Recently I had a delightful three-hour Zoom conversation with a friend, mostly about psychedelics. One key insight – very applicable outside of psychedelics – was realizing how important it is to be cognizant of our inner suppression circuitry and to challenge it, question it, and sometimes bypass it. Lots of ideas that we generate each day are decent and workable, but our brains internally reject or dismiss them.

Think of this as the default mode network (your everyday way of thinking) defending its equilibrium. It tries to maintain the status quo, such that your future expectations are projected forward as relatively predictable extensions of your past. So you largely keep doing what you’ve been doing. And consequently, your results will fall within a certain range of predictability as well.

This keeps your life fairly stable, but it’s also limiting, holding you back from turning in different directions or powerfully pursuing stretch goals that would disrupt your old status quo.

What if your default mode network is keeping you broke? Or depressed? Or anxious? Or lonely? Or addicted? It doesn’t always work as we’d like. Stability can be nice for some, but many people really struggle with their brain’s current default mode.

Knowing that your default mode network will defend your status quo is empowering because then you can be on the lookout for its defenses kicking in, and this creates opportunities to consciously bypass them. You can use other parts of your brain to challenge the default mode network, nudging your thoughts, feelings, and actions down different pathways.

Psychedelics can help us see that more options are viable, and such substances can even rewire the default mode network, but we can also consciously strive to catch these suppressions as they arise. Note the inner objections that arise when you consider certain ideas, and lean towards implementing those ideas anyway. Be a bit like Jim Carrey’s character in the Yes Man movie, at least when you’re considering new actions that your default mode network would otherwise object to. The article Embrace the New goes into more detail on leaning into new experiences.

We don’t necessarily need more or better ideas to open up a tremendous world of abundance and possibility. We just need to suppress fewer ideas and allow more of them to flow into action and exploration. We can consciously develop more neural flexibility by becoming aware of how the default mode network operates and by challenging and redirecting some of its decisions. Deliberately override some of those default choices.

When I think about blogging about psychedelics and openly sharing what I’m learning from these explorations, I can feel my suppression circuitry objecting because this is a relatively recent exploration that’s been ramping up for me, so my default mode network isn’t fully on board with it. Internally it still generates thoughts like these:

• Your audience isn’t a match for this kind of content.
• Writing about this will scare people away.
• It’s too early; maybe wait a few years till the current psychedelics wave has grown more prominent, so more people are already into it.
• You’re not a psychedelics coach or therapist, so why are you sharing about this?
• Why not write about some safer vanilla topics instead?
• You could just keep this exploration to yourself .
• And so on…

This reminded me of how useful my 30-day challenge of generating 100 ideas per day was, back in the Fall of 2021. I became more aware of how many ideas my mind quickly rejects and how it rejects them. During that challenge I ended up implementing some of those previously rejected ideas, and they worked very well. Some were financially lucrative too.

In general I’ve benefitted greatly by challenging my default mode network repeatedly, even to the point where I’ve trained it to be more cooperative and flexible over time. For instance, by thinking of myself as an explorer, including asking questions like, “What would a personal growth explorer do here?” I got this frame pretty well embedded into my default way of thinking about life and work. I consider this superior to thinking of myself primarily as a blogger, writer, speaker, coach, etc. because the explorer frame is way more flexible. It gives me more freedom to have new experiences, and it actually fuels other aspects of my work, such as by always giving me fresh experiences from which to derive and share insights.

I’m also reminded of how easy it is to see opportunity blindness in other people and hard to see it in ourselves. You’re probably surrounded by accessible opportunities each day, yet you talk yourself out of them constantly, or your subconscious mind blocks them from even bubbling up to your conscious awareness. Especially notice the ideas that have been resurfacing now and then for years, and you keep dismissing them. What if you did the opposite for a change?

How easy is it for you to quickly act upon new ideas? If a divergent new possibility or invitation comes onto your radar, can you get yourself to explore it with ease? I like having flexible neurology that lets me quickly explore something new and promising, not recklessly or randomly but intelligently. I can quickly assess whether it seems worth exploring without having my default mode network over-suppress.

For instance, I only learned about the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference’s existence a couple weeks before it happened, and I quickly signed up and went, including doing some touristy stuff in Denver too, a city which was new to me as well. In the past when I learned about a potentially interesting and relevant conference, my default mode network would have easily talked me out of it for being too far removed from my status quo. It would have raised immediately objections regarding the time, cost, scheduling, inconvenience, doubts about the benefits, etc.

I can see that many of my best ideas were ones that I had many years prior that kept resurfacing, until I finally loosened up on objecting to them and leaned into exploring them. Exploring psychedelics was just one of many that I suppressed for years with thoughts like “Well, I don’t even know where to get anything,” until I eventually stopped suppressing and began considering it rationally.

Suppression often seems rational but frequently isn’t. Typically the default mode network’s defenses are very thin, hinting that some deep thought went into them when in reality they’re usually superficial calculations with very little substance when you look beneath the surface.

A 60-Day Activation & Suppression Challenge

To help train my brain to be more even more flexible, I’ve decided to deliberately practice this conscious activation of otherwise suppressed ideas.

Yesterday I began a new 60-day challenge of identifying at least one suppressed idea each day and implementing it instead of suppressing it. Pick something that my default mode network is trying to talk me out of, and talk myself into it and do it instead. See what happens.

Some days this will involve catching my brain in the act of suppressing an idea, and I’ll un-suppress it and do it instead. If it’s complex or can’t be done right away, I’ll aim to take some action to advance it that same day. I’ll be traveling for three weeks during this time, so I’ll need some flexibility there, but this kind of challenge fits nicely with travel, encouraging more spontaneity and flexibility.

Other days I may brainstorm some ideas first, and then I’ll identify one where my default response is to dismiss the idea as bad, and I’ll advance it instead.

I like that this is fairly simple and action-oriented but also flexible. I think it will be pretty easy for me to know if I meet this standard each day. I just have to be able to end each day with one identifiable action I took that I’d have otherwise suppressed if I wasn’t doing this challenge.

A short while after making this commitment, I had the thought to add another spin to this challenge, which is to flip it around and also catch an idea that I’d normally advance by default each day, and suppress it instead. So each day for 60 days, I will:

1. Advance one suppressed-by-default idea.
2. Suppress one activated-by-default idea.

This seems like a great way to practice consciously challenging and redirecting my default mode network, ideally training it to be more flexible.

Doing one of each is the minimum to check off each day, but I’ll likely do more than one of each per day.

I only began yesterday, so I’m just getting started, but I’m already noticing that this is making me more aware of how my default mode network is working. I’m noticing when ideas it allows to pass through by default versus ideas where it objects and quickly tries to suppress them, redirecting my thoughts and actions down a different pathway.

Wish me luck! 😀