Compass No.20
Letting go of the need for certainty, the *sense* of agency, and getting connected to yourself
Thought provoking quote
A few highlights on letting go of the need for certainty from Brené Brown’s book, The Gifts of Imperfection:
“In my research, I found that what silences our intuitive voice is our need for certainty. Most of us are not very good at not knowing. We like sure things and guarantees so much that we don’t pay attention to the outcomes of our brain’s matching process. For example, rather than respecting a strong internal instinct, we become fearful and look for assurances.” (p.88)
“When I’m making a difficult decision and feel disconnected from my intuition, I have a tendency to survey everyone around me. Ironically, since doing this research, surveying has become a red flag for me—it tells me that I’m feeling vulnerable about making a decision.” (p.89)
“I can have a physical response to ‘not knowing’ – it’s anxiety and fear and vulnerability combined. That’s when I have to get very quiet and still…Whatever it takes, I have to find a way to be still so I can hear what I’m saying.” (p.91)
Book insights that stayed with me
I’m in the middle of reading Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How it Changes Everything by James R. Doty, MD and this piece of research on the sense of agency stayed with me.
“The sense of agency is just that: a *sense* that is constructed by our brains from a combination of cues in our experience. The brain examines whether our actions appear to be causing the results we intend them to and influencing our environment as we choose, and then uses that data to assess whether we have agency in the situation. The humbling truth is that our conscious mind does not have access to most of the subconscious processes by which we carry out actions (such as our ability to perform movements), and therefore it can only set an intention, watch its effects, and then interpret them accordingly. In other words, our sense of agency is a story our brain tells us about our experience.” (p.65)
Doty examines research on anosognosia to illustrate his point. Anosognosia is a term for patients who do not know or realize that they affected by a particular disease or impairment. For example, stroke patients who suffer from paralysis and show damage to parts of the brain associated with integration of self awareness, may not be aware on a conscious level that their movements are impaired.
Doty contends, “There may be a large gap between a person’s feeling of inner power and their ability to express that power in practice. In a sense, many of us suffer from the opposite of the patients with anosognosia: we labor under the delusion that we are paralyzed, when we are in fact fully able to act effectively!” (p.66)
Question inspired by a recent essay
Last week, I wrote about how neglecting vital parts of who we are can lead to a feeling of being disconnected from other people and ourselves. Just as overwatering a plant can starve it of oxygen and necessary nutrients, we can starve the garden of our inner landscape by overwatering certain parts and leaving others untended. I’ll leave you with the final question I posed in that essay:
“I think your gut reaction to this simple test is telling: Do you feel self connection’s presence or it’s absence? Where you feel absence, I invite you to look at the parts that are being overwatered. What parts of yourself need your dedicated time and attention to come back to life?”