It’s one of those things that happens whether you are conscious of it or not: your brain gets trained.  Most of us have heard something about this, the way our brains store information in groups of neurons firing together.  Thus all the information about a particular thing is tucked in the same pile.  That just happens.  The question is how can you use that to your advantage?

I had somewhat of an epiphany about this recently watching a favorite movie with someone who had never seen it.  The film was ‘Cat Ballou‘, the 1965 western romp with a very young Jane Fonda, a wild and inebriated Lee Marvin, and Nate King Cole and Stubby Kaye as narrating  balladeers!  I hadn’t seen it in years.

The moment it started I was flooded with memories.  I remembered sitting in the Wyo Theatre in Sheridan, Wyoming seeing it several times as it played that summer.  I spent many summers in Wyoming with Cup Cake, my grandmother.  She worked at a furniture store; she’d take me with her to the store, and I’d help her.  When she got busy I’d wander the town or go to the movies.

Since I saw the movie several times in the week that it ran, it’s a strong memory.  I even remembered that Lee Marvin won an Oscar for it.  As we watched I could smell the popcorn.  I knew every bit of dialog and every shot.  This was a really impactrul memory, and it was securely tucked there in my brain.  I didn’t actually call it forward—it came on its own.  The main difference between how my brain built this memory and others was that I saw the film a bunch of times close together.

Since we know our brains work this way, we could purposely and specifically ‘train’ them to build strength in areas that are desirable.  Actually, we already do that, right?  We learn things.  We practice.  We gather data.  We do that about all sorts of things… except for money!

Actually we do unconsciously train our brains about money… it’s just that most of the training is negative.  It’s about things that happened with money in our childhoods.  It’s about arguments around money.  It’s about many situations where money was present in the mix, but probably not the actual cause of the problem.

We all need money to survive in our culture, and at some level most of us want it.  It seems to me that it’s a lot easier to acquire and deal with something you like and understand than a mysterious thing you find scary and incomprehensible.  So why not change that?

Change truly results from creating those groups of neurons firing together.  How can you create some new groups—and stop adding more to the old ones—around money?  What might be different if that happened?  You’ve developed memory and expertise around all sorts of things in your life… why not give training your brain around money a go?

Ka-ching

Shell Tain, the Untangler

Want to chat about how to re-train your money brain? Give me a call at 503-258-1630 or leave a comment.