Living La Vida Limbic

Genesis 6

1 Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

 2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

 4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

 5 For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

 6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

From the beginning of recorded human history we see a struggle between what we know we SHOULD do, versus what we FEEL like doing. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were told they could eat anything in the garden except the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The value system part of their brain wanted and planned on doing what their father told them to do. But there was a part of their brain, a more animalistic and impulsive part of their brain that desired the fruit. Satan tried to leverage this part of their brain to get them to act contrary to their values. Personally I think the final decision to take the fruit wasn't because of the temptations of pleasure, but because they knew to progress it was a necessary step. But regardless we see from the beginning the struggle between values and feelings.

In the Book of Mormon we also learn about this struggle.

Mosiah3:19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord

The battle continues today in each of us, and in our society at large. I like to think that most of us desire good, and plan to be happy and successful. What stops us from doing what we plan? Why do we so often trade what we want most in life, for what we want right now?

My hope with this blog is to help myself and others to better understand and control lower road feelings and impulses, so thoughts and behaviors will be aligned with our values.

As I've studied more about this topic I've discovered this battle in the anatomy and physiology of the brain. This is an oversimplification, but you'll get the idea.  I'm lumping the brain into two high level parts, the low road and high road. The low road portion includes the brain stem (reptilian brain) and the limbic system (mammalian brain), found in the middle of the brain. This portion of the brain controls our survival functions like breathing, it is responsible for our fight or flight response, and also our feelings. With only these parts of the brain, we'd be like animals, acting on instinct. The cerebral cortex however, particularly the pre-frontal cortex, is where we find our value system, our problem solving, our planning, thinking etc.

There's an important role for all parts of the brain. But where we run into trouble in our lives is when the messages from our limbic system tells us to do something contrary to our values (prefrontal corext). In this situation, giving into the limbic system is a recipe for failure in the things important to us. When one is 'Living La Vida Limbic' the neurons in the cortex aren't firing and aren't engaged, so you're quite literally not thinking. We've all experienced that before, when we've given into an impulse and after wondered why we'd do something so stupid. Well, we weren't thinking!


One of the best resources I've found to learn these principles and learn strategies for success is Life Changing Services, based out of Farmington Utah. They focus a lot on addiction and pre addiction, but the patterns and strategies they teach are universally applicable and are not just how to avoid addiction, but a recipe for success in life. Check 'em out!
lifechangingservices.org

So here's hoping that we can all learn about how to balance the functions of our brain, and keep from living in our limbic system (Living la vida Limbic). Which will help us to stick to the plans we have and succeeding in our goals in all areas of life.