High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 360: Embracing the New Better

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

Cindra talks about embracing a “new better” which helps you move forward despite the things in our world that you cannot control. It is easy to live in fear right now given the uncertainty in the world. Today, Cindra talks about what to do when you “amygdala gets hijacked” due to fear and how we can move forward embracing a “new better” instead. One way to embrace a "new better" is to consider what your vision looks like and what is one thing you can do today to reach that vision. As Abraham Lincoln said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it!”     This week’s Power Phrase:  “I embrace the new better. I imagine the future in my mind and then create it.”   

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. And we say good morning to Dr. Cindra Kampoff.

What's up, Doc? What's up, Logan? Thanks for having me today. Oh, thank you for joining us. And glad we could finally get things figured out, you know, better late than later, as we like to say here today. How are things in your life? How's the family?

We're doing excellent. We're having a good week, so happy about that. Very good. And there's no doubt that in the last handful of months there, some things have changed in all lives, everything from day-to-day operations to just kind of ways of thinking. And today we're talking about embracing the new better. So what is that and what inspired the topic for today? Well, I think, Logan, during this time period of COVID, it's really easy to scare yourself. You know, when we had it in our home with my son, my husband and I were talking about how it was so easy to let your mind go to the worst case scenario. You know, you feel like you have symptoms, but you don't. And you can

overthink it and think about it all the time. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's really easy to worry right now. You know, our world is changing. And I'm feeling like I'm seeing a lot of people live in fear. But when we live in fear and we feel the fear, this really lowers our immune system, which we don't want happening right now. No kidding. And what is it important to remember about fear in these kind of uncertain times? I think what's helpful to know is that, you know, fear applies to all of us, but we can't really eliminate the fear, nor should we, because the fear really helps us make good decisions right now, and we're keeping our family safe and ourselves safe.

I think that the helpful thing to remember about fear is that it lives in the future. So what that means is we're thinking about the worst case. We're typically thinking about something in the future. And we want to choose courage over fear to reach our best. And today we're talking about embracing this new better, which really is about choosing courage over fear. So for somebody who, you know, maybe isn't a doctor, doesn't have a PhD, how would you describe what's going on in our brain when this sort of thing happens? Yeah, I love talking about the

slogan. So when we're overcome by fear and kind of the stress response, the way to think about it is that your amygdala gets hijacked. So what does that mean? So your amygdala is this tiny set of neurons in your brain. It's the back of your brain, and it's where your fight or flight or freeze lives. And when you get in the stress response, when you feel the fear, all of your energy rushes back to your amygdala. So sometimes I just use this phrase to help me understand what's happening in my own brain.

But when your energy goes back to your amygdala, what's really important to do is bring it back to the front of your brain where, you know, your prefrontal cortex is kind of, I'm touching my forehead right now. That's where you rationalize everything and when you can think and rationalize through the fear. So I think that's really important right now is to realize that that might happen to you, but get your brain, your energy, and your thoughts back to the front of your brain where you can rationalize what's going on.

So talking about a new better and embracing it, what does a new better mean to you? So a couple weeks ago I had a guy named Jack Canfield on my podcast, and he wrote the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. And we were talking about this idea of embracing a new better. And what it really means is that you get to the front part of your brain, and you choose courage over fear. Like embracing a new better means to me that we realize the world's not going back to what it was, that we're continuing to change and evolve. And instead of wishing that life was the same as it was a year ago, we really take control of our future and create it,

despite all these things that we can't control. And when we do that, we're more likely to thrive, not get stuck in the past, thinking about the way that things were or focus on things we can't control. So for folks listening, how should we consider what our new better is? First, you could do like a vision exercise and knowing that you can't control, you know, how long this is going to last or how it's going to continue to impact the world. But in that vision exercise, think about, you know, what do you want your life to be? Let's say two or three or five years from now now and for sure all of this is over, right?

Just think about what do you want your life to look like and what's one thing that you can do today to move closer to that. And then you could use this phrase, knew better, to help you just embrace that future and you could even use it when you feel like you're stuck in the past irritated or wishing

the world was the way it was a year ago. I love it. So how do we summarize today? I would say that embracing this new better really helps us move forward despite all these things that we can't control in our world. And it's easy to live in fear right now. But remember, you don't want to completely eliminate the fear, but we can choose courage instead. And when your amygdala gets hijacked, bring your energy back to this rational part of your brain and consider what your new vision looks like moving forward. And you know, the best, as Abraham Lincoln said, the best way to predict the future is to create it. I love it. And what's this week's power phrase? I embrace the new better. I imagine the future in my mind and then create it.

Perfect. Dr. Cinder Krampoff, if folks want more information on you, want to check out the podcast, where can we get more info? You can head over to DrCindra.com. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.