How Mantras & Rules Can Help Break Your Cycles

Change is easy to want and can seem impossibly hard to make happen. I have spent my entire adult life researching and discovering why that is and working on strategies to make it at least possible. I say “at least possible” because there’s no magic wand here. Even the best strategies take a lot of effort to realize the benefits. Change is not hard because you lack discipline. It is hard because your nervous system thinks your old life is keeping you alive. That is annoying, inconvenient, and, as you'll hear in this episode, biologically reasonable.

In this episode, I will provide insights as to why change is hard and a couple of simple but powerful strategies I have seen be very effective in kickstarting the change people are after and help empower your Optimal Life.

The Optimal Life app is now available on the App Store for iPhones with the Optimal Life program - all for FREE! The same program is also available at elliotbarnett.com. And of course, the certifications are available for CRT and the ARAEt framework as well. Together, we can usher in the new era of mental health and make mental health affordable, accessible, and effective for anyone looking to live their Optimal Life!

Transcript

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Welcome to the Ultimate Life Podcast. My name is Eli Barnett, and I'm excited for you to be with me today to talk about a topic that I think is going to be very empowering to you. We all want to make changes in our life, but change is easy to want, but can seem kind of impossibly hard to make at times. And I I've spent my entire adult life researching and discovering why that is and working on strategies to make it at least possible to make happen. I mean, I say at least possible because there is no magic wand here. All the even the best strategies take effort and a lot of work hard work to actually realize the benefits. But, and I'm going to get into why that is and how that all works, but today I'm going to share with you a strategy that's a very simple but very powerful strategy that is very similar to some of the big milestones that you hit in programs like the Optimal Life program that comes out of cognitive response therapy, but a little bit easier to achieve on your own without all the uh back sort of hard work that goes into the journey that you go through in the Optimal Life program. So uh, but again, before I get into the details on this, make sure that you go ahead and download the Optimal Life program or head over to ElliottBarnett.com. This is a free program. I have built the app and put all the material on ElliottBarnett.com and given the Optimal Life program away for free. This is the core of a personal journey towards living an optimal life. It's a self-driven, self-directed program that has videos and exercises and questions to help you along your way. But I'm giving it all away for free. So head over, download the app first. If it's on iPhone right now, Android is a fast follow, or you can access it on elliotburnet.com and check it all out. I really want to make sure that we are after the mission of making mental health more affordable, accessible, and effective for everyone. And the first step on that journey is helping people to move towards living an optimal life. Of course, if you want to join the revolution here and usher in the new era of mental health with me, the certifications are available on labarnett.com for CRT and the Arate Framework to help you help others in a very similar fashion to the Optimal Life program. But okay, let's get into this together. So even the best strategies take a lot of hard work to make change happen. And I I want to help you to understand that it's not a lack of discipline. It is not just that you're not working hard or you're not taking it seriously. Of course, it does take a lot of hard work, but I want you to help you understand that it is your nervous system fighting against you. It is uh hard because the nervous system is wired to resist change. It is convinced that your old life is keeping you alive, which is horribly inconvenient, uh, but it's just a fact of biology. It's part of our evolutionary uh past. So it's really kind of your nervous system's fault, but in a way that it's just part of who we are. Our nervous systems are hardwired to ensure that we move away from threat and toward safety and keeping our body in homeostasis. What does that mean? It just means that we want to make sure that the body budget, as I uh as we refer to it, is is in balance. Just like your uh a bank's budget, you would don't want to just withdraw money without any reason or paying attention to the balance, and and if you get too low on your balance, you want to you want to make deposits and you you're always kind of mindful of of the balance, you don't want to get toward zero, certainly negative. There is this drive evolutionarily within your nervous system and and all the unconscious processes that are working below your conscious awareness, are really trying to make sure that you're staying in homeostasis. So if you're taking withdrawals from the body budget, you're the the unconscious processes are saying, is it really worth it? Do we really need to withdraw from the body budget here? And of course, seeking opportunity, which is really all about changing, is seeking an opportunity, always comes second to surviving. And so it's all it's not so it's not about thriving in your life, your nervous system is just driving you to survive. So if we don't recognize ways to kind of get our nervous system's attention and train those unconscious processes, then we are just going to follow patterns. So let's get into what I mean by the patterns. If you've listened to previous podcasts or read my material, you'll understand that because I talk a lot about the predictive model of the brain, your brain is a prediction machine, it generates guesses as to what is going to happen next. I I think of it kind of like a backseat driver. It's always back there knowing what is going to happen next. It's yelling, it's yelling at you. Sometimes it maybe talks to you, but when we talk about getting a panic attack or taken over by anxiety or feeling stressed, it's really the nervous system of the unconscious processes, what we refer to as implicit cognition, yelling and screaming at you to get your attention from the backseat and it's saying, Hey, I need you to be aware of something. I want you to understand that the best predictor of what's going to happen next is to look at what has already happened. So the predictions are exactly that. It collects information from the environment, it looks at the state of your body, and then very importantly, it looks at your memories. It says, Hey, what has happened before as a predictor as to what is going to happen next. So naturally, if you're trying to make changes or do something different in your life or break patterns that you followed previously, those patterns become cycles, and I'll talk about that in a minute. It says, Oh, wait a minute. You're challenging the things that are going to make the prediction false because I'm going to guess what's going to happen next. And if it's different, then that stresses me out, as your nervous system says. And the stress responses of the body are exactly that. It's your nervous system saying, Hey, something's different here. I we're taking withdrawals from the body budget. You're getting out of homeostasis. You're making me nervous here. I need to get your attention. Well, how does it get your attention? Well, the predictions get your attention to your conscious awareness through the sensations of the body, which are the feelings of the body. Feelings are different than emotions. Feelings are the sensations of the body. It's the nervous system communicating to you through the predictions and saying, hey, I need to get your attention. We label that with some emotion word like anger or anxiety or fear. These are these are words we use for the sensations of the body. And then, of course, it's communicating to you with those narratives, those thoughts that show up. So that's how the predictions make their appearance to your conscious awareness, and they drive how you show up and respond to life situations. Now, if you if you think about that for a minute, this sets up a cycle. A prediction is generated, it drives some type of response. That response drives a result, those results become memories and shift the state of the body, and then you just go back to the first step. Another prediction is generated, and if your the prediction is based on partly your state of your body and your memories, and that previous result influenced your memories or stores it stored as a memory and influenced the state of your body, that means that the next prediction is just going to be based on what has already happened before. And you can see that that would start to have a pattern, which then those patterns become cycles, and those cycles drive your entire life. I refer to those in the Optimal Life program and card the response therapy in my previous research as predictive response cycles. Predictive response cycles are PRCs. They drive your entire life. If you are frustrated, if you're not happy or thriving or or living the life that you want, you you you have to address those PRCs. And i i it it sounds easy enough, but it it turns out that you are fighting a hardwired biological drive that we were just referring to that that need to keep stay in homeostasis. So we have to figure out how do I get my nervous system's attention, how do I recondition my nervous system, and the only way to do that is to disrupt those uh PRCs. So but uh unfortunately the unconscious is very stubborn for that reason that that hey, you know, anything different is is making me nervous, you know, because it's gonna withdraw from the body budget. And it's a very hardwired, very stubborn process that's that's biologically uh hardwired into us from our evolutionary past. We are not uh descendants of those that took a lot of risk. You know, the risk was always secondary to survival. You had to make sure that you you were able to survive first before you went and explored. So we always make sure we're safe first. And the the whole point of this is that because your nervous system is being stubborn, it doesn't really care if you are thriving. If you're miserable, fine. If you're stuck, okay, but you're still alive. So those PRCs are working, those those those cycles are working for your survival. Now you might not be happy or thriving, but that doesn't matter to your unconscious processes. Your conscious mind might want growth and purpose and love and success and some and the optimal life, but your unconscious wants you know a typical Monday. So we have to figure out how do we influence those processes. So the the real question becomes how do you interrupt a system that thinks repeated cycles means you are going to survive? And of course, there's a comprehensive strategy built into the Optimal Life program and based on cognitive response therapy. And uh I I teach that in the Optimal Life program, and of course, I I teach people to help others through the rate framework and CRT certifications. And there's a quite a long journey of understanding, overcoming the introspection illusion, and learning more about yourself, but ultimately the journey ends up creating action plans, which are very strategic, comprehensive uh steps to intercept these PRCs. So where's the opportunity? Well, the prediction is generated right before you respond. That's your opportunity to influence the next prediction. And these action plans are there's a lot of work to get there, but once you have those, wow, they're very, very powerful and they're very specific to the challenge that challenges that you face in your life, those things that sort of trigger results in your life that you're not super happy about. And we all know what those are. It could be somebody in your life that sort of triggers a bad response, somebody at work that you don't that uh causes you conflict, or somebody in your family. It could be situations like maybe you get cut off in traffic and you don't respond well, or there's all sorts of different things that we know are what I call cognitive catalysts. A catalyst is something that speeds up a reaction. So a cognitive catalyst is one of those things that triggers a negative predictive response patterns or predictions that generate sort of negative energy or disempowering energy or disempowering information. And remember, the whole journey, I've talked about this before, is that the the idea of these programs is to, in a journey into living an optimal life, is to train your nervous system to generate more appropriate and proportionate energy to situations and more empowering information. What happens is we get swept away by those sensations of the body and we get overwhelmed by the disempowering information. And that is again the predictions communicating to your conscious, to your conscious mind. So if you can influence those to say, hey, I I don't need all that energy, I don't need that massive uh stress response to the body. I I actually want empowering information to show up, not disempowering information, and that's the whole goal of using action plans in those situations that are challenging. But what I'm going to teach you today is a little bit of a simpler, uh, a simplified version of those action plans in the journey. And uh what I what I'm referring to are mantras and rules. And again, we we need to be able to figure out how to intercept the uh the before the response, so the prediction is generated, you're not going to control, by definition, the all the processes that are going on behind the scenes. You don't directly control the prediction process that's done on your behalf based on those three elements the environment, your state of your body, and your memory. So these predictions are just gonna generate uh be generated on their own, but you have to start influencing those, and a great way to do that is to develop mantras and rules for yourself. I I have a bunch that I follow for uh that uh I can share a couple of those with you, but the whole concept of a mantra is a simple expression of a very powerful belief you hold yourself to. So one of my favorites is I've done harder. Anytime I face a situation where I feel maybe a little bit of doubt or or I feel a little nervous about something, or I'm not I I sort of doubt doubting my ability to do something, I remind myself I've done harder. I just say that to myself, I've done harder. And it just kind of snaps me out of it and says, hey, you know what? I'm gonna just get back to this. Another one that I like to use for myself is is I stop when I'm done, not when I'm tired. Again, anytime I I feel like I'm gonna stop short of finishing something, or or uh you know, I I sort of start doubting myself to pushing forward, I remind myself, hey, you know, you don't stop when you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when you're done. I stop when I'm done, not when I'm tired. So my nervous system is just trying to do its job, is trying to say, hey, I I I I'm gonna push back on on you and I'm going to pull you away from what I think is a perceived threat, and I'm gonna put you back towards safety or the familiar. I'm going to protect the body's budget and I'm gonna make sure that we keep it all nice and nice and homeostasis. But these mantras are a little just a way to disrupt that and say, hey, you know what? I've done harder. Uh I I stop when I'm done, not when I'm tired. These short, quick little phrases that really help me snap out of it and train my unconscious and recondition my nervous system to do better next time. The next one is uh rules. Rules are very similar, but they're uh and by the way, these are these are rules that are not meant to be broken, these are statements you hold yourself to. Uh, and of course, you're gonna fall short sometimes, but you have to commit to doing better next time. So, uh, for example, I have a rule that do it now. So whenever I think to myself, well, I gotta go do this thing, and I say, I'll just do it later. Nope. I have a rule. When when I think of doing something, I do it right then, even if it's inconvenient for me, because I'll tell you what, if I put it aside, I'm gonna probably forget, and then that's massively inconvenient. So I've I've learned that I have to have that rule in place. Then when I say to myself, oh, I gotta go get that thing, or I gotta send that text or whatever, even if it's inconvenient for me, I just stop in that moment and I and I do it now. So that's my rule. I do it now. So anytime that I feel, oh, I'll just do it later. Nope, I I can't break my rule, I'm gonna do it now. And these types, again, of little rules that you can turn to and and hold yourself to on a consistent basis. And I there's so many examples that I can cut that I that I can share with you, even even when I'm when I'm out running, I can say to myself, Well, I'm gonna, you know, maybe take a shortcut and and not go as long. And I say, I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy. What does that mean? Well, to me, that just means I'm not the person that takes shortcuts. I'm the person that that I went out to do a five-mile run. I'm not gonna do a less than a five-mile run. I'm doing it. That's it. I have another one, no days off for my workouts or self-improvement. Uh I work out every day and I do a little something uh to improve myself or to add value to others. So I have a rule, no days off. I always do something from uh to add value to others, invest in myself. I work out every day. So that's a rule, no days off. So when I think to myself, ah, maybe I won't work out today, or maybe this or maybe that. Nope. I cannot break that rule. So those are mantras and rules that are an amazing way to just interrupt that energetic response of the nervous system that's a fallout from those predictions and the narratives, those thoughts that show up, say, hey, maybe you could stop here, or maybe you can take this little shortcut, or or maybe that's too hard for you, or whatever it is. It's little these voices that show up, these these thoughts and narratives that show up to try to keep you in homeostasis, pull you away from those perceived threats. Those are all just byproducts of the nervous system's conditioning of how you've gotten here, but you have to start uh conditioning that out. Whatever has been conditioned in can be conditioned out. And I want you to hold that because we can feel like it's an impossible, like it's an impossibility that change is just too hard, change is for everybody else. But these little these strategies that are actually quite simple to articulate and implement have very, very powerful. Now, of course, you know, that there's a comprehensive program in the Optimal Life program and all the the programs like CRT that are all based on CRT, cognitive response therapy. But these little strategies that you can implement today, just sit down and write out a handful of rules and mantras, and then you'll you'll start thinking of more, more opportunities because you will find those moments that you're like, oh, I didn't respond so well there, or hey, this is this is something that's not super ideal, that I I could probably improve on, or I do find myself procrastinating. Why is that? Well, maybe I could institute a rule or or put a mantra in place in these situations that I can always call on no matter what. These are are wonderful little tools to be able to just pull on at any moment to move past that resistance that your nervous system is generating and push past that. And every time that you do that, you are training the nervous system and training the predictions through those memories and the state of your body to give you better options next time and a more proportioned energy next time so that you can be empowered to live your optimal life. So I hope that really helps. And of course, again, please go ahead and download the app and head over to labarnnet.com and check out the optimal life program. Uh please also check out my book, uh the the The Myth of Living Better. It's available on Amazon. And uh it's I I'm actually thinking about writing a second book now, a uh a non-fiction book. This is the Myth of Living Better, it was a fictional tale of a uh of sort of a therapeutic journey of a character named Jeremy to live his optimal life, but it's full of allegory and fantasy, and it's a really cool story of uh teaches you something but entertains you at the same time. But I I am actually thinking about writing my second book now that is going to really set you guys up for success in your life and as a lead-in to the optimal life program. So look for that. Hopefully, I'll get I'll I'll put uh well, it's not pen to paper anymore, but hands to keyboard pretty soon on that. So uh, of course, I'm here to help. Please reach out at any time, and we are going to usher in the new era of mental health together. Mental health needs to be more affordable, accessible, and effective for everyone. And when we work together, not only helping yourself, but to help others, we are going to make that happen together. Thanks so much, and I will see you next time.