The Mindset Mentor - How to Rewire Your Negative Thoughts

Episode Date: November 25, 2021

It is time to get rid of the negative thoughts in your head! In this episode, I'm going to teach you how to find the positive in every negative situation and how to create positivity in your life. 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 today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you've ever gotten any piece of value from this podcast, please do me a favor. Please go into iTunes or Apple Podcasts and give us a rating and review. Reason why is because the more positive rating and reviews that come in, the more iTunes and Apple go, hey, we should probably show this to more people. And that's the way that the podcast grows organically. So if you would do that for me, I would greatly, greatly appreciate your help. Today, we're going to be talking about how to break your addiction to your negative thoughts

and your negative feelings. And if you have negative thoughts, I want you to realize if you have negative thoughts that perpetuate and they continue to keep happening, there's a pretty good chance that you actually might be addicted to your negative thoughts. Now, come along with me on this journey. I'll explain to you what I mean by this. But here's the thing. If you're addicted to your negative thoughts, you can want to be positive, but you could be addicted to the negative thoughts. And I'll explain to you chemically why that works and how it works in your brain and your body. But just think about this for a second. Most people who are alcoholics, my father was an alcoholic, so I saw him. He

didn't want to be an alcoholic, but he couldn't stop being an alcoholic. And so you can want to break your addiction and to be positive, but have this negative spiral that happens inside of your mind. And so if you look at being addicted to something, let me explain to you what I mean by that. If someone is an alcoholic, they have had alcohol every single day, every single day for a while. And what happens is their body becomes chemically dependent on it. And so the lack of that chemical being there puts their body into a state that doesn't feel good and they want to feel better. So therefore, they have to go for that. And this could be drugs. This could be alcohol. This could be food. This could be calories. This could be sex. This could be work. It could be caffeine. I mean, there's many, many, many things that people are addicted

to in this world, but negative thoughts is a part of it. And let me explain to you how someone can be addicted to negative thoughts. So your thoughts, whenever you have a thought inside of your head, there's something that's a messenger, a chemical messenger that goes from your brain to your body that's called a neuropeptide. A neuropeptide is a chemical messenger from your brain to your body. When it goes to your body, your body then creates hormones, which are chemicals inside of your body to make your body feel a certain way. And then your body feels a certain way and your body goes back up to your brain and says, yep, we're feeling this way.

Like for instance, if I were to talk about the one person in your office who pisses you off, right? You can think about that person and literally just a thought can make you feel differently in your body. You could be having a great time and then somebody brings up Nancy in accounting, as you guys all know. We always talk about Nancy in accounting. And she is just always on your ass

about stuff and you don't like Nancy in accounting. And you could be having a great time, but the thought of her starts to make you feel different because the thought sends a chemical messenger or neuropeptide to your body. Your body then creates hormones to feel a certain way. Let me give you a complete opposite example of that. You can have a sexual thought, and that sexual thought can send different neuropeptides to your body, which create different hormones, and then turn your body on the way that it needs to be to do what needs to be done. So when you talk about this, you literally can realize that a thought can change the internal state of your body. But the thought happens, the neuropeptides

are sent, and then the hormones are created. Hormones are chemicals inside of your body. So if you have had negative thoughts over and over and over and over and over again, repeatedly every single day for years and years and years and years and years, your body is starting to actually become addicted to the cortisol and the adrenaline that are released from having those negative thoughts. And so without those negative thoughts being there, without the cortisol and the adrenaline being there, there's an absence and your body doesn't feel right. And so when I talk about this, and the reason why this is important is because you start to realize, oh man, I actually might be addicted to my negative thoughts.

I might be addicted to my negative feelings. I might be addicted to the release of the adrenaline and the cortisol and everything that happens. There's a good possibility that it might be. And if you just look at it, I'm not saying like you need to go to a rehab center or something like that. But the first part of it is the awareness. You need to develop the awareness that it could be a possibility for you. And if it is, no big deal. We can work through it

together. And I'm going to talk to you about it today. But the first thing and the most important thing is just become very aware that this is an absolute possibility for you. And if it is, the awareness is the first thing. And after you're aware, now you can start to work through it. Because you can't work through anything without the awareness first. So let's talk about how to stop because probably you're out there and you're like, all right, well, yeah, this is a good possibility. I might be addicted to negative thoughts and feelings. And if you're not addicted to negative thoughts and feelings, there are other things that you might be addicted to. And one of the things for me that I realized that I was addicted to for a long time was stress. And I didn't realize it, but stress

was actually pushing me forward. And I became addicted to it. And then when I heard about people being addicted to stress, I was like, oh my God, I might actually be one of those people. So as I'm talking about this, you might be addicted to negative thoughts and feelings. You might be addicted to stress. You might be addicted to a lot of different things. But we can start to, as I'm talking about, just kind of put yourself in this place and see how you can work through it. Okay? So let's talk about how to stop. Number one is to be intentional. Be extremely intentional in everything that you do. The thing that people don't realize is that you literally

have to brainwash yourself to be positive. We are naturally quite negative. And the reason why is because our brain are problem-solving mechanisms to keep us safe. Our brain wants to keep us safe at all points in time. So it's constantly looking for threats. That was great for 100,000 years ago, but me sitting inside of my living room right now, inside of 70-degree air conditioning, fully fed, have all of the water that I need,

completely fine, don't need to worry about anything. My brain is going to search for things that are wrong, aka negative, in my space to try to keep me alive. If I were to not leave my house and get my food delivered and stay here, I could literally never leave my house again, completely safe. Nothing would ever happen to me

and I would never have any potential danger that could ever come at me. But my brain, the amygdala, is still looking for that danger. And so I always say, a brain left up to its own devices will usually go negative. And so first off is to be intentional and realize that, hey, if I have been negative for a while, my brain might naturally go that way. Or maybe even my parents were that way and I also learned it. How can I be very intentional with every action that I take to make sure that I'm not going to be negative anymore, to make sure that I'm going to start my day

off on a positive note with the intention of I'm going to be positive and anything that comes up that is negative, I'm going to push it away and I'm going to work through and I'm going to figure it out. You literally have to create a brainwashing routine for yourself in order to get through this. So the first part is to get through this. So the first part is to just be intentional. One of the biggest reasons why people don't get what they want in their life is just the lack of intention. They wake up and they just kind of just see what happens. They wake up and they're just reactive all the time. Instead of being

reactive, let's be proactive and be proactively positive. So that's the first thing is the intention. The second thing is to catch your negative thoughts. There are things called ANTs, automatic negative thoughts. We all have automatic negative thoughts at some point. And I've said this before many times in my podcast, but I have thoughts and I have no idea where they come from. And I'm like, I would never think that. I would never say that. But it comes up in my head and I'm like, where the hell, who the hell did that come from? Like, it doesn't feel like it's my thought, but it just somehow pops up. And I'm like, well, I don't know where that came from. I don't judge myself for it. I'm just like,

yeah, that's not my true self. No, no, where that came from. And so with automatic negative thoughts, you've got to become aware of when they pop up and you've got to become more self-aware and you've got to be able to take yourself out of the jar of your head so that you can read the label. So if you're inside of a pickle jar and you're trying to read the label, you won't be able to read it. But if I take you out of the pickle jar, you can then see the label and it says, oh, I was in a pickle jar. Same way with your brain. When you're inside of your brain, it's weird. Things are weird. It's abstract. It's hard to understand. But if you take yourself out

and look at yourself as if you are another person, imagine that you're a psychologist looking at your patient. You just happen to be the psychologist and the patient at the same time. And you look at it, you're like, yeah, that person's having some negative thoughts right now. Okay. What tips would I give that person to stop those negative thoughts? So the first thing is that when you have these negative thoughts, you catch them. You've got to have the self-awareness to change them as soon as possible. And whatever that negative thought is, to stop a negative thought,

you stop it and then immediately go to three positive thoughts. One of the things that really put people down a lot of stress and anxiety with thinking of the future and thinking of what could go wrong and all that stuff is that if you sit there and you think to yourself,

like for instance, oh my gosh, inflation's happening in the United States, right? Okay, we have inflation. That means that eventually, and you could just think the thought of, okay, we have inflation coming up in the United States. Then you can immediately go down a negative spiral and it can just spiderweb itself into all these other places. Oh my God, if we have inflation, that means that all the money in my bank account is not going to be worth as much as it is now. That means that all of the food that I normally buy, all of the gas that I normally buy, all the cars, the electricity, everything, the water, everything that I normally buy is going to be costing more. So my money is going to be worth less and all the food and money

and all the food and the water and everything, the gas and the electricity is going to cost more. How am I going to feed my kids? How am I going to pay my bills? How am I going to... And it could just go and spiral. The thing is that you have to stop the negative thought because negative thoughts can have momentum once you get one of them. And now that your thought has now created that fearful hormone,

that cortisol and that adrenaline inside of your body, now that you're thinking and feeling the same way, that momentum gets stronger and stronger and stronger. You've got to click yourself out of it. And you've got to be able to realize, okay, yep, I'm going through some negative shit right now. Okay, I can focus on the negative stuff and then that's going to keep me spiraling down that negativity

or I can go ahead and focus on something that's great right now. What do I have to be grateful for? Oh, I have this and I have this and I have this. And what happens is instead of spiraling off down the negative side, what if I can teach myself to start to become aware, bring myself out of the negative side and to start to spiral down the positive side instead? I'm going to spiral down that side. I want to imagine if you just woke up and you're like, holy shit, I'm just so grateful for this and this and this and this and this, this, this. How amazing would it be to just be thinking about all of the amazing things in your life all of the time? It'd be

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stop overthinking all of the stuff that I love and all the stuff that I'm grateful for and all the stuff that I'm happy. I can't stop. Can you please make my positive overthinking stop? Nobody's ever come to me that way. They always come to me and they say, can you stop my overthinking? How do I stop my overthinking? I'm like, your brain's doing what it's supposed to do. The problem is you're just thinking about the wrong thing. You've got to catch the brain and you've got to move it down a different way. So that's the thing that you have to realize is that you just, you can't just decide one day, you like wake up and go, you know what, I'm going to be positive.

I'm just, I'm just going to be positive today because eventually something's going to go down the negative. It's something that you just, you have to work at. It requires work to do this. Like you just can't wake up and be like, you know what, I'm going to be thin today. And then just, you're automatically thin. That'd be ridiculous for us to think. today. And then just you're automatically thin. That'd be ridiculous for us to think. It requires work because habits of the way that you, the actions that you did or didn't take, or the food that you did or didn't eat in your past has now gotten you to the weight that you want to change from. So now you've got to take all of these years of bad habits and reverse them into new habits. Same way that if you have had negative, negative, negative thoughts all of the time in your head,

and then it boils up and you go, oh, I want to change. It's not like you can just immediately change the same way you can't be immediately thin. It's like, you've got these bad habits that need to be reprogrammed and worked through all the time and that's where the intention comes in. You can't just have one positive thought and then your brain is rewired.

It's about being intentional about constantly finding the positive. And I'm not saying, this is important, I'm not saying just ignore the negative. But what I'm saying is whatever negative exists, it makes it really easy to work through that negative if you can come from it from a positive standpoint. It makes it easier to work through negative things in your life if you have positivity. It's just simple.

It's the way that it goes. And that's what everybody wants. And so how can you start to look at everything? I'm not saying, once again, to ignore the negative. I'm saying, focus on the positive and then you can work through the negative much easier. You have to be intentional literally all day, every day, all day, every day until you wake up one day and you realize, oh my gosh, I do feel different. I get so many messages from people all of the time. People send me Instagram messages all of the time. I've been listening to you every single day, working on my mind, listening to you every single day, working on my mind every single day for months, for months, for years, for two, three, four, sometimes five years, people send me messages. And they're like, I'm a completely different person than I was. I have fully rewired myself into a different person. That wasn't me that did that. They just happened to listen to podcasts. They took the

action and put in the work. It's like if you go to YouTube and start watching people that are doing fitness videos, that's not going to make you fit. But if you follow what they teach and you do it enough, it's eventually going to make you fit. So it's like they put in the work. The work is required. It just doesn't happen overnight. You have to realize that. And another thing to think about that helps a lot of people is to start to try to identify where these negative thoughts or feelings might have come from. Where did you learn to have these negative thoughts? A lot of times it comes from people's parents. Maybe your mom was negative. Maybe your dad was negative. If you have negative thoughts around money, maybe your mom talked about money a certain way. Maybe your dad talked about money a certain

way. In a program, the same way that if you look outside and I say, what color is the sky? Everybody in the English language is going to say, it's blue. But you only say blue because you were taught it was blue. It's just not, that is like, it is blue. Everybody knows that. And so you go, okay, what are some other things that you've been taught throughout your childhood that you are just as sure that the sky is blue? Like money's hard to get, money's hard to work through, people screw you over, negative, negative, negative. Maybe that's something that you just learned from seeing your parents talk that way. And sometimes it helps to be able to figure out where it came from. Because when you identify where it came from

and you identify where it is and how you continue to do it right now, then it makes it much easier to decide how you're going to work through. And it'll help you become more aware of the situation when it does happen. Because I'm going to be honest with you, you're not just going to get rid of all those negative thoughts. They are going to still keep popping up. Mine still pop up and I'm like, where the hell did that come from? But now that I see it, I have actions, I have strategies that I built over years to work through these things. You guys have heard me say it before. Like one thing that I hate is sometimes like a negative thought or a judgmental thought will pop in my head about somebody that I don't even know. And I'm like, I don't even know where that came from. I don't know that person. I have no reason to

judge them in any sort of way. But what do I do? I immediately make myself in that moment, find three positive things about that person and say it in my head. And I have to identify them before I can move. So that's just the strategy that I've built up over my time of doing it. But really what it all comes down to is identifying it and being intentional. The same way that maybe, hey, if someone goes to Alcoholics Anonymous, you've got to admit that you're an alcoholic first and then you can start working through it. So maybe we look at it and say, hey, maybe I am addicted to negative thoughts. Maybe I'm addicted to negative feelings. Maybe I am addicted to these

things. And now that I've at least admitted it, now we can start to work through it. And if I start to work through it, it requires me to be intentional with my mind, with my thoughts, and with my actions every single day. Because it's got to be important to you. Because if it's not important to you, it's not going to change. When something's important to you, you'll find a way. When it's not important to you, you'll find an excuse. So that's what I have to say about how to think positive every single day and how to rewire yourself from your negativity to your positivity. So if you love this episode, please do me a favor. Please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. That is also where I share the majority of my stuff throughout the day and the easiest way to connect with me. So if you want

to get more positivity, motivation inside of your newsfeed, go ahead and follow me on there, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.