How To Re-Pattern Your Brain

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am 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, please do me a massive favor. Take your phone out, go to however you're listening to this, and give us a rating and review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, however you're listening to us. The reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get, the more that those platforms show that to people. This podcast, people have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and allows us to continue to keep impacting people's lives.

0:37So if you'd do that, I'd greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about how to repattern your brain. I'm going to talk to you about how to repattern your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. And I'm going to teach you a behavioral technique to actually help you repattern yourself. So this isn't going to be based in some weird pseudoscience. This is actually going to be based in psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy. And I'm going to give you a specific behavioral technique. to actually start to change yourself and rewire your brain. So, you know, when you look at life, oftentimes what we do, most times what we do is that we take actions that line up with how we feel.

1:22So it's a really important part, probably the most important part to understand for today. We feel a certain way and almost always we take actions that line up with how we feel. And that's all good. It's all great when you're having a really good day, when the sun is shining, you've had your cup of coffee, you got a good night's sleep. And you're like, yeah, today's awesome. It's great in those cases. But what about the days when you aren't, quote unquote, feeling it as much? You know, you've been there before where you're not, we've all said it. I'm not really feeling it today. Maybe you got really crappy sleep.

1:55Maybe you don't feel all that upbeat. Maybe it's sun's not shining. And you don't really feel like talking to anybody. You're like, I just don't really want to talk to somebody. And then the phone rings. You're like, I'll just send it to voicemail. And then, you know, you call a friend that you were supposed to have dinner with tonight. You're like, hey, I don't really feel like going out tonight. I just, I'm just going to stay home. And you decide to stay home. And it's a little teeny tiny thing. Like this right here is a very small example, but it's a little teeny tiny thing. Oh, you don't really feel up to it.

2:30So you don't answer your phone. You don't get back to people. You cancel the dinner that you're going to have your friend. It's teeny, teeny, tiny things. And most of the time they go unnoticeable. But you do this all day long. You unconsciously make decisions based off of how you feel. What happens though when you end up bringing this to work? Oh yeah, you don't really feel all that good and now you got to go to work. and maybe you're a manager and you have some people that you really do care about on your team and you're not really feeling it today. And so you, you know what? You cancel that meeting that you had with your team to help them improve and get better.

3:07You don't do that one-on-one meeting with your most important team member. And then what happens when you end up getting off work and you were supposed to go work out? What happens to your fitness routine? You know what? I'm going to skip the gym today. Just not really feeling it. Today was just so long. It wasn't a great day. Our feelings will always influence our actions. And if we're not conscious of it, we'll create our entire life because your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings create your actions. Your actions create your results and your results end up making your entire life.

3:47And, you know, it can even be something like having a bad day at work, which influences how you feel. And now you bring that shit home and put it on your family and you put it on your spouse and you put it on your children and they get the bad end of your emotions. And then when you calm down, you regret how you acted. This problem, the problem is that the problem is when you act consistent with how you feel. Those actions and feelings become more hardwired into you as you continue to do them and they become a pattern for you. And clearly, this is not a pattern that you want. Now, before we go any further, I want to say this because I don't want to be misunderstood in this.

4:31I'm not saying don't feel your feelings. I'm not saying become a shell of yourself and just push away all feelings and emotions and all your humanness. I'm not saying that. I'm saying what I really want you to be aware of is how little teeny tiny feelings make you change the way that you act. So for instance, let's say that you're, you're, you feel sad or you're in a low state and you decide to isolate yourself. It's a Saturday. I'm not really feeling today. I'm kind of sad today. I don't know why I'm kind of melancholy, kind of in a low state. I'm going to decide to stay in today. I'm going to isolate myself.

5:09And most times, isolation leads to more sadness. And so if you're staying in your room, your message to your brain might be, I'm sad, which makes you more likely to stay in another day and then can increase the sadness of how you feel. When being around someone that you really care about and cares about you might actually help you get out of that feeling of sadness or melancholy or the low state much quicker. When we take actions that line up with how we feel, oftentimes what we're doing is we're adding fuel to the fire. When we take actions that line up with how we feel, which is what we unconsciously do all day long, oftentimes it's like adding fuel to the fire.

5:58So what do we do? Well, there's a thing in psychology that's called behavioral activation. And behavioral activation basically means when we identify how we feel and we don't want to feel that way, we do the opposite of how we feel. Once again, not saying don't be a human, not saying don't feel your emotions. What I'm saying though is that sometimes when it ends up being too long and it just continues to keep going, you're actually digging the hole deeper. So we identify how we feel. And if that feeling is not how we want to feel, we do the opposite of how we feel. Because when we act in ways that are the opposite of how you're feeling, the feedback loop to the brain does not confirm the emotion.

6:41And in most cases, it eases that emotion and can even change the way that you're feeling. So this is really important. By acting how we feel, we are confirming that feeling. Okay, when we act how we feel, we are confirming that feeling. But by acting the opposite of how we feel, we are not confirming it in our brain and in turn makes it easier for us to change that feeling. Interesting, right? So if we want to start repatterning ourself, we need to actually start acting the opposite of how we feel. Start acting different than how we feel. And so I'll give you a lot of examples today so you can just kind of see how you fit within yourself.

7:27And so if you feel like isolating yourself, then what you really need to do is when you become aware, you know what, I feel like staying in. I feel like isolating myself. I don't feel good. I feel kind of sad today. Call a friend to come over and hang out with you that will make you feel better. Or call a friend or FaceTime with a friend just to chat. Hey, I'm feeling kind of sad today. Can I talk to you? So instead of isolating, that could in turn make you perpetuate that and continue to be sad and continue on to isolate and continue to feel sad and continue on to isolate. You end up breaking that cycle and you do something different.

8:01You do the opposite of how you feel. If you're feeling very lazy today, oh, I don't feel like doing very much today. What's the opposite of that? Get moving. If you don't feel motivated to go and do something, start small. Find the little teeny tiniest task. That's the first step to doing something. If you feel negative, take a step back and practice some gratitude. Think about all the amazing things that you've been blessed with in your life. If you feel judgmental towards someone, if you're scrolling on Instagram and you're like, oh my God, this woman, oh my God, this guy, whatever it might be, and you're feeling really judgmental and you become aware, oh my God, I'm judging.

8:37Make yourself compliment that person out loud. If you find someone that's in front of you and you're judging them in person, you're in the grocery store and you're judging that person in your head, walk up to that person and give them a compliment. Re-pattern the way that you're feeling and the way that you're acting. If you're feeling anxious, you got a lot going on and you feel a whole lot of anxiety inside of you, slow down. Do some deep breathing. Re-pattern yourself. If you're starting to feel a certain way and you want to eat a lot of junk food, you want to eat a lot of sugar, eat something really greasy, fast, don't eat anything.

9:11Re-pattern that side of you. If you're really pissed off and you're infuriated because something happened, Somebody cut you off on the way to work? Force yourself to smile. There's proof that shows when you smile, it actually starts to change the chemicals in your brain. Feeling too pessimistic? Find something positive. Force yourself to find something positive. If you feel like a little negative Nancy and you're all up in your feelings, in your own mood, everything sucks, and the world sucks, and my husband's an asshole, and my kids are loud, and I don't like the way that I look, and I don't like the way they feel, and you get yourself all negative, and you're finding all of the negative in the world, sit down and watch a comedy.

9:50If you feel like you're worthless, go out and help somebody else. The reason why this works is a couple different reasons why. Number one, the first thing is endorphins, right? So when you take action, your body is going to react in some sort of way, depending on what action that is, right? So for instance, if you feel like staying in bed, but you're like, okay, I feel like staying in bed. You know what? I'm going to go for a run instead. I'm going to do the opposite of it, your body will naturally react to that. Your body will naturally release endorphins, which are feel-good chemicals. And those endorphins make you feel better in the moment.

10:29But the interesting thing about it is it also makes your brain and body want to do it again in the future. And so next time you find yourself feeling like staying in bed, you actually are going to be more motivated to get out because you've already had the endorphins and your brain's starting to go, hey, remember that time we went for a run instead? What if we did that again? So the first thing is endorphins. So the next reason why this works is something that's called dopamine rewards. I actually wrote an entire chapter about something that's called a dopamine reward system inside of my book.

10:57I think it's chapter 12, level up. If you want to get the book, it's called level up. But basically dopamine rewards is this. When you don't feel good, but you do something, regardless, you will make your brain release dopamine. So let's say, for instance, let's go back to like being a negative Nancy, right? and you're a negative Nancy, oh my gosh, I'm in my feelings and you decide that you're going to watch a comedy instead. Dopamine is a feel-good chemical and that feel-good chemical is actually going to make you feel better in the moment. The other thing that it's also going to do besides that is it's actually the chemical of motivation.

11:34And so you could sit there and feel like you're having a really shitty day and be like, oh, I'm in my feelings and life sucks and blah, blah, blah. and you watch a comedy and watching a comedy makes you feel good and that feel good makes you release dopamine. That dopamine makes you feel good in the moment but it's also the chemical of motivation. When you feel that chemical of motivation it actually makes you more likely to go out and take action. So you can literally go from being a negative little shit to watching a comedy to actually getting up and taking ash like you want to. You're breaking the pattern that you no longer want to have and it makes you more likely to do something different.

12:10And the interesting thing about dopamine is that we're basically, when you look at all the books around dopamine and all of the neurologists and what they're saying is we're kind of all dopamine fiends. Like we all want dopamine. And when we get dopamine, we want more dopamine. And so we'll continue to do things like take more action to feel more dopamine. And so that's another chemical that's really important to understand when we break the patterns that we have. And then that turns into the next thing, which is neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to change itself. but it does not change itself if nothing changes.

12:41Either you deepen the old wiring that you have, which is just the pattern that we've been in. We act how we feel, we act how we feel, we act how we feel, or you change the wiring. And over time, the new patterning becomes stronger than the one that you had before. And it doesn't, the important thing to understand is it doesn't change from just doing it once. It changes from doing it over and over and over and over and over again. And I will give you an anecdotal example. I am the perfect example of this. I was such a negative little shit before I found, you know, self-development and wanting to get better and improving myself and reading and all that.

13:18I could find the bad in anything, like anything you have, if you had something positive to come and I could find, I could just cut that thing down. I was like, I was so bad. Like if you like, you came to me like, Rob, I just won the lottery. I'd be like, oh, that's neat and stuff. But you may, you're gonna have to pay in taxes, taxes, you know what the government does with taxes, they spend it on war, and then they just quote unquote, lose billions of dollars. Like I goes just such a negative little shit, right? Like I and now for me, it's really hard for me to find the negative in something. And naturally, my new patterning, and mind you, I'm 18 years of working on myself.

13:55My new patterning is basically like when something negative pops up, quote unquote negative, or a challenge pops up, it's way easier for me to immediately go to what's the silver lining, what good can come from this. But the point of all this is to repattern yourself. The things in your life do not change unless you change. Your feelings will not change unless you change. Your actions will not change unless you change. And so the important thing is to start identifying, okay, well, when do I like how I feel? And when do I not like how I feel or how to, you know, what, what patterning happens when I, when I do this, or I hang out with this person, I don't feel good.

14:34Or when I have, don't have good sleep, or if I go to bed late, I don't, I wake up and I don't feel good. And you start noticing first off the, the ways in your environment that you don't feel good. And then you start asking yourself, well, how can I get rid of those things in my environment or shift my environment in some sort of way so that I don't even have to not feel good. Then you start to ask yourself, well, well, when is it that I don't feel good? Do I feel angry because of this thing? Or do I feel unmotivated? Or do I feel lazier? Whatever it might be. But the first thing, more than anything else, is awareness and to become very aware of yourself.

15:08And the reason why you probably haven't changed this within yourself is because you probably, number one, you probably weren't, you didn't know you could change it. And number two, you just weren't aware, right? You just weren't aware. So the first thing is awareness. How do I feel? And is this how I want to feel? Is this how I want to feel? Like this, this sadness, this melancholy, this, this isolation that I'm feeling, whatever it is, is this how I want to feel? And if I don't, then I ask myself, what is the opposite action that I can take to repattern myself? And so that's important for you to identify right now.

15:43When, what is the feeling that you don't want to feel? And then what is the opposite action that you can take to repattern yourself. Because it's really important for us to all understand. You know, the beautiful thing, the thing that I love most about being a human is our ability to change ourself at any moment. I have a, my very first tattoo is a, I only have two tattoos. Actually, sorry, it's my second tattoo. I'm lying. My second tattoo is right on my wrist and it's the Roman numeral for the number 10 ,000. It's a Roman numeral X with a line above it. And because I, because it goes back to the 10 ,000 hour rule, which is the ability to be able to master anything.

16:18I love that humans have the ability to be able to master anything that they want to master. That's an amazing part about being a human. The only thing is that it takes, in order to master yourself, it takes about 10 ,000 hours of dedicated practice, which shows you it requires hard work to work on yourself. It requires hard work for you to change yourself, but it means that you can always change yourself at any moment. It's the difference between a fixed mindset. this is how I've always been and this is how I'll always be versus a growth mindset which is I can be whatever the fuck I want to be right you don't have to be who you've always been you can change you can do whatever it is that you want to change do whatever it is you want to do you could change whatever it is you want to change so how do you want to change how do you want to feel and then what actions would you need to change in your life in order to feel the way that you want to feel and so if you can identify those you can start to repattern yourself change yourself and create yourself into whoever you want to be.

17:14So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a huge favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at Rob Dial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with Adam, 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.