9 Crazy Psychological Hacks

0:06Welcome 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 you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast and you want to try to improve yourself for 2025 and improve your goal-setting techniques, go to goals2025.com. I have a free ebook to teach you how to set, plan, and achieve all of your goals. So once again, it is goals2025.com. Today, I'm gonna be giving you nine crazy psychological hacks to help you improve your life. all the way from how to overcome your anxiety, how to stop procrastinating, all the way to how to fall asleep faster.

0:47And so I wanted to give you these and I thought I was looking at these different psychological hacks and I was like, maybe I should do an episode about this one and maybe I should do an episode about this one. I was like, screw it. I'm just gonna put all of these together and then just give a bunch of them all at one point in time. And I think that your brain and your body are incredible. And I love learning about all of the different ways that we can use our body to do what we need to do to create the life that we want and how we can use our brain to do what we need to do to create the life that we want.

1:17Because if we can understand how they work and why they do what they do, then we can use them for good. Because a lot of times they tend to hold us back. But if we can use them in the right way, we can use them to actually help us create the life that we want, which is what we want. And so I just love discovering hacks and ways that we can use them. So that's what we're going to go over today. Okay, let's say Let's go through it. Number one, let's say that you find yourself with some anxiety, right? There's a thing that's called the vagus nerve reset. And so here's what you're going to do. You're going to submerge your face in ice cold water while holding your breath for 10 to 30 seconds.

1:55And so if you find yourself with a lot of anxiety, you tend to be in your head a little bit too much. What you want to do is you want to just get a bowl of ice water, make sure it gets really, really cold. Take a big, deep breath in and you're going to put your face in that ice water while holding your breath. And what happens is it actually starts to reset your vagus nerve. So the vagus nerve is a key part in your parasympathetic nervous system and your parasympathetic nervous system. So there's your sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight. And there's the parasympathetic nervous system, which is calm, cool, collected, allow your body to rest and reset.

2:33So if you find yourself in your head too much, too much anxiety, you're in your head, you're in your sympathetic nervous system. I want to get into my parasympathetic nervous system. You take your face, you put it in ice cold water, and it activates your parasympathetic nervous system and your vagus nerve by that cold exposure. And what it also does is it also slows your heart rate down and it reduces stress, shifting for your body from fight or flight to calm and restful state. And so the science behind this, back in 2018, there was a study that found that applying cold to your face or your neck stimulates your vagus nerve and rapidly reduces your symptoms of anxiety.

3:15And the study highlighted in this method how it directly influences the autonomic nervous system as well, which promotes relaxation. So next time you find yourself getting really anxious for some reason, just be like, I need a full-on reset. How do I do a full-on reset? Ice water, hold my breath, dip my face in. And if you do this, it'll help. And you could do it one time, two times, three times, as many times until you feel like you've gotten that full reset. So that's the first kind of cool psychological hack that you can use, which is the anxiety hack. The next one is a sleep hack. If you find yourself sitting up and ruminating too much.

3:52There's a thing that's called cognitive shuffling that you can do. And so let's say that you're sitting down, you're laying down, you're trying to go to bed and you just got all of this stuff that's running through your head. What you're going to do is this. It's a thing called cognitive shuffling. You're going to choose a random word like apple, for instance, and you're going to visualize unrelated images for each letter that spell out apple. And so you're going going to visualize. A, I'm going to visualize an ant. P, I'm going to visualize a plant. Another P, I'm going to visualize a plane. L, I'm going to visualize a lamp.

4:30E, I'm going to visualize an elephant. Now you might be like, this is stupid. Why would we do this? Well, this thing that's called cognitive shuffling prevents your rumination and your intrusive thoughts that often are the things that keep people awake. And so by focusing on unrelated words and images, what you do is you distract your brain, which help you transition to sleep. And so there's a study that was done in 2014 by Dr. Luke Bowden, and he developed this thing called cognitive shuffling and demonstrated its effectiveness in reducing what's called sleep onset latency. And so in his research, he found that this technique calms your mental activity and mirrors the randomness of thoughts that occurred during your early sleep stages.

5:18So it allows you to transition to sleep earlier. So you pick a word like Apple, and then with each letter of the A-P-P-L-E, you just visualize something different. And then you go on to the next thing and you continue to keep doing this. What you'll find is that your brain doesn't have the chance to ruminate on problems or things that are coming up or your to-do list, then it allows you to transition to sleep quicker. So that's your sleep hack for the day. What about a focus hack? There's a thing that's called the lion's gaze. Here's what you want to do. You're going to want to sit upright in lion's gaze.

5:51Think of a lion, right? Sit upright, relax your body, and focus on one single point that's off in the distance for 60 seconds at least. And the reason why this works is because staring you know intensely at a point reduces your overstimulation that's why we can't focus because we're so overstimulated so you're bringing your mind and your focus to one point that's off in the distance so it reduces your overstimulation overthinking and it promotes mindfulness which helps you regulate your nervous system and sharpen your concentration and so there's a study that was done in 2007 that conducted studies on mindfulness and focused attention and the studies show that this practice improves your cognitive control and also reduces your stress.

6:36So if you need a focus, man, my brain's all over the place. I've had so much stuff I'm doing today. I'm going to put my timer for at least 60 seconds. I'm going to find something that's off in the distance and I'm going to try not to blink and I'm going to try to bring all of my mental and visual focus to looking at that thing in the distance. And that'll help you with your focus. Okay. And we will be right back. and now back to the show next one let's talk about helping you with with boosting your mood and also your confidence there's a thing that's called the superhero pose okay what you're going to want to do is you're going to stand up as tall as you can put your shoulders back put your shoulders down put your feet shoulder width apart and put your hands on your hips and you're going to slightly raise your chin and you're going to just sit that way for two minutes it's called the superhero pose.

7:21Like imagine a superhero with his cape flapping behind him. How do they usually stand? Hands on hips, chest out, shoulders back. And so this is called the power pose. And power posing triggers hormonal changes and increases your testosterone, which is linked to confidence and decreases cortisol, which is linked to stress. So it boosts your mood and also helps you with their confidence as well. And there's a study that was done in 2010 by Carney, Cuddy, and Yap. And they found that participants who adopted high power poses, which is what this is, experienced a 20 % increase in testosterone and a 25 % reduction in cortisol.

8:02So the hormonal shift directly influenced their feelings of power and confidence and reduces their stress. Your brain and body are always working together. This is a way to put your body into a certain state to change the way that your hormones feel in your body and also the way that you think. So that's number four. Next one is calm mind, relax body. Calm mind and relax body. And so it's called the straw breathing technique. So here's what you want to do. If you notice yourself overthinking, you got too much stuff going on, you're kind of all over the place, maybe you're too in your head and you want to get into your body.

8:38What you do is you inhale deeply through your nose and you're going to exhale slowly through pursed lips as if you're blowing out through a straw. So it's just... So why does this work? Slow controlled breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which we talked about earlier, which reduces your stress hormones. And so there's a study that was done in 2000 that studied breathing techniques that impact on the autonomic nervous system. And their findings showed that long, slow exhalations improved heart rate variability and reduce your stress. It's also known that if you have a longer exhale than inhale, that longer exhale actually starts to slow your heart rate down.

9:27If you wanna speed your heart rate up, you have a longer inhale and less of a long exhale. So if you wanna slow your heart rate down and calm down, it's inhale through the nose. and then as long as you possibly can, exhale like you're breathing out through a straw. So that's called the straw breathing techniques. And you're gonna want to, in doing this, calm your mind and relax your body. Test number five. Number six is something that's called the gratitude hack. And it's called reverse gratitude. And so what you're gonna do is, I find this with a lot of people that struggle with gratitude and they think they don't have anything to be grateful for.

10:01And oh, my life is so terrible and woe is me. And these are all the things that I don't have and I'm lacking and I'm not good enough. And what happens is you're so in your own life that a lot of times you don't really, it's hard for you to identify sometimes what you can be grateful for. Some people listening, you have a great life and things are going well. Some people listening, your life doesn't seem so great, but there are still some things to be grateful for. And so this is what I want you to do. It's called reverse gratitude. I want you to imagine something, like losing something that you value deeply.

10:36So think about this for a second. Imagine losing maybe your apartment, losing your house. Okay. Imagine losing your spouse. Maybe that's through them leaving you, or maybe that's through, you know, tragedy. If you really want to go crazy with it, you lose your spouse. Imagine losing your job and you're going to imagine yourself losing something that you value deeply. So it's taken away from you. And then imagine getting it back. So you imagine losing your house and you don't have it. You're living in her car. And then you imagine coming back and you're able to live in your house again. And imagine losing your spouse.

11:21And then imagine, oh my God, just realizing that they're still here. Imagine losing your job and then realizing that you're driving to your job right now. And this feeling is you lose something. And then because you realize that you actually still have it, you actually find yourself become grateful for it. And the exercise heightens your gratitude by emphasizing what you already have and shifting your mindset from scarcity into abundance. And it's called reverse gratitude. And so there's a study done in 2003 that conducted research on gratitude interventions. And they showed that gratitude practices like this increase your self-esteem, they enhance your well-being, and they reduce your symptoms of depression.

12:05And just overall, they help you with their overall sense of well-being. And so imagine losing something that you value deeply and then getting it back. And that'll make you realize that you have a whole lot more. Imagine losing your health and then getting it back. Oh my God, I still have it. There's so many things to be grateful for. you just, a lot of times you're not focusing on it. Okay. Number seven, this is a, this one, this is a fun one. Okay. It's kind of a weird one. It's, it's a creativity hack. It's called the hypnagogic spark. I don't even know if I'm saying it correctly. I think I'm saying hypnagogic correctly, right?

12:39And here's what you do. This one's pretty wild. You lie down and you want to, in your hand, hold a metal object. So like say a spoon, for instance, right? And you're going to hold it above a plate. So you're basically going to lie down. I'm going to try to explain this the best I can. You lie down and like you're going to sleep and you're going to hold a spoon in your hand. And then under your hand, you're going to have something like a plate and you'll start to drift into what is called hypnagogic state, which is the state that is just before sleep. And as you do that, your muscles start to relax.

13:15What will happen is as your muscles relax, you will let go of the spoon, that spoon will hit the plate and it'll wake you up. In that moment, you want to record your ideas that came to your mind during that state, right? The hypnagogic state is a transitional phase where the brain generates unique and creative associations free from all of your logical filters. And so this is kind of like, it's almost like a psychedelic state where the reason why a lot of people, when they go and they do psychedelics, they come back and they have these amazing ideas that they've never thought of before is because you're not really in this state of thinking logically.

13:54You're like, I've thought of this thing that I've never thought of before and I can't believe I've never seen it. This hypnagogic thing is the exact same way. And so this is also very similar, just so you know, to what Thomas Edison used to do. Salvador Dali used to do stuff like this. They're famously known for using similar techniques to harness this this hypnagogic state for creativity, getting themselves into kind of like a lucid transitional state between sleep and awakeness. And sleep creativity, and there was a study that was done on sleep creativity in 2000 and found that this state enhances what's called divergent thinking and problem solving.

14:32So sometimes, and this happens to me often, I don't know if it happens to you, I'll wake up and immediately the very first thought that I have in the morning is usually a really good idea. Like where I'm like, oh my God, I completely forgot about this. Like the house that I live in right now, we, uh, I found the house three days before Lauren gave birth. And because of the fact that it was so close to her giving birth, I just forgot about it and I let it go. And then I woke up about 30 days after she gave birth. And I was like, I want to wonder very first thought in my head. I want to know whatever happened to that house.

15:03We went and saw this house that day, put in an offer and then got this house. And then two days after we put the offer on the house, somebody else put an offer that was bigger than ours on the house. But because of the fact that ours was already accepted, we ended up getting the house. And so I have this a lot where it's like, when I have a thought that comes in first thing in the morning, I'm usually like, hmm, let me trust this thing. And so it's just a way of thinking differently is not as logically and is like in a box like we like to. and it's something you can try out. Okay, next one. This is a hack for productivity and procrastination, okay?

15:38It's called the timer paradox. What you're gonna do is you're gonna set a timer for two minutes and work on a task with no obligation to continue after that. And so the reason why this works is because of the fact that we tend to procrastinate because we think of the entire task that we need to do. And oh my God, this task is gonna take me two hours to do. if you give yourself two minutes to do it and you make it a manageable interval, it usually reduces the psychological resistance, which often is all that we need in order to get started. And so it utilizes time intervals to enhance your focus and your productivity.

16:15And then it reduces your procrastination because the barrier to entry is so low. I'm going to do this for two minutes. And so a lot of times it's like the hardest part about working out is going to the gym. It's like the exact same idea. The hardest part about creating your presentation for work is thinking about it and just starting it. And so give yourself only two minutes. And a lot of times after those two minutes, you kind of have momentum on your side and like, all right, screw it. I'm just going to finish it. Okay. And the next one and the last one is a decision hack. It's called the body compass.

16:48And so people always ask me, like, I think that I'm really in tune with my intuition. It's something I've developed over years of paying attention and just kind of getting quiet and meditating and mindfulness a little bit more. But people always ask me like, how do I develop my intuition? And I always tell them it's always there. It's just most people are not listening to it. And so there's this thing that's called the body compass. When you have a decision that you want to think about, you're kind of not really sure where to go. You're going to stand up and close your eyes and think about the decision and notice what your body does.

17:23Your body, if it's a yes, will usually start to lean forward just a little bit. If it's a no, your body will start to lean backwards a little bit. And so what you do is you stand up, you close your eyes, and you think about this thing that you need to make a decision on. And then just think about it. And then notice if your body's starting to lean one way or another. Your body's like a compass to tell you where you should go and where you shouldn't go. And so the reason why it works is because subconsciously, our body is always giving us cues and we have these instinctive preferences, this allows you to kind of tap into your intuition and bypass all of the things that you're overthinking around it.

18:00So you stand up, close your eyes, pay attention to where your body is. You think about this decision you need to make and then notice if you lean a little bit forward or notice if you lean a little bit backwards. So those are nine psychological hacks for you. Anxiety hacks, sleep hacks, focus hacks, mood boosting hacks, calming your body and mind hacks, gratitude hacks, all of the different ones, creativity hacks, all the things you could possibly think of. Hopefully those help you out. Take one of them, try it out next time that you need it, and then send me a message on Instagram. Let me know if it worked for you.

18:33So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with that, I'm going to leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.