It doesn’t like change, it goes out of its way to avoid intellectual earthquakes.
That hunk of grey matter really doesn’t want the big things to change. It doesn’t want the bedrock stuff like identity, values and world view to shift. Which isn’t really surprising.
When your brain is presented with facts that means it should change, it’s likely to ignore them. In fact, some proper clever psychologists have proved that a certain amount of contradictory evidence actually strengthens your opinions.
Think about that, if you give people a little information telling them they are wrong, then they start to believe that they are more right. You must have experienced this when arguing with someone, the more you counter their points the more convinced they become.
Your brain’s ability to sneak contradictory information into its worldview is staggering.
I’ve seen this demonstrated again and again, the creativity, ingenuity and raw intelligence that people use to bodge conflicting ideas into their existing opinions is amazing. In many ways, it’s a triumph of nature.
And it might make you wonder how anyone ever manages to change anything.
Particularly, it may make you doubt the ability of anyone to stop doing anything as significant as drinking alcohol. I mean, it seems to be a part of our identity, our values, our very worldview, therefore changing that must be nigh on impossible.
But here’s the good news. It only seems that way because alcohol seeps into every crack of our lives. It only seems to be an intrinsic part of our identity, values and worldview.
Imagine a city. The tall, strong buildings are your core. The skyscraping towers are your identity, your values and your worldview. What about alcohol?
Alcohol has built a shanty town around the base of these buildings. Booze is a series of scruffy, poorly constructed hovels clinging to the bottom of what really matters. And that’s great news.
Because it means you don’t need a huge earthquake, you don’t need to destroy the city. You don’t need to go back to rubble and start again. Yes, you need a bit of seismic activity, but we are talking little tremors. All you need is a bit of a shake and the weak structure alcohol has built in the city will crumble.
Best of all such a small quake won’t even crack those tall, strong buildings at the core of the city.
In other words, you can remove the rubbish that you believe about alcohol from your brain without in any way compromising your identity, your values or your world view. In fact, clearing out the illusionary ideas that have been squatting in your mind will strengthen the core.
Freedom from alcohol will help you to express your identity more clearly. It will help you live up to your values. It will help you live in a way that is true to the way you see the world.
Yes, your brain doesn’t like earthquakes but luckily you don’t need one.