EP 6 | Blueprint of Your Dream Life: Awareness | Alignment | Action

We all want to be living our dream life, yet sometimes we get so caught up in life, we put ourselves and our life on the back burner - or, we don't believe that we could actually ever live the life we romanticize and fantasize. I'm here to tell you, that once you learn a little bit about how your brain functions, what your patterns and habits are, and what is really holding you back - you can achieve that dream life. 

We are looking at parts of the brain, why the primitive brain is holding you back, and we are discussing how to become more aware, aligned, and how to start taking that action that will lead you to your goals. It's not about focusing on the goals as much as it is focusing on your daily habits. Are you showing up for yourself? You want to? Then have a listen! 

Website: https://cuethenewyou.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/merittrollinsbrown/

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@merittrollinsbrown?_t=8hC2ICTEGIY&_r=1

Transcript

0:00

Hey cutie, thank you for tuning in today. I'm Meritt, your host of the Cue the New You podcast and I am so happy and grateful that you are here. I'm a curious person. When do you typically listen to podcasts? I usually listen to them when I am cleaning, walking the dogs running, or if it's a long drive and I'm by myself. I love listening to the Morbid podcast. I have always had an obsession. Maybe fixation would be a better word. So I've always had a fixation on serial killers because. I've always wanted to understand the psychology behind the why, which I feel like a lot of times you don't get the answers to anyways. This episode is not about serial killers at all. It's about focusing. Let's co-create your best life. So this episode's kind of like the blueprint, if you will, and we will look at things you can explore to start living the life that you want to live. Everything in life is connected. I had a therapist tell me before that how ivy love is how I view money. So your thoughts about one thing can either block another thing or receive another thing. This is a powerful concept and it may sound a tab woo woo, but you can see it and hear it time and time again. When the therapist said that to me, it really made me. Question a lot of things about my thoughts and beliefs, and if you've listened to this podcast for a while or followed me on social media for a while, you know, my business has been all over the place and the money has also been all over the place because the two are connected. So that should tell you something. What you think produces what you believe and what you have, what you have materialistically, but also financially, relationally, spiritually, and accomplishment wise. the three things we are going to focus on today are awareness, alignment, and action. Awareness, as you know, is one of the most important aspects to personal development, in my opinion, because if you are aware of something, you can't change it. But once you are aware, you have no choice but to change it for, at least for me, it's always a lingering. It is like having a dark cloud over my head when. When I hear something and it's like, oh, now I'm aware of that, it's always in the back of my mind. Or you know, like in the cartoons, somebody has a rain cloud over their head. That's what I feel like. It's always looming there until I take action and I start to change whatever it is that I need to change. Let's explore the brain a little bit. The brain is a complex organ that performs many functions and contains many parts like neurons, neurotransmitters, gray matter, neuropathways, and so much more. But we aren't gonna get into all of that. We're gonna talk about three things. Three of the most important functions of the brain are. One, cognitive functions, which is how we process information, language, make decisions, and what we think about our experiences. And y'all, this is gonna be like a brief mini lesson, if you will. Number two, motor function, the way in which our body moves. And number three, emotional function, how we react or respond and process feelings and regulate our emotions. Our brain does a lot for us. It helps us think, make decisions, communicate, learn things. Yet at the same time, we are all pre-programmed with what is called our primitive brain, which is also known as lizard brain. And I think I've heard it as monkey brain before, but it's our survival mode function, or. Our lower level thinking, it contains the brainstem, amygdala, and the limbic system. The primitive brain creates the emotional parts of the nervous system. So when your nervous system is dysregulated, your primitive brain is the one who's controlling how you're living. Three functions of the primitive brain. Responsible for regulating basic survival functions such as breathing, blinking, and body temperature regulation, releasing hormones, heart rate and fight or flight response. It plays a role in instinctual behaviors such as hunger, thirst, and sexual desire, and it is involved in the formation of long-term memories. And part of the primitive brain is the limbic system, which is a collection of structures that are involved in emotions, behavior, and memory. The amygdala, which triggers the fight, flight, or freeze response, and interacts closely to the hippocampus by connecting emotions to memories and the hippocampus is the conversion of short term to long term memory. Thalamus and hypothalamus are all structures contained within the limbic system. So again, everything is connected. The limbic system is important to understand because when you try to shortcut your emotions, meaning you are escaping, buffering, avoiding instead of acknowledging them and processing them. You are creating a chain reaction of false pleasures in your mind, meaning you're putting the bandaid on your emotions and not getting to the root cause so you feel this way, but you wanna feel this way, so you're creating false pleasures and desires in your mind. Therefore, you do X, Y, Z. This chain reaction then becomes a wiring of your brain. The more you do the same thing over and over again, the more your brain functions. In this way, this is how thought loops are formed. Behavioral reactions and habit loops are formed. A Canadian psychologist, Donald Hubb, and I think I said this last time, but this is one of the most important things, when he was studying neuroscience. He realized that behind the function of neurons and how those influence psychological processes, he figured out that what fires together, wires together, meaning when one cell is activated, a nearby cell can be activated, causing the second cell's axon to fire, which leads to a stronger synaptic enhancement. So. In other words, the more you do the same thing over and over again, the more your brain functions in that way. Because our brains like to be efficient. They don't like using up a lot of energy. They like staying in their comfy clothes all day and not getting up off their couch. Doing new things can feel hard or hopeless because our brains are wanting to keep going down the familiar path of comfort. The magic of awareness is that it helps you notice all of this without judgment. It helps you figure out what is going on in your brain so you can catch yourself thinking, oh, that's just my survival brain trying to keep me small, or, that's an old belief that's not serving me anymore. A lot of times I hear people say, yeah, my, I named. My survival brain, Karen, or I named my survival brain Chad. Whenever or when somebody is talking bad about themselves, they have a, they have a name like, Ugh, Karen Quits saying that about me. I don't wanna hear it today, but it's their own brain, and I think that's a good way of looking at it, naming your survival brain or naming the part of you that criticizes yourself, because that brings awareness to what is going on and what you're thinking in that moment. That's where power begins because once you are aware, you can choose differently. And not choosing to do something different is also making a choice. And it's like if you ever wanna try something new, like wearing a new trend, learning a new language, creating a new routine, but you never try that something new. Two things are happening. One is you don't believe your results can change. Two, your brain is uncomfortable trying something new. You struggle getting out of your comfort zone because it feels uncomfortable, and I feel like most people are the latter, that you're just, it's a habit to be comfortable, so you stay in your comfort zone. You struggle getting out of your comfort zone because it feels uncomfortable. And you may feel uncertain about the outcome, so you don't push yourself. Oftentimes, I hear you have to do the thing that scares you the most in order to grow. For some, that can mean quitting a corporate job and chasing a dream, ending a relationship, speaking in front of people, or sharing your work with the world, whatever is holding you back. You need to question your brain as to why you feel like this is holding you back. What is blocking you from moving forward? What is keeping you stuck? Once you start becoming aware of your thoughts, your reactions, habits, feelings, your prefrontal cortex has the ability to start overriding your primitive brain. And again, primitive brain is your survival. Once your prefrontal cortex kicks into gear, you start becoming the leader of your life. The watcher of your thoughts. As Eckhart Toley says, you start living your life making better decisions. You spice things up. You may become more spontaneous or adventurous. You learn how to push the comfort zone, boundaries. You learn how to plan ahead of time, how to create routines, systems and habits that work for you. You learn how to stand up for yourself and others when needed. You learn how to start living the life you want to live, and this is where alignment comes into play. Because once you understand your brain a little bit, clear out some things, become aware of other things, then you can start planning and executing your goals alignment can look like this. So I want you to get a piece of paper out and I want you to write down on one side of the paper. If you could picture your life any way you want, what would that look like? Write it down because it's important to get your visualization onto paper to see this clearly. And I'm talking about what's your ideal morning routine? What's your ideal life like? What's your, um, ideal career? What does your ideal day look like? And on that same piece of paper, I want you to write down what your day-to-day life is currently. And when you're finished with both columns, I want you to draw a line to match what is in alignment. Meaning if you dream of a slower lifestyle and you started to garden a month ago, and now that's in your day to day life, draw a line. Because those two are aligned, so slow lifestyle equals gardening, for example. That may not be the best example, but I think you get what I'm talking about and keep doing the things that are in alignment. What is important to note is what is out of alignment? How many things aren't matching up to your current life and your dream life? Explore these areas. Why are these out of alignment? What can you change to create more alignment? What needs to happen in order for you to enjoy your dream Once you become aware of what is aligned and what isn't, then you can proceed to the action step, writing down a goal and writing the action plan to achieve that goal. So for the action step, this is an easy way to do this. You need to look at the bigger picture and the end goal. So for example, if you wanna buy a castle in the south of France, like me, you have to be financially stable to do so, right? Like I cannot buy a castle currently, but it is my dream and I have a vision for that dream. And because I have this entire vision of myself standing in the castle in a room with wooden floors, big windows that led a lot of light in with white curtains, bellowing in the wind, and I've had this vision since I was in my room, and I'll never forget it. I was in my room when I was maybe 10 or 11 and I was cleaning and daydreaming. Listening to the Leanne Ryans cd and I just had such a clear vision of my future self, and I know deep down and my bones that this is going to happen. I will be standing in a room that looks exactly like what I envisioned all those years ago, just like I knew I was moving to Europe at some point in my life, and we made that happen. Duolingo reminded me today when I complete my lesson tomorrow, it will mark 1000 days of doing a Spanish lesson a day, and that's almost three years. I remember when I committed to myself when I was on vacation at my favorite beach house three years ago that I was going to learn Spanish, and I'm learning Spanish, so if you have a dream, hold on to it. It may take a month to achieve. It may take 10, 20, 30 years to accomplish, but you have to believe it will happen for you. You hold that power, look at your end goal, then do a yearly goal. So let's circle back to the French castle. I can say a yearly goal can be under finance, and the goal would be to have$10,000 in my savings account. By the end of the year, then I can break that down into quarterly goals or monthly goals. So every month I save X amount of money, break that down even further, and do weekly goals. Each week I need to earn X amount of money. The final step is to break that down into daily goals. So daily goals I can ask myself, how am I earning money today? Can I earn more money if I post twice a day to social media? Will this help me achieve my financial goal? Can I sell something? Can I invest in something? What am I doing daily that will help me achieve my monthly goal? That will help me achieve my quarterly goal, that will help me achieve my yearly goal, that will help me achieve my dream goal? Do you see how everything is connected? Everything you do today can affect your results. So pick one thing you want most right now in your life. Then ask yourself what's actually blocking you from having this? If it hasn't happened yet, there's likely a reason, not a flaw, just a pattern. And once you identify that, you can begin creating a plan. That truly works for you. And here's the key, understanding how your brain operates, how you react and respond when you feel most creative, when you need to pivot, how you process emotions, all of that. Self-awareness is your compass. It helps you choose the next steps for you to take. Some of us live with A-D-D-A-D-H-D-O-C-D, autism pots, bipolar and other neurodivergent wiring, and that deeply impacts how we plan and function. There's no one size fits all method when it comes to creating your dream life. What works for one person may not work for you, and that's completely okay. For example, I thrive on routines and structure. So I created an entire planner system based on breaking my days into rituals and habits, because that's what works for me. You may need to try different approaches, maybe try different visual tools or audio reminders. Color coding could be somebody's fixation, maybe flexible timelines. The point is to experiment until you find what works for you. What feels aligned for you and your lifestyle? What keeps you in flow? The more in tune you are with yourself, the more empowered you'll feel to create the life you actually want in a way that honors who you really are. So as we wrap up today, just remember this awareness is where the shift begins. Getting honest about what's really going on inside, what's blocking you? Alignment is the filter, which helps you choose what feels true for you, not just what looks good on paper and action. That's where the magic begins, even if it's small, even if it's messy. You have to make progress. You have to create movement, and you need to find out. What works for you to keep that needle moving forward? And you don't need to have it all figured out today. Don't overwhelm yourself. You just need to know yourself a little bit more. Trust what resonates, and take one step at a time, one day at a time. Your path is not about perfection, it's about honoring your process. Your wiring, your rhythm in choosing to do this every day. You're choosing yourself and you're choosing your dream, and you're choosing your goals every day. So I'm so glad that we are in this together and we're doing this together because I am also creating my dream life right now. And it's an exciting time. It can be hard at times. I can feel unmotivated at times, but you have to keep pushing through and again, make a plan for those obstacles. If you don't feel like it, if something comes up, what's a plan around that to keep that needle moving forward? So if this episode spoke to you or resonated with you in any way, maybe share it with someone else who's on their journey, their self-development journey, their dream life journey as well. And let me know what your next step is moving forward, because I'd love to hear from you. As always. You can DM me on TikTok or Instagram at Rollins Brown. And speaking of Instagram. I'm going to create a page dedicated to the podcast because I think it'll be so much easier and that way I can put visuals, up of everything and do like a newsletter and more things because. That's what I wanna do, but I don't wanna do that on my other page. So that name will fall under Cue the New You podcast and that's what I'm going to start creating. But for now, you can DM me on Mer all write Cuties. I'll talk to you next time. Have good week everybody. Bye.