Season 7 Premiere: Part 1 – Discover the Power of The Contrarian Mindset: A New Approach to Rewiring Your Brain for Resilience and Growth

Welcome to Season 7 of It’s an Inside Job! In this episode, Jason introduces a groundbreaking series focused on The Contrarian Mindset, a toolkit designed to counter unhelpful fears and mindsets while building resilience, tenacity, and psychological strength. Jason also explores how the brain’s negativity bias shapes our perceptions and how neuroplasticity empowers us to reshape those patterns for personal growth.

This episode lays the groundwork for a season dedicated to mastering the brain’s potential to overcome challenges and unlock a fulfilling, growth-oriented life.

Key Takeaways:

1. What Is the Contrarian Mindset?
   • It’s about challenging the status quo of your mind, questioning fears, and embracing unconventional paths to resilience and growth.
   • Composed of 12 actionable skills, the mindset is divided into three clusters: Mastering Self, Mastering Perspective, and Building Resilience.
2. Understanding Negativity Bias:
   • The brain’s survival software prioritizes threats and problems, creating irrational fears and unproductive thought patterns.
   • This evolutionary tendency skews perceptions towards negativity, influencing emotions, relationships, and decisions.
3. Harnessing Neuroplasticity for Growth:
   • Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to rewire itself based on new experiences, thoughts, and behaviors.
   • By intentionally practicing new habits and challenging fears, you can reshape neural pathways to build resilience, adaptability, and psychological strength.
4. Examples in Action:
   • Fear of public speaking can be rewired by confronting the anxiety in manageable steps, creating new positive associations and breaking old limiting beliefs.

Episode Highlights:

• Introduction to the Season:
  Jason shares his personal journey of resilience, shaped by challenges over the past year, and introduces The Contrarian Mindset as a central theme for Season 7’s Bite Size Fridays.
• Practical Insights into Negativity Bias:
  Understand how evolutionary survival mechanisms still influence modern mindsets and how to shift focus from negativity to constructive action.
• The Science of Change with Neuroplasticity:
  Jason explains how repetition and conscious effort strengthen new neural connections, enabling us to overcome fears and adopt healthier mindsets.

What to Expect in Season 7:

• Bite Size Fridays will feature concise lessons on the 12 skills of The Contrarian Mindset.
• Long-form Monday episodes will alternate between solo reflections and discussions with expert guests on leadership, resilience, and well-being.

Chapters

• 0:16 Introduction to the Contrarian Mindset
• 9:28 Understanding Negativity Bias
• 17:16 The Power of Neuroplasticity
• 26:00 Exploring Automatic Negative Thoughts

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:06] Welcome to It's an Inside Job, the podcast where we equip you with actual skills to build resilience, enhance communication, foster well-being,

[0:14] and lead and coach with impact. I'm your host, Jason Lim, and every Monday we bring you expert insights and real-world stories to help you thrive and succeed. And with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:33] Hey folks, welcome back to It's an Inside Job. I'm your host, Jason Lim. Well, we are at the top of Season 7. That makes us three years old. Makes my podcast three years old. And I have tried and I've dedicated myself to delivering an episode every week. And through Season 6, twice a week. And as we understand, Mondays are going to be these long-form episodes, long-form discussions. Sometimes they will be solo projects by myself. And a lot of times they will be with these brilliant, high-caliber guests that bring us a lot of information, experience, talking about leadership and resilience and well-being. And we explore many different subjects. But also on Fridays, we have Bite Size Fridays, where I've been bringing sort of excerpts or soundbites from previous archived episodes. And I find those fascinating. I've got a lot of feedback. In season seven, I want to mix things up a little. I will be doing a lot of solo projects because over the last year I've been navigating through my own sojourn, my own journey per se, and understanding resilience from.

[1:45] A very personal, introspective, subjective perspective. And it has shaped me. It has strengthened me. It has molded me and carved me into the man I am today, into the host that you here every week. And I want to share some of those insights that I've learned on my own journey. It is far from over and I'm still headed down that dark trail that has its lighter aspects here and there. But I've also learned a lot from guests. And in that journey, I've also had a lot of musings and I've written them down into some sort of coherent manner. And I want to share those thoughts with you, to understand that resilience and psychological strength and tenacity and fortitude, well, it's an inside job. And so over the last 12 to 14 months, I've been scribbling down my thoughts, my emotions, my insights about the ups and the downs of this sojourn that I'm on. It's neither good nor bad. It's something that's happened to me and it's understanding. It's given me a chance to explore my inner landscape.

[2:53] And what I want to bring to you is that exploration. I've tried to articulate it in the best, clearest and most concise format that I can. And I want to share that with you because I think my learnings can be something that may help you on your own travels, your own sojourns, regardless of what that is. So I've taken these thoughts and these musings and I've formed them into kind of chapters. They're about 10 to 15 minutes in length when I share them with you. So I'm going to be reserving Bite Size Fridays or most Bite Size Fridays for those learnings. and I will present them in a logical, coherent manner where one organically leads into another. I will still sometimes share longer musings with you on Mondays in the long form format, but I will still be bringing you a lot of brilliant guests that can help us with resilience and self-leadership and such. But I'm going to be dedicating, obviously, this episode to sharing some of my thoughts around that today. But you can expect most Bite Size Fridays will be those learnings that I'm going to dive into. Now, I'm going to call this series The Contrarian Mindset. Now, the reason I'm calling it Contrarian, which I will define in a second.

[4:13] The Contrarian Mindset is that our brains tend to naturally default to its survival software. And what that simply means is, you know, our brains have the best intentions, the most positive intentions to save life and limb. Thank you. But because of this evolutionary software, this is something we've talked about on the show a lot, this negativity bias, where our brains tend to default to looking for threats and problems. And so the natural extension to this, it creates sometimes irrational fears or unproductive mindsets. You know, that may be the fear of vulnerability. It could be the fear of change or of uncertainty, the fear of rejection, the fear of being judged, the fear of conflict. It could be deviating from the known path. And so there's a number of these mindsets and fears that I have explored with my clients, with myself, with numerous brilliant guests that I've had on the show. And I want to articulate this. And so what do I mean by the contrarian mindset? So the question is, what is a contrarian? Well, it is someone who opposes or rejects popular opinion or goes against prevailing trends. In this case, the default mechanism of our brain's survival software.

[5:30] You know, a contrarian mindset is someone who challenges commonly held beliefs or behaviors. Now, these beliefs or behaviors are these common fears that we have where we disengage from life, where we avoid certain things instead of approaching and engaging. So in a more general context, a contrarian thinker is someone who is self-aware. It's a personality, it is an attitude, it's a viewpoint or a mindset that seeks to question the norms and to take alternative viewpoints. You know, it's about frequently aiming to bring a fresh or an unconventional perspective to discussions or decisions or how we engage with the world or the challenges or problems or threats in front of us. So through my own experience, I've discovered 12 skills. I mean, there was a number of skills, but I've kind of clustered them into 12 skills. And I've taken those 12 skills and clustered them under three major headings. Now, the first major heading is going to be under self-management or self-leadership. And there are four skills to explore there. And each of those skills, I will dedicate to a Bite Size Friday episode.

[6:38] Now, the second cluster is mastering perspective. And again, there's four skills under that. And finally, there's going to be building resilience. That's the third major cluster with four skills under that. So in total, there's 12 skills, and I'm going to share these over 12 bite-sized episodes. And so pretty much those 12 skills are what I'm going to be calling the contrarian mindset or the contrarian playbook. They are plays that we can use to counter a lot of the fears and the mindsets that our brains naturally tend to default to. And in my discussions and dialogues and my own self-discovery, I've identified.

[7:17] Different types of fears and mindsets that don't really work for us, that actually push us away from life, to disengage, to avoid when we should approach and engage with life. And trust me, I talk about this every week with people, coaching them and speaking to guests, but I am still fallible. I still fall into these pitfalls, but I've learned to climb out of them. And I want to share my raw unfiltered experience with you of how to do this. And so those fears and mindsets will also be shared in those Bite Size Fridays. So this contrarian mindset, this contrarian playbook that I want to share with you, well, that's going to stretch over the next three to six months. But I want to do it piece by piece. So you have time to absorb it, time to apply it, time to see if it's something that can help you from week to week. And sometimes what we need is space between episodes to actually learn and to process and see how it fits into our lives. Now, I'm not saying all the skills I'm going to teach you are relevant to you, but there may be a handful of them that can really make a difference because I know it's made a difference in my life. And I want to share those experiences with you.

[8:35] But that's the plan for season seven when it comes to Bite Size Fridays. This episode, well, I want to dedicate it to understanding the brain software, to understand the negativity bias and how our brains default to that. Because with knowledge comes power. And if we can apply that knowledge actively, if we can be self-aware and we can show self-compassion for ourselves, if we can use self-efficacy, meaning if we can apply the knowledge. Well, that gives us so much more power. It slowly builds our confidence how to deal with things. So I know this has been a longer than average introduction, but I wanted to lay the groundwork. You know, we can learn greater skills to give us more latitude and altitude to deal with the challenges that we face day to day and however that shows up for you, my friend, personally.

[9:29] So with that said, let's slip into the stream to this week's episode, Season 7, Episode 1. And I'll see you on the other side of this issue.

[9:37] Music.

[9:57] Contrarian thinking is not about being disagreeable or purposely going against the grain for the sake of it. It's about challenging the status quo of your mind. It's about questioning the usual ways you respond to life's challenges and exploring new, often unconventional paths to resilience, tenacity, fortitude, and psychological strength. So this ongoing dedicated series of the contrarian mindset, well it invites you to think like a contrarian. Not to complicate your life, but to simplify it by cutting through the noise of common fears and social expectations and dysfunctional mindsets. In order for us to confront and reshape deep-rooted fears and mindset, well, it becomes imperative for us to lay a foundational understanding of the brain's role in this process. You know, understanding the basics of brain function allows us to appreciate why our brains gravitate towards specific fears and mindsets and more importantly well how we can actively work to alter these patterns. This foundational knowledge equips us with the insights necessary to apply the contrarian strategies more effectively ensuring that changes we strive to make are meaningful and lasting.

[11:14] It underlines that our brains are not fixed entities but dynamic systems capable of remarkable change. Now we're going to set the stage for deeper and more impactful exploration of the common fears and mindsets that permeate our lives by grounding ourselves in how our brains shape our perceptions, emotions, decisions. And we're going to dive into the negativity bias.

[11:38] The concept of the negativity bias in the brain is a fundamental aspect of human psychology that significantly influences our thinking, our decision-making, and our perception. This bias means that adverse events or emotions substantially impact our psychological state more than positive or neutral ones.

[11:57] Now, the evolutionary roots of this bias suggests it developed as a survival mechanism, prioritizing the recognition of threats to ensure safety and survival. Now, the negativity bias manifests itself in various ways, including a stronger physiological and emotional reaction to negative stimuli than positive ones. For example, research has shown that the brain responds more vigorously to images that evoke negative feelings than those that generate positive or neutral responses. This heightened sensitivity to negative information was crucial in early human history, where noticing and avoiding danger was essential for survival. This bias affects our psyche and our relationships and interactions with others. In personal relationships, well, negativity bias can lead us to focus more on others' negative actions or traits than on the positive ones, potentially skewing our perceptions and interactions in a less favorable light. Furthermore, negativity bias can lead to a preference for avoiding losses over acquiring equivalent gains, demonstrating its profound effect on assessing risk and making choices.

[13:12] Understanding the intricacies of negativity bias and its profound effect on our psychological state, well, it requires acknowledging various contributing factors. Now, this bias does not merely emerge from our evolutionary background. Multiple facets of our personal and psychological landscape can intensify it.

[13:33] At its core, negativity bias reflects our brain's predisposition towards negative stimuli. This evolutionary adaptation, crucial for our ancestors' survival, well, it helped us recognize and respond to threats. While beneficial in prehistoric environments, this bias now tends to skew our focus towards negativity in the modern world, where physical threats are less imminent, but psychological and social challenges prevail. There's also past experiences. Our past significantly colors the lens through which we view our current reality. If our history teems with negative events, it may predispose us to anticipate negativity, influencing our interpretation of new experiences. Now, our brains actively detect patterns based on past events, leading us sometimes to expect the worst, even when it's not justified.

[14:26] Then there are our beliefs and our biases. Now, our worldview and the biases that stem from it also play a pivotal role in shaping our interpretations. Believing in the world's inherent hostility can make us more likely to perceive neutral or ambiguous events as unfavorable. These pre-existing beliefs filter our experience, often highlighting evidence confirming our pessimistic outlook while ignoring contradictory information. Then there's the brain's stubborn single-mindedness. Fixating on a single perspective without considering alternative viewpoints, well, that can significantly contribute to negative interpretations. This tunnel vision limits our ability to see the full spectrum of possibilities in any given situation, often leading us to overlook positive outcomes or solution. Then there's emotional arousal on top of all this. Emotions heavily influence our perception and interpretation of events. High emotional arousal, predominantly negative emotions, such as anger or fear, can distort our perceptions, leading us to interpret actions and intentions in a more negative light than might be justified. Emotional states can amplify the impact of negativity bias, making it difficult to maintain objectivity. Of course, by recognizing these factors, we can understand how deeply ingrained negativity bias is in our psychological framework and its profound effect on our daily lives.

[15:55] However, acknowledging this bias and its contributing factors is the first step towards mitigating its impact. We can counterbalance our natural inclinations towards negativity, well, by consciously controlling our interpretations and striving to view situations from multiple perspectives. Accepting situations as they are and responding with reason, positivity, and constructive action, well, that allows us to navigate our lives more effectively, fostering a resilience and a more balanced outlook.

[16:27] Of course, understanding and acknowledging the existence of negativity bias is the first steps towards mitigating its effects. Strategies for managing this bias include, well, focusing on positive experiences, practicing self-awareness, self-compassion, and self-efficacy, establishing positive routines, and also employing mental models to guide decision-making. Now, in the context of the contrarian playbook or the contrarian mindset, understanding negativity bias provides a crucial foundation for exploring the common fears and mindsets, these pitfalls that we fall into. Recognizing the innate human tendency to overemphasize negative experiences and perceptions can highlight why confronting and overcoming these fears is

[17:13] essential for personal growth and resilience. By challenging you to engage directly with your fears, well, this series of episodes aims to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to navigate life's challenges more effectively, turning contrarian thinking into a powerful strategy for personal development and growth.

[17:32] Music.

[17:49] So as I've mentioned earlier, in future episodes, which will be coming out quite soon, I'm going to dive into the contrarian mindset, the 12 different skills that contribute to the contrarian mindset, to do the contrarian playbook. But to understand why these techniques are so effective, I need to explore in part two of this episode right now, the concept of neuroplasticity. So what is this concept I'm talking about? Well, neuroplasticity is the brain's extraordinary capacity to change and adapt and respond to experiences, thoughts, emotions, and environmental stimuli. It's foundational to our ability to learn new skills, to form memories, to recover from injuries, and enhance our resilience. Now, central to both the science of resilience and the remarkable discoveries in neuroscience, well, neuroplasticity challenges the notions of fixed traits and predetermined outcomes. It reveals our almost limitless capacity for continuous growth and transformation.

[18:52] Now, by strengthening or weakening these neural connections and creating new pathways in response to our interactions with the world, neuroplasticity serves as the driving force behind our capacity to learn, to adapt, to evolve, and to overcome challenges throughout our life. And as I said, in future episodes, we're going to explore how engaging in activities and thought process that promote neuroplasticity, neuroplasticity, well, how it allows us to actively shape our brains and unlock our potential for resilience, for tenacity, for fortitude. So let's dive in right now and talk about some of the fundamental cornerstones of what neuroplasticity is and how we can use it to our advantages.

[19:36] Well, one of the cornerstones is the formation and the reinforcement of neural connections. So each time we encounter a situation, our brain processes the experiences through a network of neurons. So neurons themselves are just what we call brain cells. So that positive or negative experiences can strengthen these neural pathways, making future responses to similar situations more likely. So for example, a common fear or mindset is presenting in front of others, speaking in front of a group of people. You know, the first time we do it and we avoid it and we feel in the short term good, it's like, okay, I avoided that. But in the long term, we know it's It kind of hinders us. But what happens is if we continuously avoid the situation where we need to present in front of people because of our job or because of our position, well, that just reinforces the anxiety. That reinforces the fear that we have. And more than likely, after a while...

[20:36] Neuroplasticity works against us. It actually strengthens that pattern. And so each time we approach a similar situation, well, the anxiety becomes even stronger and stronger, meaning that we habitually avoid those situations, which does not help us, but in the long term can hinder us. Now, another foundational stone to neuroplasticity is creating new neural pathways, new patterns in our brain. Now, neuroplasticity also enables the brain to adapt by forming new connections. Learning a new skill, such as playing a musical instrument, involves creating new neural pathways, these patterns in our heads. Similarly, actively challenging negative thought patterns and adopting new ones, while in positive ways of thinking, for example, can lead to the development of healthier neural connections. So back to the example of presenting in front of people, If I know that presenting or holding lectures or speaking in front of larger crowds or teams is part of my job and it will help me to excel in my career, well, I'm going to want to move into the anxiety and fear to embrace it and to push myself through that anxiety, through my fear, to take on a contrarian mindset to push myself. And by doing that, by having that raw experience, well, that starts breaking my limiting belief.

[22:02] It allows me to start establishing new connections, a new neural pathway, using neuroplasticity as an advantage to serve me and not to serve against me. Of course, I may not want to jump into the, you know, talking 500 people. Maybe it's in a room of 5 or 10 or 15 people, people that I'm familiar with. But what that does, it builds learning adaptation.

[22:26] I see that I can't do it. And so the anxiety starts to wane based on new experiences. So to rift on that, I'd like to introduce point three, the impact on fears, perceptions, and mindsets. Now, each of these significantly influences the shaping of our neural networks. A mindset focused on negativity and fear, well, that can strengthen neural pathways that predispose us to anxiety and stress. Like the example of presenting in front of people, for example. It affects our perceptions of the world as a threatening place.

[23:01] Conversely, though, adopting a contrarian mindset that challenges these fears and seeks positive experience, well, that can forge new, more resilient neural pathways. Now, a fourth fundamental stone in neuroplasticity is the role of conscious effort. That means we want to become self-aware. When we are self-aware, that means we can consciously direct our attention, the brain's most valuable resource, to serve for us and not against us. Well, what do I mean? That means engaging in mindfulness practices, using cognitive behavioral strategies, adopting positive or constructive thinking. All of these can reshape our neural pathways, promoting mental well-being and resilience against negative thinking patterns. And what does that do? Well, it's like anything. If we're going to learn a new language, bounce a basketball, play a musical instrument, the more we practice something, the more adept and skilled we become at it. Well, it's the contrarian mindset is just that. Those 12 techniques that I will teach you in upcoming episodes is just that. The more we practice it, the more we take a contrarian mindset, the more we can use neuroplasticity to build resilience, tenacity, and fortitude to be better at leading ourselves.

[24:20] So understanding neuroplasticity, it highlights our brain's capacity for change, adaptation, and evolution. It challenges the idea of the permanence of negative thought patterns, that our brains are fixed and this is the way I was born.

[24:36] That is complete hogwash. Through conscious effort, through self-awareness, through self-compassion, through self-efficacy, having consciously directed actions, Well, we can move away from common irrational fears and unhelpful mindsets and to adopt cognizantly, consciously, a contrarian mindset. But here's the thing. You don't even have to think about neuroplasticity. This can just be part of the back of your brain. This is a natural process that happens. All you will want to do is be cognizant and conscious of directing your attention towards your fears, your anxieties, and your unhelpful mindsets. And that's what it is. It's constantly applying. It's not how long you do it. It's how often you apply the skills that I will be teaching you in upcoming episodes. Because the great thing is, neuroplasticity, it offers insights explaining the flexibility of our mental processes. And it sets a foundation for actively reshaping them. We don't have to be handcuffed to old patterns of thinking that do not serve us. And that's the magic of this.

[25:51] All it is is about applying the straightforward, simple mindsets and techniques and cognitive skills that I'm going to be teaching you.

[26:01] In a directed way.

[26:03] Music.

[26:13] Hope you found this initial foray into the contrarian mindset of interest to you that it's piqued your interest and your curiosity because in the following episode uh the next time i see you or next time you listen to me i'm going to be exploring more in depthly what negative thinking rumination overthinking is now someone one of my professors used to call it automatic negative thoughts now these automatic negative thoughts he called them ants and they're different species of these ants and we're going to explore each of these and how negative thinking and rumination can actually lead us to it can affect us directly our mental health and our sense of resilience and our sense of tenacity but if we can get on top of it if we can understand the different species of ants automatic negative thoughts well then we can counter them and we're going to counter them by future episodes where i will teach you about the contrarian mindset the different plays that make up the contrarian playbook to counter this because as we've learned today well with the power of neuroplasticity we're not fixed we're not a slave to the mental processes or patterns already in our head we can change and adapt.

[27:28] Them just like we learn any physical skill it's the same thing with mental skills so with that said i'm going to wrap up this episode thank you for joining me and i'm looking forward through season seven to share the contrarian mindset with you and the skills that I've learned on my own journey. But until the next time.

[27:47] Music.