Change Your Brain Every Day - Is It Possible To Stop Your Brain Before You Self-Sabotage?

Episode Date: February 1, 2018

Can’t seem to get out of your own way? You’re not alone. Fortunately, there’s something you can do about it. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen describe the hallmarks of those that suffer from self-sabotage. Learn what the causes are for self-defeating behavior, as well as methods to change this behavior to become your own best advocate instead of your own worst enemy.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. Today, we're going to talk about self-sabotage. So I recently did a live chat on Facebook and I didn't realize what a nerve it was going to touch. So, you know, we've been doing some coaching. We've sort of adopted a family this year and, um, it's been, it's been, let's just say it's been a process. It's been a process. And, um, so anyways,

there's been some things going on and I, the question keeps coming up for me, why do people do things they know are gonna sabotage their success? And we know several people in our lives, and I certainly know a bunch of people that I'm like, you look at yourself and you're like, why? Why do they do that when they know it's not going to be a good outcome?

So, and I didn't realize what a nerve it was going to touch. I mean, I got a bunch of people writing into me in my private inbox and wanting to have someone from the clinics call them, not understanding why they do the things they do. They don't want to do them, but they do them. Very negative behaviors. So let's talk a little bit about that because I think people are suffering. You know, I just finished my 46 book and people go, how'd you do that? And I went, I'm old and I'm consistent. You're consistent for sure.

My first book was in 1982, Secrets of Successful Students. 100,000 copies it sold last year in Mexico. My second book in 1986 was called The Sabotage Factor, How to Get Out of Your Own Way. What are the things people do that mess up their lives? So I've been thinking about this for a long time. And is there a why in there? There's a why the brain hates change. So you want to be very careful of the habits you allow in your life because the more you allow in your life, because the more you allow in your life,

the more they become part of your life. And what about things like head injuries? What role do some of these things play? Because I mean, that's what we do here, right? Well, it's funny. In 1986, I had no idea that the brain played a huge role in it. And in it, I talked about if you have undiagnosed ADD

or depression or bipolar disorder, you've got to get those things treated. But what we've learned at Amen Clinics over a long period of time is if you've had a head injury, if you have mold exposure, if you have... Lyme disease. I had one woman recently, her brain showed really low activity. She had open heart surgery when she was a baby. Common, common. When she was a baby, which then led to learning disabilities because she had lower overall blood flow to the brain. So the first hallmark of self-defeating behavior

is having a brain that doesn't work right. And if you never look, you never know. And that's why the imaging work here is so important. The second hallmark of self-defeating behavior is you blame other people for how your life is turning out. Being a victim. Yeah, because whenever you're a victim, it's my wife's fault. It's my boss's fault. It's my child's fault. It's Trump's fault. It's, uh, you can't change anything. You become powerful. You just opened a whole can of worms.

Well, no. I mean, you know, whatever your political thing, I mean, you know, this thing that happened in Hawaii that we talked about, right? Celebrities are tweeting, it's because Trump provided this toxic environment. It's like, no, probably the guy didn't sleep. Then make the mistake. But whenever you blame someone else for the problems in your life, you become a victim. And victims can't win. And you can't change anything because it's not your fault.

And I love what you say. We say it all the time that taking responsibility doesn't mean it's your fault it means your ability to respond to this situation and so so brain and blame and then not being effective not having a plan so if we think about the person that we helped, some really simple things that she didn't know how to do. Yeah, it's interesting. They seem simple to us, but to someone who doesn't know or has no exposure to doing any of this stuff,

would have never, like she would have never really sort of gotten it on her own. So getting help, I think, is really important if you're struggling at that level. So having a plan, it's effective. So vetting the plan with other people who've actually done what you want to do. Yeah, I think having a mentor and a role model, huge, huge for success. Who you hang out with is really important. Tony Robbins has a saying that I love. I adopted it when I was in my early 20s when I was struggling.

Success leaves clues. And so if you find successful people that you want to accomplish some of the things they've done or you want to be like them, success leaves clues. Watch what they do. Right? And then you want to have the expectation that you're going to be able to do it. Because if you think you're going to fail, you won't actually engage in the behaviors. So much so that the Olympics uses visualization techniques.

Visualization of success is really... In fact they say they're not allowed to visualize any mistakes because practice you can't do 100% perfectly, visualization you can't do 100 perfectly visualization you can do 100 perfectly so when they're visualizing when they have coaches that are doing the visualization with them if they make a mistake they make them rewind it like a tape going backwards until they get it perfect and they want to go slow initially to do that so they really understand the steps. People who sabotage them repeat their mistakes. And they never study their mistakes.

We know you're gonna make mistakes, we make mistakes all the time. But successful people think about their mistakes. They study their mistakes. Like basketball players. I was gonna use football, but I'm like, no, let's not use football. They watch film.

Right. And they go. Over and over and over. This is why we lost the game. And so they think about it. They don't just deny it and hope it will be better going forward. Right.

So learning from mistakes is so important. People that self-sabotage, they're rigid, they're inflexible. My way or the highway, the brain hates change and they hate change. So they're reinforcing. They're going to keep doing the same thing even if it's wrong. Right. They have trouble making decisions or they make impulsive decisions. And what we learned is if you don't sleep enough,

you're more likely to say that nasty thing to your spouse that you shouldn't have said. You're more likely to eat something you really didn't want to eat. You're also more likely to get in a car accident. You're more likely to get in a car accident. You're more likely to get into a car accident, communication problems, being insensitive to others, having the ants, and then important things like you don't have the energy to do it because your thyroid's not right.

So hormones can play a big role, your blood work. Really important to have those things checked. You can't change what you don't measure you can't change what you don't measure can't change what you don't know and then persistence is so important it's so many people you know I mean I have ten bestsellers and I think my first book was rejected about 30 times right it's one of the things I love about martial arts is it requires persistence and And so you don't want to go so far as to be a stalker because stalkers are persistent. Really?

Okay. Right. So not all persistence is good. Let's focus. Sometimes it's okay to give up. It's like, okay, this isn't going in the right. Let's go back to martial arts. Okay.

That kind of persistence is really good. It requires a tremendous amount of focus and it requires being okay doing it wrong repeatedly until you fix it and get it right. But you have to have a teacher because if you just keep doing it wrong, what happens is the brain learns how to do it wrong and will make it harder to do it right. That's a really good point. So early on, see, you had really good coaches. And so when you didn't do it right.

And so good, they're not afraid to tell you, do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. Like, do it right. Do it again right. Right. Do it again right.

Because there's this thing in the brain called long-term potentiation and the more you practice something the more so initially the brain makes sort of a soft connection when you learn something new uh i'm learning the piano i'm having so much fun at it learned how to play don't worry be happy and i had to like do it over and over and over again. That so fits you. And if I keep practicing it wrong, then my brain will automatically be doing what's wrong. I need to practice perfectly in order to make those perfect connections in my brain. So in the book, The Talent Code, it's a really good book. In the book, The Talent Code, they talk about that.

So you have to go back and slow down to the book, The Talent Code, it's a really good book. In the book, The Talent Code, they talk about that. So you have to go back and slow down to the point. Do it so slow in slow motion until you get it right. But they make a big point that the best people in their fields, whether it's the violin, dance, whatever it is, martial arts, sports, the people who are the best, they actually studied this. They're not afraid to look foolish or stupid or make mistakes in the beginning. And they're not afraid to go back and slow it down and look silly doing it to get it right. So that was the one of the big differences between them and people who were mediocre because they didn't want to do

that they didn't want to look funny they didn't want to look silly so being willing to do that being willing to go all right i'm willing to let it be worse before it gets better in order to be great so step number one take care of your brain optimize your brain and then it has to be programmed right with the right information and strategies and if you've self-sabotaged a lot welcome to normal now is a good time to try a different way and get help if you need help if you really suspect you've like if you've had a head injury or you suspect there's something going on chemically or you've got an imbalance this is the time to get help if you see the pattern that you've been doing the same thing and you just can't seem to get out of your own way, you might need some help. So stay with us.

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