6 Ways to Transform A Negative Mindset & How to Overcome Fear and Anxiety

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2:15Shop gifts for everyone. Amazon. Everything for everyone on your list. The monks which I learned to train was constantly asking myself why. Every time I wanted something, I would trace the why. Is it because of a societal expectation or ego pursuit or a deep value? That three-letter word is a skeleton key for unlocking your self-awareness. And self-awareness is at the root of self-mastery.

2:48Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. It's my short daily series on Calm, The Daily J. And let me tell you, it's unlike anything else I'm doing. It's part storytelling, part mindfulness, with a wide range of unique, actionable insights, and it's also the only place you can meditate with me each and every day. I absolutely love all the wisdom we're sharing, all the lives we're changing. And whether you want to improve your mindset, your habits, or your relationships, whether you want to work on developing more focus, presence or equanimity, building a Daily J routine just 7 minutes every day can make a huge impact.

3:29So make sure to check out the session at the end of the podcast and then subscribe to Calm for your daily dose of the Daily J. Go to calm.com forward slash J for 40 % off your membership today. This week we're tackling the topic of mindset and how to approach life with focus, perspective and positivity. Of course, if you want to listen to The Daily J every day, you have to subscribe to Calm. So go to calm.com forward slash J for 40 % off your membership today. Hey everyone, I'm so excited to be speaking with you today about six ways to monk switch your mind for growth and resilience. There has been a lot of research involving monks that shows how monks are really masters of the mind.

4:13I detail some of it in my book, Think Like a Monk. For example, several years ago, a monk named Yonge Mingyur Rinpoche traveled from Nepal to a research facility in Wisconsin so the scientist there could observe his brain activity while he meditated. They put a device that looked like a shower cap on him and fixed hundreds of senses to his skull. And they had him cycle in and out of meditative states on cue. Now, if you've ever tried to meditate, you sit down, and what happens? The second you try to clear your head, your mind floods with thoughts, right? It takes most of us at least five to ten minutes to settle down mentally and get into that meditative space, if we're lucky.

4:59So, knowing this, the researchers in Wisconsin were astonished by what they saw, which is that whenever they gave the monk the signal to start a meditation cycle, his brain immediately went into meditation mode. It was like flipping a switch. They had never seen anything like it. He was able to switch in and out of meditation mode again and again, just like that. And here's the thing that's important to understand. This monk wasn't special, no offense to him. What I mean by that was that he wasn't following some exclusive special training program. All he was doing was he was living the regular life of a monk.

5:40These same scientists, along with others, have run many exhaustive, detailed studies on long-time monks and other seasoned meditators, and they all show the same types of results. An astonishing degree of mental control, whether in the form of focus, compassion, and even the brain indicators for happiness. Monks spend so much time training their minds that when challenges arise, whether it's dealing with external challenges like what we're all experiencing now or internal ones like struggling with ego, that's when their training kicks in. Like Yonge Mingyo Rinpoche, we can learn to monk switch our minds so that the practices we've trained automatically kick in in times of stress and struggle.

6:29Today, I'm going to share with you six ways to monk switch your mind so you can feel more resilient and experience a greater sense of meaning and purpose, especially in the face of massive challenges. Now, at the monastery, monks have what is mostly a controlled, immersive environment for their training. And so you're probably thinking, but Jay, I'm not a monk and I don't want to be a monk. So how can this apply to me? This time we're in can be your monastery or your ashram. And in a few minutes, I'll talk about some ways you can actually create more peace in your own surroundings. So if you're ready, here we go.

7:08Now, some of you know I'm massively into movies. I already referred to one movie. Now I'm gonna bring in another. I especially love Christopher Nolan movies and his movie Memento is one of my favorites. If you've not seen the movie, it's about a man who has a very specific type of amnesia, a brain condition where he can no longer make new memories. And the story is told starting with the ending, then working backwards. Now, since that movie has a neuroscience theme, and I'm about to delve into some neuroscience, I thought I'd do it memento style. We're going to start at the end with where you want to end up and work backwards to how you get there.

7:46For most of us, it relates to resilience. We want to feel that no matter what happens, we can handle it. that we have the tools to deal effectively with whatever life throws at us. That's our target. Now, that might be individually, and it also might be from a relationship perspective or from an organizational perspective. You're an entrepreneur or a family person. Whatever type of resilience you're focused on creating, here's the thing. In order to change your external experiences in life, you have to master your internal experiences first. There are indisputable facts about what's going on around us right now in the outside world.

8:26But on the inside, we're all experiencing it differently. Some of us are filled with fear and anxiety, while others are finding a way to navigate it with more equanimity and even make progress in their lives or their organizations or relationships. Some couples are leaning in and becoming more of a team. Some individuals are using this as a growth opportunity. Some companies are creating new service lines. Take ZocDoc, an online service for booking in personal medical appointments. The company had a massive amount of momentum coming into 2020. But by the end of March, they saw bookings decline anywhere from 50 to 90%.

9:06Co-founder Oliver Carras was advised to lay off staff and lay low for the duration, as many companies have done. Yet ZocDoc did the opposite. it. They expanded. Instead of trying to weather the storm, Karas says he saw an opportunity to build windmills. Instead of initiating layoffs, the company tasked their staff with creating and implementing a telehealth platform so patients could get remote care from their doctors. It was a massive effort, but within two months, the company had done the impossible. They pulled off a successful launch of a brand new telehealth platform that under other circumstances, Karis says would have taken them two years to create and introduce.

9:50One of the greatest monks which is out there is to train yourself to equate change, especially change that seems negative with opportunity. Monk David Stendhal-Ross talks about something he calls grateful living, which is a way of cultivating trust in life and in all that's happening in the external world, no matter how it feels. As Stendhal Ra says, when you receive every moment as a gift, you ask yourself, what's the opportunity in this moment? And that's exactly what ZocDoc did. And that's what you can learn to do to find the opportunities that are present in these otherwise challenging moments.

10:31But I'm sure you know countless other examples of organizations and people who are doing the opposite. They're struggling. And that's understandable. I want to acknowledge that this really isn't an exceptional time for us all, and most of us are experiencing some combination of personal loss and financial loss or stress. That's very real. Yet, as Dr. Andrew Huberman says, part of what determines whether we struggle or find a way to thrive depends largely on how we frame stress. Huberman is a professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University who studies, among other things, brain plasticity or our brain's ability to learn and progress.

11:12He says perhaps the biggest determinant of how we will weather storms from the pandemic down to everyday stresses is whether we run from our fears, whether we freeze, or whether we move towards what we're afraid of. In fact, neurologically, it's only really in conditions of discomfort that we can train our brains to learn to thrive from stress and become more resilient. So we have our goal. Now to uncover how we get there, along with how ancient wisdom figures into the equation, let's take a step backwards and look at some of Dr. Huberman's research on neuroplasticity. It used to be that we thought that once you hit about your mid-20s, your brain couldn't change much.

11:57You can't teach an old dog or even 35-year-old new tricks, right? But thankfully, modern research shows that's just not true. In fact, in some ways, we can actually become better at learning difficult things and performing at the leading edge of our ability, especially if we understand how our brains work. Unfortunately, according to neuro-research, There's a pretty predictable formula for it. You're juggling a lot. Full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family. And now you're thinking about grad school? That's not crazy. That's ambitious. At American Public University, they respect the hustle. And they're built for it.

12:41Their flexible online master's programs are made for real life. Because big dreams deserve a real path. Learn more about APU's 40-plus career-relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu. APU, built for the hustle. Sometimes what we need most is a pause, a moment of clarity that helps us breathe a little deeper, listen a little closer, and feel a little lighter. On TikTok, those moments are actually happening every day. Creators share daily habits that people find helpful, personal insights that help them understand their own journeys, and reflections that have brought them perspective when life feels overwhelming.

13:28You'll also find people opening up with honesty, about healing, about growth, about finding balance in their lives. And in that honesty, we're reminded we're not alone. Because one story of resilience can ripple into thousands of others. One reminder to be present can shift an entire day. and one spark of wisdom can keep us moving forward with more compassion for ourselves and each other. On TikTok, support can show up in the simplest ways. It's a community for reflection and connection and where small moments can make a meaningful difference. The first part of the formula involves three things.

14:05These are the three elements you need to be able to learn to raise your level of performance. First, you need clear intention and direction. The second thing you need is intense focus. And the third thing you need is a strong motivation. The next step in the formula for learning and growth is that you need to apply direction, focus, and motivation continuously for an extended period of time. Think about it. If you lose your direction, you'll go off course. If you lose focus, you'll be ineffective. And if you lose motivation, you'll disconnect from the emotion that was acting like a propeller pushing you forward.

14:46Imagine a marathon runner during all those days and miles they log when they're training. If they lose sight of their direction, they won't train properly. If they lose sight of their focus, they can get distracted by all the other things they'd rather be doing, like hanging out with friends and eating pizza instead of running 15 miles in the pouring rain. And if they lose their motivation when they're out on the road or the track, they won't have the heart to keep going. So you need to be invoking all three over and over again, just like that runner training day after day to run that marathon.

15:24And there's another part of the equation. The progress you make doesn't reshape your brain and create actual learning or skills you can repeat until another element is added. And that element is periods of deep sleep or rest. So direction, focus, motivation sustained along with deep rest, that's the formula for how we can reshape our brains and it explains why Yonge Mingyo Rinpoche showed those incredible results in Wisconsin because that formula is essentially how a monk lives every day of their life in focused, directed, intense effort followed by periods of rest. Fortunately, as Huberman's research shows you don't have to live like a monk to change your brain.

16:13You do, however, have to understand how to overcome some neurochemical hurdles. In that first part of the equation, direction, focus, and motivation, your brain is releasing two main neurochemicals to assist with the performance and learning processes. Those are acetylcholine, which will help to make those actual changes to your brain when you rest, and noradrenaline. The noradrenaline, as you might guess from the adrenaline part gets you amped up. Think about how you feel when you're about to compete or about to give a presentation or about to sit down to an intense work session. You might feel anxious or excited or fidgety.

16:52Many of us interpret these feelings as negative, but as Huberman points out, some amount of agitation or even a feeling of frustration is normal to the process of getting ready to do something that's at the edge of your performance zone. It's what the initial stages of growth feel like. But many of us let these feelings of agitation sidetrack us. We can't get focused, we say. In actuality, part of the noradrenaline's role is to help you get focused. So instead of allowing yourself to click over to Twitter or text a friend, you need to train yourself to just get started. In a few minutes, the agitation will pass as you get into the next phase of the process, which is the sustained effort portion.

17:39So that's where that stress response comes in. When you feel that stress of agitation, that's a time to monk switch your mind. When you feel that anxiety, your hands maybe go a bit cold or you get fidgety, tell yourself again and again, I'm about to learn or I'm about to grow. Over time, those body signals will cue those thoughts automatically. As Stanford researcher and stress expert Kelly McGonigal says, when you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage. How powerful is that? Literally, when you choose to see stress as useful. Now remember, once we step over that stress threshold and start learning or performing, we're in our presentation or our high stakes meeting, we're working on writing our book or we're running that marathon, we have to sustain the effort.

18:35And this is where another neurochemical you're probably familiar with kicks in, dopamine. Little hints of dopamine signal us that as Huberman says, we're on the right path. And that's what draws us forward. Otherwise our brains would become too saturated with noradrenaline and eventually it would make us give up because we'd be worn out. Occasional dopamine hits actually balance the noradrenaline by giving us a chemical and emotional thumbs up and that keeps us going. That's why marathoners will tell themselves, just make it to the next water station or to the next intersection. Or it's why people tell you instead of focusing on writing an entire business plan to chunk it down into smaller pieces and just focus on completing one at a time, than giving yourself a mental high five.

19:24Those smaller milestones give us a boost of dopamine when we achieve them. There are other ways to get dopamine hits as well. Research from Huberman's lab shows that things like laughter, a sense of group cohesiveness, a feeling of being supported, or a sense of playfulness among others gives us that dopamine that sustains our effort. So now let's backstep again and I'll show you how a monk would approach that formula for growth, learning, and resilience. The first element was a clear intention or goal. For monks, our GPS that points us in the right direction is our value system. We look to our values to direct us.

20:03So our intention or our goal would link to our values. For example, I tell a story in my book of a time when I was walking with my teacher and we came across a monk who was an incredibly accomplished scholar. I was so impressed with how many verses and passages from the ancient texts he had memorized. I turned to my teacher and said, I want to do that too. And he asked me, do you want to do that because you want to be known as someone who did that or because you want to actually put in the hard work of doing it? So for monks, while we might have a goal in mind, say memorizing books or verses, we would link our goal to a deep value such as learning rather than a surface pursuit such as ego.

20:47Did you catch the monk switch there? It was a bit hidden. The monks which I learned to train was constantly asking myself why. Every time I wanted something, I would trace the why. Is it because of a societal expectation or ego pursuit or a deep value? That three-letter word is a skeleton key for unlocking your self-awareness. And self-awareness is at the root of self-mastery. So train yourself to ask why for a week. Every time you want something, ask yourself why. even if it's just a type of food? Where does that want come from? If you do this with regularity, you'll start to do it automatically, and the practice will help you connect with value-directed goals.

21:32The second component in the learning formula is focus. How many of us have sat down at our computer with the intention of doing something, we're finally going to start that course, and then five minutes later, one on Instagram or texting a friend to see what they're up to. Without the ability to bring your focus fully to a task and sustain it, you will not make progress. There are several ways a monk cultivates focus, one of which is through mindfulness. You can think of mindfulness simply as noticing what is in the present moment without judgment. Here's a practice you can use to train that. Simply sit in a comfortable position, breathing in deeply and then out and in again and now instead of trying to totally clear your mind just notice what comes up acknowledge it release it like okay I noticed some anxiety around work okay I acknowledge you anxiety now I realize you and I bring my mind back to the present moment if it comes back acknowledge and release it again there's no need to get upset at anything that arises.

22:43The goal is to not have an empty mind. It's to be where you are, practicing, noticing, and releasing. The amongst which you're training here is that when you sit down to start that course, when the inevitable distractions arise, you can simply notice them and release them. Coming back to focus on your project, essayist and novelist Pico Ayer said, in an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And I love that quote because that's a way we can hack our focus, but reframing it not as something that's hard, but as a treat, as a luxury, as he says it. You're juggling a lot, full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family, and now you're thinking about grad school?

23:33That's not crazy, that's ambitious. At American Public University, they respect the hustle and they're built for it. Their flexible online master's programs are made for real life because big dreams deserve a real path. Learn more about APU's 40 plus career relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu. APU, built for the hustle.

24:05We all want to live with more purpose, more connection, and more joy. Sometimes that starts with a small piece of wisdom, a perspective shift, a grounding practice, or a story that makes you feel less alone. On TikTok, those moments are being shared every single day. Millions are finding people who show meditation techniques, discuss the science of the mind, or share daily habits that many find helpful. Others are opening up about their own journeys, talking about well-being, resilience, and healing in ways that can make you feel seen. And what stands out is the way it's shared. Ideas spread quickly and support can grow from a single post.

24:48And it all happens in a welcoming and supportive space. TikTok stimulates your mind in more ways than one. It's a place for learning, for mindfulness, for tools that support healthier habits and reflections. If you're searching for growth and connection that resonates with your own unique journey, you'll find it on TikTok. Now the third component is motivation. As I write in my book, according to a Hindu philosopher named Thakur, there are four fundamental motivations, fear, desire, duty, and love. Everything we do sits in one of these four motivations. However, a monk would say, Adas Thakur, that fear is not sustainable over the long term.

25:31Your anxiety may motivate you now, but it's going to exhaust your body and your mind. Also fear limits your access to creative thinking and decisive creative solutions. And when we are motivated by desire for personal gratification, we may be happy when we first get that new car or whatever it is, but we all know that feeling quickly wears off and we'll need more to achieve the same pleasure. However, when we're motivated by duty and love, these motivations create meaning. Love is the ultimate motivation and the ultimate why. And as American football coach Bill Walsh once said, if your why is strong enough, you will figure out how.

26:12So when you're thinking about what you want to do, you want to align your motivation with duty, such as getting a better job so you can support your family or love, such as helping others or the simple love of learning and improving. When they opted to create a telehealth platform, ZocDoc had the strongest why. Of course, the company wanted to remain profitable, but more than that, they wanted to protect their staff and their jobs. They wanted to support the medical providers who suddenly couldn't see patients in person, and they wanted to support people who were abruptly cut off from medical support during an international health crisis.

26:52When ZocDoc created their new platform, they even offered it for free to doctors who are not ZocDoc providers. See, here's the single most important thing I'm going to tell you today. Service is the ultimate hack. When you tie your work or your goals to love and service of others, it's the most powerful way to game your brain to strive and grow. Because service not only feels good, it also boosts our self-esteem and creates connection with others. And service is a self-reinforcing motivation. We want to keep working and to keep serving because we get so much satisfaction from it. And so we want to keep expending that effort.

27:34Service has its own built-in reward system. For monks, our lives revolved around two distinct and intense areas of focus, the self and the not-self. We'd spend the first half of our days meditating, learning, classes, otherwise training and mastering ourselves. The rest of the day, we would spend in service of others. Service was our highest purpose. For me, it still is. It motivates me deeply. So that's another monk switch. Whenever possible, figure out how to switch your work from total focus on self to service. Whether it's service of your family, your community, or your company, it will help you feel motivated, directed, energized, and like you can make a real impact even when it feels as if everything that's around you is crushing down.