If you’re like me, you know a few people who are constantly on the go doing different things and you know some people who are chronic couch potatoes. What makes people act so differently? Well, it could be a number of things but it is largely due to the three pound organ between your ears – your Brain. The brain is a funny thing. It likes to do whatever it is doing. If we give it stimulation, then it will crave more variety. If we are lazy, then it is content not to do much. So, what causes this disparity?

We each have a kind of gear shift in our brains called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). The ACC acts as a mediator between our emotional brain and the front of the brain. The front of the brain is the executive part of the brain. It directs our decisions and plans our actions. The ACC helps us change the focus of our attention. Lowered ACC function has been implicated in people who have ADD. When we dwell on things, we are in effect getting our ACC stuck in neutral. Once it gets stuck, it can be hard to change gears.

This is where cognitive-behavioral intervention is useful. If we find ourselves stuck in a rut, we should make ourselves do something else. If we ruminate and worry about things too much, we should change what we are thinking about and redirect our thoughts. This can be very hard to do since the brain gets used to doing whatever it is doing. With a little effort we can get ourselves going again. The first change of action is the hardest, but once we retrain our brains we can get out of neutral and kick ourselves into a higher gear!