Part One
Get to Know Your Brain
The different parts, and the roles they play in everyday life.
Approx. 10–12 minute read
This written companion accompanies the Mindset Style series explaining how your brain works. You’ll discover how well-being really works, and why understanding your mind truly is the key to feeling good for real... less stressed, calmer, more relaxed, and able to get the most out of your life. Reading it will be a few minutes of your time that really will just keep on giving — future you will thank you.
As humans, we’re all walking around with these remarkable brains in our heads. But most of us were never really taught how they work. And when you think about it, that’s kind of crazy — considering how much they influence our lives!
Our minds are constantly working in the background, responding to our day-to-day experiences. They’re doing an incredible amount of work behind the scenes, all day, every day — shaping our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Our mindset — the way we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us — has a huge impact on our lives. It influences how we interpret situations, what we expect, how we respond emotionally, and even what we believe is possible for us. But despite its name, our mindsets aren't set! And when we understand our brains, and how our minds work, it helps us make sense of why we think, feel, and do as we do. And just as importantly, it shows us how it really is possible to make changes, when we want to, so that we can get the very most out of life. So if you’ve ever felt frustrated with how you’ve been thinking or feeling, and you’d like to feel more in control of your own mind, keep reading. And if you’ve ever wished you could feel more relaxed — a bit calmer, a little happier, or more confident — then you’re in exactly the right place. Because reading this will help you understand how your brain and mind work — and how you can begin to design and influence your mindset.
Understanding what’s going on in our minds really can change everything.
At any point while you’re reading, feel free to take a break, put the kettle on, or relax while listening to a Mindset Style audio. It gives your brain a chance to pause and process, take in new information, and make space for more — without you needing to do anything other than sit back and relax.
Although we’ve only got one brain, we actually have two minds… which might explain a few things. Let’s take a look. We’ll start with the part of your mind that you know as you — the prefrontal cortex — the part you’re aware of. It’s the logical part. The conscious part. It’s the part we use to think, plan, and interact with the world around us. It’s the part you’re using as you read this now.
The prefrontal cortex sits at the front of the cerebral cortex — the outer layer of the brain — the wrinkly bit you probably picture when you think of a brain. The cerebral cortex is a vast subconscious resource library, holding huge amounts of information we’ve learned over time — knowledge, language, skills, and experiences — a bit like a huge computer database. The prefrontal cortex can draw on that information, bringing it into conscious awareness when we need it to help us think things through. These parts of our brain work together — consciously and subconsciously — to form what we call our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain, or RIL brain for short. And if you’ll excuse the terrible pun, the Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain — or RIL brain for short — is RILLY good at helping us deal with RIL things in our RIL everyday lives. It helps us weigh things up, think things through, make considered choices, and find solutions to problems.
The Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain is generally quite positive and helpful. But there’s another part of the brain, and it’s the original part. The part our ancient primitive ancestors used to survive their daily lives. Now, their lives were obviously quite different to ours. But even though, as humans, our lifestyles have changed dramatically over the past several million years, this primitive part of the brain has stayed largely unchanged.
This original part of our brain operates mainly at a subconscious level — doing its thing in the background beyond our conscious awareness. It’s part of the limbic system, a group of areas deep inside the brain, and together they help co-ordinate our body’s automatic processes — our heart rate, breathing, and digestion — all the things that run on autopilot and keep us alive. It’s the emotional part of our brain. And it plays an important role in how memories are formed and recalled.It’s also responsible for our protective responses, and its number one priority is our safety and survival.
We can think of it as the brain’s own special operations unit — quietly working in the background to protect us and keep us alive. The central — and probably most influential — part is the amygdala. It’s like the brain’s security guard, constantly scanning for danger and threats everywhere. It’s the part responsible for triggering our fight, flight, or freeze response. It works closely with two other original parts of the brain — the hippocampus and the hypothalamus.
We can think of the hippocampus as the brain’s filing assistant. It has access to all of the personal information and intel our brain has stored away — records and memories of everything we’ve ever experienced, like files tucked away in our subconscious mind just in case they’re needed for future reference. We can imagine that these files are stamped with emotional significance by our amygdala — the security guard — to show how important they might be, helping the hippocampus classify and prioritise them before they get tucked away in a slightly rickety old filing cabinet in our subconscious. The hippocampus helps us make sense of the world around us through pattern matching — making connections between what we’re experiencing now and what we’ve experienced in the past. It works alongside the amygdala, providing it with data and intel, helping to judge whether something feels good, bad, or indifferent — familiar, safe, or potentially threatening. This makes our brain a kind of prediction machine, influencing how we react and respond to things.
And then there’s the hypothalamus, which is the chemist of the brain. Its job is to help direct our physiology — the chemical responses in our brain and body. So our security guard, filing assistant, and chemist — AKA our amygdala, hippocampus, and hypothalamus — work together to form this special operations unit in our brain.
They are the original part of our brain. (O)
The protective part. (P)
And importantly, they are largely subconscious. (S)
We can call them our Special OPS brain.
So let’s look at how our Special Ops brain works to protect us and keep us safe... Just imagine that later on today you’re out and about and you run into a polar bear — a real live polar bear.
What would happen? In a flash, your amygdala, the security guard, would sound the alarm. In a matter of milliseconds, your hippocampus — the filing assistant — would have consulted the filing cabinet and found all the files stored about very large animals with big claws and sharp teeth. And all those files would probably be big and red and marked DANGER, confirming your amygdala’s suspicion that you are, in fact, in danger.
Your fear-survival response would kick in, and in that very instant your hypothalamus, the chemist, would pump you full of stress hormones to prepare your body for action — sharpening your focus and getting you ready to respond. And all of that would have happened in a fraction of the time it’s taken you to read this!
During those split seconds, your nervous system would have switched to fight-or-flight mode.Your heart would race, you’d feel hot and sweaty, your stomach might churn — and you’d be off like a shot!
Brilliant! Your Special Ops brain has done its job and saved you from danger. It took charge of things and triggered a stress response to protect you from a stressor — and the source of stress, in this case, was a polar bear, so you’d be really, really pleased!
But the thing is, our Special Ops brain can get the wrong end of the stick about all sorts of things in our everyday lives. We need to remember it isn’t logical or rational, and it acts automatically, often outside of our conscious awareness. Any time our Special Ops brain feels unsafe in any way, it reacts as if there’s a threat. And although this might mean it feels unsafe physically, it could just as easily detect a threat emotionally or psychologically.
All sorts of things in our everyday life can trigger a stress response from our Special Ops brain. All sorts of things can register as a threat on some level. All sorts of things can become ‘polar bears’ to us. And the polar bears will look different for each of us.
It might be:
An unexpected bill
A difficult conversation
Physical discomfort or pain
A messy house
A busy day
Concerns about someone you love
The presentation you’re worried about
A long to-do list or an overflowing email inbox
Essentially, any time we feel under pressure in some way.
Sometimes our own personal polar bears — the things that trigger our Special Ops brain — are obvious, and we might be well aware of them. Stressors which glare us in the face: health issues, financial concerns, difficult relationships, dealing with loss, or a stressful job.
But sometimes they are less obvious — things going on in the background, things we see on the news, pressure we feel from social media, or the fact we’ve booked an amazing holiday but must not forget to renew our passport!
And they can also be subtle micro-stressors — small, everyday pressures, frustrations, irritations, or demands which still register with our Special Ops brain but are often beyond our conscious awareness.
Sometimes we experience challenge stress — the kind of stress that can feel motivating or energising. It might feel a little daunting, but it also feels manageable or maybe even exciting.
But there’s also threat stress, which is when something feels like it’s beyond our capabilities or our ability to cope. In simple terms, it’s when the demands on us seem greater than the resources we feel we have to deal with them.
Whatever the source (and they’ll probably be different for each of us), when danger, threat, or challenge is detected by our Special Ops brain, our hypothalamus will endeavour to help by triggering the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol into our system — preparing the body for action.
In the right amounts, these hormones can actually be really useful. A little adrenaline and cortisol can sharpen our focus, increase our alertness, and give us the energy we need to respond to challenges. But a little goes a long way — and like many things in life, they work best in the right amounts and only for short periods of time. These stress hormones are designed to help us run away from or fight threats to our life, like those posed by a real live polar bear.
But when the metaphorical polar bears we experience in our everyday lives are things like an overflowing email inbox, the thought of speaking in public, a difficult colleague at work, an awkward social situation, getting stuck in traffic, or your computer freezing right before a deadline, we probably can’t run away from them — and fighting probably isn’t a socially acceptable option. So the adrenaline and cortisol in our system don’t get used as they were intended, and having unused adrenaline and cortisol circulating in our system can affect how we feel both physically and emotionally.
Too many stress hormones lingering in our system can make us feel tense and on edge, and affect our heart rate, our breathing, and even our stomach. Excess adrenaline and cortisol can negatively impact so many areas of our life — our sleep, our immune system, our pain threshold, our appetite, our digestion, our memory, and our tolerance levels. All of which, in turn, can create more metaphorical polar bears — triggering our Special Ops brain even more.
Our Special Ops brain can be activated in a flash, like if we are crossing the road and hear a fast car approaching, but it can also be a gradual process. It’s a key part of our nervous system — our body’s internal communication network, made up of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves that run throughout the body, constantly sending messages back and forth.
The nervous system has two main modes: The sympathetic system, which prepares us for action, and the parasympathetic system, which allows us to feel calm — to rest, digest, and recover. And yes, that includes physically digesting dinner, as well as mentally digesting our day.
When the Special Ops brain senses threat — whatever that may be — it activates the sympathetic system, triggering the stress response, shifting the body into survival mode, and pressing pause on any parasympathetic calm. And if our nervous system becomes dysregulated — which can happen when it’s been under pressure for a while, or dealing with lots of little stressors adding up — it can become more sensitive to stress, more responsive, and more reactive. We’re likely to spend too much time with our sympathetic system activated — which is a bit ironic, because “fight or flight” doesn’t sound very sympathetic! — and not enough time experiencing parasympathetic calm.
It’s really important to stop here, though, and clarify that a regulated nervous system does not mean you are completely immune to feeling stressed. It doesn’t mean you will never feel frazzled. And it doesn’t mean you’ll never experience a fight, flight, or freeze response. These responses are natural and normal.
What a regulated nervous system does mean is that these responses tend to be triggered less often, and when they do happen, you’re better able to return to a state of calm afterwards. You’re able to move between parasympathetic and sympathetic states more easily, rather than getting stuck feeling stressed — finding it much easier to recover, move on, and get back to feeling like yourself again.
Imagine we’re going through life and the usual things crop up — things that annoy or frustrate us. They might trigger our Special Ops brain for a moment, but we can usually take them in our stride. Our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain then helps us deal with the situation, and we return to feeling calm afterwards. But if our nervous system has been under prolonged stress and pressure, or hasn’t had the chance to fully reset, that calm resting position can shift. We’re already slightly heightened.
Our Special Ops brain will be on high alert — ready, willing, and waiting to step in at any opportunity — and that can become our new starting point. Our amygdala — the security guard — might get a little over-sensitive and trigger-happy.
Our hippocampus — the filing assistant — is more likely to pull out unhelpful files, providing dodgy data or outdated intel.
Our hypothalamus — the chemist — can get so efficient at pumping us full of adrenaline and cortisol that it fails to notice when it’s really not needed, or it just forgets to turn off the tap.
So things have more of an impact on us. Our Special Ops brain becomes more likely to step in and take charge in situations where, in reality, it’s far more of a hindrance than a help, and even more things in our lives might start to register as polar bears. Before we know it, we can find ourselves in a bit of a bear storm.
Luckily for us as humans, we’ve evolved and developed amazing Rational, Intellectual, Logical brains, which are able to discern between real live polar bears that threaten our lives and metaphorical ones that simply make us feel threatened. Our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brains support us to think in helpful ways and handle whatever life sends our way (polar bears and all!).
But our Rational, Intellectual, Logical brain doesn’t always get the chance to do its rational, logical thing. And in the next part, we’re going to explore why that happens — by taking a closer look at the characteristics of the Special Ops brain, and how they shape the way we think, feel, and respond. Because when we learn to recognise these patterns, we can begin to notice when the Special Ops brain is in charge — which is the secret to being able to take charge ourselves.
Understanding what’s going on in our minds really can change everything.