Bloom Your Mind

Ep 144: Regenerative Thinking

• Marie McDonald

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In this episode of the Bloom Your Mind Podcast, we unpack the cycles of thought that either move us toward the life we want—or pull us away from it.

Just like a garden, our minds are always growing something. Some thoughts regenerate possibility and growth. Others are degenerative—reinforcing old, unhelpful beliefs and keeping us stuck. Today we’ll break down how that happens, how to recognize it, and most importantly, how to change it. 

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

  • How regenerative vs. degenerative cycles actually work
  • Why most of our thoughts are subconscious and programmed in without our control 
  • The role compassion plays in effectively changing our thought cycles
  • Real-life examples of both degenerative and regenerative cycles
  • A simple 5-minute practice to identify, interrupt and change thought cycles from degenerative to regenerative 
  • A ten second version to use on the fly

Resources & Links:

  • Listen to the episode on Regenerative Design (for the full framework)

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind Podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 144 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. Oh my y'all, I'm coming in hot off. This week. I was talking about this to the Bloom Room group. Today. Lots of people in there were talking about this too.

Speaker 1:

School started last week for my kids, and so now it's been what? Three days? Last week and yesterday it was one day of school. It's been four school days, with a weekend in between, and I realized yesterday afternoon that my nervous system was just spiked. It was like I'm at, I like, turned up to a higher frequency than normal and I realized it is just really wacky how fast everything starts up again and how big the transition is from summer to the school year. And what I've done since, realizing that I was like kind of anxious and like jittery, and I'm usually not like that and so what I've done is I've started planting in more meditation moments, like in the morning, I meditate before anybody wakes up, I have a little candle, I meditate, I ground and I've planted some of those throughout my day and it's really helping me. So I'm just here to normalize for anybody else out there. If you are transitioning, either if you're listening to this real time or you're at a different time of year and things are moving it is totally okay to take a moment to notice your nervous system and your body and adjust your schedule, adjust your daily practices, and I highly recommend adding in some of those moments of mindfulness or moments to complete the stress cycle where you actually jump up and down and shake a little bit, you take a walk, you just like shake it out so that you can get some of what we bottle up in our bodies out. All right, that's enough about that. Today we are talking about regenerative thinking. So true to the name of the Bloom your Mind podcast. I have kind of a bloom your mind life where I have about a billion growing things in my world, or at least it feels like that. When it's time to water them, it takes me forever. I have inside plants, I have outside plants. My kids love to work on the outside garden with me where we grow stuff to eat. My husband loves it too. We cook it, we eat it and we grow flowers to put in our house In some years.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we really revamped the garden during COVID because we were home all the time together and so we breeded our front yard ourselves. We built this fence, we built raised beds and we learned how to garden. I had this new huge amount of fresh soil, like this magic soil, from this place in my hometown there's like fish emulsion in it, rabbit droppings, like all of this magic stuff. And that first year my garden went off with all that fresh soil. It was a riot of like zucchini and basil and tomatoes flowers. It was spilling over the edges. It was everything grew like jack and the beanstalk in that soil. And then some years since then it's been how many years? Like five years since then. Some years it's like that it's beautiful, and other years it's a leggy, wilty mess.

Speaker 1:

I will go on vacation and I won't be tending it as often. So I have really learned that if I want to have a garden, if we want to have a garden with my family, we got to tend it. A garden needs daily attention. I have to intercept the pests, pull the weeds, fight off the white mold. Because I live by the ocean, I have to prune so that the plants grow in the direction that I want, instead of going buck wild and choking each other out. And I'm serious, they do that. And I have to intentionally plant things that I want to grow right, because I'm going to grow them. I'm going to tend them with care. They're going to turn into things that I want to grow right Because I'm going to grow them. I'm going to tend them with care. They're going to turn into things that I either want in my kitchen or I don't. And sure, in a perfect world hey, an ideal world, a magical fantasy world I would start every single gardening season with an entire fresh bed of clean, nutrient-rich soil. But I can't do that. I mean, it would take an incredible amount of investment to do that. So I've only had that once. The first time it was all new soil, new fresh soil, unadulterated. Every other year I add new soil to the top, I work it in, I take some out and I work with what the old soil is giving me too.

Speaker 1:

And the reason I'm diving so hard into this metaphor is because our brains like metaphors as we understand concepts. And, speaking of our brains, they work. Just like that garden. Your brain is always growing something, thoughts are constantly firing and all of those thoughts, those seeds right, create cycles in your life. I'm going to talk about what that looks like. Some of those cycles are regenerative. The thoughts start a whole cycle in your body, in your behavior and your results that bring you closer to the life that you want. It's like a little circle with those arrows in between them. It's a cycle. There's also another cycle, same deal. If you visualize this circle, you know, with the three arrows, like a recycling circle, that regenerative circle. There's another one that's degenerative. Some of our thinking cycles keep us stuck, stir up anxiety, erode self-worth, and what they do is they create a cycle of behavior and results that reinforce that thinking and move us backwards in our life, farther away from what we want. So today we're going to talk about how each of those types of cycles work, how to recognize which one you're in and, most importantly, what to do about it.

Speaker 1:

And what I love about this concept, y'all, is that you can use the five-minute version of this reflection tool and develop new, whole new levels of awareness that will just change your life, and I do not say that lightly. I don't know if you've heard me say this is life-changing before. I do not say that lightly. This practice has literally enhanced every part of my life understanding these cycles. But also you can do the 10, second version as you're moving through your day and just ask yourself the cheat sheet version, which sounds like I know my thoughts create cycles already. If this thought is going to prove itself through and I know that it's going to prove itself through, and I know that it's going to prove itself through my behavior and the results, is this thought going to be regenerative or degenerative? If I keep thinking it, how's it going to show up in my life? And while a deeper look is always more insightful, we can use this little quick look on the fly too, just asking ourselves is this degenerative or regenerative?

Speaker 1:

First, if you listened, I want to do a quick recap of regenerative design. If you listened to my episode on regenerative design, you know this idea. Your energy flows out of you into the things that you invested in, in your ideas that you're trying to make real. Then it comes back to you in time money, love, community fulfillment, you name it. Energy out, goes into the world and comes back to you when you put your energy, which is a very finite resource and the most valuable one that we have our time and our attention right and our money. Our energy, time and attention is what I mean by the most important resource that you have. When you put your energy into something that gives you equal or greater energy back, that's regenerative design. It's reciprocal. It feeds the machine which is you. When it drains you or gives you something you don't even want in return, that's what we call a degenerative cycle, and the same principle applies to our thoughts.

Speaker 1:

So here's the loop and how these thought cycles work. You have a thought work. You have a thought. That thought creates a feeling in your body which drives behavior. Usually, the behavior matches the thought. That behavior creates a result and the result becomes evidence that the original thought was true. So it's a cycle where your subconscious bias is proving your thoughts true over and over and over again by gaining evidence of them, and I'm going to break this down in a couple of examples. So the result becomes evidence and your brain is like see, I told you so, and the belief grows stronger. When it's a negative belief that's running in the background like software that we don't even see and I don't know how that stuff works. It's just magic in the background, or even a negative or less helpful belief that we are aware of. That cycle is going to create things we do not want in our lives, and that's what I call a degenerative thought cycle or degenerative thinking. Most of this is happening in your subconscious.

Speaker 1:

Psychologists estimate that the majority of our thoughts are not only subconscious but also not really our responsibility. We didn't plant the seeds. Psychologists estimate the majority of our thoughts we didn't choose them. Most are programmed by family, schools, media, body language. We absorbed experiences we lived. The ones we heard out loud are easier for us to identify and catch. We're like okay, that's a belief I heard said to me a bunch of times. So I know I have it. But there are most of them on the subconscious level are more sneaky than that. We absorbed them through all of that that I just named Body language, experiences, observations, watching other people we may not even realize they're there.

Speaker 1:

So as we uncover the beliefs we got to have compassion Super important when we bring awareness to a degenerative thinking cycle. The only way it works is if we do it with compassion, because the thoughts are not your fault. They're programmed in. It's like weeds that blew in from your neighbor's yard. When you notice them, instead of shaming yourself, just get curious. Oh hey, weed Didn't plant you, but I keep seeing you every year and you're a little bit bigger every time. Here you are. All right, let's see what's going on. That's where your agency lives. All right, let's see what's going on. That's where your agency lives. All right, let's break down a couple of degenerative cycles. Number one let's say you have some degenerative thinking going on as you're trying to get an idea out into the world.

Speaker 1:

I see this one all the time with people, and so again, I want you to just picture that circle of the thought, with a little arrow going into the feeling, with a little arrow going into the feeling, with a little arrow going into the behaviors, another arrow going into the results and those results going right back into the thought, because we're gaining evidence, our results are proving that the thought is true, strengthening the belief. It's a cycle that's going round and round. Okay, so the thought is I never have enough time, and this is the one I hear all the time. I see all the time I don't have enough time, which creates a feeling of kind of hopelessness in our bodies and then out of that hopelessness that comes from thinking I just never have enough time. We respond to everybody's requests reactively. I got to get this done right now. Okay, wait, I don't even know what else is on my plate I got to get. We're just responding and reacting. Maybe we create a lot of plans but then we never clear our schedule and say no to enough things to actually execute on the plans and then they kind of pass by and we have to start again in the planning mode. So we stay stuck in idea generation mode and in reactivity, fulfilling everyone else's requests. That's the behavior and the result is that our days are full of reactive action we're not creating and that proves we never have time. So it strengthens the belief that it will never change. We'll never have time. We don't have time. That's a degenerative thought cycle.

Speaker 1:

Second example a social situation. Let's take the thought and you know, sometimes this is on the surface and really we can be aware of it. Sometimes it's happening subconsciously. Let's take the thought I don't belong. Maybe it comes up a little bit differently for somebody else, maybe it's they don't want me around. But we'll just take up the I don't belong here, maybe the feeling that that generates in our body is self-consciousness, and out of that self-consciousness that comes from feeling like we don't belong, that people don't want us around. Maybe we don't approach people because we just assume they don't want us to. We avoid eye contact because we kind of feel self-conscious. Our body language says keep out. It's sort of aloof, and the result is that people don't invite us in because they think we don't want to be invited in. We seem aloof, and to our brains that proves that we don't belong. It reinforces the whole cycle, making it stronger and stronger.

Speaker 1:

So these cycles are going, they're rolling like wheels on a car, and what we want to do is put on the brakes. When we put on the brakes and we start checking out these cycles, we can flip them around, and I'm going to give you an exercise in just a couple minutes to do that. We can flip them around, and I'm going to give you an exercise in just a couple minutes to do that. So let's take an example, though, of how to flip both of the examples that I gave you. Let's say you saw the degenerative cycle running in your life, creating all kinds of havoc, because you did the exercise that I'm going to give to you in a minute and you decide to interrupt it. You start brainstorming ideas for more helpful regenerative thinking that would seed behaviors and results that you actually want in your life. Okay, take two Same two examples, but with regenerative thoughts put into the cycle.

Speaker 1:

So again, I can create time for what matters most. Let's say that is a regenerative thought that you want to prove itself true. When you actually practice that thought, I can create time for what matters most and you believe it. You're going to generate a feeling of empowerment. You block off time for your idea in your calendar, you say no to the requests that come in of your time and you don't allow yourself to get distracted during the day. You block off little chunks of time practicing the game of inches, week after week, so that you make huge progress toward the thing that is most important to you, says you, the thing that is aligned with your values, that's an expression of your passion and your unique self in the world. And the result you progress. You progress on the idea and you gain evidence that you can yes, you can make your idea real and you do have time for what matters most, reinforcing the cycle that you can create time for what matters most, seeding the garden with the idea that you want to make real, which is, you can create time for what matters most.

Speaker 1:

All right, let's take the social example and flip it on its head. Let's say, instead of thinking I don't belong, we just think connection is possible. For me too. It's not like a sunshine and daisies thought. Connection's important to me and connection is possible. And so maybe we're not feeling like the most popular person in the world, we're just feeling open. Because we're feeling open, because we're thinking connection's possible, we smile, we approach people, our body language is open. It's like we're open for business here. We invite people over to gatherings, we invite them to hang out, we ask someone to take a hike with us, we text people more. We're like, oh, this person would love to hear from me. And if that's too far to believe, we think I'm going to go for a connection here. Connection won't happen without me. I can't let it all depend on the people around me and blame them. I need to be the catalyst here. If connection's what I want and the result is, people respond and then connection happens, right, they respond and they connect. They walk up to you, they talk to you when you walk up to the group to talk to them, they start talking back to you, and maybe it doesn't happen every time, but the more you do it, the more it happens and you gain evidence that you belong. That connection is possible for you. That connection is within your sphere of control and it feeds a cycle that's regenerative in your life, that creates more of what you want. We love it. All right.

Speaker 1:

Here's the practice to turn degenerative thinking cycles into regenerative thinking cycles. Think of an area where you're challenged right now. Step one, step two write down all of your thoughts for five minutes with no filter. Stream of consciousness write it out. We call that a thought download Number three. Stream of consciousness write it out. We call that a thought download Number three. Underline a few that feel like if you were gonna ask do I want this to prove itself out in cycles in my life? Maybe it was like nah, this doesn't seem super helpful. Circle three or four of them and then map it through the cycle.

Speaker 1:

What feeling does that thought create? What are the behaviors that come from that thought and feeling? And what's the result that proves and reinforces that thinking? How does it play out? Then ask yourself is this regenerative or degenerative? If it's degenerative, try replacing it with a thought that you want to prove true, one that you can believe, and we'll talk more about that next week. Run that thought through the cycle. What behavior would it spark? What result might it create? Do you like it? Start practicing it. Practice the thought until it generates the feeling in your body and see what grows from it. That's how you start reseeding your mental garden and I swear to you, my friends, if you practice it diligently, you can change and evolve all of the areas of your life with this tool.

Speaker 1:

All right, so remember, your brain is always planting, planting something. Maybe they're weeds, maybe they're dandelions. Maybe you want them, maybe you don't. Some are thorny. Do you like this metaphor? Am I choosing you out? Some seeds grow fruit and flowers and some grow weeds.

Speaker 1:

Right, it's just, we're going to grow things. It's a matter of asking ourselves is it what we want? We don't need to have a fresh start, and in fact, that is not even on the table. We just need to, with compassion, start bringing awareness to what's growing. What are the thoughts that are cycling all over the time in our mind? You have the beautiful brain that you have. You have lived the unique life that got you here, and I'm so grateful that you've had all of those experiences that make you you and you're here with me now. All you need to do next is notice what's growing, pull the weeds that are not serving you out with compassion so that they stop eroding the things that you want to do in your life and instead seed new thoughts, the ones that will create a regenerative cycle for the things you actually want to harvest in your life, the things you actually want to grow and experience, and the beliefs that you want to be gaining evidence for over and over and over, because they will strengthen as you practice them.

Speaker 1:

Next episode, we'll go deeper into how to evolve your thinking over time, but for now, go check your garden. It's growing in there. All right, that's what I've got for you this week and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you've got to come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the bloom room.