Bloom Your Mind

Ep 152: Intentional Evidence Collection

• Marie McDonald

Share episode

Every big change, project, or dream starts the same way: with a glimmer of possibility.

 A spark. A flicker. A tiny inner knowing that says, Maybe this could be real.

But the second that glimmer appears, our automatic brain jumps in to challenge it. It points out everything that could go wrong. It shows us all the gaps between where we are and where we want to be. It offers scarcity thinking, worst-case scenarios, and doubt — not because we’re broken or unmotivated, but because our brains are wired to protect us from emotional risk.

So how do we stay committed to the idea?
How do we hold that glimmer long enough to make it real?

In this episode, we explore Intentional Evidence Collection — a simple yet powerful tool for strengthening belief, sustaining commitment, and keeping your idea alive through the messy middle.


What You’ll Learn in This Episode

  • Why belief and sustained effort (not talent) are the greatest predictors of success
  • How your brain naturally collects evidence against your ideas — and how to reverse it
  • The science-backed role of visualization and future-self identity in making change happen
  • How to anticipate obstacles and rehearse overcoming them before they arise
  • The link between thought cycles, emotional states, behavior, and results (RT Model)
    How to use evidence collection to fuel aligned action instead of shutting yourself down


Your Invitation This Week

Choose a glimmer of possibility you want to nurture.
Write down every piece of evidence you can find for why it's possible.
Keep adding to the list.
Read it again and again.

Sustained belief + sustained aligned action = your idea becomes real. Every time.

And if you want support building the structure to do this work: jump into one of these 

Start the Make Ideas Real Course — for bringing a meaningful goal to life
Apply for the The Moxie Mastermind — for women making world-shifting projects real in a sisterhood of the most amazing women you could ever choose to have by your side. 


Mentioned in this episode:

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_00:

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 152 of the Bloom Your Mind podcast. I'm so happy you're here. How is it going? My husband and I have been talking about how wildly full the fall has been. Have I talked about this yet? About how I just I feel like the fall is supposed to be really like inward and calm and quiet. And it's the opposite. It's like the wackiest time ever, full of everything. And I'm hearing everybody around us say the same thing. And we've just talked about when we get past Thanksgiving break, like the fall break for our kids. We have a couple big things happening. We're renewing our vows. We're having a bunch of people there and we're celebrating 10 years married and 15 years together and really renewing our commitment to being being each other's person and being who we want to be in this life together. And we're doing that with all the people that we love around us. We had this idea we wanted to make real rather than going and traveling somewhere, the two of us to celebrate. We wanted to kind of infuse our community that lifts us up and carries us through this life with love and kind of invoke love for everybody and create an atmosphere where we're all together at this time when a lot of things pull us apart. So pretty wild, got pretty big. There's like 80 people coming. Um, and we're doing that in a couple weeks from now. And once we get past that, we have made some grand visions for what we want the next month and a half to be like. And they include making soup and eating soup and lighting candles and going on walks and sitting and reading by ourselves and reading together and going on so many drives or walks to see lights twinkling. So I don't know about you, but we are super in the mode of creating time and spaciousness to just be humans in bodies together in the twinkly lighted period of time that we are about to enter into. So no matter what time of year you're listening to this, what are the little things you're looking forward to that can create some spaciousness? Some little moments of just appreciating life and beauty. We were in the bloom room earlier today, and I was starting our, I always start us with a little grounding meditation. And there were some beautiful flowers in the background of my video and a beautiful plant and flowers in other people's videos, and we all just started by checking them out. Checking out something beautiful that our eyes were landing on before we closed our eyes for a quick grounding meditation and just noticing what it felt like in our bodies to just look at something beautiful. Something kind of normal and beautiful. So you can do that too. Any time. And when we create these little goals for spaciousness and for just the little parts of the season that we want to experience, it helps slow us down and notice those little beautiful things. The soup cooking and steaming, the twinkling lights, the light on our loved ones as they're reading. All that just feels so good. All right. Today we are talking about intentional evidence collection. Because our brains see a glimmer of possibility when we're birthing a new idea, when we're like, ooh, I have an idea for how my life could be better. We see a glimmer of possibility. Maybe that's in how we're communicating or our career, or maybe it's in a habit we want to change, our physical health habit, or just who we want to be. We see this glimmer of possibility of something new and different that's more what we want. Sometimes it's a big thing. I see this glimmer of possibility for this business I could start, for this book, for this community event, whatever it is. And once we have that glimmer of possibility, our job is one thing and one thing only. When we decide that possibility is something we actually want to turn into a reality, an idea we want to make real. It moves from a glimmer of possibility to an idea that we are making real. Then we can go through our whole process that I teach over and over again for how to make an idea real. But what's so important is that it's our job to hold on to that glimmer. And it's hard to do once we get into the process of iteration and ups and downs as we're trying to make an idea real, as we're trying to change a habit, as we're trying to learn something new, start something new. In Angela Duckman's book, Grit, she presents a whole bunch of beautiful evidence that commitment to the idea or the goal combined with sustained action are much more determinant of our success than any natural talent or proclivity towards being good at something, right? If something comes easy to us and we're naturally really talented at it, our human brains overemphasize that as being predictive of our future success. And what the evidence that Angela presents shows us over and over in multiple contexts is that when we believe in our idea and take sustained action, that is way more indicative of our success than any natural talent or something coming easy to us. So we know we need to stay committed to the idea. Once it's a glimmer of possibility and now it's an idea we want to make real. We know we got to stay committed to it, but how do we? Well, there are multiple things that I teach, and I'm gonna build on them today. We can believe in the after until it's real. I have a whole podcast episode on that. What I mean by that is that when we have an idea for how our lives, our communities, or the world could be better, that idea isn't real yet, right? So we have a glimmer of possibility for this idea. We want to make it real, but our brains are gonna immediately offer us all the reasons that things could go wrong. How the world doesn't match the world that we're envisioning. And of course it doesn't match because our idea isn't in the world yet. So the world right now does not match that world. Our brains are gonna go to work collecting all the evidence why our idea doesn't fit in this world. And of course it doesn't, because we haven't changed the world to make our idea real yet, right? Like our idea, once it is real, once we've taken the sustained action, then the world will match it. So our brain is really designed to keep us safe and point out danger and risk. And so it's gonna be like, yeah, this isn't possible. See, the world isn't like your idea yet. And our job, like all innovators, is to say, of course it's not. It doesn't exist yet. And we got to hold the clear vision for the world after our idea is in it, clear as day. Hold that vision so that we balance out that brain's negativity bias. We got to believe in the after until it's real. And we can do that through writing our idea stated as a goal, making it time-bound, stated as done, and reading it over and over every day. We can do that through visualizing our future self, having accomplished the thing that we, the idea that we're trying to make real in vivid detail, because our brains can't tell the difference between vividly imagined experiences and reality. So we can practice visualizing ourselves having accomplished the thing. In neurobiology, there's this famous quote: we can practice a feeling state till it becomes a neural trait. And when we do that, when we practice visualizing and we pull the feeling into our body of what it will be like when that thing is real, when that idea is real, we kick in our subconscious bias, our opportunity bias, and we line up our conscious mind that's trying to keep that glimmer of possibility really solidly in our mind and our subconscious mind so that they work together toward the same things. So we practice visualizing and that primes our subconscious mind to start to look for ways that our idea can be real. We can also anticipate obstacles and come up with strategies to overcome them and then visualize ourselves actually overcoming those obstacles. That also primes our subconscious mind to deal with them in the way we want to deal with them when they actually arise. And all of this stuff, my friends, all of these skills, they are in multiple of my podcast episodes prior to this, and also they are all outlined in great detail in a rhythm of 10 classes in the Make Ideas Real course. So just reach out if you want to take that course. And we can also self-coach our brains, looking at our automatic responses to things and choosing bridge thoughts and better feeling thoughts, choosing regenerative thought cycles that actually support what we want to create. We can do all those things and still, let's say we're doing all of those, and still sometimes it's hard to stay committed and remember the feeling, stay anchored in that glimmer of possibility. So today I'm gonna teach you a new tool called intentional evidence collection. So let's go back to that idea that some part of you thought the glimmer of possibility was possible. Some part of you knew it was possible. The idea you had for how your life or a community that you're in or the world could be a better place, some idea for something you want to change, make better, make different, create. Some part of you saw a glimmer of possibility and created a vision, an idea for what you wanted to make real. And then your automatic brain kicked in and challenges the glimmer. Just like every great innovator, everyone that made something new real, your job is to hold on to that glimmer and make the glimmer stronger. Your job is to magnify the glimmer of possibility, to balance out your brain's negativity bias. Our brain will naturally challenge that glimmer with thoughts that point out the negative, with scarcity thinking. And we know that if we keep thinking those thoughts, those scarcity thoughts, they'll cycle into the results that we have. We see that through the regenerative thought model. We have a thought about the circumstance in our life, that thought creates a feeling, that fuels our behavior and creates a result that proves the thought. And then our brain says, see, I knew it would happen. I knew that was true. So if we start to think in scarcity thinking, it's going to create scarcity results in our life. That evidence collection is going to make the thought stronger as a neural pathway and it's going to keep cycling on its own. So we got to interrupt it. We can use that same cycle to support our glimmer of possibility by intentionally finding thoughts based on the evidence of why our possibility is something we believe in. So we will intentionally find the evidence for why that possibility is so strong, and then practice thinking those thoughts. That new evidence that you intentionally create will start new thought cycles that you can practice thinking, which generate much more helpful feelings in your body, fuel actions that are aligned with the possibility you see that you're trying to create, and then your idea becomes real through that belief you're creating in it and sustained action. So here's how to do it. Think of the possibility that you created, that glimmer of possibility for an idea you want to make real, an idea for a change you want to make in yourself, in your life, in the world, something you want to create. You got that glimmer? Is it twinkling at you? Okay, now list every piece of evidence for why it's possible. Mine, dig deep for every piece of evidence and be as detailed as possible. So when I say evidence, I like to use that loosely in this exercise. They don't have to be factual. You're gonna list everything you know, all the evidence. So let me give you some examples. Let's take an idea for why it's possible that I could write a book in the next two months. When I have that idea, I have like this idea for this book, I really want to make real on a pretty quick timeline. But I've got all kinds of other stuff. My brain is gonna kick in and start to say, okay, well, the holidays are coming up. I already have these courses that I'm, you know, editing now that are all recorded that a bunch of people are starting to take. And I that I have the foundations course that is a course that teaches self-coaching, that's the foundations of everything I teach, the uh the self-coaching, the self-hypnosis, the emotional mastery, and then a deep dive into existing belief patterns, values, and desire finding. And then that ends by doing an assessment to help my folks find an idea they want to make real to improve their own life, their community, or the world. I have that. I have that course already, the foundations course. And I also have the make ideas real course. And that course teaches these mind-blowing tools and the process that innovators use to make ideas real and what your brain will do at every stage of the process. So I have these courses, and then my brain says, I already am running those courses. I can't do another thing. I already have those to focus on. It's gonna be the holiday. My brain is gonna kick in all the reasons why I can't. So I'm gonna mine for why it's possible that I can write this book in the next two months. Here's all the evidence I can think of. Well, I have most of it written already. I have pages and pages, hundreds of pages already written. And then I can hire help to put all those pieces that I already wrote together. I already know the flow. I wrote it all. I could just hire someone to like copy and paste it in together, and then I can write the new stuff to fill in the gaps. Here's another piece of evidence. It doesn't have to be perfect. Anne Lamont, in her book Bird by Bird, recommends that writers have shitty first drafts, right? B minus work, shitty first drafts is what Anne Lamont calls it. So I can do a shitty first draft. I could, I could definitely do something shitty. This stuff is absolute gold content. That's another piece of evidence. And this is what I'm I'm saying when I'm like, okay, it doesn't have to be factual. This is just something I believe that this stuff is gonna help people so much. I've developed and tested the content over the last five years, and I've seen it rocket people's ideas into real things. So this elaboration on the content, this is the easy part. Another piece of evidence, I'll just say, I'll find an amazing editor. Amazing editors are out there. Another piece is the focus on of this work of the book is on helping ideas be made real. So the work I'm doing with women in the Moxie Mastermind is gonna feed the book with examples. I'm already doing stuff that's gonna make this easier. Another piece of evidence is I love writing. Every time I get some progress on writing, I get super energized and I want to write all day. Another piece of evidence is the world needs this now. Another piece of evidence is women need this now, and the world needs women's ideas. So now I have this big list of evidence for my glimmer of possibility and why it's possible. Okay, let's look at another example. What about an idea for a change you want to make in a relationship? Let's say that you have a change for how you and your primary partner or a friend or a loved one, how your relationship and your communication could be better. And this idea isn't real yet. And so maybe your brain is seeing all the evidence that it's not real. You're still having the same fight, you're still having the same challenge, you're still having the same problem, and your negativity bias is going to kick in to tell you, see, this is never gonna work, all the things. So let's mine for evidence. Let's use the intentional evidence collection tool. First piece of evidence. It takes time to change. People say getting through hard stuff takes effort. I know we're both willing to work on it. We've had our whole lives to build these bad habits and like however many years to build the specific habit between us, of course, it's gonna take a long time to unlearn those habits. We have to iterate just like anything else. The first few attempts are not gonna work. We have to evaluate what worked and didn't and try again. That is totally 100% necessary. So even though my brain is saying it's not working, I can tell my brain, of course you think it's not working, because that's what brains do. But iteration is 100% necessary in any process. We're just iterating. Another piece of evidence. I hear people all around me say that this is hard for them too. I'm not alone, I'm not broken, we can do this. Because I also hear stories of success when couples stick with it and they finally overcome the challenge, and then they say that their relationship is so much stronger. Couples or friends or family members. This person is important enough to me to do hard work. Those are all pieces of evidence, and they feel so much better and will fuel the end result that you want in a relationship so much more than your brain's natural tendency to point out the negative. All right, one more example, and then it's your turn. Let's take an example with a business you want to start. And maybe it's just in the hard part. You're kind of in the like right over the initial big burst of motivation, and you're like, oh God, this is feeling hard, but I'm still at the beginning and it's hard already, and I have so much ahead of me, and I'm doing this market research, and I'm seeing all the steps it's gonna take, and okay, all your brain's negativity. So then let's mine for evidence. Let's do intentional evidence collection. This is something the world needs. And what I can give the world, what I can create, is different than what anybody else can. I just need to keep going and going because the world needs me and needs this. I'm at the beginning of market research. So of course it feels like a lot in front of me. That's okay. It's just one step and then the next. One foot in front of the next, one hour at a time, one task at a time. All I have to do is the next right thing. I can find successful people to interview and learn from their mistakes. I can get all the steps that work for them. The world really needs this solution, and I care enough to get past the hard part. I'm really passionate about this, and I know I'll be good at it, and that I'll stay committed to it for a long time if I can just make sure to get through the hard stuff. I am in the hard part that I knew was gonna be hard. So it makes sense self-doubt is coming up. Nothing has gone wrong here. It's all good. I can just feel the self-doubt and keep going. My family and friends are super supportive. I can lean into that support and help them remind me that I can believe in myself. I can make time for this. I've done that before. I can make time for what's most important to me. I actually have the tools that I need for this part already. I have a business plan. So now we have all kinds of intentional evidence to support us at keeping clear on that glimmer of possibility. You get it. All right, now it's your turn. What's a goal that you have that you want to make real? An idea for how your life, your community, or the world can be a better place. An idea that you're making real. What's the glimmer of possibility? Zoom in, double-click on that glimmer. Make it brighter, focus in. And now collect every piece of evidence for that glimmer of possibility, list them out every single one, and then read them again and again. Because sustained belief in your idea, commitment to your why and to your idea combined with sustained aligned action will make your idea real time and time again. If you need support, come to the Make Ideas Real course. If you have a big idea to make real, come to the Moxie Mastermind. I got you. Reach out. And 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 gotta 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. We'll see you in the bloom room.