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Your Brain Cannot Be Trusted: The Hidden Power of Meditation.
Your Brain cannot be trusted. Here's is how Meditation will reduce the likelihood of you falling back into the bad habits.
Joe Smith
March 01, 2025
In this edition of the Peak Performance Newsletter, we will be discussing:
Why You’re Brain cannot be trusted.
How the Amygdala hinders your decision-making skills.
How Meditation can be beneficial to improving your spilt second decision making skills.
Actionable steps to go towards applying what you’ve learnt.
Table of Contents
This will be shorter than most that I post here in this newsletter, but I thought that it can be beneficial to explore deeper into the benefits of Meditation and what it can do to your own brain chemistry. If you’ve been an OG follower of this newsletter than you might be wondering why the beginning description for this post is completely missing.
This is a reason to it, because as most of you may know, this newsletter audience has become exceedingly larger than it was before last time. Almost a 500+ difference which is absolutely insane. I can safely assume that the majority of you came from the Beginner’s Mental Health Guide post that has blown up in the r/Habits subreddit.
I didn’t know how popular the post would have been at the time, but I had no doubt on if it would have resonated with the lives of the people on there. That being said, I am grateful that you stuck along for the ride and invested your time into taking action.
But because I have such a bigger newsletter audience than previously, I’ve took the time to step back away from the newsletter space and really reflect on the values that I still stand for now. I want to be very sure that what I preach inside my newsletter is still aligned to my current purpose and is reflective of the beliefs that I hold to this day.
In addition, I want to ensure that the audience that I do have is subscribed to the right newsletter that shares similar beliefs and values.
Because if you disagree with everything that I do say, then what’s really the point of you still subscribing to it?
That’s why I made it perfectly clear in the welcome email that you should not proceed in reading if it doesn’t align with any of the values and beliefs that you also have. You are free to have different opinions on certain topics, but being that it is a self-improvement newsletter, I assume that you already have the judgement to operate within the mindset of holistic self-improvement.
Granted, my beliefs and your beliefs will be subjected to change throughout the course of time, but it should be relatively similar to where you might disagree with what I say on one thing but still be open to hear what I have to say and why I continue to think this way.
I’ve also made it clear that the insights and advice presented in the newsletter is up the reader’s interpretation. So, it is up to you to decide if it is beneficial to your own self-improvement journey or vice versa.
“Take what you read here not as gospel, but rather ideas or thoughts that you can incorporate within your own life, and maybe even add your own twist to it to better suit your goals”.
Point being, having the ability of free-will and to think for yourself is strongly encouraged as a part of my own values when creating this newsletter.
I want to have an audience of thinkers who can live by their own values and not by the beliefs that were put onto them by other people. It would be foolish of me to do so, since the last thing that I want is to create a cult-like following since I am strongly against that idea.
I can’t condense everything because this post is discussing about Meditation but be aware of the possibility that there will be a follow up post later this week talking about the ideologies/philosophies/values that I share on this newsletter.
But these are my recent thoughts so far. If anything that I said above doesn’t feel right to you, then feel free to unsubscribe to this newsletter. But, if you cool with it, then we can get started into discussing what you’re really here for, the hidden Power of Meditation.
Thanks for letting me ramble a bit but let’s get into the main topic of this post.
Why You’re Brain Cannot be trusted.
So maybe you take a bit of offense towards this header initially but hear me out for a bit and I’ll explain the meaning behind this statement.
Your brain cannot be trusted because it has placed you in a position that you are unhappy with. Whether it’s your binge eating disorder, your content scrolling addiction, or even the micro actions that you do every day.
If you are at a place where you are unhappy with your life, then it is a reflection of what your brain made you to believe was the right action to take.
You listened to the thoughts in your head, the emotional response that was connected to a certain bad habit, and it led you here. You trusted your brain when it said, “eat the junk food” you trusted your brain when it said, “Go procrastinate on your work” you trusted your brain when it said, “Oh you can never be this person because of x reason” and all of those thoughts has led you down this path.
A path of quiet desperation where it just feels so hard to even get the things that you want done. The goals that you wanted to accomplish for years now. The goal of finally getting in shape “this year”. It has all been sabotaged by the very mind that you’ve listened to for your entire life.
Throughout this post, you will soon realize that the automatic thoughts that you have during the day are not on your side. Your own brain is not on your side.
Why do I know this? It’s because you are reading a newsletter post on how to not trust your brain.
If you can get one thing out of this post, remember that “The majority of the thoughts you have during the day is aimed to destroy the life that you are currently hoping to build”
“You are not your thoughts, as they are generally not on your side”.
Ok, so with that being said, why is it so difficult to resist against these thoughts that are dragging you down?
In order to understand this further, we have to break down the parts of our brain that is causing us to keep repeating to do these actions. The 2 parts of the brain that you’re going to learn today is the Amygdala and the Pre-frontal Cortex.
How the Amygdala hinders your decision-making skills.
There is one part of your brain in particular that is responsible for this rash, impulse reaction whenever you have the urge to indulge into the bad habits. This is the Amygdala, almond sized clusters that is centered in the middle of your brain. It is responsible for processing emotional reactions and is involved in the flight or fight response.
The most important fact to consider is that the Amygdala is one of the oldest and most outdated parts of your brain. Setting back in the primitive days, it was absolutely crucial for our survival of our species because it sensed nearby threats or possible dangers that could arise.
The problem is that it is considered as more of a hinderance now it was a few hundreds of thousands of years ago. Technology has shaped our world as we know it, with the introduction of the internet, social media, and highly stimulating activities.
Reason being? The Amygdala was important for our survival way back then but now it has come under the influence of highly manipulative scientists who knows how to spark the amygdala under a high stimulus. All of the social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, even YouTube, they all know very well to control it so that you spend more time on their platforms.
Remember how I said the Amygdala was responsible for controlling your emotional responses? Well, that is the underlying issue right here, the Amygdala in modern times is constantly way too overactive than it was initially to be.
All of these social media scientists know this and uses it for their benefit. You control how the Amygdala responds, you control the emotions of 99% of the entire world’s population.
Now this isn’t to fear monger or to scare you in any sort, but rather to explain why social media itself so addicting. We can’t change the past, so there’s not really any point in complaining at these large corporations or anything.
What we can do now is to use this knowledge for our own benefit to gain a deeper understanding on how to lower the activity of the Amygdala and thus improve our decision-making prowess.
But now let’s talk about the other part of the brain is responsible for making rational decisions, based on reason and is associated with higher level thinking such as analyzing and planning.
This is the area of the brain that we want to improve upon the most. The prefrontal cortex allows us to make decisions based on logic, not impulse in the case of the Amygdala.
Most often, the Amygdala is unfortunately what is going to be the most active or “louder” in this sense while the Prefrontal cortex is going to be less active so “Quiter”.
This is not scientific at all but here is a very good example that can help demonstrate the activation of the Amygdala and the Prefrontal Cortex in a realistic situation.
Whenever you suddenly have the urge to scroll on your phone or binge eat in the junk food, then that is actually an example of the Amygdala firing up at that moment.
We’ve all heard the analogy of the 2 distinctive voices in our head, 1. the Voice that tells you to indulge in the bad habits and 2. The softer voice that insists you to not indulge in it.
What is actually happening here is the conflicting contrast between the activation of your Amygdala and your Prefrontal Cortex. Basically, the more “sinister” voice is your Amygdala telling you to indulge in the habit as it is more based off of emotion rather than logic. While the prefrontal cortex is your “angelic” voice that persuades you to not give into your other voice in your head which is the Amygdala. This voice is a contrast to the Amygdala and is based off of reason rather than emotion.
So, the overall goal is to lower the activity of the Amygdala and to increase the activity of the Prefrontal Cortex that is responsible for making rational decisions.
But how exactly do we do this?
The answer lies in Meditation.
How Meditation can be beneficial to improving your split decision-making skills.
I’ll give you a quick breakdown on how Meditation works but if you want to see further in depth, then my Beginner’s Mental Guide addresses it here.
Meditation is the skill of returning your breath back to the present moment.
Meditation is comprised of 4 stages, focusing on the breath, being present on the breath, being distracted away from the breath, realizing that you’re distracted, and then repeating the cycle again and again.
The key to meditation is that it is the practice of returning back to the present moment. The goal is to not clear your mind of thoughts for the entire session, but rather to be distracted and then to focus on the breath again.
So how exactly does Meditation help you increase the activity of your Pre-frontal Cortex?
Well, I’m glad you asked.
The very act of Meditation is what’s responsible for improving your rationale and more specially your spilt decision-making skills.
Allow me to explain further.
When you are meditating, you are constantly distracted by either a sound that you hear or by your very own thoughts, then you realize it and try to return back to the present moment.
By returning back to the present moment, you are now within this time frame that you are clear of all thoughts.
But here is the very important piece of the puzzle so be sure to read this over carefully…
When you are in a state where you are not in the present moment, the thoughts become who you are. You stay indulged in the thoughts rather than it just being an extension of yourself.
Hence why the quote that I mentioned in the beginning, “You are not your thoughts”.
When you begin to meditate consistently, then you are able to be in this “trance” I guess you could say where you perceive the thoughts not as you right now but as if you are looking at it in a 3D perspective of it.
This might be hard to visualize so let me try to describe a bit more.
So, imagine if when you are not in the present moment, you and your thoughts remain in the same body of mind, as one piece that is connected to each other.
But, when you are in the present moment, the thoughts that you have begun to detach away from yourself, since you see it as it is, not as the definitive truth of the world.
Almost like you would see a dog passing by, you would view the thought as something external of your own self and treat it as if it is just there, not as a definitive fact.
This happens because you continually condition your own mind, through meditation to keep referring back to the present moment after being distracted. It is when you during meditation, you see these thoughts as they are and then you quickly snap back to focusing on the breath. That is the moment where you are able to see your thoughts in a 3-Deminsional Perspective rather than it ingulfing you.
So how does this help?
Since you are able to detach away from your thoughts as an external part of your body, it no longer has the control that it once did over your own decision-making skills.
Rather, you see the thought as it is. This greatly decreases the realm of control that you’re Amygdala has over your own actions and greatly increases the activity of your Pre-frontal cortex.
This is because whenever you have the intrusive thought to indulge in the bad habits, through meditation you see the thought as an external part of your own self. This gives you a 3-5 second window of thinking time to actually decide on if you should listen to this thought in your head.
This is absolutely crucial because all of these decisions happen within a short period of time. So that 3-5 seconds may seem meaningless, but they are worth every single whenever you are choosing between picking one or the another. Should you decide to trust your own intuition, or should you reflect on your decision and weigh the potential downsides of it?
That my friend, is the hidden power behind Meditation.
Actionable Steps to Apply what you’ve learnt.
Before I do tell you the list of actionable steps to follow, I want to show you a recent finding that I’ve learnt on the effect of Meditation on the brain.
There had been studies confirming that Meditation not only has a mental benefit to your own wellbeing, but actually physically changes the structure of the brain itself.
At first, I did not believe this at all, but I dug into a bit deeper, and I found out that Meditation has been known to literally increase the grey matter density in the brain, which leads to better learning, memory, and emotional regulation. In addition to this, it also does thicken the Pre-frontal cortex, which does lead to an increase in activity.
Now, how is Meditation able to do this. I have no clue, since that is way above my realm of expertise. But that is why I will link some additional sources highlighting the structural changes of the brain due to consistent meditation.
I usually do not feel the need to cite any sources in my newsletter since I believe that most of the information that I do share is practical enough to where a source isn’t justified or necessary to prove that it’s “scientifically correct”. I just take most of what I’ve learnt from my own experience, self-help books, and information that I’ve scourged on the internet, and synthesizing all of it here in the newsletter.
But this post is an exception because it does contain some scientific concepts that should be credited as such. So, feel free to check out the additional sources that will be linked at the end of this post.
With that being said, here is a list of actionable steps that you can follow to start Meditating today.
Start small. You do not want to rush in this quickly if you’ve never done it before. I would recommend starting off at 3 to 5 minutes to get used to the entire process and then progressing from there.
This is a marathon, not a sprint. Do NOT expect to see any changes in your decision-making skill and say “Oh, Meditation doesn’t work for me”. You must be willing to be consistent in the habit in order to see results. You’ve only started meditating just recently out of the many years you spent not doing it in your entire life. Don’t expect to just get the benefits right away.
Find fulfillment in the process, not the end result. If you only try to get the benefits out of it, then you will grow impatient and give up. Rather, find enjoyment in sitting for a couple of minutes, no distractions, and just relax and focus on your breath for the majority of the time. Once you find the enjoyment in the process, the results will follow.
Pick a time out of the day to do your meditation session. Allocate at least 5 minutes out of the day to meditate and you will get great progress. It can be in the morning, evening, or night. Whatever works best for you, make sure you stick to the same time frame for best results.
This is the best actionable step so far. Download an App that will track your progress. The one that I personally recommend is Medito, I don’t have any affiliation with them, but this was the one app that I used consistently during my first of my-self-improvement journey. I highly recommend it. Links to it will be at the end of this post.
Well, I hoped you’ve enjoyed this post and learnt something new that you can apply to your own self-improvement journey. Once again, I really appreciate the immense positive feedback that I got from my post on Mental Health. I’m glad that I was able to resonate with a lot of people with my work and it seems to me that people were able to get some results from the Guide so far. We’re almost there to the 3 Week Mark so it’s not safe to say just yet.
But I do want to give some appreciation for the people who are still sticking by as a follower of this newsletter. Not just for the mental health guide but to integrate self-improvement into their overall lifestyle. Genuinely humbled that I was able to impact the lives of other people in some sort of way. I definitely got a long way to go in terms of my own goals, but this is just the beginning.
Until then, I’ll see you in the next post 😎✌
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