This is What it REALLY Takes to Rewire Your Brain

Hello, friend. I am coming in hot today on every level because I am gonna start this podcast without preamble and tell you what the topic is. I have been thinking today about what it means to rewire your brain because I know that this is something that we talk about kind of all the time here in the self-help world, and I think that a lot of us think the process of rewiring our brain is going to be a certain way. And what I'd love to talk to you about today is what it really takes to rewire your brain. And now that I am done with that, here comes the preamble. Except that it's not a really a preamble at all. It's like a post ramble. I wanna tell you why I was thinking about this. So this, this part of the podcast is for my business-minded friends. And actually, before I even get into that, I'm gonna apologize because I'm pretty sure that the audio is gonna be a little bit funky today. I'm wearing a different shirt than I [00:01:00] normally do, and I, I, when I'm editing the podcast, I notice that no matter how little I think I'm moving, that there's always some movement sounds. And today I, I feel really hopped up. I just came in from my run. Obviously this is what I do, so I have got a lot of endorphins going on. I'm already talking with my hands. I really do apologize for that. At some point I'm going to figure out. I'm gonna figure out like a really good podcast setup. Right now, I'm still using the microphone that I used to use back when I made workout videos. It's the little clip-on one that goes on my shirt, and so depending on what I'm wearing from my run, some of my shirts are a little more like form fitting and some of them are really loose. Today happens to be a really loose one, which means that it's gonna probably interfere with the microphone, so hopefully it will not be so inter- fearing interference-y. Hopefully it'll not be annoying. How about that? In [00:02:00] any event, this part is for my business friends. Here's why I was thinking about this phrase, rewiring your brain. One of the, one of the things that I am doing right now in my business is being really careful about the promises that I'm making when I'm talking about the Daily 3, which is my journaling framework. There's a link you can sign up to watch the masterclass, learn all about it. It's pretty much all we talk about here on the podcast nowadays. The rejuvenated Get Your Goal podcast is all about getting your goal through journaling, and the framework that I offer you is the Daily 3 because it is really specifically goal- getting journaling as opposed to the kind of journaling that you're probably doing and loving, which is fantastic. Gratitude journaling, fantastic vent journaling, fantastic creative journaling, fantastic self-reflection journaling, fantastic. All of them help you in so many ways. They're so good for your brain. They're so good for your life. They're so good [00:03:00] for so many things. And they're not really goal specific. In order to get your goal, there are ways to, here we go, rewire your brain that help you actually achieve a specific thing that you want. You can actually, here, let's get into the weeds on this one. You can actually rewire your brain for, no, not for with those other types of journaling, but you're not rewiring your brain in a goal specific way. Again, you're rewiring your brain. By seeing your thoughts, understanding yourself, uncovering your patterns, focusing on things that are going well in your life, unlocking the part of your brain that can think in a creative way as opposed to trying to be like logical or linear, like you're rewiring your brain no matter what kind of journaling you're doing. You are specifically rewiring your brain to achieve, to accomplish, to behave in a [00:04:00] specific way, to achieve a specific thing when you do the three types of journaling that I talk about in the Daily 3. And before I even get into the rewiring of your brain and how it works and what it is and how to do it, let me just tell you that you do not have to do the Daily 3 exactly the way that I presented in the masterclass. It's not about the specifics of how to do it. I offer it as a five minutes of daily journaling because I want it to be easy for you. If you don't wanna do it in five minutes, don't do it in five minutes. It really doesn't matter. Understanding that those three types of journaling, success journaling, metacognitive journaling, and future self journaling, which I said in the wrong order because it goes the other way around, the way I present it. But again, it doesn't matter which way you do it. You get to do the journaling any way you want to. I offer it in a, a specific way just so that you can see what it is and start practicing with it so that you can make it your own. Here's the [00:05:00] thing. Here's the thing about rewiring your brain. I think, no, I was telling you the story. I was like, this is why I'm making long pauses. I'm like, Nope. I was telling you the story of why I was even thinking about this. This is still for my business minded friends. And then we're gonna get to how to rewire your brain. I've been thinking a lot about the promises that I make. One of the things that I say on the page when you go to sign up to watch the masterclass for the Daily 3, one of the things that I say, and I don't remember exactly how I say it, but I say something about rewiring your brain, and I've been thinking a lot about the kinds of promises that I make to people about what it is that I'm offering and what you'll get from it and how it will, how it will help you. And I was thinking about how when I first came to like self-help work and any kind of journaling, any kind of self-awareness, I really, truly thought that rewiring your [00:06:00] brain was some version of like subliminal messages. Like I am of an age, and I'm gonna just assume that you are too, that I remember in the, what was it? Like the mid or the late eighties, the Satanic Panic. Where they were all hot, all the adults, all the grownups, they were all hot about how, you know, there were subliminal messages in hard rock music and Judas Priest was making teenagers, you know, smoke pot and do terrible things. The eighties were such a weird time. I'm having so many weird flashbacks about ah, ah, the eighties. Anyways, anyways. Then in the nineties, I remember like listening to like self-hypnosis, those again, like subliminal messages essentially, where you would listen to something while you were sleeping so that you could rewire your brain so that you could be a different person. And so I [00:07:00] came to self-help and self-awareness with this kind of underlying belief that it could be passive. That it could be something that, for all intents and purposes just happened to me while I was going about my life and continuing to complain about everything. It's so funny to me now to think about this, that I thought I could become, you know, a, a positive, happy, better person just by listening to something in my sleep while still in my waking hours, continuing to reinforce my old self concepts by complaining about them. It's so obvious to me now, which is why I'm laughing. And let me, let me soften that a little bit just in case you are coming to this work thinking that there is anything passive about it, that affirmations that you listen to [00:08:00] or scripting that you write every day or subliminal messages, thinking that that will rewire your brain for you is really only half of the story and the other half of the story is what I wanna talk to you about today. The thing that rewires your brain, the thing that makes any of this stuff work is your intention. You've certainly heard me say before that it doesn't matter what you do, it matters how you feel. That your intention is what actually creates your results. And there's a different way that I wanna say this to you today. And I'm just going to lovingly offer you that when this word comes out of my mouth, you are probably gonna wanna turn off the podcast. And so I'm gonna tell [00:09:00] you right now that I'm gonna talk about my history with this word because I really wanna show you what this can bring to your life when you decide. I know, I know that word. Decide decisions. Yes. This is a podcast not just about rewiring your brain, but we're talking about making decisions. We're talking about deciding to rewire your brain because that is how you actually get your goal. I'm actually gonna use the C word a couple of times today. It's not the one you're thinking about, even though that one's a fun one too. But I'm gonna tell you that you can't. I know it's a terrible word. It's a terrible word. It's so dramatic, and I do not care for using this word because I am the kind of person who's like, you can do anything. What I'm gonna tell you is that without [00:10:00] making the decision to rewire your brain in both big ways and small, that you can't get your goal. And then I'm gonna dial that one right on back and tell you that of course, you can change your mind and make decisions anytime you want to. And in fact, that's where we're gonna start this conversation about decisions and about rewiring your brain. I'm gonna quote the late great Neil Peart, as sung by the equally fantastic Geddy Lee, that even if you do not decide, you still have made a choice. The truth of it is that you are a decider. You are a person who makes decisions. Constantly, literally. Every minute of every day you are making decisions. It's just that most of them are subconscious. You make so many decisions under the surface of your awareness that you do not currently. You might not, let me [00:11:00] actually rephrase that. You might not currently think of yourself as a person who either is decisive or can make decisions or wants to make decisions. And the gentle thing that I would love to offer you here as your life coach, I gently challenge some of your presupposition, some of the stories that you are telling yourself about yourself. That one of the easiest ways to rewire your brain about this self-concept you may have about making decisions is to simply notice that you are constantly making decisions. Every single thing you do is a decision, but it's not necessarily a conscious one. And I really, I, here's big picture. The more intentional you are with your decisions, the easier it will be to get your [00:12:00] goal, whatever your goal is. Let me tell you my story about decision making. I come from a long, long, long history of thinking of myself as somebody who was now, was indecisive. For many, many, many years, most of my life the self-concept was the exact opposite. It was, I am indecisive. I don't like to make decisions. I don't want to make decisions. I won't make decisions. I refuse to make decisions. And there were many reasons for this. I mean the, I'm gonna say that the biggest one is being the child of divorce and being asked, you know, where do you wanna go for Thanksgiving? What do you wanna do this summer? Which parent do you wanna be with this weekend? Those kinds of things felt very, very fraught, but in my own, in my own untangling of decisiveness I gotta be honest, I'm sure it went back even further than that. There were plenty [00:13:00] of, there were plenty of occasions in my entire upbringing that helped form my opinion of myself. I had lots and lots of socialization, not the least of which is just societal socialization about being a girl growing up when I did in the seventies and eighties about how women weren't really supposed to make decisions, that women weren't really supposed to be in charge of things, that we were simply supposed to let our lives happen to us and let the, let the big strong men make the decisions. I had lots of socialization that helped me tell a story about myself to myself about being indecisive. I had the word decisive on my vision board. Oh my gosh, when did I first start wanting to be decisive? Oh, years and years and years and years and years ago. This was a change that I had wanted to make in my life [00:14:00] and did nothing about it. Unironically made no move to do anything about it. I couldn't decide what to do to be more decisive and yet, and yet lo, all these years later, I have definitely become a more decisive person. Here's the thing about. Here are many of the things about being decisive. For me, starting off by recognizing that I was always making choices, even when I was telling myself I didn't want to or I didn't like to or I wouldn't. That, that in itself really is a decision helped me start to untangle my own thoughts and feelings and self-concepts about being decisive. It helped me start to rewire my brain to think of myself as a person who truly [00:15:00] does have agency. The agency to make a decision whether or not I want to, whether or not I think it's a good decision, whether or not it's an easy decision, whether or not I overthink it constantly. None of those things have anything to do with starting to shift into this idea of being a person who makes decisions. And here's the thing, here's why this is a conversation about decision making. When you decide to rewire your brain when you decide to examine your thoughts, when you decide to feel your feelings on purpose, when you decide to take a look at your patterns, when you decide to gently, lovingly examine your resistance. When you decide to do [00:16:00] something new. When you decide that you're actually going for your goal, instead of trying for your goal, when you decide to step into a new self-concept, everything that comes after that isn't easier. I know you thought that's how I was gonna end that sentence. It's not that things become easier, it's that they feel different. When you, when you come to self-help work, when you come to goal work, when you come to your goal and your life from a place of other people make decisions for me or circumstances force me to do things or any, any way you hear that. Not the least of which is, I'm going to do this because that sounds decisive, but I'm going to do this because [00:17:00] it's the right thing to do, or because I have to, or because so and so told me to, or because this is the way it has to be. Actually, let's, let's take a little side trip into those kinds of decisions, because it sounds like a decision, but it's not. Making a decision for or about or because of something outside of you feels terrible, feels powerless, feels helpless, feels like you don't have agency. And that really is the thing that rewires your brain is taking, recognizing, feeling your agency. [00:18:00] The actual mechanics of rewiring your brain for you personally are going to be truly unique to you. For me, there were, there were several different concepts that I unraveled and worked my way through. And it's funny, I, it's so funny. This might not seem related it, I think it is because it's what just popped into my mind. Literally three days ago I was working on something, I was working on a technological issue behind the scenes administrative work. Not even an administrative. No, it was, it was truly technology related. I'm trying to get something to work in a way that I want it to work, and I did not feel like I had any agency over it whatsoever. And I was, I was so mad and I was complaining, and I was [00:19:00] yelling and I was crying. I had such a frustrating several hours of feeling like I had no agency over the situation, that there was no decision that I could make that was going to feel better, that there was nothing I could do, that I was over a barrel. That was the phrase that came to my mind, and I will tell you that I still haven't solved this problem. I still haven't dug through how that I am feeling that I am over the barrel of this technology, that I can't do anything in my business the way I want to because of this particular issue. This is so fascinating to me. Maybe that's why I wanted to talk about this on the podcast today, because I am still untangling my own work about decisions about agency, about rewiring my brain in order to get my goal. Here's the [00:20:00] thing, you will, on your way to your goal, it is your great opportunity to learn something about yourself. And what it is exactly that you will learn is so unique to you. For me, taking agency, I've had the opportunity to hear and work through my thoughts about being responsible. As the youngest child, I, I had a lot of socialization to think of myself as being irresponsible, as not wanting to be responsible for things. I have come around so much on that word that I actually enjoy now, taking responsibility for what is mine and allowing other people, whether they want it or not, to take responsibility for their stuff, allowing other people to be responsible [00:21:00] for their stuff. That has been, oh my gosh, that has been such a beautiful and wonderful untangling to not take on other people's stuff. To leave it to them, even if they don't want it, even if they act or say or behave as if they do not want their own responsibility. Knowing what's mine and what's theirs has been, ah, it's been like freedom. Some of the other things that I have worked through on my way to being decisive is my thoughts and feelings about not being capable, not being able to do things for myself. Again, I'm gonna call this a youngest child thing, and yet I know so many people, I know so many people who are the youngest in their families who do not have any of my issues. There are so many reasons how we turn out to be who we are. So much different [00:22:00] socialization, and there's just the unique wrinkle of your own brain, how you heard something, which things got caught in the filter, and which things moved through. You and I, and all of us, we just weird, wacky, wonderful people with brains that absorbed some things and let other things go, and this is the great work of our lives. It's deciding which things we want to keep. It's always a decision. It's always a decision. I feel like I've said here's the thing so many times, this was the long pause. I was trying to start this next part without saying, here's the thing, but really, here's the thing. In order to get a goal, if you want something, there will be this beautiful opportunity to take agency over yourself, over your decisions, [00:23:00] over your thoughts, over your feelings, over your actions. There will be a great opportunity to decide what to release and let go of. Also, you get to, you can, you're capable you can decide what you wanna keep, what you wanna release. So, so much of what we think of as reality and the way things are is just stories that we're telling ourselves. Rewiring your brain to get your goal is about sifting through those stories. Which stories are taking you to your goal and which stories are holding you back from it? Which stories do you want to tell about yourself? By the way, this is future self journaling. What do you want [00:24:00] to do? What do you want to have? What kind of a person do you want to be? How do you want to show up in the world? That vision of what you want, practicing that is what helps you create it. This is the part where I'm gonna talk to you about the Daily 3 and how the Daily 3 helps you rewire your brain. It's why I make the promise. It's why I make the promise. We very often think that the future by default will be more or less exactly like either our past or like our current circumstances. Asking yourself what you want the future to be like, isn't the way your brain naturally works. Your brain continues to predict the future based on the past. But if you want something [00:25:00] new, something different, AKA, your goal, asking your brain deciding to focus your brain, even if it's just for one minute a day on the future that you desire helps you rewire your brain. Metacognitive Journaling the second part of the Daily 3 rewires your brain by gently, gently observing the stories that you are telling yourself about why you can't have that goal. It's stories from your past. Again, your brain is operating on a predictive model that your future will be like your past. So therefore, if you haven't had it before, you haven't or don't currently see it in your life right now, your brain will predict that that is what the future is gonna look like. So it will have a story for you about, I can't lose weight or I've never written a book before, or it's too hard to run, or I [00:26:00] don't know how. I just heard the story of my own brain. I don't know how to operate a successful business. Man. Okay, I'm gonna put a pin in that one. That's my own journaling. That's my own metacognitive journaling for today, even though I've already done the Daily 3. But understanding, observing, that's just a sentence in my brain. That's a sentence that just came out of my mouth as though it could possibly be true. This is the essence of rewiring your brain, coming up and out of your stories and deciding that they are stories. Seeing your thoughts as thoughts, deciding to focus on your body, to allow your body to simply feel the emotion that your thought has created instead of behaving from it. It's a decision. It's a decision that you make for yourself [00:27:00] to operate. I, I'm gonna say against your brain, and that's not the way I mean it at all. Your brain has natural, efficient, default functioning. It is capable. It is imminently capable. In fact, it is lovingly wanting to do these things. It can adapt. It can observe your thoughts. It can predict a different future. It can see what you're doing in a positive light instead of negative light through negative negativity bias like your brain can do all of the things to rewire itself. It's why you're capable of rewiring. It's why we even talk about rewiring your brain because it can, and it's not what it would do left to its own devices. It requires that spark of decision from you. Then we'll talk about success journaling, how it rewires your brain. Your brain, [00:28:00] very naturally defaults to negativity bias. It's because generally speaking, what we refer to as negative emotion, I don't love that. It's why I say that in kind of a sarcastic sing-songy voice, negative emotion isn't a thing. You have feelings that feel, like physiologically feel, comfortable or uncomfortable. Comfortable feelings are what we associate with positive emotions, uncomfortable feelings are what we associate with negative emotions. I will tell you from my own experience that yes, I'm getting into the weeds, but I really wanna talk to you about this. I don't love thinking about emotions as positive or negative because there have absolutely been times in my life when some of the most physically uncomfortable feelings were created from thoughts that sounded really on their surface positive, but because I had never felt those feelings before or had never [00:29:00] felt them so strongly, they felt deeply uncomfortable. I'm thinking very specifically. The day I got an agent for my book, the thought that I had in my head was, this is everything I've ever wanted. And that sounds like so joyous, right? But at the time, in that moment, there was so much joy you, you certainly heard me refer to as overjoyed. The feeling itself was deeply deeply uncomfortable. It is one of the most uncomfortable feelings I have ever felt through ever in my life, ever, ever. Which would therefore, what make it a negative emotion, that something positive was happening. This is why I don't love positive and negative as descriptors. There's comfortable and there's uncomfortable. In any event, we [00:30:00] tend to have more emotional resonance with what you would refer to as negative emotions. They tend to feel stronger, which is why biologically speaking, your brain pays more attention to it. Whatever has the most emotional resonance is what your brain pays attention to. When you rewire your brain with success journaling to intentionally, decisively focus on what's going well, on the success that you're having, on how you're following through, how it's all adding up, who you are becoming as a person who can behave this way regularly over time. My friend, this rewires your negativity bias into success bias. Intentionally, decisively asking yourself to do, [00:31:00] if not exactly the Daily 3, but things like the Daily 3 things like your current journaling. When you ask yourself intentionally for yourself, not from a place of obligation or have to, or because so and so said so, or because it's the logical thing to do. When you do this for yourself, you rewire your brain. It is not passive. It is not putting on a cassette tape and putting on your Walkman and going to sleep. And you know, the thing that's really funny about that, the thing that's really funny about that, those people for whom that did work, it worked because they decided it did. It worked because they had the intention, the decision, the desire. They wanted to rewire their brain. And the reason it didn't work for the rest of [00:32:00] us, I'm thinking so specifically. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. There was about a year in my life where I felt so desperate. That's not entirely true. I have felt desperate a lot of years of my life, but there was one year that I felt so, so desperate, so constantly, about so many things, and my over overriding feeling about my business was just desperation. I remember that every single morning, I had like quiet time, meditative time, self-awareness, journaling time, and I would put on YouTube and I would listen to these affirmations and I would just lay on the floor and cry and feel so sorry for myself while listening to these affirmations about I love money, and money loves me. Every day in [00:33:00] every way, I'm the one making my dreams come true. And again, if you're reading the transcript, this sing songy, sarcastic voice, oh my gosh. I desperately wanted things to happen to me. I wanted my good fortune, the thing that I desired most in the world to just come to me passively. Because I didn't feel like I had the agency, I didn't feel like I could make the decision to do it for myself. Unsurprisingly, those affirmations didn't do me a whole lot of good. What I did come to understand and what I've shared with you here today is that it wasn't going to be passive. That in order to create what I want, I created what I want. On purpose intentionally, [00:34:00] decisively. That's where I'm gonna leave it with us today. My friend, thank you so, so much for listening. I'll offer you a gentle plug here at the end: if you haven't already watched the Daily 3 masterclass and you are ready to rewire your brain, there's a link in the show notes. I'll talk to you again soon.