Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 189 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast.
Thanks for being here.
We are each working to be the best we can be right? No-one wakes up and says I’m going to be a horrible human today, not many anyway. But the human condition is such that we are imperfect and so there are times when maybe we aren’t proud of something we said or we aren’t proud of something we did or didn’t do, or the way we handled a situation. And then we seem to go into this self critical spin in our heads of what an awful person we are and how we will never change and on and on and on.
But you aren’t an awful person. You’re a normal person. Unless you’re Eckart Tolle you probably have more negative thoughts then you care to admit and those negative thoughts affect you deeply.
Our brain and our thoughts affect every situation we come into. Everyone. The way we think about it is the way it’s going to turn out.
Think about a time you met someone and initially you weren’t sure if you would jive with them and then you find out they like the same thing you like or they are part of the same group you’re a part of and boom.. instant connection and an instant shift in the way you see them. It’s happened to me enough that now when I catch myself with an initial judgment before I know anything about someone I kind of chuckle because they’ll probably end up being one of my favorite people. I’ve seen it happen. Our mind is the most powerful tool we have. It can make us do things that will blow our own minds, and it will also make us want to just hang out in our pajamas all day and hide in our cave.
When you realize this and you know that so much of your success, or lack of success, so much of your happiness or lack of happiness starts in your mind. You can start using little hacks to make yourself better.
I’ll give you a couple I use. So, I prefer to do my cardio exercises outside. It’s so much easier for me but that’s not always practical. Sometimes it’s raining. Sometimes it’s 10 degrees so I opt to do my cardio in the gym. Because I dislike being cold or wet even more than I dislike doing cardio in the gym. But I’ve noticed that the more I tell myself I feel like a mouse on a wheel running aimlessly on the treadmill the less I feel like continuing. So I asked myself. What could make you enjoy this more, what could make you finish the 12 minute cardio warm-up without stopping early? So one day I’m on the rower and I’m having thoughts about how this 12 minutes is feeling like 12 hours and literally only 2 minutes had passed…My mind was like there’s no way you’re gonna go all 12 minutes on this rower. and then I thought to myself wait…what if I was really rowing on a river? Would I stop mid way?? Of course not, that’s silly. I would have to swim back with my kayak which would be way harder. So I told myself the 12 minutes of rowing is the time it takes to get to the other side of the river where my car is and so I was determined to get there and it worked! And the guy on the rower beside me? That’s my teammate and we are working together to get to the other side. Same thing on the treadmill. The 12 minutes is what it takes for me to get back to my house just as if I were outside. No way am I quitting!!!! I would have to call someone to come pick me up so I keep going until the 12 minutes is up because that’s what it takes to get to the finish line.
You see, we do things differently based on what our mind tells us about the situation.
And remember we are imperfect humans so we have to learn our way around situations.
Another mind hack I use is when I see someone out, a perfect stranger and I feel the initial judgment coming up, maybe based on appearance or whatever. Because we do that right? We tend to judge fairly quickly. And sometimes we are hard on people. So when I notice myself starting up with a negative judgment about someone I don’t know…I ask myself what could I appreciate about that person? And then I’ll run through a couple scenarios of things that could make me feel that. Maybe they’re a single mother that’s making a special dinner for her family tonight, or a father working hard to put food on the table or a son that’s taking flowers to his elderly mom. None of these do I have any idea about but they’re just as possible as that negative thought I felt coming because I don’t have any idea what this person is living, what their circumstances are so why not train my mind to be kind instead of judgemental. You may still feel that judgment coming on but let that be the trigger to ask yourself what you could appreciate about them. It changes my mindset to notice when I’m being judged and turn it into something positive about them. I talk a lot about momentum and this is a really good way to get the momentum flowing in a direction that will serve you the rest of the day.
These are just a couple examples of how when I change the way I look at things the things I look at change…that awesome quote from the late Wayne Dyer
My challenge to you today is to notice when you’re struggling with a thing whatever it is…ask yourself how you can change the way you’re looking at it to flip it on its head. And this is a challenge where you don’t change the thing…you change the way you’re looking at the thing. Give it a try…Maybe ask yourself…How can I look at this in a way that serves me? And then watch your brain find the answer!
I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
