The document discusses how animals are able to take action despite risks and imperfect conditions by focusing on meeting basic needs like hunger rather than waiting for perfect situations. It argues humans can learn from animals by focusing on weighing risks and rewards in each moment rather than dwelling on threats. Taking small steps to relieve "bad feelings" like hunger or anxiety builds positive expectations and wires the brain to expect success through experiencing rewards.

1. Do You Want to Be
Perfect Someday
or Better Today?
Dr Loretta Breuning
Inner Mammal Institute

2. Are you waiting for the
perfect moment?

3. Do you want to be sure.
before you try?

4. You can
imagine
trying
and
failing.

5. And failing again.

6. Imagining the worst can
leave you frozen

7. But imagining
the best can
freeze you
too because
reality never
measures up

8. You don’t
intend to
be a
perfectionist

9. But the right time to act
never seems to come.

10. How do animals avoid
this problem?

11. They live in a world of
constant threat, yet they
take action.

12. A gazelle drinks at the
waterhole next to the predator
who ate its child yesterday.

13. A lizard suns itself despite
the risk of getting eaten
alive at any moment.

14. A lion misses
90% of the time.

15. In an imperfect
world, how do
animals find the
will to act?

16. We have the same limbic
system as animals
beneath our big cortex.

17. Your limbic
system
rewards you
with dopamine
when you take
steps to meet your needs.

18. Neurons connect when
dopamine flows,
which builds a
pathway that
turns on that
good feeling
in similar
circumstances.

19. You expect to feel good
when you do something that
felt good before.

20. Positive expectations

21. It’s hard to have
positive
expectations
with a big
human cortex
capable of
abstracting.

22. We humans can anticipate
problems that don’t exist yet.
This protects us from harm…

23. but leads to
negative expectations.

24. An animal would get hungry if
it waited for a perfect world.

25. The bad feeling of hunger,
motivates action, which
relieves the bad feeling.

26. That’s how the limbic
brain is designed to work.

27. Each time you succeed at
relieving a bad feeling,
positive expectations build.

28. The limbic brain gets
wired to expect success.

29. Your verbal brain may
object!

30. You may insist
that positive
expectations are
unrealistic!
But imagine…

31. …a gazelle who refused to forage
until all threats were eliminated.

32. …a lizard who expected the
sun to shine under its rock.

33. …a lion who refused to hunt
until it had a 100% success rate.

34. Our brain is designed to
promote survival by
weighing risk and reward.

35. Hunger increases the
reward value of action.

36. When you’re NOT hungry,
the risk of taking action seems
to outweigh the reward.

37. This is why we dwell on risk
in our relatively safe world

38. This is why
disappointment
seems like a
huge threat.

39. What can we learn from
animals?

40. A lizard always faces two bad
choices so it focuses on the most
urgent threat in each moment.

41. A gazelle seeks safety in
numbers while also
seeking individual rewards

42. A lion rests when it fails,
and then looks for a goal it
can reach

43. Our big brain can justify
inaction with fine theories:

44. “I have a right to be
safe from predators.”

45. “I should have
access to the sun.”

46. “I’m waiting for
the best opportunity."

47. Our quest to avoid threat
deprives us of rewards.

48. When I face a threat, I tell myself
that weighing risk and reward is
the job my brain evolved to do.

49. Every
lizard
can do it.

50. Every
gazelle
can do it.

51. Every
lion can
do it.

52. I can do
it too.

53. I can come out from
under my rock.

54. I can fail and try again.

55. I can
explore
greener
pastures.

56. books
podcasts
videos
infographics
training certification
slide shows (incl this)
5-day Happy-Chemical Jumpstart
all free except the books
innermammalinstitute.org
The Inner Mammal Institute
has the resources you need
to make peace with your
inner mammal

57. Habits of a Happy Brain
Retrain your
brain to boost
your serotonin,
dopamine,
oxytocin and
endorphin levels

58. Tame Your Anxiety
Rewiring
Your Brain
for
Happiness

59. Notice when you think:

60. I’m not moving
until the world is fixed.

61. I’m not moving
until the herd moves.

62. I’m not moving until my
approach is perfected.

63. How can you expect me to
move when all the choices
I have are bad?