Learning how to challenge the inner voice that holds you back with the book Mind Your Mindset

[00:00:00] Alison: Hello, hello and welcome to today's show. I wanted to share with you, I've, I've shared with you multiple times in previous episodes, books that I'm reading. I really became super passionate about personal development when I was a Beachbody coach. And because part of weight loss, a huge part of weight loss, the majority of weight loss.

[00:00:25] Alison: Is what's going on between your ears. So you've really gotta figure that out and dial that in. Otherwise, you're going to. You're just gonna keep struggling. So that's one of the big things that I took away from my met te as a Beachbody coach. So I continue to read books and actually I honestly really usually listen to them.

[00:00:46] Alison: I get them on Audible and I listen to them while I'm driving somewhere, while I'm walking my dogs. And that's how I'm able to kind of get that personal development time in. So I wanted to share with you today, I, I really, the past couple of books that I've read, I really have spent a lot of time putting together an outline and really giving you like the full dirty of the book.

[00:01:11] Alison: And it takes me so long to do those episodes and I was like, I can't keep doing this. So for this book that I read read, it's called Mind Your Mindset, it's by Michael Hyatt. And I actually have another book by Michael Hyatt called Living Forward, which I'm not sure that I actually read the book.

[00:01:32] Alison: I think I have it. I think I actually have it on Audible and I haven't read it yet. But anyways, I heard him on a podcast and he wrote this book with his daughter Megan. And I heard him on a podcast and he was, he was telling stories, which is such a powerful way to to relay information is through storytelling.

[00:01:49] Alison: And I was really intrigued. So I picked up the book and , got it on Audible, and and I listened to it and. Here's what I took from it. I was, I was a little bit disappointed because what I gleaned from the interview that I listened to, the podcast interview that I listened to, I was really hoping that they were gonna really focus on.

[00:02:13] Alison: Specific scenarios and asking yourself questions. And that's really not what the book was about. The book was really explaining the science behind how you have the thoughts that you do and how you can challenge those thoughts. And it was really the science behind all of that stuff. Which I think is interesting, but that's not what I thought the book was gonna be about.

[00:02:38] Alison: So I just w I'm gonna share with you my big takeaways from the book. The first one is that you tell yourself stories in your head, whether you're aware of it or not. We all do it and the kind of the rub is, Becoming familiar with what you're telling yourself in your head, right? And so the, one of the things that they, they talk about in the book is that you have, they call it the narrator in your head, right?

[00:03:11] Alison: That's the, the voice in your head. That's telling you stories of what you can and can't do, what you're capable of, what's holding you back, you know, all of that stuff. There's a narrator in your head that's just repeating those stories and we have the ability to question that narrator and to really take a step back.

[00:03:33] Alison: And that's kind of what the book was talking about. It was like, take a step back and look at these stories that you have in your head and. Ask some questions, ask some thoughtful questions, do some research and really think about are these, are these true? Are these actually true? And what was intriguing to me when I heard the interview is and, I think they're some common stories that you might be telling yourself in your head too.

[00:03:59] Alison: And that could be everybody in my family, is overweight and it's just genetics. There's nothing I can do about it or nobody in my family has gone to college. We just, I, I'm not, I'm not gonna go to college either, because we just, I'm, I'm not smart enough to do that. Or I'm really nervous in front of other people.

[00:04:24] Alison: I'm a horrible public speaker. Just, you know, different things like that. And then the, the whole point of the book is that, is, is, you know, our brain, I. Our brain can be rewired. This, I've been hearing this word so much lately. It's neuroplasticity, and what it means essentially is that our brains can be rewired.

[00:04:49] Alison: They've shown, like you can see different areas of the brain lighting up with different stimuli. You can. You can reprogram your brain. So the the, what we have to be able to do is see these stories for what they are, where did they come from, is there truth behind it? Really questioning that narrator and then moving on from that spot.

[00:05:12] Alison: And then here's the, the, the other part of the narrator is that, and we've talked about, and this is another super fun science word, is the r a s system, reticular activating system of the brain. What it is, is it's essentially. Your brain is looking for confirmation of what you are thinking, right?

[00:05:34] Alison: So for example, you are thinking about buying a red Volkswagen Beetle, and you started to do research on it, and you're reading the reviews and you're, things like that. And now all of a sudden when you're driving down the street, all you see. Are Volkswagen Beatles Now, is there have, is there just recently been a surge in people purchasing red Volkswagen Beatles?

[00:06:01] Alison: No, probably not. Your brain just wasn't taking in that information. It wasn't looking for confirmation. So the r a s is your brain looking to confirm stories that you have told it to confirm information that you have. So that can work in your favor and it can also work. As a detriment. And so what this is talking about or the, the, you know, the kind of the focus of the book is looking at those stories that might be holding us back and limiting us and really asking those questions.

[00:06:28] Alison: Is this true? Where is the evidence for the, for this? And then questioning that evidence. Where did I get that from? Where am I telling the story from? Because this was interesting. He's talking about how our brains. F pick up stories and we're like, oh, you're thinking back to, , 15 years ago and this is what happened, and then this, and then this, and then this, and then you'd speak to someone else who was experienced the same situation.

[00:06:53] Alison: You're like, no, that's not what happened. It was this, this, and this. And you're like, no, it was this, this. So there's a lot of things, a lot of stories and inaccuracies that we, our brains then think of as facts and it creates, can create those negative stories. So it's really just looking back in your brain and, and paying attention to those thoughts and then really asking those questions.

[00:07:19] Alison: Is there something that's holding you back? I can't do this because like, so for example, the reading of the book is split between between Michael Hyatt and Megan. So she reads one chapter, he reads another chapter, and through the story she's talking about how she's always had a fear of public speaking and when she was pushed in her company to.

[00:07:42] Alison: Make a keynote speech. She was absolutely petrified to do it. And so she started doing this work, asking the questions, where did this come from? And what she did is she went back. Is she did, she saw, she had a very, very good friend who had to, in high middle school or high school, had to give a speech in front of the class, froze.

[00:08:00] Alison: Everybody laughed at her. She ran running out of the room crying, and so Megan adopted that story as her own. I can't, I'm terrified. I can't do it. I'm scared because she had seen what her friend experienced and she didn't wanna experience that, so she was a terrible public speaker. In reality, she'd never done public speaking.

[00:08:20] Alison: It was just a story that she had in her head. And so when she started asking those questions and looking for the confirmation, is this true? It wasn't true for her? So then she's like, okay, that's not true for me. How can I. Find confirmation of what I do believe to be true. I can be a public speaker, I can put in the work, I can find a coach to help me be good at this.

[00:08:41] Alison: I can have good notes. I can do this. And then your brain, right, that r e s system in the brain starts looking for that confirmation as opposed to the negative confirmation. So it's just a different way to kind of program your brain. And then the other big thing that I took out of it was Is how you approach situations in your mindset, approaching situations.

[00:09:06] Alison: , Michael gave an example , he travels all over the world. He's a he's a, he has a performance coaching company, so obviously he does a lot of speaking and things like that. Keynote speeches and things like that. And he was sitting on a plane and he got a phone call from one of his friends and he's like, oh, I'm, I can't do whatever because I I have to fly to San Diego to do this presentation.

[00:09:35] Alison: And the friend called him on it and was like, what do you mean you have to? And so when you question that and you reframe that, it's like, hold on a second. Okay, I'm flying to San Diego. San Diego's a beautiful city. We've lived, we lived there for almost seven years. A beautiful city, Southern California, beaches right there.

[00:09:56] Alison: Sunshine. I mean, a beautiful people pay money to go on vacation there. He gets to go there. On someone else's dime, right? And this, this convention that he's going to, to speak at. People are paying money to come to this convention. He gets to go and he gets to give this presentation. And isn't he lucky that he gets to have these opportunities?

[00:10:17] Alison: So you can look at it as, oh man, I've gotta go do this thing for work. I have to go do this thing. Or you can reframe it and look at it as I have the opportunity to do these things. And so, you know, practically in, in our life, we're try, I'm trying to use that to help us because Michael travels all the time.

[00:10:42] Alison: We've, I've talked about it a lot. And he, he's, he's gone a lot and it's hard and. But there's other ways. There's other things that you can look at when, you know, like, so for example, he goes to to DC a lot, and we have a lot of family in the DC area, so he gets to go and have dinner with his mom and he can go see his brother and he can, you know, like things like that.

[00:11:09] Alison: Those are, it's just a different way. Yeah. He's gotta go on travel and be away from us, but there's other things that you can look at. To kind of put a positive spin on it, if you will, which which I think. We need to do more of that. Right. I think we tend to be negative Nellies a lot of the time, especially, you know, it's hard and I know it's hard, but it doesn't help us to sit in the hard.

[00:11:34] Alison: So what can we do to help us, , turn that over and look at the other side of it. Right. Okay. And then the last thing that I the last kind of nugget that I took out of this book was he said A lot of times if you are really stuck on something or you've been working on something, a presentation or a project or something, and it's just not going well and you just can't, and you're just, it feels like you're kind of beating your head against the wall for your brain, neurologically, one of the best things that you can do is walk away is walk away.

[00:12:09] Alison: Go get a good night's sleep. Wake up in the, so he gives an example again, get, I love stories. They're so powerful. So he gives an example in the book. He's working on a, a keynote. He's gotta give the next day and he's just, he just can't, he's done this so many times, he can do it in his sleep, but for whatever reason, it's just not coming together.

[00:12:27] Alison: And he is. Just hours. And it's just, and there's wads of paper all over the floor and he just, he can't seem to get his ideas together and what he wants to do. And his wife comes in and is like, you really just need to walk away, get a good night's sleep, just walk away and look at it again in the morning.

[00:12:42] Alison: And that can be stressful because he had this presentation at like 9:00 AM so that's putting yourself on the crunch. But what happened is, , he got a good night's sleep, he got up the next morning and he banged it out in like 15 minutes. Done. So a lot of times if you can walk away and give yourself a break, you'll see things in a different way.

[00:13:01] Alison: Questions maybe that you didn't think to ask before, or conclusions that you didn't think to come to before. When you give your brain that space to think bigger, then the outcome can often be different. And, and part of that too, is accessing an environment. So one of the examples that he gave was working in an office collectively, and they, there it was a research study that I think that they talked about and he said, they had these engineers and , they're just, , banging their heads against the wall, trying to fix this little issue to do whatever, and they bring in, they have, so there's, there's a lot of times there's masterminds, right?

[00:13:41] Alison: I'm sure you've heard of it. , it's just groups of people and oftentimes you're in similar situations and you just kind of bounce ideas off of each other, push each other to go harder, things like that. But there's also, you can take a different approach to that. And so I feel like the story that they told, it was an engineering issue that they were having, and they brought in, they had this group of people and there were people on the, on this team, in this mastermind that had nothing to do with engineering at all, and they would throw out these ideas that seem really farfetched, but it's like, hold on, hold on a second.

[00:14:14] Alison: That, that actually that would work. And so they, they this huge problem this engineering team was having. They just could not figure out a workaround to get this done. Someone from this mastermind that had nothing to do with engineering, wasn't an engineer, had nothing to do with engineering, fixed the problem because they came at it from a different perspective.

[00:14:33] Alison: So kind of the moral of the story of that one is, Branch out, like expand your your circle, right? And, and somebody might have, even though they don't have anything to do with your specific or per, you know, profession, they might have a great insight that you just can't see because you're so in it. Like you're so focused and down and.

[00:14:55] Alison: , drilled in and trying to figure it out that your brain like literally cannot access the creative side, right? And so when someone else comes in and can look at it from, From the outside looking in, oftentimes they will have insight that you just can't get from the inside. So I thought that that was cool.

[00:15:13] Alison: So those are kind of the big takeaways that I had from this book. I, again, I feel like as , as military spouses, it's, we have just in an, you know, and again, I feel like I've been talking to more and more people that listen to the show that are not military spouses. So now I kind of feel like I'm talking to everybody.

[00:15:32] Alison: And that is that. You know, I, I'm sure you've heard before, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And for, if you've got kids at home or you're in a small circle where you don't have that, the influence of, you know, if you take, take stock of that, like if you think about who do you spend the most time with, the five people you spend the most time with you, or the sum of those people, if they're a five and six year old.

[00:16:00] Alison: Whew. That's, that's, it's going to be hard to crush some big goals when your circle is small children. So how can we expand our circle? How can we get mentorship? How can we grow, how can we learn if we're stuck in the middle of North Dakota at this base, or we're in central Texas at this base in the middle of the desert, right?

[00:16:23] Alison: There's, there's a lot of, of, of seclusion of oftentimes that happens as we move around to different bases and things like that. And one of the things that we can do, get a book, get audible. Podcasts, right? You can have those mentors and increase your circle of awareness, your, your circle of influence by listening to mentors via podcast, via audible books and things like that.

[00:16:49] Alison: And I think that the more that we can learn about our brain and how it works and What can we do to help ourselves navigate our lives better, to mitigate stress, to move through situations instead of sitting in the stuff like how, how can we do that stuff? I think that's, there's incredible power in that.

[00:17:10] Alison: So I'm gonna continue to be reading these books and I will continue to share them with you. I will probably also continue just. To do this shortened version where I finish the book and I'm just gonna sit down and just like free ball and talk to you about the, my, my big takeaways instead of taking hours and hours and hours to go through and and summarize the book for you.

[00:17:33] Alison: So that's all I have for you this week. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day, and I'll talk to you again soon.