The Mindset Mentor - How to Change Your Habits & Patterns

Episode Date: May 1, 2017

Episode 265 -  Your habits and patterns can hold you back, but they can also push you forward if they are the correct habits and patterns. In this episode, I talk about how patterns and habits happen chemically in your brain and how to change them. Want to learn more about Mindset Mentor+? For nearly nine years, the Mindset Mentor Podcast has guided you through life's ups and downs. Now, you can dive even deeper with Mindset Mentor Plus. Turn every podcast lesson into real-world results with detailed worksheets, journaling prompts, and a supportive community of like-minded people. Enjoy monthly live Q&A sessions with me, and all this for less than a dollar a day. If you’re committed to real, lasting change, this is for you.Join here 👉 www.mindsetmentor.com My first book that I’ve ever written is now available. It’s called LEVEL UP and It’s a step-by-step guide to go from where you are now, to where you want to be as fast as possible.📚If you want to order yours today, you can just head over to robdial.com/bookHere are some useful links for you… If you want access to a multitude of life advice, self development tips, and exclusive content daily that will help you improve your life, then you can follow me around the web at these links here:Instagram TikTokFacebookYoutube

Welcome to the MWF Motivation Podcast, one of the top-rated motivational podcasts in the world. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I come out with a short, to-the-point, no-BS podcast designed to transform you from who you are today into who you want to be. There's no fluff here, just life-changing content. My name is Rob Dial, and the podcast starts now. Welcome to today's episode. If you have not yet done so, please subscribe to us, however you listen to us.

Also, I'm going to give you one announcement and one announcement only on Thursday night, which is May 4th, 2017. I'm going to be running a webinar about how to hack your brain to be successful. It is going to be at 8.30 PM Eastern, 5.30 Pacific time. And I'm going to be teaching you guys exactly how to hack your brain. I am obsessed with the human brain, with psychology and all of these things to the neuroscience, like all way down to that level of, uh, of really, really geeky stuff. And, um, the reason why is because I've learned that if I can learn psychology, but I can also learn the way the brain works and I can learn why we hold ourselves back, how we hold ourselves back, and then teach people how to get past that. So I'm going to be teaching that this Thursday night. So if you want to sign up for it, it is

free. Go to mwfmotivation.com slash webinar and sign up before it completely fills up and all of the seats are taken. So mwfmotivation.com slash webinar. All right, let's go ahead and dive in. What I'm going to be talking about today is breaking your patterns. And just so you know, I'm going to talk about a little bit on the geeky side so you can have a little bit of an idea of what I'm going to be talking about on Thursday's webinar. I'm not going to be talking about this specifically, but I want you to understand kind of how your brain works and why it works the way that it does. Okay. Here's what most people do when they live their lives. They do something, they react to something in a certain way, or they act in a

certain way, or they think a certain way, or they have a certain emotion. And they're like, man, I hate that I think that way. I hate that I am that way. I don't like that I think that way, but that's how I am. And a lot of people never really understand they can change it because your life, everything that you do is based on a part of your brain that's called the automatic brain. In the automatic brain, just so you have an idea, is your fast thinking automatic. As soon as something happens, boom, you think of something. As soon as somebody does something, boom, you react. As soon as somebody says something, boom, you get a certain emotion.

You get a certain thought. You get something. That's your automatic brain. Why do we have our automatic brain? We have our automatic brain because of fact number one, your brain is not designed to keep you successful or make you happy. Your brain is designed to do one thing and one thing only. It is designed to keep you alive.

So that being said, and this is why I like to teach how to get past this, is because if you can understand that your brain is only designed to keep you alive, then you can understand that there's certain things that you do, certain patterns that you've created over your life, and you can reverse them if they are not the ones that you like. So what do I mean by a pattern? Let me give you an example. A lot of people like to say, I'm an emotional person. This is just an example, right? Some people out there, let me ask you a question. Are you an emotional person? In your head, out loud, whatever it is, you can answer yes or you can answer no. Are you an emotional person?

Okay. Now that you've got your answer, let's deal with just emotion as something that we're going to talk about. Okay. Here's the deal. If you said yes to that, and this isn't just on emotion, you could be anything. This could, you know, this could be anything besides emotion as well. So if you're not an emotional person, like this doesn't relate to me, it does just in a different sense. You are not an emotional person. Okay. You have just identified yourself with a pattern. Let me, you might be thinking, well, emotions, that's not a pattern. Yes, it is. It is a pattern. Are you ready? We're going to talk about why it is a pattern. Okay. And I understand, listen, I understand there's some people that have crazy amounts of

a certain chemical in their brain and they might have a chemical imbalance. It might be a clinical problem. I'm not talking about clinical problems. What I'm talking about is the average person. We all have a little bit different levels of different things running through our brain and chemicals, but we're pretty close to the same. And so if you're in that range, I'm talking to you. You're not an emotional person. You've just identified with a pattern. Let me explain it to you. Okay. And I'm going to ask you a question by explaining this.

Okay. Have you ever seen one of your friends? And this seems unrelated, but it's related. Have you ever seen one of your friends? They post a picture of their baby on Facebook and you look at that baby and you're like, what is that? Like that is the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life. And you're like, that kid looks like a lizard. And the mom keeps posting pictures

of, and she's like, isn't my baby beautiful? He's the most beautiful thing in the world. And you're like, not really Nancy. She's not good looking, but you don't say anything. So let me tell you why she thinks that way, because there is a chemical that is released in a woman's brain that is called oxytocin. Oxytocin is also known as the chemical, the cuddle chemical. And it is a chemical that is released in the mother's brain when the baby is born, going through birth, all those things. And it is the chemical that makes the woman fall in love with their child. This is why it is easier for a man to leave a child than it is for a woman to leave a child because there is that chemical connection.

And that chemical connection will stay at higher levels for quite some time, years sometimes. And so what happens is this, as a child, you can do whatever the hell you want, to be honest with you. You can break stuff, you can poop on the floor, you can pee all over the place. And most of the time your parents are going to go through and they're going to clean up and they're going to do anything to be done. And they're going to let it go for a couple of years, especially your mother. Your mother is going to let it go for a couple of years. And the reason why is because she has that oxytocin running through her brain where she loves you so much that she couldn't possibly imagine yelling at you for something that you're just learning, right? You don't know how society

works. Your little tiny brain is just that way. And once again, I'm going to tie it back to how you're an emotional person in just a second. Now, what happens is this. Eventually, the cuddle chemical, the chemical that makes your mother love you so much, you know, it's not that she doesn't love you. It's just this chemical that makes her love you way more and make you get away with all of the things finally runs out at some point in time. And that's when you might do something that you had done the day before. The exact same thing, poop on the floor, break something, whatever it is. And instead of getting the reaction of, oh, no, no, honey, that's not it. Your mom might snap.

And not in a bad way, but it's just, it's a different reaction than what you're used to because that chemical is different in her brain now. That chemical balance is now different in her brain. And the only thing that a child loves or wants is love from their parents. And so if your mom snaps on you, what you think in your head is, holy crap, your little kid brain, your two-year-old brain is holy crap. My mother doesn't love me. And immediately what happens? You start crying. You get flooded with emotion. And what happens? Your mom immediately snaps out of that of like, holy crap, what did I just do? She picks you up. She cuddles you. She's like, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I love you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's the thing, your brain, we are so smarted. Even this age that your brain makes a connection says, hold on. If I cry, if I become emotional, I get what I

want. Right. And I'm going to ask you this question, answer yes or no in your head or out loud. Do you know children that cry when they're not hurt or they cry and they, you know, they just fake cry? Do you know, have you ever seen a child do that? Now, do you think that's a natural thing? No. What is it? It is a learned pattern. So a child can learn when I'm emotional, I get what I want.

That is a pattern that is created from an early age. And some people never get rid of that pattern. So if you're a quote unquote emotional pattern, that is a learned behavior. That is a learned behavior. You're not an emotional person. You've just identified yourself with that pattern. It's crazy, isn't it? Right? So this is why you should never ever in your entire life, say the words I am and have it be followed by a word or a sentence that is not empowering. Don't you ever say I'm emotional. Don't you ever say I am not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not pretty enough. Any of those things, because your brain automatically stores that as true. You are not that. If you say I am,

the next freaking words or sentence out of your mouth better be something powerful and empowering that's going to make you feel better about yourself. Something that you can store in your subconscious as true, that's empowering. So you are not an emotional person. You have just identified yourself with a pattern. Once again, we're going to talk about patterns on this episode. So let's talk about patterns. You're not an emotional person. You're also not a lazy person, right? If someone else, oh, I'm a procrastinator. No, you're not. Oh, I'm a lazy person. No, you're not. That's just a pattern. When things get hard, what do you do? You shut off. When things get tough,

when you have a lot of work, what do you do? You sit down and get lazy. You procrastinate. Why? Because that's what the pattern that you've learned to continue doing over time. You are not those patterns. You can break any pattern, any thought process, any emotional process at any point in time that you want to. Now, let me explain how this works chemically in your brain again. Okay. If you look at any, you know, you look at any cord that's plugged into a wall. If you notice, all of the cords have rubber on the outside of them, right? What is on the inside of them is most of the time a copper wire, right? Why is this rubber on the outside of a copper wire? Because it is able to keep the electronic transmission. It's able to travel faster and more efficiently if there's rubber on the outside, right?

What does this have to do with your brain? There's a thing called myelin. If you want to Google it, M-Y-E-L-I-N. Myelin builds up inside of your brain. And what happens is this. If you think of the rubber wire, the myelin is the equivalent of the rubber on the outside of the wire. The copper on the inside is a neurotransmitter. The actual things that are firing inside of your brain, the patterns that are created, right? Another thing that you can think of with muscle memory is like myelin,

where it's like, if you don't know how to play something, you can develop myelin over time and it becomes muscle memory. Patterns are muscle memory. That's all that it really is. So why does this myelin, how does this myelin build up? First of all, myelin builds up from doing something over and over and over and over and over and over again, a pattern. Myelin builds up when there is a pattern. Why? Because your brain wants this to become an automatic thing so it doesn't have to think. Anything that you do often, your brain wants to make automatic. It wants to store it in that automatic part of your brain. Why? Because the most energy consuming thing, energy consuming organ that you have in your body is your brain, right? It only consumes about, it's only about 2% of your body

weight, but it consumes anywhere between 20 to 30% of your energy on a daily basis. So your brain wants to store things as patterns. It wants to store them in your automatic brain. This is why you can drive home and you get home and you're like, how the hell did I just get home? Well, the reason why is because of the fact of the myelin that's built up. It is a automatic thing. Your brain wants to go on autopilot to conserve energy. And so what happens is you develop patterns and habits and myelin will build up on the outside of your neurotransmitter so that neurons can travel faster and more efficiently and you don't have to think about it. If I'm geeking out on you, this is not how crazy the webinar is going to be. But just so you guys know, this is kind of the in-depth of the way I learn about the

brain so that I can help people hack it. So myelin builds up on the brain, right? On the neurotransmitters so that neurons can fire quicker. So if you look at, once again, the rubber that's on the outside of a copper wire, the rubber is on the outside of the copper wire. The rubber is on the outside of the copper wire so that the electricity can travel more efficiently from one place to another, and it doesn't lose any of the electricity that goes through it. Your brain has myelin that builds up on the outside of the neurotransmitter. The more that you do something, the more myelin builds

up on it. Why? So that your neurotransmitter can fire neurons from one place to another more efficiently. So you develop patterns and habits. So what do you need to do in order to break your patterns? Number one, don't identify yourself with a pattern. You're not an emotional person. You're not a lazy person. You're none of those things. You're identifying yourself with a pattern or a habit. You are not that. If you were that, then you would never be able to break it, but you can. That's the best part about patterns and habits You can break them anytime that you want to so That being said myelin builds up on the outside of it

The easiest way to think of this is this your if your pattern is you're emotional or you're lazy Or you know, whenever somebody cuts in front of you on the road you freak out whatever the heck it is That is just a well-worn path in your brain. If you look at a forest and you see a well-worn path, and that's the only thing that you see, there's a whole bunch of, you know, just bushes, everything everywhere, but there's one well-worn path. That's how your brain works. It's easier as a person to walk through the well-worn path, isn't it? Of course it is. Why is it there? Because of the fact that it's been traveled down so many times. So many different people have traveled down that path that it's become a well-worn path.

That's how your brain works. It fires down that way and that's how it works. Now, are you able to walk down a different path and create your own path, a new path? Yes, you can. Is it harder? Yes. Is it worth it? Possibly. Depends on where you're trying to go. So your brain is the exact same way where you're so used to these patterns of, for instance, emotional, going straight down this emotional pattern, right? But if you start noticing yourself walking down the well-worn path, you can then change your mind immediately

and go a different way. You can change your mind immediately and go a different way. And that's what you have to do. You have to become extremely self-aware and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do I want to be emotional? No. Do I want to yell at people when they cut me off on the side of the road? No. Whatever it might be. I don't want that emotion. So I'm going to take myself out of my body and say, I'm going to do something different. If you start getting emotional, if somebody says something to you and you would normally react to it, you can stop yourself in the moment and go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Why am I being emotional? How can I stop this? That myelin is built up. That

automatic brain wants to fire, you know, that one place to becoming emotional because I think I'm going to get what I want, even though you probably don't get what you want now as a grownup. So what happens is this, you start to notice your patterns and you start to know that you can break your patterns and you start to create the patterns that you want. So what I would do if I were you is take a pen and paper out and say, what are the patterns that I know? What are my habits? Good habits, bad habits, all of those things.

What are all of my habits that I can think of? Right? Write them all down on a piece of paper. Which habits do I like that are good? Circle them. Which habits do I like? I'm sorry. Which habits do I have that I hate? And you find those ones and you put an arrow next to them and say, what would I prefer this to be? Okay. If I'm an emotional person, if I normally would cry when somebody screams at me, how can I change that emotion to something else? Calm. Instead of crying, how can I make it calm? And so next time you automatically know these patterns and habits.

So that next time somebody yells at you and you start to get that flood of emotion, you start to feel yourself cry. You take a deep breath and you say, no, no, no, no, no. I almost went down that well-worn path. I'm going to go down this other one. I'm going to continue down this path that I'm going to create and make myself calm when I normally would be extremely emotional. If I noticed that something gets hard and I normally get lazy or procrastinate and I start to feel myself go down that path of, oh my God, I've got so much crap going on that I'm just consumed. And I've just, I just fall over and I just can't, I can't do anything. I'm so paralyzed because I have so much ish that's good. So much

crap that's just going on. And I know that normally I would become paralyzed. That's, I could feel myself going down that well-worn path in the forest. I take a breath and I go, what's first out of all of these things that I have to get done? What do I need to do right now? And you develop a new pattern. You develop a new habit. So don't ever say the words I am, unless they are powerful, unless they are something that you can identify yourself with. So that's what I have for you guys today is to figure out your patterns, your habits, and start to change them. This gives you a little bit of an example of how geeky I am

and how much I actually learn about the brain and how to change the brain. And this is an example of something, you know, I'm not going to talk about this, probably not in the webinar, but this is an example of the webinar that I have, how in-depth I'm going to go in talking about your brain and how to actually change your brain to make yourself successful. If you can figure out how your brain works, if I can teach it to you, and we know how it works, we know why you do certain things, then we can go, oh, now I understand why I do those.

Now I can change it. And that's how you hack your brain to become successful. And that's what I'm going to be talking about though on the webinar. So once again, if you want to join the webinar, mwfmotivation.com slash webinar, that is where you can sign up for it. It is free up until it hits the maximum amount of people allowed. So if you want to be joining in, please do so. Do it quick before it ends up going completely full and it is free. Once again, it's at 8.30 on this Thursday, May 5th, 8.30 PM Eastern. And it will be a live webinar. So I can answer all of your questions that you have after that. So with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission, make somebody else's day better.

I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day. See ya. Well, that's it for today's podcast. If you want the show notes for this episode, they can be found at mwfmotivation.com. Also, if you liked this episode, please spread the love and share it with a friend because it's our mission to help as many people as we can. And to keep in touch, you can follow us on Instagram and Facebook. Both handles are at MWFMotivation with no spaces. Now you know what time it is. So go out and make your dreams a reality. Outro Music