We all do actions, all actions that we do to meet our basic six psychological needs that we have. When you put those together, our brain is negatively biased that our actions are to meet our needs. When we're first born, we cannot do anything for ourselves, including meter psychological needs. But as adults, we can, but we never learned it. Often we didn't know how to meet our psychological needs independently without relying on others and situations. All these things happen, and our brain works off a neurochemical reward system so as children are striving to get our needs met externally because we don't know how to do that internally, and it rewards our brain, we're seeking connection or some certainty in our lives that we might do something.
Partially meeting those psychological needs and our brain says I just got enough reward for that then I hold on to that because my brain did get some neurochemical tips and so I'm going to do it again. And that's why we get stuck in our patterns and we do it again because I got my needs met. I got some neural chemicals from that. So let's do it more, because if I do it more, then maybe I'll get more of that reward and so that we develop these patterns and our children develop these patterns based on the negative bias of their brain based on getting their needs partially met based on the neurochemical reward.
Our brain doesn't care how our emotions feel. It doesn't care if it gets its neurochemical rewards based on the negative things, the things that are less helpful to us, or whether it reaches its needs met off of that joy, excitement, and gratitude. It just wants its neurochemical rewards. When we see children or we are stuck in a pattern, we can't just say, I noticed the pattern. It's gone away. It doesn't always work that way because unless our brain finds another way to get that reward, then we are. We cannot maybe maintain that for a little while, but then we fall back into the old patterns because we didn't say, brain, you don't need to get your rewards that way anymore. We're going to get our rewards another way, and often that is in celebrating, and for many people, it's really hard to celebrate the things we do because we get into the home, we're not good enough. I didn't do enough to deserve this reward, this emotional reward of celebrating it and feeling that joy.
It's the energy they notice and catch more than we think. They truly do, and It's that negative bias that often they have that feel of that, that thoughts and energies we put out so it's allowing us to feel rewarded, to fill the joy, to fill the gratitude in all the incremental things that would enable our brains to feel its reward, to get its neurochemical rewards in a way that benefits us. It's focusing on being OK with celebrating those little things. It doesn't mean we don't have more things to work on. It doesn't mean we're perfect. It just means, I did something on purpose, and I'm choosing to feel the reward for this. I'm choosing to serve that joy, that gratitude, that love.
Even if my mom is yelling at me, right? Even if things conflict with my spouse, even if something happens at work, I can still feel joy and gratitude. After all, I choose it because I can see that even in this difficult situation or even in this challenge or even a little bit of this, even in this conflict, whether it's big or small, internally or externally, I can still feel the reward so that my brain knows that, hey, I want to go towards this, that I can let people hold their own. If that conflict is with my spouse, I can give my husband space he can be upset or angry or struggle with whatever he is working with.
Whatever it is that they're struggling with, that is bothering us. Not all parts of my life were fantastic and what my mom would have wanted but It brought me to where I am, and so if we go in with that and give them that space, then we have that space to keep our joy, to keep the reward where we want it to. That doesn't mean we don't go in and help our child. It just means we're in a better place to help our child, that we're not going to fix our child so that we can meet our needs. We Have that unconditional love to be able to go in and have a greater influence.
That feeling we need to do is the neurochemical reward our brain is used to. It's not a real thing. We can allow that space and get our neurochemical needs met in a way that's beneficial for us and will enable us to influence our children more.
So remember, children are great by their very nature, and we have the opportunity and Responsibility to raise them.
