Learn how to prime your thoughts for success in this episode where I play guest with host of Mid of Steel, Fernando Sosa.
Transcript
00:00:01 Speaker 1
Do you struggle with keeping your mindset in a good place during the week? Who doesn’t during times like these? Well stick around? Because in this episode we’ll be talking about tactics to prime your mind for success. And in this episode I play guest with Fernando Sosa on his YouTube live show.
00:00:19 Speaker 1
Mindset of Steel, which is a great show all about personal development, so I hope you enjoy.
00:00:24 Speaker 1
An you take away some some Nuggets of helpful wisdom, practical wisdom to improve your mindset. Anprim your mind for the day and success in your future goals. Alright, let’s get started.
00:00:45 Speaker 1
Hi, if you’re meeting me for the first time, my name is Patrick Marten. I’m a psychotherapist by trade on a mission to help teach you actionable coping skills. To improve your quality of life through lessons I’ve learned professionally and personally on my journey to self improvement. Alright, so let’s go.
00:01:00 Speaker 2
Did you know that subtle things that we experienced during the day affect how we think?
00:01:05 Speaker 2
How we feel and even how we behave during the course of the day. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how we can use priming and other strategies to help us get more energy, motivation and positive outcomes coming up.
00:01:32 Speaker 2
Hello, I’m Fernando Sosa and you’re watching mindset of steel live show. In this show, we encourage you to crush your limiting beliefs, punch you in the face and take massive action in your personal life an your business. By focusing on the 80% psychology and 20% strategies.
00:01:50 Speaker 2
Today is episode #10, so I’m fired up. This is very. I’m very excited that we’re on episode #10 going on two months now of our weekly live show. And today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the daily ritual of priming and how to identify healthy thoughts and.
00:02:10 Speaker 2
We have a special guest of licensed psychotherapist and certified.
00:02:16 Speaker 2
Cognitive behavioral therapist. He’s going to be joining us in a couple of minutes and we’re going to get some insights from him as well. He’s going to share a lot of good information now. Priming is something that I picked up a few months ago, and in particular in an event that I attended with Tony Robbins and I am going to share with you.
00:02:36 Speaker 2
Something that I picked up in that event and but before going getting into what priming is, I wanted to share with you just the word priming itself. If you look up the definition of priming.
00:02:52 Speaker 2
This is a definition I just I just looked it up online and it says a substance that prepares something.
00:03:00 Speaker 2
For use of action, so there’s different types of priming, but the key thing here is that I wanted to highlight is the word prepare, so priming has to do with preparing something for something else, just preparing. So in terms of identifying healthy thoughts and just the mindset in psychology.
00:03:22 Speaker 2
Aspect of it to prime is is basically you’re you’re you’re preparing yourself mentale to do so.
00:03:30 Speaker 2
Thing and sometimes.
00:03:31 Speaker 2
This happens whether you realize it or not. It’s possible to change the way you think and the way you behave by looking at certain things an these things that you’re looking at sometimes you don’t even notice it, and the thing about this is that this thing about priming.
00:03:52 Speaker 2
Is used by many companies in advertising and and different areas different industries. There’s an example about priming that I wanted to just briefly mention an.
00:04:04 Speaker 2
Uh, Spain. I think in uh, actually all over the world, but I saw an example that in Spain they the Spain train system. They did an experiment that in order to reduce crime, they played classical music and the train station, and I found that interesting when I looked at it.
00:04:25 Speaker 2
And then I looked it up and that actually has been done in different places all over the world.
00:04:30 Speaker 2
That they play music, and I think that could be argued that it’s it in. Some people argue that that’s not necessarily priming, but that they’re just.
00:04:39 Speaker 2
There are just a.
00:04:43 Speaker 2
Diverting people that don’t like classical music, not to basically hang around the the the train station, and therefore they’re not committing the crimes so. But the the idea is is so fascinating to me that they introduce.
00:05:00 Speaker 2
Classical music just to prevent like you see here to reduce antisocial behavior, and it actually according to them it worked. And again this has been done in different parts of the world. And the other thing is that I know that advertising agencies they use priming as well and they use it in a way that.
00:05:20 Speaker 2
Basically they they show you some image right and you may or may not even realize that the image that they’re showing you prime.
00:05:30 Speaker 2
View into taking some action, whether it’s an an ideally for them it’s buying their product. I saw another experiment.
00:05:38 Speaker 2
About a person holding a couple a hot Cup of coffee versus a cold drink and depending on and they made an experiment with different people, some people took the grab the hot Cup of coffee and some people grab the cold Cup of drink and.
00:05:56 Speaker 2
The ones that grab the hot Cup of coffee.
00:06:01 Speaker 2
Reacted in a way that was more favorable to the person that was doing the interview, and again it has to do with changing introducing some ideas it it could be something. Subliminal really, and it’s more like a persuasive way to introduce something in your mind that makes you take a certain action.
00:06:23 Speaker 2
So.
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When you put on it, well, so the subtle things, basically that it.
00:06:28 Speaker 2
Triggers your behavior.
00:06:30 Speaker 2
That’s what it is, so I wanted to show you let me just show you one example here. So what I I mentioned that when I attended this event at Tony Robbins he introduced this concept of priming and he has a routine or ritual that he’s calling a priming exercise. And for me it was. It was helpful because once you have something that you can name an you can have it into a.
00:06:52 Speaker 2
Structure routine I think it’s for me. It’s easier to do so he’s he calls it a priming exercise, but then when I looked into.
00:07:00 Speaker 2
Further, you know it’s really the basic concept of priming, but he’s he has some steps that that he puts into the exercise and I and it’s very it was very, very helpful for me because I do this every morning and it basically consists of the following. It’s five steps.
00:07:17 Speaker 2
The first step has to do with breathing. It’s a breathing exercise, and by the way, I’m going to leave a link to the actual video of the priming exercise. It’s about 10 to 15 minutes, so I’ll put a link in the description after the show.
00:07:30 Speaker 2
But the first step is a breathing exercise, and it’s a heavy, heavy breathing exercise that you do a couple of repetitions, and I think that the point of this exercise of breathing it helps you with the your oxygen level and it just brings you it has an effect, the physiological effect. So there’s a breathing exercise, and then the next step is.
00:07:51 Speaker 2
You get into this visualization of you visualize an yourself of of something that you are very grateful for. So basically you go through basically a gratitudes step.
00:08:05 Speaker 2
What is it that you’re grateful for basically and you identify two or three things that could be? You know, big things. There could be small things. It doesn’t really matter, but the idea is that you, you, you get into the feeling and the emotion of how it feels when you are grateful for whatever you’re thinking about so you spend.
00:08:25 Speaker 2
A couple of minutes in the in that gratitude step an.
00:08:30 Speaker 2
Again, you are recalling what are you most grateful for. An you really, really feel it. You close your eyes and you kind of put yourself in that state. The next step is visualizing outcomes already achieved. Now I talked about visualizing outcomes in my previous episode, and so it’s being used in this in this step, and it’s basically.
00:08:51 Speaker 2
You have an outcome and you visualize yourself as you already achieved it. How does it feel? And then you ask yourself, how does it feel now that you achieved this particular outcome, this particular goal?
00:09:04 Speaker 2
And that feeling is very important. So a couple of a couple of those outcomes when you go through this priming exercise an you really you internalize the feeling of achieving that outcome. The next step is basically you’re sharing with others, and here’s more gets into more like a spiritual aspect of the exercise.
00:09:25 Speaker 2
The matter what you believe in God, the universe, whatever it is.
00:09:30 Speaker 2
People you you, you basically it’s kind of like a meditation. You visualize yourself like getting like a light that goes into your body goes down to your body and then goes out and up in the Sky.
00:09:45 Speaker 2
So it goes through your body and goes up, so this is.
00:09:51 Speaker 2
Step #4 and then the next step is that you celebrate. You basically share with others what you experience and you want to basically share the the the joy that you’re experiencing, because after all of these positive things these are all good things, right? So you’re internalizing all of this so.
00:10:11 Speaker 2
After this, you’re pumped your pump. This is about 10 to 15 minutes. Going through this and there’s.
00:10:17 Speaker 2
There’s a rhythm like I’m going fast, I’m saying it fast here, but it goes slow. There’s a pet you’re pacing yourself an you’re very positive so it’s all a positive experience.
00:10:29 Speaker 2
Patrick Patrick welcome.
00:10:32 Speaker 1
Hey, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, Fernando.
00:10:35 Speaker 2
Thank you for being here Patrick.
00:10:38 Speaker 2
So Patrick I I’m very interested in this topic an I like I said I learned about priming and then, but I never. I didn’t really make the connection until recently from what? What you?
00:10:52 Speaker 2
Um, you explain in one of your videos now before I get into that, can you tell me a little bit more, a little bit more about yourself. I know that you have a podcast, you have some videos, a YouTube channel, how is that going? Can you share with us a little bit about that?
00:11:09 Speaker 1
Sure, so a lot of that just started off as kind of a passion project.
00:11:13 Speaker 1
I’ve been working as a therapist therapist for about a decade now and full time I started a online private Tele health practice earlier this year.
00:11:23 Speaker 1
And that’s been fun, but I got into blogging. I would say about a year ago and that kind of lead into podcasting as I learned more about it. I’m a big podcast addict myself, so learning from people like Pat Flynn got me into that. And then of course I ventured into YouTube recently and so they all kind of complement each other.
00:11:43 Speaker 1
But the real drive behind.
00:11:46 Speaker 1
These avenues has been part of my frustration as a therapist, knowing that there are a lot of coping skills, a lot of knowledge that we can impart that I don’t necessarily think should be reserved just for the therapeutic.
00:12:01 Speaker 1
Environment because a lot of people already have trouble accessing care or they you know when by the time they they seek help they’ve been in crisis for six weeks and there’s going to be another three months before they get an appointment. And so it’s really hard for people to get traction quickly.
00:12:16 Speaker 1
And of course.
00:12:19 Speaker 1
The podcast YouTube channel. These are not meant to replace therapy by any means, but really just to complement and augment.
00:12:27 Speaker 1
People’s mental health in general and quality of life. And so I just you know, I find it fun. And you know anything I can do to help impart a little bit of what I know and package it in a way that’s digestible. You know, is is my aim.
00:12:42 Speaker 2
Awesome and what part of the world are you joining us from?
00:12:46 Speaker 1
I’m in Greater Los Angeles area, so the San Gabriel Valley, so like a stone’s throw from LA, not too far.
00:12:54 Speaker 2
OK, West Coast, so we’re so with the time changes is this?
00:12:58 Speaker 2
Still 3 hours difference.
00:12:59 Speaker 1
Yes, three hours apart on the East Coast, so 415 my time yeah.
00:13:04
OK OK oh.
00:13:06 Speaker 2
So one question I had right from the get go quick. Can you explain to me what is the difference between psychotherapists and cognitive behavioral therapists would?
00:13:18 Speaker 1
Sure, you know, and I get these questions a lot from people who are, you know, new clients and not really even familiar with mental health in general is.
00:13:26 Speaker 1
Now that’s the difference, but even it’s like Kaya, Tristan, a psychologist, right.
00:13:30 Speaker 1
So we know that a psychiatrist is a medical doctor. They can prescribe medications. A psychologist is a licensed therapist at the pH. D level or side D level. A therapist can be an MFT, a marriage and family therapist. It can be an LCSW. That’s why I am a licensed clinical social worker.
00:13:50 Speaker 1
And that’s kind of like the most common you’ll find across states even internationally.
00:13:55 Speaker 1
Um?
00:13:57 Speaker 1
And there’s LPCS, which I haven’t really seen around these parts. You know California, but I know they have them elsewhere, and so there’s different types of counselors licensed therapists, but a cognitive behavioral therapist is someone who’s certified in what’s called an evidence based practice. And so depending on what you’re seeking treatment.
00:14:17 Speaker 1
Or you might seek a different specialist, and so evidence based practices are just kind of how the treatment is packaged. An approved through trials and research that says this is.
00:14:30 Speaker 1
Efficacious for this problem, right? So CBT has been proven to be affective in things for depression, anxiety, trauma, OCD, and there’s certain kind of denominations. If you were of CBT kind of better tailored toward that disorder whereas.
00:14:51 Speaker 1
Someone with PTSD might see someone who certified in EMDR or BRAINSPOTTING.
00:14:58 Speaker 1
As opposed to CBT.
00:15:00 Speaker 1
And so, depending on what you know, what your struggle is, you’ll want to find a therapist who specialized in that evidence based practice.
00:15:07 Speaker 2
Got it, got it.
00:15:09 Speaker 2
So with regards to the topic that we have today, Anne and I mentioned the priming and I know that you know it involves a lot of thinking.
00:15:21 Speaker 2
Positive thoughts really. Thinking about you know, I talked about gratitude or visualizing outcomes, but there’s a lot of I guess head trash as the opposite to the positive thing that we have to kind of, you know, sift through. So how do you? How? How can somebody?
00:15:41 Speaker 2
Identify these healthy thoughts when they’re overwhelmed with what’s happening around them in the world.
00:15:49 Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely great question. That’s actually at the very root of what CBT is is geared around, you know, is to address this stinking thinking if you were.
00:16:01 Speaker 1
So yeah, like the.
00:16:02 Speaker 1
You know trash mindset, you know.
00:16:06 Speaker 1
So basically you know where any data with things that are constantly competing for our attention all around us, and that’s never going to go away. It’s like you were saying that that morning, ritual of priming, priming your mind is excellent. You know all of the research points to that you know, carving out protecting that time.
00:16:26 Speaker 1
To prime your mind and emotions to be intentional.
00:16:30 Speaker 1
About your day, you know the deep breathing. You know that activates the the rest and digest response. The the gratitude you were talking about. That is the biofeedback we talk about in therapy.
00:16:43 Speaker 1
The.
00:16:45 Speaker 1
Just that the intention of setting your mindset onto the things that you want that visualization you were talking about your goals as if it’s already happened, that’s.
00:16:56 Speaker 1
Called goal pacing and therapy. That’s beginning with the end in mind and working backwards which combats that black and white thinking and so.
00:17:04 Speaker 1
When we think about negative thoughts or thoughts in general, you know the first thing. And CBT that we try and talk about is.
00:17:13 Speaker 1
Understanding that we’re not trained to think about our thinking right, it’s just always as always, running. But we aren’t really taught to check our thoughts, and there’s this this phrase in cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s called, check it.
00:17:29 Speaker 1
Check it, check it. Sorry, catch it, check it, change it. It’s the three seas. Catch it, check it, change it as the first step is to just take notice of your thoughts.
00:17:38 Speaker 1
And then the second step is to see if they are valid, right? Because oftentimes we have these thoughts and we just assume that they’re valid, we give them validity without even you know, looking under the hood, right to see if they’re based in reality and the problem with that is that will elicit oftentimes an emotional response to the thought that.
00:18:00 Speaker 1
Plays out on our actions and so CBT is really looking at training us too.
00:18:07 Speaker 1
Identify the thoughts and then.
00:18:10 Speaker 1
Labeling those thoughts and once we get familiar with labeling those thoughts as.
00:18:16 Speaker 1
Whether it’s mind reading.
00:18:19 Speaker 1
Self labeling negative filtering.
00:18:22 Speaker 1
Whatever, whatever type of or category of thought that we struggle with, once we get in the habit of identifying it, they are easier to catch. And once we are able to catch them in real time.
00:18:33 Speaker 1
And then we can challenge them and then we can replace them if they’re invalid, or at least come to terms with them if they’re not invalid, right?
00:18:43 Speaker 2
So so how so?
00:18:45 Speaker 2
In order for us to categorize them once.
00:18:49 Speaker 2
So like if if I were to start if I’m trying to identify some thoughts.
00:18:56 Speaker 2
Um, do I just go about and just kind of remember day and how the day goes and try to pick something that happened during the day and then put it in a bucket?
00:19:04 Speaker 1
Great question, so that’s that’s oftentimes you know somebody goes to a counselor.
00:19:09 Speaker 1
You know, it’s one of the first things are going to start talking about is some form of mood tracking, which is different than like keeping a thought diary right. Mood tracking is very specific because depending on what you’re dealing with, if you have depression, you’re most likely focusing more on mood tracking as well as surrounding events and your coping behavior.
00:19:30 Speaker 1
And so for me, you know I learned in CBT.
00:19:33 Speaker 1
To use a scale of like 1 to 9, OK if nine is your best mood.
00:19:36 Speaker 1
And one is your worst mood.
00:19:38 Speaker 1
How was your day? We try to D complicate it like declutter it you know people want to like give you decimals and fractions and ranges throughout the day of of what’s going on but.
00:19:48 Speaker 1
You know you want to keep a quick and clean when we’re talking about mood tracking and thought tracking, so it’s ’cause then it’s easier to identify patterns, right? So if you’re dealing with depression and you can just put a number on it for the day.
00:20:03 Speaker 1
Overtime you might realize that Saturday stuck. Why is that? Yeah, there’s something going on either who you’re with or where you are, or something is triggering you for eliciting those thoughts. Now if we’re dealing with something like anxiety, it’s a little bit different because rather than doing like just a mood scale, we you know, anxiety tends to be rooted in fear.
00:20:24 Speaker 1
Of pending concerns, so fear of the future.
00:20:28 Speaker 1
Fear of the self relay.
00:20:30 Speaker 1
Into the world and therapy we often think about that and like self concept myself, image myself esteem versus self in context. So that would be like how we relate to the world and how the world relates to us. But if you’re an anxious person, you’re going to assume.
00:20:46 Speaker 1
That the world is judging you oftentimes that you’re inadequate. And so when we’re when we’re doing boot tracking with anxiety or thought you know, thought tracking, the first step is to rate, you know.
00:20:59 Speaker 1
Your intensity of the anxiety and the triggers.
00:21:03 Speaker 1
Right, that’s kind of step one, and from there then you move to.
00:21:07 Speaker 1
Identifying your coping behavior. So when I’m anxious, this is what I do, you know, to cope and from there you start getting into classifying the thought, the thought categories right and getting rid of that. Catch it, check it, change it that we’re talking about.
00:21:21 Speaker 2
Got it, got it interesting. Now I wanna ask you something about something that I saw and maybe you can you can help me with this.
00:21:30 Speaker 2
How, in one strategy or technique 2?
00:21:35 Speaker 2
Put together things that worry you. I heard something about the Journal of some type or.
00:21:42 Speaker 2
Yeah, we’re doing a wheelie Journal. OK is that?
00:21:44 Speaker 2
What can you tell me a little bit about?
00:21:46 Speaker 1
That sure it sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Yeah, I’m asking not to worry, so I give you a worry Journal right now. The whole concept behind the word Journal is more of a problem solving Journal, and this is because most most intrusive thoughts that we have most.
00:22:02 Speaker 1
Anxious thoughts that we have are about pending issues or unaddressed issues, right? And so one of the biggest things people will complain about when they’re anxious is insomnia.
00:22:15 Speaker 1
They’ll be like, well, I try to sleep, but my head keeps racing.
00:22:18 Speaker 1
Right, well, a big reason behind that is kind of what we started off with by talking about how much noise there is around us. There’s constant noise in our life and.
00:22:28 Speaker 1
Clutter, you know that that demands our attention and so.
00:22:33 Speaker 1
Most people don’t create quiet time during the day to reflect, and you were talking about starting the day off that way. That’s great, that’s your first fruits. That’s like this thing. I know it’s important my mindset. So my first fruits are going to prime in my mind for the day, but I worry Journal is basically.
00:22:51 Speaker 1
A Journal or whenever you have an intrusive thought, you’re going to jot down verbatim, and it’s very important that you write your thought down verbatim, because that’s going to tell you what you’re afraid of, what the fear is, and the more specific you can be in the details.
00:23:06 Speaker 1
Of the thought.
00:23:08 Speaker 1
That much easier is going to be to come up with the intangible solutions.
00:23:12 Speaker 1
The more vague something is, even if it’s a positive goal, I want to be happy. Well, what does that look like? What is happy? Happy to you is different than happy to me. It’s entirely based on context, right? In your value system. So what are you afraid of? You know, I’m afraid I’ll never be successful well.
00:23:29 Speaker 1
What does that mean? I’m afraid I’m gonna be. I’m gonna fail in my marriage. Well what does that mean? What does failure look like for you?
00:23:36 Speaker 1
So the more specific you can be with your distressful thoughts.
00:23:41 Speaker 1
The better, but the trick is to not address them right then and there.
00:23:45 Speaker 1
The trick is to write it down and then put it away.
00:23:49 Speaker 1
And then come back to it during your worry time.
00:23:52 Speaker 1
And OK, right right so?
00:23:55 Speaker 1
It’s more of a brainstorming time because you’re looking at your thought that you wrote.
00:24:00 Speaker 1
Down and then you’re just going to Bullet point Brainstorm without judgment. ’cause people have anxiety, they tend to judge a lot themselves, their thoughts, good, bad, stupid, you know, but to just kind of brainstorm potential solutions.
00:24:15 Speaker 1
And then if you have time left in your worry time then you can start to rate them in terms of viability. Oh, this is a good solution. This is a 10. This is a 8. This is a two and then put them in order of priority that you will try. You’ll try them on right with no particular expectation.
00:24:34 Speaker 1
Right?
00:24:35 Speaker 2
Wow so I I I really like that that that’s a it’s. It seems like it’s more like a project based task based app. You’re setting time aside, you’re identifying the tasks with our worries. You’re you’re writing them down and table ING them to a deal with them at a particular time where it’s just for.
00:24:57 Speaker 2
Is that, is that right? That’s kind of.
00:24:58 Speaker 1
Absolutely in the hope.
00:25:00 Speaker 1
Chris behind that. It’s not that we can’t problem solve, you know, in the moment the problem with trying to problem solve in a moment is that that’s not the ideal time because I’m at work and I’m my minds running away with a problem from yesterday about an unresolved issue.
00:25:18 Speaker 1
It’s gonna affect my work, got it and then guess what I’m going to have more problems and that’s why I’m not going to get addressed anyway. I’m just going to worry more about it later, but when we write it down and we commit to a time too.
00:25:30 Speaker 1
Really process it and get into a problem solving mode.
00:25:34 Speaker 1
That also removes us from feeling like a victim. We’re taking action.
00:25:39 Speaker 1
Right, yeah, we’re being very intentional about how we’re addressing it, and that feels empowering. And then that actually helps to repel anxiety, because anxiety is fear based. If we’re taking action, we feel like we’re doing something tangible.
00:25:52 Speaker 1
That empowers us.
00:25:53 Speaker 2
Right?
00:25:55 Speaker 2
Powerful, oh, that’s that. Yeah, I really like that.
00:26:00 Speaker 2
Like me being like business, Ribbon is just like like anything else like any you just this is something else that you want to time block. And exactly that’s awesome. Yeah so one thing also that I wanted to ask you the term neuroplasticity and I think I’ve heard that a lot and I wanted to just get from you.
00:26:20 Speaker 2
Can you like in layman terms, what? What does that mean?
00:26:23 Speaker 1
So basically it just means like the mind isn’t fixed, we’re not done growing right. People feel like.
00:26:30 Speaker 1
So you can teach an old dog new tricks, right? But that’s not true. You know all the research on cognitive development or even happiness. You know when we talk about anxiety and depression, really, we’re talking about satisfaction like life satisfaction, right?
00:26:45 Speaker 1
All the research that I’ve seen shows that this idea of neuroplasticity means that we can develop new pathways in the brain. Right in psychology, there called dendrites.
00:26:57 Speaker 1
So a dendrite is basically like if you’re walking on the trail, right? And you’re walking on the beaten path. But then you say, hey, I want to go over here.
00:27:05 Speaker 1
You know, like OK, so you already know you’re gonna have to do some work to get through. The Bush is right, but the more you you take that new path, the more you carve that new path, the more it starts to look like.
00:27:18 Speaker 1
A man made path right?
00:27:20 Speaker 1
Right, the brain works the same way. The more we turn our mind to something. And in terms of our our train of thought and we attend to a different thought.
00:27:31 Speaker 1
The less resistance, less friction our mind is going to give us with going that direction later. Meaning like it, if you say to yourself.
00:27:42 Speaker 1
I’m a good worker, but you don’t really believe it. It feels ingenuine.
00:27:46 Speaker 1
Right?
00:27:47 Speaker 1
And we praise ourselves if we, if we have depression, that feels very ingenuine
00:27:51 Speaker 1
But the more that we repeat that thought and then put action to it.
00:27:57 Speaker 1
Overtime our brain starts to prefer that thought that’s neuroplasticity. It’s your mind’s ability to change direction of the synapse, the way we think, our thought patterns, right?
00:28:10 Speaker 2
Right wow, so I can imagine that the the negative effect can also happen if you’re. If you’re thinking of something.
00:28:18 Speaker 2
That you cannot do you or.
00:28:22 Speaker 2
Can you learn not to do something like if you’re if? If we can learn how to do something?
00:28:28 Speaker 2
It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re learning. You can learn how to do something wrong, or something that you don’t want to do right.
00:28:33 Speaker 1
Yes, absolutely. So it is a battle of the mind right when we’re talking about our behavior and they’re married. We can’t really separate them. That’s why, in CBT, you know there’s really three pillars there is your thoughts.
00:28:47 Speaker 1
Your mood and your behavior right? And we have to kind of address each pillar independently and then find the correlations. Because if if we think yourself ourselves, I can’t do something. We’re already short changing ourselves, right? We’re already shutting ourselves down right now. I can’t do that.
00:29:04 Speaker 1
Right, but in reality we can learn new tricks all the time. We can learn new things, but we have to allow ourselves room to explore the how you know and put in the time and love yourself enough to really explore.
00:29:19 Speaker 1
But the tangible steps behind it, as opposed to shooting ourselves down. But it’s very much about the language.
00:29:25 Speaker 1
In the CBT we talk a lot about adding on to the negative thoughts, yes, but.
00:29:31 Speaker 1
Right, because that that gives a little more wiggle room right to the thought it’s like.
00:29:36 Speaker 1
Hi build my marriage.
00:29:38 Speaker 1
But I learned a lot about what I need to do different next time.
00:29:42 Speaker 1
Right, as opposed to being an absolute statement because I thought is either one of two things. It’s a question.
00:29:49 Speaker 1
Or it’s a statement?
00:29:51 Speaker 1
And when it comes to our thoughts, if we can learn to just rephrase our.
00:29:56 Speaker 1
Thoughts and questions?
00:29:59 Speaker 1
It’s going to do us a lot of good.
00:30:01 Speaker 1
And because.
00:30:04 Speaker 1
It it allows a room for being curious for exploring options.
00:30:09 Speaker 1
Instead of saying I can’t. I can’t be an IT developer.
00:30:13 Speaker 1
I don’t know anything about that.
00:30:15 Speaker 1
I I stunk at math right? As opposed to saying, I wonder how long it would take me to become an IT developer.
00:30:23 Speaker 1
So it’s very different, very different, very different.
00:30:27 Speaker 2
OK, well this is awesome now Patrick. I know this is we’re just touching the surface of all of this.
00:30:34 Speaker 2
How can somebody learn more about this if they want to learn more about you? I have your website here. Can you tell me you know what can they find on the website? How can they contact you?
00:30:45 Speaker 1
Sure, so you can hop over to the mentalhealthtoolbox.com. There you’ll see my blog links to my podcast, the YouTube channel. If you want to just check out the YouTube channel. It’s the mental health toolbox.
00:30:59 Speaker 1
I have a. If you go to the mental health toolbox slash links, you’ll see all of my relevant social links there. If you’re curious of any books I recommend.
00:31:09 Speaker 1
You know, in terms of personal development or tools, you can always hop over to mhtgear.com. That’s MHT gear.com, and you’ll see a lot of the books that I personally love. You know around personal developments. My favorite subject.
00:31:25 Speaker 1
So big on James clear and the like, you know. And an.
00:31:30 Speaker 1
Practical wisdom, so yeah, I’m a Tony Robbins fan myself, and so you know I’m very big on personal development. A lot of what I talk about is is.
00:31:40 Speaker 1
Learn through my own experience. I’m not talking, you know, just clinically I’m talking about, you, know the bumps and bruises I’ve I’ve learned in my own journey on personal development, so I know this stuff works. The Battle of the Mind is something everybody struggles with, and one of the biggest problems with anxiety and anxious thoughts is comparative thinking.
00:32:01 Speaker 1
We look at somebody else and we say.
00:32:03 Speaker 1
Oh, they have it all figured out what’s wrong with me.
00:32:06 Speaker 1
Right, but we see people’s highlights. Not not, there really. Is not the filmstrip you know all of the in between that people go through to get where they are. So be very careful with comparative thinking. You know it’s a tool that we learn as a kid. That’s very effective, you know, because we have to compare things to understand how the world works. But as we get older, it can become a detriment.
00:32:27 Speaker 1
Because.
00:32:28 Speaker 1
It becomes, it can become very skewed, right?
00:32:32 Speaker 2
OK, well that’s about all the time we have today. Now. Thank you very much Patrick for joining us and sharing your knowledge. If you’re watching this on the replay or if you catch it caught this late, go watch the replay. Just to recap, we talked about a little bit of priming exercise.
00:32:51 Speaker 2
Some some steps of priming. I’ll leave a link in the description of a video for the priming. Then we talked the Patrick.
00:33:00 Speaker 2
Talked about neuroplasticity, the worry Journal, and other other strategies and tips just to identify healthy thoughts.
00:33:11 Speaker 2
Patrick can be reached on the website we have here on the link and he will listen to his podcast as well. Give him a good review. Just listen to it. He got. He has a lot of good stuff going on there. Thank you again Patrick for being here. Thank you. Appreciate it.
00:33:23 Speaker 1
Thank you my pleasure, alright. Thank you everybody.
00:33:26 Speaker 2
Goodbye to the next episode of Mindset of Steel.
Want to learn more? Check out my top picks for books on self-improvement and recovery HERE!
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