Emonthebrain - 10 Mindset Upgrades to Instantly Level Up Your Life

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

Em shares ten tiny neuroscience backed upgrades to the way she thinks and operates that have had a massive impact on her reality and shows you exactly how to apply each one today. Pre-order my book MindCraft HERE!: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/MindCraft/Emily-McDonald/9781668219065?utm_source=author_site&utm_medium=author_social&utm_campaign=mindcraft&utm_content= I’m hosting a free MASTERCLASS on the Neuroscience of manifestation and reprogramming your subconscious mind!! Sign up here to save your spot: https://learn.emonthebrain.com/masterclass Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emonthebrain?igsh=aG1wNDY0OXZ1c3pi  I'm Going on Tour! Here's the link to RSVP for your city! https://laylo.com/emonthebrain/m/2jAoUd?utm_id=97760_v0_s00_e0_tv3

These are 10 tiny upgrades that I have made to the way that I think and operate that have had huge impacts on my reality, that you're going to be able to steal right now today, apply them and see ships immediately. So let me know which one you are going to be applying in the comments and let's dive straight into it. But before we do, if you're new here, hi, I'm Emily. I'm also known as I'm on the brain. I'm a neuroscientist by training. I've got two degrees in neuroscience as well as many years of research experience in the lab. And I am now a coach to people in over 55 countries all over the world, helping them to rewire their brain, level up, and live their best life. And that is exactly what I'm here to help you do. Number one is to treat your reality

like a lagging indicator. Your current reality is old news. I heard a quote once that said, your current reality is a mirror image of who you have been over the past 90 days. And that is completely true. I want you to think of your reality the same way as you think of results in the gym. When you go to the gym, yeah, sure, you might look in the mirror afterward and see a little pump right away, but you know deep down that the results really happen over time. And if you stick to it, if you say consistent in 30 days, 60 days, you look in the mirror and you will see a different version of you. You will see a different reflection. And your reality works the exact same way.

So you really can't use today's results, what you are seeing today, to judge your current actions, right? Like you have to look at how you've been showing up over the past 90 days to really be able to judge whether or not your actions are working, whether or not you should change courts. So don't beat yourself up and don't get down if you're not seeing results or if you're not seeing changes in your reality immediately. Your reality is a lagging indicator. So treat it like one. Be patient.

Keep showing up. Be consistent. and you will see changes. Upgrade number two is a fun one that I use all the time, honestly, and if you are somebody who feels like you give everybody else great advice, but when it comes to you, you struggle to take your own advice or even come up with what the solution or answer is, this one is for you.

And it is to give yourself advice the same way you would somebody else. And I'm going to tell you how to do this in practice. Let's say you are stressed about something. Something's not going your way. It's not working out. What you should do is imagine a friend, your best friend, somebody that you love unconditionally, maybe a family member, comes to you with the same exact problem. Maybe you want to change a few of the details to make it apply to their life and not yours,

whatever you want to do. But imagine somebody that you unconditionally love comes to you. With a similar problem that you have, what would you say to them? I do this all the time. When I am down and out about something, I literally will imagine my best friend coming to me and talking about a problem that she has with her Western blots, which this is something that you do in a science experiment in a lab and I have friends that are scientists, but I would imagine that she comes to me and explains a problem that she has in the lab and, you know, the details are

very similar. Like she's been trying it this way, maybe blah, blah, blah. Anyway, what would I say to her in that moment? And oftentimes what you would say to that person in that moment is exactly the thing that you need to hear yourself. So when in doubt, pretend that somebody that you love has the same problem as you and give them advice. Tiny upgrade number three. When dealing with fear, take it all the way to the end. I've had clients that I coach come to me and explain that they're feeling anxious or afraid about some certain outcome. And I don't tell them to not be afraid or feel the fear and do it anyway. No, I tell them to take the fear all the way to the end. What does that mean? It means, okay, what if the worst thing does happen? What if the thing that you are afraid of does happen? What if

it is true? Imagine it play all the way out, all the way to the end, and then make peace without outcome. What if you do fail? What if you do embarrass yourself? What if you do get rejected? What if you do get rejected? What if you do get rejected? Then what? What's the story? And what this really does is it helps you to identify this story that's really behind the fear? Take it all the way to the end. What is the story that you're telling yourself? What happens then? What happens if you do fail? Okay, then what? And if you can take it all the way to the end and make peace with it and understand that you know what? Like even in that situation, I will be okay. It's a game changer for you. It allows you to move straight into the fear. You sort of do become a little bit fearless because that fear that you

have, it no longer holds power over you. Tiny upgrade number four is to ask the question, how can I make this more fun? How can I make the tasks of today more fun? This is actually something that I have on an alarm that goes off every morning. If you can make the work that you have to do more fun, your brain will actually motivate you to do it. Ask yourself this question and you will find yourself enjoying the things that you need to do and maybe even looking forward to them. And this is a huge productivity hack that I like to use as well. A lot of the time, our brains sort of hold us back from doing the tasks that we need to do or doing the chores or the errands or whatever it is, maybe the work, the cleaning, whatever it is, because it's dreading the effort it's going to have to put in.

The brain motivates us kind of on this sort of analysis of cost versus reward, right? Like effort. versus reward. And if you can make the reward bigger by making the task more fun, then the effort doesn't seem so bad. Now you've hacked your brain to motivate you to do the things that you didn't want to do before. Tiny upgrade number five is a good one. And it is to stop making your failures mean something about you. I see so many people that I work with, so many people that I coach, they do this. They will have a failure or get rejected or or not the thing that they want doesn't go their way, whatever it is. And they make it mean something about them.

They write a story about themselves that isn't productive or helpful for them, for their self-image, for their identity, or for their ability to achieve their goals. I'll give you an example. There are really two sort of identities that you can hold. There is an identity of, I'm a successful person, therefore I cannot fail. And there's the identity of, I'm a successful person because I'm willing to fail. because failure can't hold me back. Which identity do you think is more stable, more secure?

Definitely the second one. And I like to make the analogy here of sort of like guilt versus shame. I find a lot of the people, a lot of my clients and students that I coach, find this really helpful. So hopefully you do too. Let's say you walk into a bar and you spill a drink on somebody. Your immediate reaction could be, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I'm such a klutz.

I can't believe I always do this. I am such a mess. God, I suck. Why do I always do this? I should never just go. I should never even go into bars anymore. I should not go to restaurants. I can't even be around people. Gosh. Or your immediate reaction could be, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. Can I pay for your dry cleaning? Can I replace this item for you if I ruined it? You know? And again, what is the difference here?

The difference is the first reaction was making it about you. Okay, yeah, you spilled the drink. And now you're making it a story about who you are. And the second reaction was making it about the situation. period, point blank. And you can apply this to all sorts of situations in life. Like when you mess up, when you fail, when you get rejected, when you don't get the thing that you want, you can make it about you. You can make it about your abilities. You can make it about, oh, I guess I'm never going to succeed. Or you can just make it a learning lesson, make it an experience that you had, an experiment that you run, collect the data and move on. And that is the mindset that will allow you to grow and move beyond your failures. When you start beating yourself up for getting it wrong, if you start

beating yourself up for failing or being rejected, you are only going to be draining your own energy. Like, okay, yes, being critical of yourself can be good. Analyzing yourself can be good. But as soon as it moves from criticizing yourself to get better over to criticizing yourself to the point where it's draining your energy, that's where it needs to stop. So stop making failure need something about you. Number six is to optimize your environment before you try to optimize your willpower. Look, you can play the game of life on hard mode. You can swim upstream and row that boat against the most friction ever. Or you can do what you can to make the stream flow in your favor.

If you are trying to break the habit of scrolling on social media all the time, don't you think it would be easier if you deleted social media? If you are trying to get up earlier in the morning, maybe you can set a certain type of alarm or get a certain alarm clock and put it on the other side of the room so you have to get up and get out of bed and turn it off. If you are trying to achieve a new dream in life, maybe surrounding yourself with people that have growth mindsets and support your dreams can be a game changer or at least removing the doubters and the haters from your immediate surroundings. If you are trying to be more organized and productive, remove the distractions, keep your phone in a different room, put it behind you. This is something that I do all the time, especially with productivity. They've actually shown in research studies that just having your phone within your field of view lowers your cognitive capacity because it takes up space in your working

memory because your brain is like subconsciously paying attention to it in case a notification or alarm. It's true. Even if it's face down, they've shown that this has an impact. So, optimize your environment first. Sometimes it's not you. Sometimes you're not the problem. It's just that your environment isn't setting you up for success and you're playing the game on hard mode when you don't have to. Number seven is a great one and it will completely change the game for you in situations where maybe you haven't been doing this before. But it is the rule. Don't react, regulate. If you are facing a challenge, if you are having a disagreement with someone, if you feel anxious or scared or stressed, do not react in that moment. Don't try to make a decision if you are anxious, stressed,

scared. They have actually shown in studies that your intuition is less accurate when your nervous system is dysregulated. You can't even trust the gut feeling if you're not regulated. So don't force a decision if you aren't in the place to do that. I have had students that I coach, I love stories like this. They'll tell me that they were needing to get this work done, needing to, you know, complete these tasks and they were creative tasks in a few cases. And they said to me, and rather than force productivity, force and push, they paused and took the five, 15 minutes and took the five, 10, 15 minutes to regulate their nervous systems, to relax, to calm themselves, to get back into center, to get their energy right first. And then they

took action from that place. And from that place, the action that you take will be so much more aligned, so much more powerful. I mean, they have also shown in studies that the same action taken with different energy gets you different results. So get your energy right first. Don't react, regulate, and then act. Because when you regulate first, you can act as the version of you that you are trying to become. You can act as a version of you that is living in your highest timeline. the highest version of you, right? Like, you can make choices as a version of you who has it all. But I'm sure you've noticed in your personal experience that when you are stressed or overwhelmed, the actions that you take are not always the smartest or the most aligned or the most efficient.

So regulate first and then take action as the best version of you. And that doesn't mean that you have to wait days to regulate yourself. No, like this can look like just a few moments. In the past, I've done this. In the midst of a heated conversation, if you ever find yourself in one, you pause. And you just take a deep breath and you sit back. And rather than reacting, you regulate in that moment. And then you are able to act as the best version of you. Tiny upgrade number eight is to reward your failures. This is completely the opposite of what we tend to do our entire lives. When we achieve something, when we accomplish a goal or whatever it is, we celebrate. ourselves, but our reality is already rewarding ourselves. So we kind of get double the reward from celebrating and feeling accomplished, but then also our reality itself, the achievement itself was rewarding. So we get double the reward, double the dopamine from achieving something or accomplishing something. But when we fail, when we get rejected, we beat ourselves up. And this teaches our brains to avoid failure. And there is nothing worse for success than to have a brain that is trying to hide

and avoid failure because science shows that the best way to increase your success rate is to increase your failure rate. So start rewarding your failures. Make a failure quota. I'm going to fail 10 times this month. I'm going to make it a goal to fail 10 times. Now, what might happen when you make it a goal to fail 10 times, you might end up succeeding on some of those attempts. And what you're really doing is training your brain to try, to show up, to put an effort. And now the attempt itself, becomes rewarding because you are rewarding. So don't just make it a goal to fail, right? Reward yourself when you do. I remember when I first discovered this sort of mindset shift or brain hack, and I started to do it. And then a failure happened when I was doing something outside of my comfort zone and I kind of forgot for a

moment. And then I was like, oh, wait, I can't beat myself up for this failure. This is good. This means I'm on the path. This means I'm leveling up. So I need to reward it. I need to celebrate it. Like I did something good actually. And this trains your brain to get more comfortable with doing things that are outside of your comfort zone. So reward the attempts and not just when you succeed. Tiny upgrade number nine is to make decisions as the best version of you, not necessarily as the current version of you. And I'll tell you how I apply this in real time. There was a time once where I was setting on a plane and I was trying to actually come up with content for the next week or whatever it was. And I was just feeling stuck. I was like, I just don't feel inspired or motivated to do this right now. I paused.

And I asked myself in that moment, what would my best self do? And the answer was pretty simple. It came to me immediately. She would meditate right now because that's how she connects and connects back to her intuition and gets inspired. And so that's what I did. I meditated. And all of a sudden, the creative ideas started just flowing in. And immediately I was inspired and wrote a whole bunch of great things and produce some great content. I again have had students and clients that I work with use this to level up in so many different areas of their realities. So whenever you are feeling unsure, if you ever feeling stuck, if you're feeling unmotivated, I've been sitting on my couch before, not feeling super motivated to film the long form episode or whatever it is. And I'll ask myself,

what my best I'll do right now? What would the version of me who has it all do right now? And that's what you should do. And again, it helps to do that and it helps to have clarity about who that version of you is first. So get very clear on who the version of you, who has it all is. That way, in moments when you're feeling unsure, unmotivated, unclear, you can ask that question and you already know because you know who that version of you is. And that leads us perfectly into tiny upgrade number 10, which is to live as the version of you who has it all now. There is no better way to shift your energy and step into alignment with the life and reality that you want than to live as the version of you who is living in that reality.

Make decisions as that version of them. Act as that version of them. Feel like that version of them. Dress like that version of them. Walk like that version of them. What is their energy like? What is their mindset like? what are their habits like and live like that version of you now and watch how quickly your reality

begins to shift and honestly this ties really well into number one which is that reality is a lagging indicator and i do just want to say there have been times where i have shifted my energy in a moment and seen evidence of that shift the same day i i worked with people also that shift their energy, they step into the highest version of themselves and the biggest weeks of their business in the year. Opportunities flowing to them, deals flowing to them, making more money in one week than they had made or one deal than they had made in months prior. So yes, reality is a lagging indicator and we shouldn't judge ourselves today based on the reality that we currently see, but also shifting your identity and stepping into the energy of the version of you who has it all

can shift things very quickly, especially when you continue to show up as them and you make it a consistent act and you are disciplined about doing that, it really is a game changer. And you will see when you do it. If you want to learn more about the neuroscience and manifestation, you want to dive deep into the neuroscience of the subconscious mind and learn exactly how to reprogram all of the different parts of your nervous system that make up your subconscious mind so that you can actually shift the reality that you experience, then check the link in the description below because you can sign up and save your seat for my live free masterclass where I teach you how to

do exactly that. I am also going to be going on tour and we are currently collecting RSDPs. So make sure to click the link if you are wanting to come see me live in person on tour to RSDP for your city because that's how we're deciding which cities to come to when I go on tour. I'm sending you so much love. I believe in you. I'm rooting for you. You got this. Let me know in the comments which upgrade you are going to be making. And I will see you very soon. Bye.