How to Rewire Your Brain for Mental Strength
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Upfront payment of $45 for three-month plan equivalent to $15 per month required. New customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy. Taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com. 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 you never miss another podcast. And if you love this podcast, please do me a massive favor. Give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The reason why is because...

The more positive ratings or reviews that we get on those platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts, the more that those actually show this podcast people have never listened to it before so that more people can discover us, find us, and hopefully we can change more people's lives. If you do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm going to be giving you three ways to reprogram your mind. Listen, you're here because you know if you want your life to be different, you have to change, right? If you want your life to change, you have to change.

But then it starts getting really hard. It's not really easy to change. The key to achieving success in any area of your life comes from your ability to change yourself. And a lot of times changing yourself comes from changing your mind first, reprogramming your mind to change your old patterns, to change your old beliefs, your old programs, and your thoughts, your habits, and your beliefs are your driving forces behind your actions. And

And that will then determine your outcome. So if you can understand the psychology and the science that's behind mental reprogramming, then you can start to take charge of your life and create the future that doesn't look like your past. Because if you do nothing and you just continue to do the same things that you have been doing, nothing will change. Your tomorrow will look exactly like yesterday until the day you die.

And so in this episode, we're going to really talk about how to reprogram your mind to kind of get anything that you want. And I'm not going to just tell you from like some foo-foo-y, woo-woo-y type of way, hey, you can get anything you want. Like I'm actually going to teach you proven psychological techniques and use scientific evidence because I'm a very skeptical person.

If you're listening to this podcast, you probably are the type of person that's like that as well. And so that's probably why you're attracted to this podcast, because you're probably very skeptical, but also wanting to improve yourself. And so we're probably both skeptics. And so I'm going to show you through science and through psychology how to actually start reprogramming your brain. So the first thing that I want to talk about before I teach you how to do it is you have to really understand what it is that we're trying to change. You have to understand your mind. Before we dive into the process of reprogramming,

you got to understand how the mind works, right? And so the mind consists basically of two parts when you break it down. There's the conscious mind and there's the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is responsible for just day-to-day thoughts, decisions, actions in the moment. And the subconscious mind really stores a lot of memories. It stores beliefs, it stores habits, and it kind of works very automatically. And it's, you know, below the mind, which is why they call it a subconscious mind. So subconscious

Let's dive into the conscious mind first. The conscious mind is our thinking mind. It is the mind that you know that exists, that thinks throughout the day. It's the voice that you hear inside of your head. Oh man, I should go get the kids before I, you know, go ahead and do this. Oh yeah, well that's your conscious mind. That's your thinking mind.

It's where we process information, it's where we make decisions, where we talk to ourself. But the crazy part about the conscious mind is that it accounts for roughly about 5% of our cognitive activities throughout the day. And so it's very limited. And it's just basically like, okay, tell me what to do and I'll do it. Okay, tell me what to do and I'll do it. And so you might ask yourself, how is it only responsible for 5%? I know all of the thoughts that I'm thinking throughout the day. Well,

No, you don't. You know all of the conscious thoughts. And so this is why we can often really struggle when we are trying to change ourselves and we're trying to change our habits and we're trying to change our thought patterns is we are only mostly aware of our conscious mind and our conscious mind can only handle so much at once.

And we normally do not slow down enough to analyze our subconscious. Most people keep so busy that they don't slow down enough and sit in silence and just shut up for a little while so that they can actually start to analyze their subconscious mind, to analyze their patterns that they have that are happening below the surface. If you want real change, you can't just do it with the conscious mind. You have to dive into the subconscious. And

And so when you look into the subconscious mind, so let's talk about the subconscious mind for a second. So the subconscious mind is responsible for approximately 95% of our mental activities. It operates automatically.

It stores memories, it stores your beliefs, it stores your habits, and you usually operate off of those things. And, you know, sometimes it'll just be an immediate action. You know, like, you know, to when the stove is on to avoid it with your hand, you don't have to consciously think, I don't want to put my hand on the stove. No, your brain knows that you've been burned before in different ways, you know, to avoid that.

But the most important thing that it's responsible for is for regulating your emotions and also carrying out the majority of your daily tasks because they found that psychologists have found that approximately 50% of what we do is basically on autopilot. Like we're not really paying attention. If you've ever driven home from work and you were going to stop and get some milk and then you get home and you're like, oh my God, I didn't even stop and get milk. And you're like, wait, I don't even really remember driving home. Yeah. Cause your, your subconscious mind, your, your autopilot was working.

And so our subconscious has a massive, massive impact on our lives. And very rarely do people actually dive in and try to focus on it.

And so it's really important for us to focus on reprogramming this part of our mind if we want lasting change, because that's where our habits, that's where our beliefs are all stored. And so there's there. You have to understand that there's throughout the day, millions of bits of processing happening every second in your mind below your conscious thought of, hey, maybe I should go and pick up coffee on the way to work.

That's your conscious mind, but below that there's millions of bits of processing happening every single second below that conscious mind. Below conscious, subconscious, that's what it means. So if you're not paying attention to it, you usually don't even notice the subconscious. And sometimes your brain will, say for instance, react to a person or a location or a smell and you didn't even notice it happen until after it happens. And you're like, oh my God, I didn't even notice that I just did that.

your subconscious reacts and then a lot of times your mind, your conscious mind, catches up. A lot of times it's an immediate thing, it's an immediate thought, automatic thoughts, automatic feelings, and then your mind, your conscious mind is like, "Oh, okay, I see what we just did." Like if I tell you right now, focus on your right thumb. Your brain was processing your right thumb this entire time I've been speaking.

but it was filtering it out so that you could be listening to me. So that you could think of something else. So that you could be driving your car. It wasn't thinking about your right thumb. But when I tell you right now, hey, think about your right thumb. You can go from subconsciously processing, your brain is processing your right thumb at all points in time. It's just filtering it out to now you can actually start to pay attention to it. And so really what you have to understand is the mind. So before we start to change our mind, we've got to understand the conscious. We've got to understand the subconscious, right?

Once again, subconscious is 95% of our processing throughout the day. That's 19 times stronger than the 5% conscious mind. And so you've got to start to understand it to change your brain. Now, a lot of people, if you're just newer in self-development are going to be like, but I've been this way my entire life. I just am this way.

Well, you can change yourself at any moment. You can change your brain at any moment. There's a science behind it. It's called neuroplasticity. Neuroscience has proven that our brains are not hardwired forever.

The phrase you can't teach an old dog new tricks is bullshit. You can teach an old dog new tricks. It might take longer because it's an old dog and an old brain, but anyone can learn and change themselves at any moment. So we have to understand that. And so the changing of your brain and the adaptation of your brain is known as neuroplasticity.

It is super important. I have an entire chapter of it in my book, Level Up. It's chapter 11, where I literally dive into neuroplasticity and how to actually change your brain. And when you change your brain, it means that your brain can form new connections and reorganize existing ones.

And so what that does is that allows you to learn new skills. It allows you to change your habits. It allows you to change your limiting beliefs, anything that might be existing. And so like if you're a negative person, like I used to be a very, very negative person and I hated it. I was very pessimistic. I could find the holes in anything and I just didn't like being that person. And for a long time, it was just very easy for me to be negative. Something would pop up. I was just an asshole. I'd be negative, whatever it was.

And I consciously had to take years of trying to change it, trying to reprogram myself, trying to change it.

And it's really hard for me to be pessimistic at this point. It's hard for me to not try to find a silver lining in something, no matter what it is that happens. And so it doesn't happen right away, but it allows you to be able to change because in neuroscience, the most famous phrase in neuroscience is neurons that fire together, wire together. Your neurons just send electrical signals between each other. And so when they say fire together, that means send electrical signals to each other.

So there's parts of your brain that are quote unquote the negative alleys that are just very easy for your brain to go down that alley. And so you might not really have much of a positive alley for your brain to go down. But if you start working on it and trying to find the good and trying to find the good and trying to find the good and stop paying attention to the negative, you're

it'll actually weaken the signal between the negative neurons, quote-unquote negative neurons, and start strengthening the signal between the positive neurons, which over time, doing it over and over and over again, repetition is a very key part to what we're going to be talking about here today. If you do it over and over and over again, it makes the actual quote-unquote positive neurons, the positive alleyways, much stronger than the negative ones over time. So you might be sitting there and say, so Rob, we can change our brains through neuroplasticity

If we can change our brains through neuroplasticity, can we like rewire our brains for success or rewire our brains for happiness or rewire our brains to feel more love or more gratitude? Absolutely. You sure can.

And we just need to be very clear on what's happening in our brain at all points in time. We need to become very aware. And so we need to be clear on what thoughts are going on in our heads, what behaviors we have, what habits we have that we need to change in order to eventually change our lives. And so a lot of times, most people are just kind of

living their lives unaware. They're kind of just walking zombies. They're not aware and consciously in their self as much as they could be. And so as you start to bring this awareness, you start to notice things about yourself that you can change over time. But if we consistently practice these new patterns, our brains will eventually adopt them and they will become the new norm. And so there's really three parts to this.

Before we go into the repatterning and exactly how to do it, but there's three simple parts that I always talk about, right? And we will be right back. Summer's here and we're all chasing something, a break, a goal, a vibe. Let's not let bad socks or blisters ruin it. Bombas makes socks and now slides and seamless essentials that keep up with whatever your summer looks like. Whether you're running a marathon or just a few errands, they make socks that can make

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And now back to the show. The first thing is the awareness, right? Number one, what do you want to change about yourself? And what do you want those new things to be? So you've got to become aware. You know what? I'm negative as hell. It makes it and I'm spewing my negativity and vomiting my negativity all over other people. I don't want to be negative anymore. Okay, what do I want to be? I want to be positive. I want to be grateful. I want to be more loving. Cool. That's awareness. Well, now when you notice yourself start to become more negative and pop up and be negative in moments, you're going to be more negative.

Awareness needs to come back in. So you have to have the awareness, which is number one. Number two is practice. And number three is repetition. So let me explain it and then we'll dive into it. So awareness, number one, two, practice, three, repetition. Awareness, what do I want to change and what do I want to change it to? When I notice myself go down the alley that I don't want to go down. Two, what is my practice? What am I going to do to get myself out of that practice?

old awareness that I was in or the old patterns that I was in and what am I going to change them to? And number three, repetition. I can do it over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, hundreds and hundreds, thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of times. And eventually you start to just repattern yourself. So awareness, what is it that you want to change? And then you become aware in the moment. Practice, what am I going to do? So let's say that your awareness is that you are very judgmental and you don't want to be judgmental anymore. Okay, cool. Well then when I notice myself be judgmental, what is my practice?

And I've shared this with you before. I've done this where I would find myself being very judgmental. When I would judge somebody, my practice was in that moment, I would force myself to say three things that were positive about that person.

So awareness, I'm noticing that I'm negative and I'm being judgmental on this person. What is my practice that I've already decided? I'm going to say three positive things about this person and then three. So that's awareness practice. Number three is repetition. I'm going to do it over and over and over and over and over again. Every single time I noticed myself being judgmental. So that's what you have to understand. Awareness, practice, repetition. Okay.

Now, let's talk about the techniques to reprogram your mind. The first one is called cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring is a technique that's using cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT, that involves identifying and replacing irrational and negative thoughts with the thoughts that you want. Kind of like what I was just saying right there with, okay, I've noticed that I'm judgmental. Now I need to replace with what I want.

And so this process helps you recognize the impact of your thoughts and the patterns that you have on your emotions, on your behaviors, on the world around you, and really starts to equip you with the tools that are necessary to challenge and change those patterns. I've said this many times in the podcast, but when you notice a thought come into your head, get really good at challenging that thought, like test the validity of that thought.

And just start to challenge yourself. Try to see the other side. Try to play devil's advocate for the other side of where you're normally thinking. And so when you start to do cognitive restructuring, it's here's something I've noticed about myself that I don't want anymore. I'm going to identify them and I'm going to replace them in the moment when I notice them pop up with the thoughts that I want.

I'm going to do it over and over and over again. And there are tons and tons and tons of studies that have shown the effectiveness of cognitive restructuring in treating a variety of psychological disorders. So like depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder. And so when you actually start to get really good at practicing cognitive restructuring, you can reprogram your mind to think differently.

whatever it is you kind of want more positively less judgmental more loving more more grateful which in turn is Going to give you a greater sense of confidence and makes you more likely to take action Which is a cool part about it So you can't always control your first thought but you can always control your second thought and if you change your first thought to your second thought Over and over and over and over and over again hundreds and hundreds and thousands of times eventually that second thought takes the place of that first thought and

So let me say that again. You can't always control your first thought because that's an automatic thought. Cognitive behavioral therapy calls it ANTS, automatic negative thoughts. But you can always, once you become aware of your first thought, control your second thought. Because the first thought is usually subconscious. The second thought requires conscious decision making in that moment. So like some people I've talked to before in coaching, they're like, I f*** everything up. I always screw things up. Right? And you start to feel down on yourself when you think that.

Well, take a step out of your own head, look at yourself and say, is that thought of I'm everything up? Is that thought going to support me in doing what I want to? Is it going to support me in growing my business to a million dollars this month? No. Okay. Replace it with three pieces of data that show that you're not a failure. Okay. Let me take a step back. Let me, let me, and once again, this is awareness and this is practice. It takes a little bit longer.

This is why most people don't do it. Okay, I've noticed that I had this thought of I f*** everything up. That's not going to help me get to where I want to in life. I need to replace that thought, that first thought, with three pieces of data that show that I'm not a failure. Okay, number one, I graduated in the top 20 of my high school. Okay, cool, good for you. What's the second thing? I had a goal of losing 20 pounds last year and I did it. Awesome. I am an incredible father. Okay, perfect. You're doing great.

There you go. That's cognitive restructuring. You identify the bad thoughts when they come up and then you replace them. If you want, you know, imagine your mind being a garden. You're the only one that can be tending to this garden. You've got to pull the weeds. Whenever the weeds pop up, you've got to pull the weeds. And that's what we're doing. So that's the first thing is cognitive restructuring. The second thing is visualization.

Right? Let's be real. Visualization seems corny. You close your eyes and you think about what it would look like and feel like to achieve your dreams. Okay, hippie. Cool. But science has shown many times over and over again this stuff actually works. Visualization is an extremely powerful tool that can be used to reprogram your subconscious mind. Once again, the one that controls 95% of your thoughts and feelings.

So it involves creating mental images of whatever it is that you want, the goals, the actions, and then feeling it in your body in this moment. How proud of yourself would you be if you did that, right? So you first have to know what you want in order for you to visualize it though. So like I've always given the example many times of me and my girlfriend at the time, now wife going to Italy.

But I visualized it every single day for six months. And then we were in Italy in six months. I was like, we're going to be there. We're going to be there. We're going to be there. So I did it for six months. And then we ended up moving there for six months.

And so, you know, visualize that house that you want on the beach, how proud of your, like feel in your body, how proud of yourself you would be if you did that. Visualize yourself, you know, traveling to Spain with your children and going and seeing the Sagrada Familia or whatever it is that you want to go and see with them. Like visualize yourself there with the people that you want to be there with over and over and over. Like you don't sit down and visualize once.

You do it every single morning until you're basically brainwashing yourself into believing that it's possible. Because by visualizing ourselves achieving the goals that we want, we train ourselves to basically believe that it's possible. Because all too often, you're just believing that it's not possible. And that's why you're not taking the action that you could. So when you're visualizing it over and over and over again, you believe it's possible, which in turn increases your motivation. You work harder towards it. You become more committed and you actually achieve what it is that you want.

And it's shown over and over and over again that more often than not, we just don't believe in ourselves. And so this is a way that we can start to believe in ourselves and brainwash ourselves into actually believing it's possible. And there's scientific studies that have shown over and over again that visualization improves performance in almost any part of life. You know, there's a study that was published in the Journal of Applied Sports Psychology. They found that athletes who practice visualization experience significant improvements in their performance.

And so like participants used imagery as a pre-performance routine. And those that actually used it showed the greatest improvement in their, in this case was golfing performance. And so they had them visualize making the putt over and over and over again. And then they went out and the people who had the greatest improvement were the ones who visualized making the putt.

So that's number two. And number three is affirmations. Affirmations are just statements that you say to yourself. You are constantly affirming yourself in some sort of way all the time, all day long. Question is, are they positive affirmations? Are they negative affirmations? Then you repeat them over and over and over again. You actually start to reshape your subconscious beliefs and your thought patterns.

All day long, just do them. After you brush your teeth, do them every single day. In the morning, you do them right after you brush your teeth. In the evening, right after you brush your teeth, do them. Find out what you want to say to yourself. What is the new thought patterns that you want in your head?

Because research on the effectiveness of affirmations revealed that it leads to improvements in self-esteem, into stress reduction, and overall well-being. And there was a study that was published in the Journal of Psychological Science that found that participants who engaged in self-affirmation activities exhibited increased activity in the brain regions associated with self-referential processing, which means the way that you think about yourself and the way it relates to the outside world.

and the evaluation of that. And the results show that affirmations have a profound impact on the mental state and contribute to a more positive outlook for people. So you have to brainwash yourself in visualizing what is it you want and also speaking exactly what is it you want. So you can brainwash yourself into believing whatever it is that you want. I mean, we've basically all been brainwashed to believe what we currently believe. Why don't we now take control of our own brainwashing? Why don't you just brainwash yourself into believing what you want to believe, into doing what you want to do?

So essentially, cognitive restructuring, visualizing, and affirmations are you brainwashing yourself. You've been brainwashed by everything that's ever happened to you. Now, this is your opportunity for you to take control and actually start to brainwash yourself so that you can reprogram your brain the way that you want to be.

That's all 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. Tag me in it. RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. The only way this podcast grows is from you guys sharing it. And so I'd greatly appreciate if you would go ahead and share it. And with that, I'm going to leave it 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.

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