Your brain is not your friend. Your brains primary goal is not happiness or making the best decision for you or your family. Your brain is exceptionally good at its job, efficient almost to a fault in its primary objective, survival. And by survival we simply mean staying alive and safe, completing tasks and objectives, plain and simple. Unparalleled processing power to make decisions, weigh complex factors and decide in an instant how to manage infinite actions occurring simultaneously, amazing if you ask me.

How do our brains do this? What is the secret? Sure humankind has built super computers that can rival this process but they are massive in size and require enormous amounts of energy. If our brain had to truly calculate everything going on around us it would be 10 times its size and our heads disproportionately large to fit them, energy would be a whole other issue, thousands of calories would be needed just to support thinking. So our brain takes shortcuts. Independent and without your permission your brain is constantly ignoring anything it deems not necessary. For example, do you know that at all times you can see your nose but your brain, not thinking its critical simply processes it out before it even gets to your conscious brain? The same can be said for countless other things sitting in plain sight every day that we simply just don’t see.

There are some really terrific books about how the brain works, learns to protect us from ourselves, from past trauma, others, perceived dangers. If these things interest you I hope you research a bit more. It is truly fascinating how the human mind works based on years of evolution. How the saying “old habits die hard” is more applicable than you think. Hunter Gathers used to gorge themselves when finding fruit trees because they didn’t know when they might see another. That primal response to sugar survives to this day. Do you binge cookies and candies just because you fear the store will run out? No, it is your brain holding onto those old primal habits. If you are walking in the woods and hear a noise down in the bushes, you jump away or become hyper alert. Its probably nothing and 99 times out of 100 it will be nothing, but what if it’s the one time there is actually a snake. Your mind is willing to make that tradeoff in efficiency…. just to be on the safe side. They have done experiments with animals where they click a button and get one piece of food every time or click button getting nothing most of the time and one big random payload. Which one do you think the animals picked even though it is less efficient, you guess it, the second one.

You can track this back to the beginning of man where we traded the uncertainty of hunter gathering for the stability of farming and domestication. Farming and domestication were hard, health, happiness and quality of life declined. We ate the same things over and over while as hunter gatherers we simply ate what we needed, moved on, relaxed and enjoyed the variety of life. Our brains didn’t like that volatility and found a better system, at least in their minds. Toiling all day and eating wheat over and over ensured better survival, even it sacrificed a more balanced life.

Think about that, your brain is willing to be wrong 99 percent of the time to protect you that 1 percent. It would sacrifice all other systems and happiness to ensure food security regardless of which version of life you might prefer. Take a moment and see how that applies in your present-day life. Your brain is there to keep you alive, not do what is best or most beneficial.

This brings me to the Gorilla. Those of you who read self help will most likely know of this experiment. For those who are not, take a minute and look up “The Invisible Gorilla Experiment” conducted by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons in 1999. It is on YouTube and is only a few minutes long.

A quick synopsis is participants are told to watch a video of two groups of people in all white and all black passing basketballs in a gym. The proctors of the experiment ask the participants to count how many times each team passes the ball. Its an easy enough task and after the video is over, most get the answer correct. They are then asked if they saw the man in the gorilla suit walk through the screen. Half the participants say no. Rewatching the video they are now focused on this new variable and halfway through see a man clearly walk right into middle of the gym, stand there and walk away.

So back to the title of this little article and everything I have discussed above. What is your Gorilla? Are you even aware it is there? What is holding you back, creating trouble in your life, do you even see it? If you do then you are already better off than 50 percent of the people around you.

Remember your brain is picking and choosing what “IT” thinks is important. Its possible that there is a distraction in your life you don’t see or your brain is prioritizing for you, blocking out other factors for the one it deems most important. Like the person so consumed with success they don’t see their marriage is falling apart. “How did he not see it” friends will say. “It was so obvious.” Well….so is the gorilla when you watch the video but only if you are looking for a gorilla. It is obvious you are having issues in your marriage if that is what you are focusing on.

Take some time to look at the important parts of your life, your marriage, your children, your health, work life balance. Slow down and ask yourself if they are truly ok or is there an invisible gorilla lurking in your life.

Remember your brain is not your friend but if you collaborate with it and value what it can do well, slow down and revisit decisions, actions, check in with those around you then the gorilla will have a harder time walking right through your life without being noticed.