What?  Now I have to exercise my Cingulate Gyrus?

If your first reaction to that was, “Hey cool, what’s a cingulate gyrus?” read no further, you already did.  But if you looked at that and thought, “Why do I have to do that?   Why can’t I pronounce it?  Why do I feel guilty about that and I don’t even know what it is?”  You my friend, are stuck in the rumination groove of your cingulate gyrus. In a nutshell (neuroscientists are rolling their eyes on this one) it’s the gear shifter organ in your brain. It’s the part of your emotional (limbic system) most noted for Adaptability & Flexibility, and when functioning well it see options, alternatives, chunks up and asks empowering WHAT and HOW questions.  When not functioning well, it gets stuck and recycles negative thoughts obsessively, asking the non-ending loop question “WHY?” 

Now don’t go diagnosing yourself with O.C.D and running for the Howard Hughes Kleenex box. We all can “obsess” about a thought from time to time , “Why did he say that? Why did she do that? Why do I always ask the same question?“ These repetitive-go-nowhere thoughts keep you on a continual replay loop. But there is a way out of the maze. 

To increase your flexibility and adaptability use a better language tool, in other words: ASK A BETTER QUESTION. Just switching up the way you ask a question leads you to a better result.  Instead of ruminating on “WHY DID I LOSE MY JOB?” which leads to endless inflexibility of freezing up and not seeing alternatives or moving forward; ask yourself, "What else could this mean?  What can I learn from this? What could be good about this? How can I use this experience? What can I do differently to get a different outcome? How can I get back in the game?” Initially your resistance and anger may surface with a response like “I don’t know, leave me alone there is nothing good about it!” The reality is– crap happens in life and you do have to deal with it. Developing flexibility requires persistence whether you’re in a yoga pose or cultivating mental flexibility. Darwin had it right, “the survival of fittest” were the most adaptable. The only questions are : “How resilient and adaptive can you become?” and “How soon?”