"Good job, brain," is something I started saying to myself as I healed from months of bedrest and undiagnosable mystery pain. (Story.) Our brains are really good at spotting danger and telling us to freak out about it. One of the main tools they use is binary thinking.

Good. Bad.
Right. Wrong.
Up. Down.
Danger. Safety.

Because — by design — we have these really great binary-categorizing brains, it takes WORK to train the brain to use something other than binary thinking.

Most recently, this played out during one of my coaching sessions. A client was rebelling against structure she had put in her own entrepreneurial business. (I mean, OF COURSE. We didn't become entrepreneurs or showbiz creatives because we LIVE for corporate structure, right?)

As I always do when I see binary thinking in action, I mentioned that she could pick and choose what works FOR HER from corporate structure and then dance freely within that as it suits her needs, her wants, her values, her goals.

But what do I do when my brain starts going, "You should be doing ALL THE THINGS" about my business?

She posed a good question, there. And the answer is this: Pat your head and say, "Good job, brain!" then make a choice to be less binary in your thinking. Ask if it can be NOT a business that's a clone of corporate structure and also NOT a business that's a bunch o' rebellious chaos. Can it be somewhere on that continuum?

Use a structure that works and have lots of space within it for your style?

Of course. And when we want to snap back to corporate structure as we design our own creative lives, that's just the brain looking for some rules to follow, something to blame when things go wrong, and of course stuff to rebel against (because if we weren't rebels, we'd be rolling around on a plastic pad behind a desk in a cube farm, happily clocking in and out to do the bidding of some old billionaire and his shareholders).

During my livestream on Friday (11am PST — right here; and yes, that's where the replay will be if you can't make it live), I'm gonna chat with you about training the brain to allow the scary freedom that lives beyond binary thinking, celebrate the Full Moon in Leo, and of course answer your questions/celebrate you in general.

Hope you'll join me! (Keep up with all my events here.

All my Aquarius season love (yes, things are moving much faster… it's not your imagination),

Bonnie Gillespie is simultaneously all characters in The Wizard of Oz (esp. the yellow-brick road). Wanna work with Bon? Start here. Thanks!