Try Something Every Day That Scares You

Anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC) is the area in red

Caption from published image:
Brain structures implicated in ADHD. Interacting neural regions have been implicated ADHD. In particular, the dorsal anterior midcingulate cortex (daMCC(, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), parietal cortex, striatum, and cerebellum - all key elements of cognitive/attention networks - have also been found to display functional abnormalities in multiple studies of ADHD. (1)

Rebecca climbing rocks next to Beaver Falls in Havasupai

Terri in our cold plunge

My friend Terri says, “You should try something every day that scares you.”

I hosted ladies’ night in my home last night. Rock climbing has been one of my "things that scares me" this year, but hosting was the thing that scared me yesterday.

Until I met this friend group, I have never hosted people in my home so much in my life! My ex-husband was not super social so most of our mutual activities were centered around family. This meant limiting hosting to special occasions such as birthdays and holidays. My current husband Trevor doesn’t enjoy going out to events often, but seems to really thrive on hosting. Thing is, he is away on a hunting trip so I didn’t have him by my side to help me or to keep me focused and on task.

One of the biggest compliments my mom has given me repeatedly throughout my life is that she is so impressed by my ability to strike up a conversation with virtually anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Ever since I was in grade school, I have always been able to find some commonality with anyone I meet regardless of their age, gender, social status, occupation, disability, ethnicity, or belief system. I attribute this a lot to the manner in which I grew up having been born in Singapore and lived my early life in Indonesia. But that’s a story for another time…

Whenever my mom gives me this compliment, she follows it with an example of a time I have done this such as when I found a way to communicate with a group of deaf teenagers at a local bicycling event when I was in college. I have never thought of this as a special skill though. And I’m only reminded that not everyone is able to do this when my mom reminds me.

This friend group of mine is a fairly new one. One I'd venture to say I crashed into. Michele was my next door neighbor when I first moved to the west side of Phoenix metropolitan area in 2018. She and I are the same age and I'm so glad to have built a friendship with her before moving several miles away to live on our little mini farm.

Michele had an existing long-standing friend group from the time she lived in Portland. One by one, her friends moved to Arizona. October marks the one year anniversary of my meeting Terri, a most interesting and amazing human being. Debbie, the third of their trio, moved here this summer and we met when we all went to see the movie Barbie. I'm so fortunate that they seem to be just as good at sparking conversation with me as I am with them. We are blessed to have Michele as our anchor so I now get to be a member of our newly formed quad squad.

(As an aside, Trevor is invited to all ladies' nights and participated up until the start of the Golden Bachelor season. It's not really his thing and that's ok. But our 4 gals and a guy group always have tons of laughs. Now back to my blog...)

An area that has always been hard for me, however, is organizing my stuff and general time management. This includes decluttering and finding a home for all of my belongings. It has been a lifelong goal that still has not been achieved. Meanwhile, the 3 friends I was hosting are extraordinarily organized women. They have everything in their homes put away when not in use and are always ready early for the holidays, exemplified by the fact that their Halloween and Fall decorations have been up since September. Meanwhile, I have a single orange candle that has been on display since last October when I bought it.

So you can imagine how hosting friends, especially these friends, in my home can be challenging. I needed to:

• Clean my home
• Or at least the common areas like the guest bathroom, kitchen, and living room
• Plan dinner and get the essential groceries
• Keeping in mind that one friend is a vegetarian, one friend has food allergies, one friend can eat anything, and I’m on a protein focused lean bulking eating plan
• Be ready by 5 pm when they arrive
• This included trying on the 7 Halloween costumes Michele loaned me a month ago so I could select one for this year and return the rest.

At 4:30 pm, I was FaceTiming my beloved sister and frantically trying on 7 different Halloween costumes to see which one she and I liked the best. I was invited to a Halloween party and Michele loaned me 7 of her many costumes to try a month ago. I intended on trying them on that first week and returning the ones I wasn't planning on wearing but procrastination is a bitch so here we were. Thank you to my sister Ruth for being on call in that moment and helping me! You are a gem!

By 4:40 pm, I texted our friend group chat a picture of myself wearing the one I selected.

By 5 pm, I was dressed in part of the Halloween costume I chose (the part that was my own clothing), halfway through cooking black bean and sweet potato chili, and I had only the tomatoes for the tomato salad chopped. (Yes, there were more ingredients yet to add.)

The rest of the Halloween costumes I had tried on were strewn all over my bed and the remaining clutter from around my home was tucked into piles on the flat surface in my bedroom.

But the bathroom was clean, the common areas were mostly tidied, and the Halloween costumes were sorted with their respective bags. Music was playing on our google home system, and best of all, delicious aromas from my chili were already wafting into the air.

My friends arrived just before 5:30 pm. I was grateful for the extra time and thought they might have done that on purpose for me knowing I am always running just a few minutes behind schedule. But alas, it was friend number 3 that had a last minute forgotten errand to run that delayed them. Phew! I’m not the only one!! (BTWs, I'm not always late, but neither am I always on time.)

Earlier in the day I asked my friends if they wanted to get right to eating dinner or if they wanted to try our cold plunge first. Trevor and I have been on a quest in the last couple of years to improve our physical and mental health. We want to feel good and be happy so we strive to find all the ways that can help us do just that. One area that has gained popularity particularly with recently backed scientific research showing its physical and mental health benefits is engaging in the activity of cold plunging. My bodybuilding coach added this early on as one of the activities I should do. So my ever talented husband built one for us!

My friends think the world of Trevor and his talents, but cold plunging is not for everyone so I wasn’t sure what they would say. Terri had never tried it but is down for trying almost anything. Michele had tried one at the gym that I assured her was way colder than we had ours set for, so she was in. Debbie knew all the benefits but had zero interest in jumping in a cold plunge. Rather, she kindly offered to hand us our towels after. Thanks Debbie!

In deciding whether or not to take a pre-dinner cold plunge, Terri reminded all of us that we should try something every day that scares us. It is this act of challenging us that makes us more resilient. Also, in a recent Huberman Lab podcast titled “How to Increase Your Tenacity and Willpower”, Dr. Andrew Huberman discusses how there is one single area of the brain that seems to be the primary if not sole area responsible for tenacity and willpower. This is the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC).

In the behavior change realm, there is much discussion about how willpower is a limited resource. Because of this, one should not rely solely on willpower and motivation to get things done. Rather, the better route to take is to go for consistency and frequent action and increasing habit formation. Things that you just DO whether you are motivated to do them or not. I have read about several psychological scientific experiments and theories that focus on behaviors around motivation and having a growth mindset beginning with a book called The Growth Mindset written by Carol Dweck in 2007. Now with this podcast episode, I’m learning more of the neuroscience behind motivation or, more specifically, tenacity and willpower.

In recent years, I have also read quite a bit about the dopaminergic pathway. This is the pathway in the brain responsible for movement, executive functions, and anticipation of reward. It requires the neurotransmitter dopamine (the one that is reduced in individuals with ADHD) and involves several different areas of the brain. But I have never read about the role the anterior mid-cingulate cortex plays in tenacity and willpower.

Dr. Huberman's podcast episode goes into a lot of neuroscience background to describe this part of the brain before getting into the meat of what everyone wants to know.

The bottom line is that indeed it seems to be possible to increase your tenacity and willpower. This is extremely exciting to me. The way to do this is by doing the thing you don't want to do or by resisting the thing you do want to do. This seems to be analogous to the way one exercises a muscle by stressing it out in order to allow it to grow.

How exciting it is that merely by doing something that scares or challenges you, you are able to increase the ability to do more of the things that scare you?! Or by resisting the things you want to do, you will thereby be able to increase the ability to resist those things in the future.

I have known this to be true, but understanding that there is science behind this seems to provide an increased sense of agency and control over our own lives. This is exactly the aim of the Huberman Lab podcast and I'm grateful for the knowledge he provides through his free sharing of information. 

My friend Terri is indeed a wise woman with her comment that one should do something every day that scares them. And also it doesn’t just have to be something scary. Dr. Huberman recommends “forcing yourself to do some micro-sucks”. These are little things that you don’t want to do. Exercising the aMCC in that way can increase your tenacity and willpower bit by bit. Another way to do this is to “participate in endeavors with no endpoint" by placing yourself into "novel environments where you are just curious and learning”.

It was definitely a micro-suck for me to plan out a dinner and prepare for ladies’ night in my home. I'd venture to say a macro-suck given how much I don't like cleaning toilets.

But it was a most amazing night with 3 wonderfully entertaining women!! Three of us did a cold-plunge then followed it up with a delicious chili dinner, fresh cherry tomato salad and warm French bread. We watched the next episode of The Golden Bachelor with mature women respectfully (mostly) competing for the attention and love of one widowed senior bachelor followed by the less mature but fun to watch behavior of the young men and women on Bachelor in Paradise.

The best part of all is my friends loved the chili and we all had second servings. In fact, Terri said it was the best chili she has ever had. I’m already ready to challenge my aMCC again by having them over for another ladies’ night of fun and laughter!

In the meantime...tonight the thing I'm going to do that scares me is go to a Halloween party dressed up in a costume where the only person I know for sure will be there is the host of the party who will be very busy with...well...hosting. And from his description of the amount of food and decorations they will have, I'm quite certain it's going to be a big party. 

If you would like to read the highlights of the Huberman Lab podcast episode discussed above, you can find it at Podcast Notes.

Or access the direct episode page at How to Increase Your Willpower & Tenacity.

Reference for brain image photo:

1. Bush, G. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Attention Networks. Neuropsychopharmacol35, 278–300 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2009.120

Masking Fear and Overwhelm - A Metaphor

Some days, the feelings of complete inadequacy combined with exhaustion from masking roll in like waves that are just a bit too tall for me to jump over...

It’s as if I were facing the shore posing for a photo when suddenly I’m pummeled out of nowhere from behind and slammed to the ground. My body slides along the ocean floor with rocks and sand scraping my legs as my feet scramble to gain footing whilst the remnants of the wave take their hold and pull me into deeper waters. I never see it coming...

Sure I’m taking a risk, but I love the challenge, don’t I? I have everything under control, right? I’m not that far away from shore, am I??

Of course I think this. Why else would I be standing there thigh deep in the water smiling at a camera with my sun-kissed cheeks and my dry, wavy hair blowing behind me in the wind?

Thing is, like life, the wave does not consult me before doing what waves do. Waves ebb and flow. Life ebbs and flows. Emotions ebb and flow. 

I’m not ready for that wave. I don't have to be. I've been down this road before. I'm prepared this time. But the wave has other plans, yet somehow I'm surprised. And boy, do I ever struggle. Because once one wave comes, what do you think happens next? As I try desperately to get my footing back on the ground beneath me, the next wave comes and knocks me right back down. And the next wave and the next. They come so fast I barely have time to reach the surface to inhale before the next one hits.

I was only thigh deep!! How on earth did this happen? Again? I swore it would be different this time. I KNOW there will be waves. I’m in the damn ocean. Of course there are waves! I CHOSE to go to the beach. I CHOSE to get in the water.

Last time I got in deeper…to my chest…and ya, this happened, sure. But this time, I was prepared for it. I only went in thigh deep. How did I get here? How am I feeling the massive poundage of water above me churning me head over heels over head like a washing machine until I no longer know which way is up??

I wasn’t trying to tempt fate. I was at the water’s edge for God sakes. How did this happen? How do I climb out? How do I push myself up for a breath as I scramble and claw my way along the ocean floor back to the safety of shore?

But…

Somehow I do. Somehow I end up chest down on the shoreline with tangled hair, sand in my eyes, saltwater in my throat, bathing suit disheveled, gasping for air, pretending that what happened was just a little kerfuffle and not, in fact, a near drowning, grateful for escaping the depths of the ocean, and once again swearing I will never go back in the water.

And then I do. Go in the water. It calls to me with its beauty. Its mystery. Its promise of fun and renewal and adventure. And I swear THIS time it will be different. I will carry an even bigger smile on my face.

This time, I won’t have to pretend I know what I’m doing.

This time, I will know how far to go in to stay safe and protected.

This time, I will be able to stay in control…

(Waves rumbling………)