Birds, Bears and Bushes
For all the remarkable advancements of modern civilization—skyscrapers piercing the clouds, spacecraft landing on distant planets, artificial intelligence reshaping our daily lives—there is one thing that has remained relatively unchanged: the mind. While our brains have evolved incrementally over time, the software that runs on them—what we call the mind—is still essentially running version 1.0.
The Brain and the Mind
To understand this, we must first distinguish between the brain and the mind.
The brain is an organ, weighing approximately three pounds, composed of billions of neurons and trillions of connections. It regulates our heartbeat, breathing, digestion, movement, memory, and many other bodily functions. It receives sensory input, processes information, and coordinates our body's responses.¹ It is, without question, one of the most complex and fascinating structures in the known universe.
The mind is something different. The mind is what emerges from the activity of the brain—our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and perceptions. If the brain is the hardware, the mind is the software.² While we may have built rockets that can escape Earth’s gravity and computers that beat grandmasters at chess, we are still operating our lives using ancient programming written for a very different world.
Software Designed for Survival
This original version of our mental software had one overriding purpose: survival. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors lived in a much more dangerous world.³ Their survival depended on their ability to detect threats quickly and react even faster. The mind evolved to continuously scan for danger, prioritizing speed over accuracy. Better to mistake a harmless sound for a predator than to pause and become lunch.
Imagine an early human walking through a forest. They pass by a bush, and there’s a sudden rustle in the leaves. The mind doesn’t leisurely evaluate the possibilities—perhaps it’s the wind, or a bird, or a lizard. No, the mind leaps to a conclusion: Bear! The adrenaline spikes, muscles tense, and they sprint away from danger. Whether it was a bear or not is beside the point. The priority was to avoid even the possibility of danger. This type of reactive mechanism helped our ancestors survive long enough to pass on their genes.
Fast forward to today. Most of us do not live near bears. We live in suburbs, cities, and managed landscapes. We go to work, attend meetings, respond to emails, and worry about traffic or deadlines. But our minds are still listening for rustling bushes. The software hasn’t been updated.
Now, when your boss sends a vague email or you hear a negative comment in a meeting, your mind might interpret it as a threat. Bear! Your heart races, your jaw clenches, and your thoughts spiral into imagined worst-case scenarios. The rustle was just a bird—a minor, even benign event—but your mind treats it like something far more dangerous. This is your ancient survival software in action, misfiring in a modern context.⁴
This disconnect between our old mental software and our current environment is the root of much unnecessary stress and reactivity. Our limbic system—the emotional center of the brain—gets triggered, flooding our body with stress hormones. Fight, flight, or freeze kicks in. But unlike our ancestors, we aren’t facing wild animals. We’re facing a missed deadline, a cryptic text, or an ambiguous glance from a colleague. Our responses, however, are just as visceral.
Modifying the Programming.
Understanding this evolutionary mismatch can be a powerful first step toward self-awareness and emotional regulation. Recognizing that your brain and mind are not always aligned with reality opens the door to conscious choice. You don’t have to believe every thought.⁵ You don’t have to act on every impulse. You can pause, reflect, and respond thoughtfully rather than reactively.
Imagine, again, walking past that bush and hearing the rustle. If you knew for certain it was just a bird, would you flinch? Would you sprint? Of course not. You’d smile, perhaps pause to listen, and keep walking. What if we treated our modern fears the same way? What if instead of defaulting to having our nervous system react to the perceived bear, and then having to settle ourselves down, we trained ourselves to pause and ask: Is this really a bear, or is it just a bird?
This small moment of reflection—a breath between stimulus and response—is where the magic happens. In that pause lies the difference between a reactive life and a deliberate one. In that space, you reclaim control from your ancient programming and update your internal operating system—if not to version 2.0, then at least to something more suited to today’s world.
This practice is not about eliminating fear or emotion. Emotions are essential data. And they are just that—data, not directives. You can acknowledge the feeling without surrendering to it. You can feel anxious and still act with courage. You can feel frustrated and still choose kindness. You can feel threatened and remain grounded.
In our professional lives, this awareness can make a significant difference. A perceived slight from a colleague doesn’t have to become a cold war. A tough conversation doesn’t have to spiral into avoidance or aggression. A piece of constructive feedback doesn’t have to trigger defensiveness. These are just birds in the bushes, not bears. The more we recognize this, the more we can lead and live from a place of calm confidence rather than unconscious fear.
Leaders who develop this skill become significantly more effective. They respond instead of reacting. They listen instead of defending. They ask questions instead of making assumptions. Their teams feel safer, more trusted, and more empowered. All of this starts with a simple shift in awareness: not everything that rustles is a threat.
Updating our mental software doesn’t require a complete rewrite. But it does require us to be intentional. Practices such as mindfulness, journaling, coaching, and self-inquiry can help us recognize our triggers and examine the stories we tell ourselves. Over time, we can learn to distinguish between genuine threats and those that are merely imagined.
Birds, bears, and bushes. This ancient triad still rules much of our emotional world. But once we see it clearly, we can begin to laugh at it a little. We can find freedom in the realization that our minds are not always accurate interpreters of reality. We can practice pausing, breathing, and choosing a different path.
Because in the end, the actual danger isn’t the rustle in the bushes—it’s never realizing that we’ve been running from birds our whole lives.
¹ Your Brain at Work, David Rock. I highly recommend this book, it contains a great number of practical solutions for upgrading your operating systems without a hard reboot.
² https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/biology/difference-between-brain-and-mind/
³ If you survived childbirth and made it past age 15 in 10,000 B.C. you could expect to live into your 40s or 50s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
⁴ These signals reach your limbic system approximately 300 milliseconds faster than they reach your pre frontal cortext, where the critical thinking occurs. The Science Behind Emotional Intelligence. Emily A. Sterrett, Ph.D. So pausing for just a second before you act really does make a difference.
⁵ A coaching teacher once said “Your mind is a dangerous neighborhood, you should not go in there alone.” 🙂