Priming Your Day
The neocortex essentially covers your brain. Like many other parts of your highly interconnected brain, it holds a variety of jobs. For instance, the neocortex assists with the priming process.
Priming refers to your brain’s sensitivity to your environment as a result of having experienced prior events. In other words, your brain is subconsciously primed by what happens all around you, every day. Just as what you believe and how you believe conditions your brain, how you start your day impacts every event that follows.
Priming trains your brain to focus on what matters.
Good or bad.
Positive or negative.
Healthy or unhealthy.
Our brains continuously process and analyze information. What starts in our minds eventually filters down and begins to influence our emotions, spirit, and body.
This means what we think about on a regular basis is what our brains are programmed to seek out and find. And what we find on a regular basis is a great indicator of how we are priming our brains. This is incredibly powerful and meaningful for our everyday living.
If your mind dwells on negative you will see your life negatively. Simply realizing this concept will hopefully increase awareness of the power of your internal dialogue.
Let me explain this in a practical way: Have you ever painted before? If you have, you know the importance of priming. Priming increases the efficiency of the painting process because it creates a foundation for the paint absorption. Thus allowing a more saturated, bold color of the paint.
A few years ago I painted my office. Not only did I know the color would come out better because of priming, I knew I would use less paint because of the extra prep work. My tendency is to want to jump ahead to get right into painting. Rushing the process would lead to a disappointing result requiring additional work.
Priming your day is like priming before painting. This step of preparation directly affects the result of the project.
How can you prime your days?
Here are some examples to help prime your days mentally, emotionally, and spiritually:
Prayer - starting your day with prayer transforms your thinking and you begin to live your life differently.
Reading a book that brings inspiration and encouragement
Speaking life over your day and those around you
Letting go of perfectionism - Perfectionism breeds procrastination, analysis paralysis, depression, anxiety, the list can go on and on….
Changing your internal dialogue to one of acceptance and compassion and letting go of judgment
Every day we are given a unique opportunity to have a reset button. If you want tomorrow to be different from today then you have to do something different. Priming is a powerful catalyst for this type of change. Little by little you can begin to learn how to change your perception, which begins to change your mind thinks.
Priming your day offers an intentional way for you to start out your day. In my own life, I notice a significant difference when I start out my day by being primed with the examples in the list above compared to the days that are unprimed.
