Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brains Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brains Coach and it is my job here to bring to you all the different tools for self-change, self-improvement, deepening that self-awareness in different domains, from your health and your performance to your mindfulness and awareness of where you're going in life and why. And conversations with yourself, conversations with other people, relationships with yourself and other people, how you do your work. All of these tools, in my experience, all of these areas add up to how you get to live your life, the quality of your life, and so this is the purpose of this podcast to bring to you as many of those as possible and not just bring you the knowledge but also share with you as many as possible stories and real-life applications so you don't just get the knowledge but you also have a better understanding of how you can use it today, right now, all these tools, how you can use science to improve the experience of life you have, the experience of life you have and be yourself, and everything that you get in life. Today, folks, we're talking about proper or better conversation starter to have with others and yourself, to change a mind to help others see different perspectives on lives and how to go about solving different problems or doing different projects in life, but also how to change your own mind, which I'd argue is the hardest thing to do how to get outside of your mind and then change your own perspective and change the way you view things so you could then see the path, a different path forward, because it's like climbing the mountain, or actually that was a real example in my life.
Speaker 1I was going down this path down the mountain and at some point I got to a point where I was stuck. There was just either a beast and you fall and die, or there was nowhere to go and I'm like, how did I end up here? I remember going down this route many times before and then a friend behind me said Angela, come on up here. There is a different path. And that experience reminds me of what's happening in our minds. Sometimes we get to a point where we feel stuck, like we don't see the way out. It feels like there is either abyss or staying stuck or maybe going backwards.
Speaker 1And if you possess the skill of raising yourself above your own conscious experience and viewing the situation from what one of the top conflict negotiators calls. Going to the balcony and viewing this whole situation from above, you actually start seeing many different paths that go around the issue or through the issue or jumping over it. You start seeing many different paths. And back to my climbing mountain experience with a friend. How it ended up. I went back just a little bit further up and I saw a different path down the ones that I usually would take when I didn't get stuck.
Speaker 1I'm like ah, so if you don't focus on one path all the time, and especially when you get stuck, and you just change your position, change your view, you actually can see many different paths forward that were not available to you. From that point of view, and very often in our lives we face the same situation mentally, we get stuck because we think this is the only way. But when you get a chance to get out of your own mind, usually it happens via other people taking you on a journey or taking you out of your own perspective. But you can also do that to yourself and you're going to learn today how to do that. So then you rise above your current point of view and you see different perspective and many different ways how you can solve the same issue or just go around it and not having to face it in the first place. So that is the skill set that you're going to learn today and you can apply this again to yourself into your life, especially when the moments when you're stuck or just faced with the decision that you can't take because it's too complex, too difficult and not doable for you. So you can use it for yourself or you can use it in conversations with other people your teammates, somebody that you lead, your kids, your spouses, somebody who you want to help with a different approach. And we human beings, we have this psychological immune system which doesn't always allow us to accept other people's solutions and points of view. We're so stuck on just seeing our own way and everything else feels like an invasion on our own autonomy to make decision and sometimes on our identity and personality. So we just resist any other solutions or points of view and just keep pushing, even though there is no way forward of view and just keep pushing even though there is no way forward. So if you want to help other people to also escape the trap that their minds might create, you can use the same method. What is the method you might ask at this point.
Speaker 1Yesterday I finished another certification Psychology of Change through Precision Nutrition. So time for celebration, right. So a little bit of celebration. But then at the end of this certification why I'm bringing it up? There was a sort of review process and one of the questions they asked because the topic of the certification was the College of Change was what is your favorite tool to use to help people or yourself change, and how did you use it recently? My response was, without a doubt, without any second thoughts, questioning, or specifically Socratic questioning. But it's all the same. You don't have to remember that it's Socratic, but Socratic because Socrates and school of thought that followed him seems to come up with it and use it more in their philosophical debates and discussions to elicit truth or different kind of thinking.
Speaker 1So Socratic, questioning a cornerstone of cognitive behavioral therapy. I don't know if you're familiar with that, but that's the kind of therapy where you examine your own cognitive process, your own thinking, when you question your own thoughts, and then you discover all the alternatives, way of thinking and how this way of thinking or emotional relevance might not be playing out that well for you. So anyhow, cbt, that's what the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy, in a nutshell, is a powerful tool. So Socratic questioning is a powerful tool used in CBT for facilitating cognitive change, basically the way you think. Named after the classical Greek philosophy, socrates, this method encourages clients to critically examine their own thoughts and beliefs. Well, here we're talking about clients, but you can also equally and that's what we were encouraged to do during our certification that what you could equally do with yourself use Socratic questioning to change the way you think, because that way might not be going all that well for you.
Speaker 1And then to the example, the recent example that I used it with a recent client conversation. A client told me I'm just not an exercise person. And then he actually started to talk himself out of this belief. We've been in coaching together for over a year now. But the questions that I asked him were what makes you say so? I'm just not an exercise person? What makes you say that? What makes you think that? What is the evidence? Where did you get it from? Being curious that's what's at the foundation of Socratic questioning. Not being curious meaning you're wrong, not, but like.
Speaker 1How did this thinking process come to be? What makes you think that? What makes you say that? Like. What life experiences tell you this?
Speaker 1And then other questions that followed.
Speaker 1Has it always been this way? Has it always been true? Is it always true for all kinds of exercise? What else could this be true of? What are the beliefs or things that happen in your life? Are there things you once didn't enjoy but later learned to like, maybe even enjoy and love? And that's trying for me to elicit this notion that people change, that you can change. I didn't like sardines or broccoli when I was a teenager, even in my early 20s, and now it's my favorite food in the entire planet. Other things you once didn't enjoy but later learned to like Did you change in other areas? Why do you think you cannot change in this area? Right, if you were to start enjoying exercise, what could that look like? What would you change about the experience of exercise to make it something you want to do? What benefits can you think of that come from regular exercise? What benefits can you think of that come from regular exercise? What benefits will you experience if you were to start loving exercise? What is it for right? What will it mean for your future believing that you are not an exercise person or believing that an exercise is something you could start enjoying and maybe loving and looking forward to what's likely to happen if you continue thinking this way that I'm just not an exercise person. And on and on and on.
Speaker 1The process and the point of this is to elicit different kinds of thoughts that you usually don't have Helps you to consider different kinds of perspectives and figure out the root of this thinking. And is it really true to your core personality or is it just your experience? And all of a sudden you realize your core belief about yourself start to be not that core and not that solid, and then you start questioning your identity and like is it really? Well, back to actually my favorite question of all time that my clients who learned it absolutely a lot is this thought or belief serving you and your vision of the future? Is this where you want to go? If you continue believing this thought, is this the future where you want to end up? And if not, what else can you start thinking, considering, believing that aligns with where you want to go, with the kind of person that you see yourself in the future? You wouldn't believe how transformational this questioning can be for changing your mind or somebody else's mind.
Speaker 1There is a reason why Tony Robbins, long time ago, started saying the quality of your life is the quality of your questions. And Socrates, many centuries ago, came up with this method because it works. Because it works, because it works for changing our mind, because it works for considering other alternative realities and options, and it's kind of like bringing you to the top of your mindset mountain All of a sudden. You don't see just one path, you see many, many paths following down. You see many other perspectives. You have this 360-degree view on the reality around you. When you start using this method that is quite mind-blowing and expanding and no mushrooms needed.
Speaker 1A few other examples from the article that I linked in the show notes on positivepsychologycom Question type that you can use Clarification what do you mean when you say X, like I'm not an excess person? Could you explain that point further? Can you provide an example Challenging assumptions? Is there a different point of view? What assumptions are we making here? Are you saying that? That, that Evidence and reasoning? Can you provide an example that supports what you are saying? Can you validate that with evidence? Do we have all the information we need? Is this the only information that we have? Alternative viewpoints Are there alternative viewpoints? How could someone else respond and why? Implications and consequences. How would this affect someone or yourself in the future? What are the long-term implications of this for your life, for your future? Challenging the question what do you think was important about this question? What would have been a better question to ask? Even questioning the questions themselves so you can see how mind-expanding that is and referring back to the title of today's podcast Ask Don't Tell A Better Way to Change your Mind.
Speaker 1Very often, when we are passionate about something or we feel very righteous about the thing and we also want to persuade the other person to behave in a certain way, to change in a certain way, we start with telling people what they got to do and why it's such a great idea and all this evidence what they got to do and why it's such a great idea and all this evidence. And that is having an assumption that the person is open at this moment towards considering other points of view and accepting explanations and other, perhaps proofs and beliefs, but very often the person is closed to change. To begin with, we have this again psychological immune system that doesn't allow us to just assume and accept everything that we hear. We develop this barrier and before you can help the person to see other points of view and facts and proofs, before that you need to open up that. You need to open up the door, you need to open up the gate, you need to make the person receptive to different types of thinking, beliefs and different realities that exist at the same time, and Socratic questioning is one of the most effective ways of doing so. That's why it persisted for so many years, decades and centuries, from Socrates to modern-day cognitive behavioral therapy. That, by the way, is, if not, the most effective kind of therapy. That they're at the top and at the core of CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy, is Socratic questioning.
Speaker 1So ask, don't tell, a better way to change a mind. And, by the way, it's one of the best ways for talking yourself into doing the hard thing. Very often in our pop culture these days, you will hear well, how do I motivate myself? How do I keep myself disciplined? And that assumes that the only way to move yourself forward is pushing, when in reality that is actually not the most effective way, not for other people, not for yourself. So next time when you're struggling with motivation, discipline and procrastination, pushing yourself into doing the thing that is hard. Try asking yourself better. What is in my way? What kind of thinking, believing in certain things, keeps me in this loop, in this resistance? Is it serving me? Is it where I want to go? If I continue this way, where am I going to end up? Is this the future that I want? Is this the future me that I want to be? And you'll see how that actually will pull you with a lot more consistency and empowerment than trying to push yourself into motivation and doing the thing.
Speaker 1I'm still yet to fully embrace it for my coaching and my personal self-change. But the more I used it on myself especially, the easier it became to change my mind, to change myself and start moving forward beyond the stumbling blocks and those dead ends that I had in my life, kind of like climbing or walking that mountain downstream. Sometimes I would just get stuck in one way of seeing things and somebody would help or life would have to pull me up to see different perspectives. So the more I started to use the Socratic questioning on myself, the less I needed other people to help myself to see different path to where I want to go and stop being stuck and keep moving forward. So I hope this was useful as an additional resource. Read positive psychology article that is linked in the show notes with examples and explanations.
Speaker 1And please do share this podcast episode with one or many other people. Maybe even run it in your meetup or friends gathering, family gathering, family dinner table. You Socratic questioning of all your family members who might be stuck in some loop. That is not serving them. Share this podcast with your friends, with your teammates, anyone who you believe could benefit from this process, anyone who you want to help to change, anyone who you want to grow and develop and become a better version of themselves.
Speaker 1Let's grow together. Let's help each other get better to create more positive impact in the world. Don't underestimate the impact the positive impact you can have in your closer circle of influence, like your friends or your family, and wider audience. One act of care, of love, of insight, can change someone's life or someone's way of thinking, and that can change the entire world. So let's grow together. Let's change the world together. Share this podcast episode with at least one other person and until next time, guys, keep growing and keep questioning. Ask, don't tell, a better way to change a mind. Talk to you soon. Have an awesome day.