Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:32.27)
Hey and welcome to millennial midlife today we’re talking about that annoying spot that you can get stuck in where you know what you should be doing or what you want to do and Yet you can’t move forward on it. It’s this place where so many of us get stuck
And I’ll just say that most people get stuck in patterns not because they’re not aware, but because we generally are, and I’m thinking maybe not everybody, but I think a lot of us are over informed and under supported at the nervous system level. So we’re over informed intellectually and we’re under supported at the nervous system level. And we think that we just need more information to move forward. But in fact, we need to balance that with the nervous system safety. So this,
The main premise here before the TLDR is this episode is about why awareness doesn’t change behavior. Another way of saying this is this is why you don’t just need more information to get started. And that’s where a lot of us are. I’m recording this in January. You’re probably listening. It’s coming out in January, definitely. And this is a time where, especially if we set goals and then we get to this place where we start feeling doubt or we…
stop recognizing momentum or movement forward, we think, I just need to know more. There’s a knowledge gap. Okay. Let’s just put it out there. You already know a lot. I know you know a lot. I know that you probably know maybe even more than you need to know. You’ve probably read self-help books. You probably have been in therapy or you’ve kind of self-therapied yourself. You’ve probably listened to a lot of podcasts. You probably
consume lots of information on places like TikTok and Instagram. And so you have a lot of information coming into your brain. You know a lot of things. You might even have a lot of awareness of your own patterns. And then again, if you’re like a lot of people, me included, I’m raising my hand, I understand why this is happening. I understand what is happening. I also understand what I would like to be happening, but why is it still happening, right?
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:54.702)
And I think this is often very easy to understand in sort of like an exercise context or a food context. Not because that’s the only place it shows up, but that’s something that like we are inundated with in our society and a lot of us are just familiar with it. So for instance, if somebody wants to, and I’m using the enormous goal of get healthy, very ambiguous goal of get healthy, there is no lack of information about how to make that happen.
Right, there are thousands of different food eating systems you can try. There are thousands of different exercising approaches that you can try. You can add in manifestation stuff in there. There’s so many different approaches. We know that we’re supposed to exercise and move our bodies. We know that we’re supposed to eat well. I’m using air quotes if you’re not watching me on YouTube. We know those things and we even know what those are, but oftentimes we can’t make the translation from there to here.
And that’s where it feels like we’re getting in our own way or we can’t just get it together. So oftentimes when this happens, we think, we start to think like I just need more information. And then we also think like, maybe I’m just not applying it correctly or maybe I’m bad at change or maybe I just need a little bit more information. And I’m going to say it again, because we should say it several times in the episode about this, right? A lot of people, you’re not likely stuck because you don’t know enough. You’re stuck because knowing is in what changes the system.
And I think that’s really important because so many of us, particularly if we’ve gone through any kind of school system and we have advanced degrees or any degree, we often have this cultural bias that knowledge is the thing that makes everything move forward. So we think maybe there’s a tipping point on the scale that once I know enough, for instance, about healthy eating, the knowledge will kick me into change.
So it’s the knowledge that will move me into doing something different. And it’s a false premise because I just want you to check it out. Just before you listen to me say it’s a false premise, I know you already have. Boz, and ask yourself, how often has it been a knowledge thing that’s changed? Sometimes it is. Like, oh, I just didn’t know that. My husband’s a great example. He didn’t know that meat came from animals. And once he did, he didn’t want to eat meat anymore. And a lot of us
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (05:24.034)
who grew up in the US don’t actually know that,
I once saw this thing on Instagram where a little kid asked their parents, why is chicken the animal and chicken the meat or chicken the food called the same thing? It’s a tough conversation. Okay, so there’s a cultural myth, right, that awareness equals transformation. This belief comes from insight-based models, from cognitive understanding, from education equals improvement, and it over emphasizes our intellectual higher thinking brain, which is like
totally understandable, right? Because our brain is a super, I don’t know, it’s a supercomputer and it does amazing things. And the part of us that can think and understand and crunch data and analyze things is so powerful. And so we think, if only my higher thinking brain knows enough, it will be able to get me to move forward. But the problem is this higher thinking brain is not the brain that’s in charge in the moment.
And the brain that’s in charge in the moment isn’t the one that cares about all this information. Right, so the different parts of our brain have different priorities and they have different understandings of the information we have. Awareness is important. I’m not saying don’t learn. Obviously, I love learning. I love reading books. I love doing it. I think it’s amazing. And understand that it isn’t sufficient entirely.
Right, so knowing might help you name the problem. Awareness is a big part of the work I do with people, clients that I work with individually and in the Life Lab, starting to bring non-judgmental awareness to what’s happening, to where you want to go, understanding your desires. Those are all huge parts of this, right? But you also need your nervous system to be on board. You also need that.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (07:15.256)
primitive, that lower part of your brain, that in the moment part of the brain is maybe the most helpful way of thinking of it, the part of the brain that makes decisions in the moment, it needs to be on board too. It needs to feel safe along with your nervous system to make the change, to do something different so it can stop running from it. Okay.
Your identity, who you believe yourself to be, is based in a lot of old beliefs that you have about yourself. Your patterns of behavior are based in belief. There are neural pathways that are set in your brain. If you think about like animals moving through like the forest, they have preferential paths, right? You can see them create them. And it’s faster because if you go the same path every time, like the brush gets knocked down and the branches get
chomped on the, they get kind of broken up on the ground so it’s easier to walk and you can actually see the pathways. Your brain has the same thing. Instead of understanding a new way to go to work every single day, you go the same route because it takes less energy and it’s perceived as safer because there’s, are less unknowns. Your brain is the exact same way and your system will keep doing what it’s doing because it still has these old beliefs. So the way you eat is incredibly habitual. How you eat within your day, the food you eat,
The amount you eat is very habitual. And it’s what your system learned is safe. What feels good, what is normalized to you, what confirms the beliefs that you have in the world about yourself and about food. And within that, two things are cut, two boxes are checked for the lower part of your brain, for that in the moment part of the brain. One, the box is checked that it’s safe. You’ve already done it. You know that this works out. You know what it’s gonna taste like.
You know how it’s gonna work, right? It’s why McDonald’s french fries taste the same all over the place because people want to know what it’s gonna taste like. It feels safe. It feels known. Known and safe are very, are kind of intertwined in this place, right? And also it takes less energy, right? So you’re not doing something new. You’re not going to a new restaurant and having to read their menu and figuring out what do I like here? if I have some food allergies or food preferences, are they gonna honor them?
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (09:29.482)
It is much lower energy to do the thing you’ve always done. And those are two very important things to in the moment brain, keeping you safe and conserving energy. And the beliefs that you have formed that are not always true, right? They’re just the ones that you repeat over and over again. They dictate how you feel in the moment and then what you do. The protection wins all the time. It’s really like embodied within you. It’s faster, it’s older.
And so even if you have information that now goes against this, it doesn’t really override it, right? So information can override the patterns that this part of your brain has. I hope that’s really clear. This is why things like EFT work and EMDR is because we’re not actually intellectually or logically reasoning with this part of the brain, we’re rewiring it. It’s why breathing things like that.
So insight lives in the thinking mind, but protection lives within the body, within that like in the moment brain, within your nervous system. And so a lot of times what we end up doing is we try and force ourselves. We think like, okay, well I have to use willpower to get myself to eat this way or to exercise or do whatever it is you wanna do. And I get it, you’re probably really good at this. Like you’re probably high effort, you probably have a lot of willpower, you’ve probably done this over and over again.
And willpower can work in the moment. It can override protection in the short term, but there’s a lot of tension. There’s a lot of vigilance, right? There’s a huge amount of vigilance. If you think about eating and you’re trying to like force yourself to eat a certain way, there’s a lot of vigilance there. And eventually it will collapse. And I know you’ve seen this either within yourself or other people around you, particularly when it comes to things like weight and food, right? And like, honestly, I’m gonna just be really clear here. Like I don’t have any…
skin in the game in terms of how much you weigh or don’t weigh. And I think actually like the thing we should all be aiming for is a body that feels like supportive for us and the life that we want to live. And that can be many different shapes and sizes. And oftentimes a lot of us spend more of our life in a body that doesn’t feel like it’s supporting us, right? This is not an episode about weight. This is an episode about you understanding that you want to change something in your life.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (11:46.592)
and then recognizing that it’s going to take some force and vigilance to make that happen because you’re working against yourself. You’re working against part of yourself. So part of yourself says, we need to keep doing this. This is safe and it conserves energy. And then you’re saying, but I have all this information that says we should do this. And the other brain’s like, I don’t really care about your information. I just don’t care about it. It doesn’t actually really matter to me. That’s cute and all. I’m glad you have your studies. I’m glad somebody has done research on this.
but I have lived experience and that sounds dangerous and I’m gonna keep doing what I’m doing. So effort can force behavior, but it can’t change the behavior that it’s protecting you from. And it can’t change the beliefs. Effort doesn’t change the beliefs. And the beliefs at the end of the day will always come back and run the show. That’s so important to know. So your program nervous states and your beliefs that you’ve been believing for a long time will always come back until you take the time to work through them, to rewire them, to let them go.
to retire them, essentially. Okay. So it can feel frustrating to be in this. can feel circulate, sort of circulating. It can feel circular. It can feel like there’s a lot of self blame in here, right? And a lot of self criticism and a lot of why can’t I get it together and what’s wrong with me? And everyone around me seems to be able to do this. But the truth is your body is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, which is to keep you safe and conserve energy. And your nervous system is doing what it’s supposed to do. And that in the moment brain is doing what it’s supposed to do.
And so we might actually pause and take a moment and say, interesting. I’ve been pushing against something instead of trying to work with something. And now I can start to try and work with something. What does it look like to work with something? Right? Well, it’s not insight. We’ve just realized we actually need to figure out how to create safety within our nervous system and start to learn how to reprogram those beliefs. Right?
These survival strategies, like I said, will stick around until you work with them in this way, until you start to recognize them because they’re familiar, because they lead to safety, because uncertainty is dangerous for this part of your brain. So it’s not stubbornness, it’s not failure, you’re not wrong or bad. It’s just we need to shift that. Your system needs to be updated, right? So your system doesn’t wanna update unless you actually
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (14:08.96)
work with it to do it. It’s kind of like, you know, unless you have your computer set to auto update, like it keeps asking you, it’s like, are you sure you want to update? Do you want to update? Like you haven’t updated, you need to do it tonight. Your brain doesn’t do that. Like we actually have to go in and work with it. Okay, so the conditions for change are safety within your nervous system, the capacity to feel emotions, the capacity to look at and work with, get curious about old beliefs, and then repetition, which
oftentimes looks like time, right? So meeting these beliefs, meeting these nervous system states again and again and asking, getting curious, why do I want to eat this way? Why don’t I want to eat this way? Why am I doing this? And this is exactly the work that we do inside the Life Lab, right? So this quarter, we are prioritizing working with safety, working with release, working with self-partnership, doing these in the lessons. So each week within the Life Lab, there are…
Two main events, and the first event is a lesson, where you come and you get to learn and ask questions, and we go deeper into these concepts and you get journaling questions and prompts to actually do them within your own life. And then the second event, which is after this one, is coaching, where you can come with questions from what we did in the lesson or anything else that’s going on in your life, so you can actually start to make these changes not from an intellectual knowing place, but from a nervous system safety brain rewiring habit place.
So then the change happens really easily. So for instance, going to the gym or eating how you want to eat, they start to flow very naturally from the work that you’ve done. You’re not forcing change at the end. You’re changing what happens further upstream so that the change just comes out. Okay.
I know this already. It’s like such a thing, like I already know this information is so key. And I know you might know this, what I’ve already said, but the key is not in knowing it, right? This whole app is a little bit meta, right? You just learned a lot. You just learned a lot, but the key is not in knowing it. The key is actually in implementing it. So if you understand the patterns, but you still feel caught in them, nothing’s gone wrong, but you still haven’t done the work.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (16:19.244)
Very respectfully, you still have not done the work to rewire your nervous system and to rewire your brain. Because once you start doing those, you will still remember some of these old beliefs, but they won’t trigger you in the same way. They won’t feel that you won’t see the results in your life because you are operating from a different system. So if you to make these changes and you’re not making them, it’s likely that you need some outside support. And I’m not saying that it has to be me, but it could be me. And if you like listening here, then there’s a good chance that you might like working with me.
And if you’re already working with me, like let’s dive in deeper, right? But know that you can change this, but it’s not about knowing more. It’s not about reading more books. You don’t need more information outside of yourself. You need to learn how to partner within yourself so that you can start to make these changes. And that doesn’t mean that you’ll never read a fun self-help book again and get some ah-has, but it means that you will know how to then implement them in your life, not just underline them and make a smiley face and then like never think about them again.
or never actually see them in your life. Because how many of us have read all the books and not done any of the implementation and don’t see any of the changes? I mean, I’m there too, right? So again, the offer is if you wanna keep doing this, obviously listen here, right? Where you can get more of this cognitive knowing and sharing tools. to my Sematic sessions on Thursdays, they’re free. But join the Life Lab, come do this work. If you give yourself a year, I promise, even if you do the work,
totally imperfectly as we expect, you will see big changes within a year. I know this because it happens over and over again. And if you want to have a conversation about it, I’d love to do that with you. I think it could be a big investment for people in terms of time, in terms of sometimes money. And so if you want to talk about it, let’s talk about it. Thank you for listening here. Know that knowledge is not, I mean, it is kind of power, but like nervous system regulation is the power play. And I will see you next time. Bye.
