167. How to Live a Good Life (You’re Overcomplicating It)

Becoming with Breanne Burke

Breanne Burke explores the tendency to overcomplicate happiness through constant self-optimization and digital distraction. She argues that

Key takeaways

The subconscious mind often prefers a 'familiar hell' over an 'unfamiliar heaven' due to its wiring for safety.
Neuroplasticity allows individuals to rewire their brains by repeatedly noticing and reinforcing positive experiences.

Main topics

Neuroplasticity and mindset
The trap of self-optimization

Notable quotes

Your subconscious mind will choose a familiar hell versus an unfamiliar heaven.

Conclusion

Living well requires shifting from viewing life as a project to be fix

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) Hey friends, welcome to the Becoming with Brianne Burke podcast. Speaker 1 (0:08) Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am excited to be here. It feels good to be in flow of recording. I was thinking back to the podcast I just previously recorded, which is funny enough, was yesterday. As I said, environment, it just shapes and shifts my level of inspiration. And I am here looking out at the river, watching the Canadian flag go crazy in the wind, and it just feels really, really good. And I'm thinking back to yesterday. I was like, what did I even talk about? And I couldn't even tell you. It honestly just fell out of me, stuff that's on my heart, stuff that's on my mind. And this is very much in reflection of what today's episode is also going to be about. And that is ultimately how to live a good life and how we love to overcomplicate it. Naturally, as human beings, we are wired for the negative. All right, we are wired to keep ourselves safe. We know this, our subconscious does not care if we're happy. It wants to take the path of least resistance. It wants to take the known. That is where the very common saying comes from. Your subconscious mind will choose a familiar hell versus an unfamiliar heaven, even if we know it's good for us. So if we have been raised or surrounded in an environment amongst a certain grouping of people for a certain level of time, we'll naturally start to be embedded in us through our subconscious wiring and our nervous system because they're all beautifully intercated, right? We think of our neural pathways, our thoughts and our beliefs and thought patterns in our subconscious mind as link chains, right? The more we think something, the stronger it gets. Naturally, if we are thinking something enough, it will then trigger an actual physical response. We know what it's like. You can think about example, a past partner screwing you over and you can feel yourself getting heated. You can feel the tightness in your chest. It can immediately give you a... an emotional response, just like how you can a happy memory. However, as we are hardwired for the negative, it is much more common for us and natural for us to seek out the negative, things that make us feel uncomfy and things that make us feel unsafe. So it's literally a skill to learn to look for the good. And in the beautiful day of 2026, going into 2027, it makes it more and more challenging. The life of simplicity. to a degree is easier. There is obviously such thing as decision fatigue. We are not currently equipped to be capable of actually intaking as much information as we currently are today, nor being connected to so many people. For example, seeing live TikToks and Instagram feeds of war that is happening overseas. I think there's a bit of both personally. I think things are tough right now and Things have also always been going on and we just haven't known about it. Again, very common saying, ignorance is bliss. And I'm not saying live with your head in the sand, but there is nuance around everything and you are truly responsible for your own energy. Your own energy will dictate how you navigate the world. So you can either... feed off of this and let it consume you. Or you can be an energy provider and show up as the best version of yourself in the sense of showing up as the most natural state of you. Who you were before fear led the game. Who you were before you were looking around without wearing hypervigilant lenses. Who you were before all of that. Before you were having to prove yourself. Keep up the status quo. Live up to the milestones. And look around and keep up to everything that you see online. Who you were before all that. And naturally, we love to overcomplicate because we're layered and we're complex and we're hormonal. Different seasons of life call different things and life is going to life and things are going to occur that is completely out of your control. And the moment you actually accept your reality for what it is versus what you think it should be and ultimately decide how you choose to respond, it feels a lot more empowering. And that allows you to also take that serious, intense grip that you have on your life and allows you to loosen it. And in result, you feel lighter because you don't feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Your brain learns what matters through what you repeatedly notice, attend, and emotionally reinforce. All right? The more we think about someone, something, a circumstance, a situation, a memory, the stronger it's becoming. That's why you or maybe somebody else, a friend, a loved one is able to talk about the same situation over and over and over again, because it has become so ingrained in their mind. It takes up so much of their capacity, right? And they haven't done any neural pruning, literally chipping away at the thinning out that neural pathway. They haven't been given a fighting chance. We have the ability to take advantage of neuroplasticity. We truly have the ability to change our brains, but it takes quite a bit of work, but it can be done. So if you are constantly scanning for what's missing in your life, right? What's inconvenient or potentially wrong, you can have a really, really beautiful life without experiencing it as one. And that's just a fact. You need to start giving your brain evidence that your life actually contains safety. First and foremost, above all else, followed by love, goodness, and connection, not only evidence of what actually needs fixing. Because if you, your relationship and your life is always a project, you are always going to feel like you're slightly broken. And you're not. You are simply just learning, learning the lessons. What I know now versus what I knew a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago is significantly different. It is wild. some of the thoughts, some of the opinions that I had at a younger age. And it's like, I did the best I could with the information that I had at that time. That's all that means. That's all it is. And we have the ability to change at any given time, as I spoke to in my last episode. And I want to give you just some examples. that are a little bit outside of the norm on how to live a good life.