The Stuck Brain
Having a phrase and an action to help you let go of situations when you feel stuck can be a powerful way to learn how to turn struggle into growth.
The Opponent: The Stuck Brain
There is a famous Zen story in which two monks come upon a woman struggling to cross a swift river. Due to their monkly vows they are not allowed to touch her, yet, much to the horror of the junior monk, the senior monk picks up the woman, carries her across, and sets her down on the other side. Then they continue walking.
Scandalized, the junior monk can’t contain himself. “How could you pick up that woman!?” he finally asks.
“I put her down back there,” says the senior monk. “But it seems like you’re still carrying her.” While the elder monk had made a judgment call based on the nuances of the situation and then moved on, the younger monk remained stuck in the past.
Childhood is full of moments we harp on, agonize over, or wish we could redo. We missed the shot. We got into an argument at recess. We got the question wrong on the quiz. We forgot a line during the play.
While it can be useful to acknowledge mistakes and learn from such “teachable moments,” replaying them incessantly magnifies them in our minds and often causes us to feel an exaggerated sense of failure or disappointment. This can lead to avoidance and an unwillingness to step beyond our comfort zones: I can’t believe I missed that shot. I’m so bad at basketball. I let the team down. I’m never going to shoot again.
Understanding why we get stuck, and employing a technique for moving on, can help us rightsize our mistakes and remember that they are a healthy and necessary part of growth.
The Xs and Os: We Harp Because We Care
We are wired to learn from our mistakes. As Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius explained in Buddha’s Brain, a neuroscientific exploration of Buddhism, our brains are well-honed prediction machines: “In order to pass on their genes, our animal ancestors had to choose correctly many times a day whether to approach something or avoid it.”
This approach/avoid mechanism works very well. We are constantly scanning our environments for signs of danger, and when something happens that threatens our sense of safety, we remember it: avoid the snake with the menacing rattle on its tail!
Yet in environments in which we are perfectly safe, we tend to transfer mortal threat to run-of-the-mill struggle. Stumbling over one line in rehearsal can result in stage fright so severe we want to quit theater altogether.
In these instances harping on a mistake feels like a necessary preventative measure. The more we think about it, the more we think we can dodge it forever, despite the fact that we become anxious and paralyzed, living in the regrets of the past rather than in the open possibilities of the present.
Conversely, the best athletes have the shortest memories. Take it from Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career,” said Jordan. “I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Jordan could have easily dwelled on those misses and losses, but instead they became his fuel. He wasn’t paralyzed by struggle, he was motivated to keep taking the next shot. Despite his mystique as a winner, Jordan understood how crucial it was to fail.
Many performers adopt this mindset. They develop mantras and routines for helping them let go of what they can’t control so they can focus on what they can. Their short memories are intentional. But this ability doesn’t have to be relegated to the realms of the elite. Letting go is a skill that we can teach.
The TLDR: We dwell on our mistakes in hopes that doing so will help us avoid repeating them. But the best performers know that this mindset will actually lead to further doubt and hesitation. Instead we can develop the skill of letting go.
The Play: Letting Go
If it were as easy as telling kids, “Don’t worry about it,” or, “Move on,” we wouldn’t need this play. But as we know all too well, the messages we deliver are not simply ingested and understood. For this message to land, kids need to learn a process for enacting it.
A powerful first step can be to invoke the performers that they look up to. Simone Biles, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Steph Curry have all made mistakes under the bright lights on the biggest stages and managed to move on and find (resounding) success. If it works for them, it can work for us. This lesson also doesn’t have to be performance focused, but can be about any time we find ourselves unable to move on. Talking to kids about the fallibility and resilience of their heroes plants the seed that it’s okay—necessary even—to make mistakes.
The next step is to learn to recognize when your brain is stuck on something in the past. Are you replaying a specific moment in your head? Are you hyperfocused on something that isn’t actually happening right now? Are you trapped in a negative mental loop? Once we learn to see that pattern, we can begin to work with it.
Now we need a code word, phrase, or mantra. The simpler the better. When coaching, a phrase we often utilize is “next play.” Whatever happened is in the past. Dwelling on it will only impact how we are in the present. Saying “next play”—whether it’s something you mutter quietly to yourself or simply an intentional thought—can be a useful way to remind ourselves that we don’t have time machines and that we can’t go back and change the past. We can only impact what happens next.
The last step is to connect this phrase to an action. This could be something like clapping one time, taking a deep breath, tapping your thigh three times, or cracking your knuckles. By linking the statement to an action we use the cue of the mantra to get out of our heads and back into our bodies. On a basketball court, muttering next play and clapping your hands once as you jog back on defense can help you lock in to what is happening right in front of you. After an argument, saying “next play” and taking a deep breath can help you feel ready to reset and move on.
Helping kids develop their own process for letting go can give them a play to use when they feel stuck. The point isn’t to ignore the authentic discouragement that might arise from a missed shot, it is to learn how to move past it quickly and courageously. Because if you’re willing to stay in the game, there is always a next play.
The TLDR: Having a phrase and an action to help you let go of situations when you feel stuck can be a powerful way to learn how to turn struggle into growth.