"The emotional brain...

...loves the status quo."

Have taken so many giant leaps forward, but seem to be right where I've always been - seeing the best path forward, yet not taking it.  Is that nuts?

No, it's normal.  Because our emotional brain - the part of our thinking with the greatest amount of clout over what we DO v. what we say we intend - loves the status quo.  

Here's a disturbing thought - my sense of status quo was forged in the heat of a family largely off-track on their own & totally off the rails when it came to me, the youngest.  I grew up in an inverted family culture - too complex to explain, too icky to want to.  Suffice it to say that what most people put first, we put last & vice versa.  Abberation was my norm, it IS the set point my emotional brain keeps trying to protect.  Gadzooks!

Over the past 39 years, I have loaded my brain with reasonable, logical, insightful ways to approach life & living, yet still I struggle more than I succeed.  Small wonder.  

Our thinking brain can expand to accept endless reams of information, to discern which bits are worth remembering & which deserve being tossed into a virtual dust bin.  It makes us paragons of an educable being.  

The same cannot be said for our emotional brain.  Just as our physical body strives mightily to maintain a set weight point, so does our emotional brain.  No matter how much we ingest in the way of forward-moving knowledge, our emotional brain will strive - often mightily - to keep us right where we are.

At this point, there's not much, if anything, I can do solo to turn wretched life patterns around.  Read all the books, nailed down the data, but am not succeeding in getting my emotions out of the way.  .  

On the one hand, it makes NO sense to me to know a best path forward & not take it.  But that's what I do.  Friends seek to placate me, saying, "Oh, that's just human nature."  Perhaps - but that doesn't make it less dumb.  At least it doesn't to me.

I've had my laptop for over a year.  Haven't used it.

Know that a tidy house will help me feel stronger.  It's as big a mess as ever.

Haven't submitted billing for a grannie client in over six weeks.  What's that about??

My 2012 "State of the Human" letter has now lapped seriously into 2013.

Am not self-flagellating.  It's just that I've gone as far as I can on my own.  Proud of all I've achieved over the past 39 years, especially over the past 11.  But the reality is that my status quo-loving emotional brain is quick, clever & cunning.  And it thinks that it is HELPING me, which gives is extra incentive to keep things the way they've always been.  I've gotten far enough by hard work to realize the work I cannot do alone.

What to do next?  And will I do it??