Mastering Your Mind: How Your Thoughts Shape Your Outcome

In this powerful episode of Finding Your Innergator, host R.B. Wright dives into the first and most important pillar of the Innergator mindset: The Mind.

Everything in life begins with how you think.

Your beliefs.
 Your perspective.
 Your ability to stay focused when things get difficult.

Your mindset determines how you handle challenges, setbacks, and opportunities.

R.B. shares personal stories from his life—including a moment with his wife Jennifer that delivered a powerful truth:

You cannot be committed to your goals and your comfort zone at the same time.

He also introduces one of the most important mindset principles he has ever learned:

E + R = O

Event + Response = Outcome.

While we cannot always control the events that happen in life, we always have control over how we respond to them—and that response ultimately determines the outcome.

Through a deeply personal story about his daughter Jillian overcoming a life-changing accident, R.B. illustrates how mindset can turn adversity into strength and growth.

This episode also explores:

• How your brain develops patterns of thinking
 • Why you cannot hold a positive and negative thought at the same time
 • How reading programs your mind for growth
 • The influence of the people you surround yourself with
 • How to eliminate negative self-talk
 • A practical Innergator Mind Reset exercise to shift your thinking in moments of doubt or fear

Because the truth is simple:

The mind you build today determines the life you live tomorrow.

Key Takeaways

• Your mindset determines how you respond to challenges
 • What you focus on expands
 • Your brain can be intentionally programmed through reading and learning
 • The people you surround yourself with influence your thinking
 • Negative self-talk must be challenged and replaced with intentional thinking
 • The Innergator Mind Reset can help shift your thinking in moments of doubt

The Innergator Mind Reset

When negative thoughts begin to take over:

1. Pause and breathe – inhale slowly through your nose and exhale slowly
2. Identify the thought – recognize the doubt, fear, or frustration
3. Replace it intentionally – shift your thinking to a solution-focused perspective

Changing your thinking changes your actions—and your actions shape your outcomes.

Listener Challenge

This week:

• Read something that expands your thinking
 • Spend time with someone who pushes you to grow
 • Use the Innergator Mind Reset when negative self-talk appears

Because the mind you train today will determine the life you build tomorrow.

Coming Next

Next week we explore the second pillar of the Innergator mindset: Health.

Because your mind sets the direction, but your body provides the energy.

Connect With the Show

If this episode helped you, share it with someone who needs to hear this message.

Remember:

Greatness is achieved through discipline, intentional action, and optimizing the relationships around you.

And until next time…

Go Gatorize Your Day.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello everybody and welcome to Finding Your Innergator Podcast, where we talk about discipline, relationships, and the habits that release to greatness that is already inside of you. I'm your host, Arby Wright, and I am so glad that you're here. In each episode, we'll explore powerful lessons, real life stories, and practical strategies to help you live intentionally, build meaningful relationships, and unlock your full potential. But greatness isn't something you stumble into, it's something that is built every single day. So let's get started and begin the journey to finding your inner gator. Hello everybody, this is RB Wright. You are listening to Finding Your Inner Gator. And if I haven't told you, I am so glad that you're here. I'm gonna start a little bit different today. I want to I want to tell you a quick story. And this story is probably about 18 months old. My wife, Jennifer, uh, she teaches me stuff every now and then. Uh probably more than I admit, but she teaches me stuff now and then. And one day she said something that really stuck to me, and I think it really deals with what we're talking about today. Um Friday after or Thursday afternoon, um, late afternoon. I've got a tournament starting the next day, a king tournament. I'm in my shop uh getting my gear together, checking all my rods. Uh the team had already, or team was coming by a little bit later that night. Uh, but I was out there just kind of doing some things, and I'm I'm looking, uh just I was a little distraught. And I'll tell you why is that uh I told you I take these tournaments seriously, right? And we've we've talked about tracking, we've talked about all these things, but the problem was I could not, the fish were not where they normally were, right? And uh everything I'd been doing, everything that I've been talking to others about, I I just locating the fish because of water temps, uh bait pods coming in, it was just it was difficult. It was difficult. So I'm sitting there thinking, it's just not coming together the way I wanted it to. Uh I was having some trouble finding bait. I mean, it's just nothing seemed to be going right, and I was in a bad head space. I knew that in order for me to even come close to accomplishing what I was gonna need to accomplish, I would have no choice but to get out of my comfort zone, right? I was gonna have to fish structure I wasn't f familiar with. I was gonna have to go to places that I'm not as familiar with. I may even have to pull stuff in my spread that I'm not accustomed to pooling. What typically was going to work was not going to work in this tournament. So Jennifer and I were running to, I think we're going to pick up some to-go food somewhere, shaka tak or something, and she was gonna ride with me, and she walked outside, and we got in the truck and she looked at me, she goes, What's going on? And I just said, Things aren't going the way I want them to, babe. Uh, you know, I I know there's some things I gotta try, I gotta do. I went to more detail with her, and I'm gonna go with you right now, but I just remember saying, bottom line is it's outside my comfort zone. She looked right at me. And she said something that that stuck with me and hit me like a ton of bricks. She said, babe, you can never be committed to your goals and your comfort zone at the same time. You can never be committed to your goals and your comfort zone at the same time. Oh my God, that stuck with me, right? Because the truth is most of the regrowth that we want in our lives, everything that you're trying to accomplish lives right outside of that comfort zone. And that's exactly what we got to have the conversation today on the mind. You see, everything starts with your mind, your beliefs, your perspective, your ability to stay focused when things get difficult. Your mindset determines how you handle challenges, setbacks, opportunities. Look, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna deviate just a second, and and I I've got a uh E plus R equals O. And I'm gonna share a story. Some of you know it, I'm gonna share a story with you on this one day. Uh time sake today. I don't know if it's the right thing to do, but I I'll think about it. I may end up coming back to it. But E plus R equals O. Your event, what is happening, plus how you respond determines your outcome. It helps determine that outcome. So your mindset helps determine how you handle those challenges. E plus R equals O. Your mind determines how you handle your challenges, your setbacks, your opportunities. If you're thinking negative, if you're constantly doubting yourself, if you're focused on the problem and the challenge versus what the solution is, I promise you you're fighting a battle that you're never going to win. Your mind has to be strong. Put it this way: the the brain is constantly creating patterns, right? Every thought you repeat, every belief you reinforce, every conversation that you have with yourself, it builds those patterns and strengthens those patterns, right? And over time, those patterns they they become your default thinking. You know, you talk about the half-full, half-empty people. This is why some people automatically see the opportunity while others will see a challenge. Their minds have simply been programmed differently, right? And here's the important part. Your mind can be programmed intentionally. Intentionally. Here's something powerful I want you to understand is that your brain, your mind cannot possess a positive thought and a negative thought at the very same time. One's going to win. If you are focused on fear, if you're focused on fear, if you're focused on a negative outcome, you cannot be simultaneously focused on the opportunity. If you're focused on the problems, you cannot at the same time be focused on solutions. Which means the real questions become, what are you choosing to focus on? You guessed it. Because what you focus on, ladies and gentlemen, is going to expand. Let's go back to the programming, right? Let's go back to the programming. I I said to you, your mind can be programmed intentionally. One of the most powerful ways to program your mind is through reading. You know, I I love Grant Cardone, y'all know that. And um a few years back, uh I either read something he had had had written or heard a quote that he said that if you want to have a 1 to 52 advantage, a 52 to 1 advantage over your competition, read a book a week. And that's because the average person after high school will start a book a year. Most of the time people don't finish it, right? Most time they don't finish it. I can tell you I don't run a 52 to 1, but I do run uh about a 26 to 1. I read a lot. I I cheat, I use Audible. Uh I do have a lot of uh hard copied books. I got several from uh uh my buddy Sam Monroe that he's written. I listen, I read Grant Cardone, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziggler, uh Brandon Bouchard. Uh I got one I read uh and it's funny, I was in a meeting and this came up. Um the message in the book, not the book, uh, but it was called Go for No, right? I mean, that's completely opposite of how most people program themselves. The point being, when you're reading, you're you're you're learning from people who've already walked this path ahead of you. You're learning from their mistakes, their lessons, their thinking. They didn't just wake up one day and say, Oh my gosh, I'm a genius, I'm going to pin this out so everybody can see how to do it. What they're actually saying is, oh my gosh, I've been down this path. Let me show you an easy way to do it. When I say easy, what I should have said is easier. It's going to take work, it's going to take action. When you read consistently, ladies and gentlemen, you are literally rewriting the programming in your brain. You're reprogramming your brain. You know, another major influence is the people you surround yourself with. You've heard it before, and it's true. You've heard me say it a thousand times. You become like the people you spend most of the time with. If the people around you are negative, complaining, and settling for average, that mindset will influence you. But if the people you're around are positive, disciplined, and growth-oriented, that mindset is going to elevate you. When you you have to make the conscientious decision, if you if you go to the break room or and you're sitting around a water cooler, if you're on a maybe this is more appropriate, if you're on a Teams call and somebody stays on afterwards and they're calling, they're constantly just complaining and griping about everything. Separate yourself from that. Because what you don't realize is you're allowing that virus to get into your program. You've got to have an antivirus mindset, right? They just hit you got to have an antivirus mindset because you are a result of the people that you associate with. That's how you're programming yourself. Let's talk about something else that holds a lot of people back. The mind's powerful, isn't it? It's powerful. One of the things that holds a lot of people back is negative self-talk. This is a conversation you have with you, right? Sometimes it sounds like, I can't do that. Oh man, that's too big. I am not ready for that. I am not good enough. But here's the problem. The brain begins to believe whatever you repeat. If you're constantly speaking negativity in your own mind, your brain eventually accepts that it's fact, that it's truth. You have to challenge those thoughts, you have to replace those thoughts, you have to redirect those thoughts because the words you speak to yourself, they shape the person you become. I would be lying to you if I said, I haven't talked myself out of innergator a thousand times. RB, who's gonna want to listen to Innergator? Innergator? That sounds so stupid, right? What is that? People are gonna think you're crazy, dude. They're gonna think you're crazy. Finally, I had to have a conversation with myself. I said, you know what? This system, these pillars, they help me. They help me get my head where it needs to be. This may not be for everybody, and that's okay. But if there's one person, two person, three person, four, that it can benefit and can shape the way that their life goes and helps them change the trajectory of their life, you gotta do it. Dude, you can do this. You can do this. Put yourself out there. I had to have that conversation with me. So when I'm telling you this, I'm not telling you stuff just to sound small. I'm telling you, I've lived this. Still do sometimes. I live this. I was at an executive health exam I had to go to. And part of it was the mental aspect, right? And they gave me a breathing exercise to do, and I I gotta tell you, uh, those of you that know me, uh the gator ain't never been a big fan of uh yoga and stuff like that. My wife has, but I just hadn't it never I never really understood it. However, I call I started calling this the inner gator mind reset, right? I think it's something practical. I had to start doing this when my mind gets negative, right? Before I'd walk on stage to talk to a group of people, I have a thousand thoughts running through my head. I would have to reset, I'd do the breathing exercise. I'd actually would hold my hands right down beside me and shake them where it was triggering a reset. This exercise takes about 90 seconds. Step one, I just want you to pause and breathe. Just stop. Breathe through your nose. Hold it, right? Hold it. Then release. Slowly. Do that three times. Breathe through your nose. Inhale. Hold it for a second or two, six seconds, and release. This helps reset your nervous system. And step two is you have to identify that negative thought. You got to ask yourself, what thought is running through my mind right now? Maybe it's doubt, maybe it's fear, maybe it's frustration. And then step three, intention, guys, intention. Replace it intentionally. Remember what we said earlier. You cannot possess a positive and a negative thought at the very same time. So replace that negative thought with the right one, the positive thought, the better one. Instead of saying, I can't do this, say I haven't figured it out yet, but I will. Instead of saying it's too hard, say that challenge, that challenge is gonna make me stronger. This simple reset changes the direction of your thinking. And when you change your thinking, you change your actions. You know, I I said to you a while ago that E plus R equals O. Uh and I I was getting ready to start to close this out. But I want to go back and share it. It just honestly, gosh, this is one of those moments, it's a story that just hit me. So my daughter, uh Jillian was in uh a student at East Carolina University. Her junior year on a Thursday night, actually it's been about Friday morning, about two o'clock, uh, this was during uh COVID. Uh the phone rang. And as a parent of three daughters that are college age at the time, uh you either think they got into something they didn't need to get into and they don't realize they're calling me, which you would rather it be, than it be the the hospital sharing with you uh that your daughter uh has severe burns. Uh she was at a uh kind of a pep rally type party. Uh there was a big ballot or pallet-induced uh bonfire, and she was standing in front of it, and guys would kind of dip the ladies for a picture with the fire being the bike backdrop. The young man that went to dip her for the picture tripped, slipped, and Jill fell right into the fire, severely burned from her knees to her elbows, clothes were sticking to her, they had to scrub her with the dead skin to burn her skin off. Jennifer and I drove a couple hours from Topsville to or from Fayetteville at the time to um Greenville, uh North Carolina. I couldn't go in. She had to go in. And this process of scrubbing they had to repeat over the next couple of days. I remember having a conversation with her via FaceTime. And all I said to her is, baby, no I love you. Right now I want you to cry like you've never cried before. I want you to be angry. But do that today, tomorrow, Sunday. But Monday morning, I need you when you wake up to understand that E plus R equals O. You gotta get your head right. You gotta get your mind right. The event and how you respond is gonna help to determine your outcome. Now, on the event, there's nothing you can do to change the fact the event happened. Nothing. All you can control is how you respond to that event. And I guarantee you that's going to help with the outcome. She cried all day Friday, all day Saturday, all day Sunday, and I knew when I reached out to her Monday morning she was gonna be crying. However, what I heard was, hey, you know what? I'm glad this happened to me and not my friends. They couldn't handle it the way that I handled it. Technology is pretty cool today. She healed pretty good, still has some scars. But she went on to become a pretty very successful and popular uh TikTok influencer, ended up moving to New York City on I didn't have to underwrite that, she did that herself. Uh, graduated college, worked at the marina, rocked a bikini, and learned from that. You see, the the crazy thing about that incident is I know people that whether they're 21, 22 years old or 51, 52 years old, they would not have if they responded, woe is me, my life will never be the same. People are gonna look at me and see scars or things along that line. They would have felt sorry for themselves and never, ever truly got over it. She turned around and used the event to help other people. She used the event to say, these scars tell my story. And she shared her story and she went on to her own form of greatness. The mind is incredibly powerful. Your event may not be that drastic, right? Your event may not be that. However, whatever your event is, whether it's a challenge or an opportunity, how you respond is going to determine the outcome. And I'm telling you right now, you've got to program your mind to be prepared for when that happens. Inside every person listening to this podcast, there is greatness. I tell you every time that's the case. That greatness, I call it your inner grater, greater, not greater, your inner gator. But greatness doesn't grow by accident, guys. It grows when you train your mind, when you challenge negative thinking, when you surround yourself with the right people, when you step outside of your comfort zone, your mind is the command center of your life. My challenge for you this week is to read something that expands your thinking. Spend time with someone who pushes you to grow. And the next time negative self talk shows up, and it may be at the end of this. Podcast. It may be the next 20 minutes. It may be next. It may be Wednesday, right? Whenever it shows up, I want you to use that integrator mind reset. Breathe in, breathe out. Ask yourself what you're thinking about. What do you got to replace it with? Because the mind you build today, remember this. The mind you build today, that determines the life you live tomorrow. I hope this helped. Next week we're going to move into the second pillar of the integrated, and that's health. Because your mind sets the direction, but your body provides the energy. I hope you have a great week. I hope you enjoy this, and I look forward to connecting with you again next Monday. Thanks, guys. Everybody, thank you so much for listening to the Finding Your Inner Gator podcast. You know, if today's episode helped you, share it with someone who needs to hear this message. Remember, greatness is achieved through discipline, intentional action, and optimizing the relationships around you. I look forward to getting with you next week. Now, go Gatorize your day.