#72: Flip the Script

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We often think our words simply describe our reality. Neuroscience suggests something deeper: our words help shape what we notice, expect, and experience.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why your brain is constantly listening to your language
• The role of the Reticular Activating System (RAS)
• How neuroplasticity strengthens repeated thoughts
• The connection between self-talk and stress
• The language parents pass to children
• How leaders create culture through words
• The hidden scripts many men, women, and teens carry
• Practical ways to become more intentional with your language

Key Takeaway

Your words are not magic. They are instructions. Your brain uses them to decide what matters, what to notice, and who you believe yourself to be.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why This Podcast Exists

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey, welcome to Just Count Me In. This podcast is for people who are ready to stop living on autopilot and start creating the life that actually feels really aligned, meaningful, and fully their own. I'm Sari Stone. I'm a holistic coach, an educator, a tutor, and someone who definitely understands firsthand what it feels like to look like you've got it all together on the outside while secretly feeling disconnected from yourself on the inside. For years I followed a path and followed what the path that I thought I was supposed to take, checking all the right boxes, never really feeling all the way fulfilled, always feeling like I was living alongside my life. Everything shifted after a series of wake-up calls, powerful mentors, and I had some experiences that completely changed the way I saw life, purpose, and myself. Wayne Dyer says, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And that's what this podcast is all about. Every week I'll bring you real conversations, mindset shifts, practical tools, some inspiring interviews, and give you some really honest ideas for reflections to help you break through your limitations, reconnect with yourself at a deeper level, and create lasting transformation from the inside out. Because whether I am coaching adults, tutoring students, or speaking with entrepreneurs, one thing is always true. People thrive when they finally believe they're capable of more. We'll talk growth, healing, relationships, purpose, confidence, spirituality, and what it actually means to live authentically in a world that is constantly telling you who to be. So if you're ready to trust yourself more, to think differently, and step into the life that you actually were meant to live, just count me in. Let's do this together. Hit subscribe and share this with someone who needs it. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining me today. Welcome back to Just Count Me In. And I'm Sari, I'll be your host.

Why Your Words Matter More

SPEAKER_00 2:12

This is a solo episode today. We're talking about something that sounds incredibly simple, but it may be shaping your life more than almost anything else. It's actually your words. Your brain is always listening. And whether you're a leader or a parent or a teacher or a coach or a partner or you're just somebody trying to build a meaningful life, the language you use matters more than you realize, far more than most of us realize. I found this topic really interesting right now because we're moving towards the summer solstice, which is the brightest day of the year. It's the season of light, and light actually reveals things for people. What if one of the things worth bringing into the light is the way we speak to ourselves and to the people we love? Most people assume language just describes a reality. I looked into it because I wanted to find out why this coincidence that the way I'm speaking to myself and the way I hear others speaking to themselves seems to be what they speak into existence almost. So I looked into the neuroscience.

The Brain As A Prediction Machine

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Language actually does help create the reality that we experience, not because it changes facts, but because it changes attention. So your brain is constantly scanning the world and it's asking, what matters? What should I notice? What should I expect? What should I prepare for? Scientists often describe the brain as a prediction machine, and I talk about this with my clients all the time. Your brain is really good at predicting based on probability. It uses all past experiences and beliefs and repeated thoughts to predict what's going to come next. One of the strongest ways we reinforce those predictions is through our language. So think about some common phrases that you might be hearing in your place of employment or in your household or just among your friends. I'm terrible with money. My kids never listen. Nothing ever works out for me. It's Murphy's law. I'm overwhelmed. What next? I'm sick of this. I'm not good enough. I'm always behind. If it can go wrong, it will. Well, what do you expect? And it's exactly that. When you think about all the things, I don't even want to go down that road, but so many things that we say to ourselves. At first, this might sound like you're making an observation. Over time, they become instructions. As do things like, I always find the best parking spaces, and things always work out for me, and my life just keeps getting better and better. And I always figure out what happens after a while. Sometimes it just takes me a while. The brain begins

RAS Filter And Seeing Evidence

SPEAKER_00 5:14

looking for evidence that those statements are true. And that's the part of the brain called your RAS, your reticular activating system. I think of that as my filter. Every second, millions of pieces of information are competing for your attention. So many. Your brain has to figure out what gets through, and the RAS helps to make that decision. It's like you're programming yourself. Right now, if I said to you, think about green, everything green in your room would just pop out at you. Or if you buy a red jeep, all of a sudden you see red jeeps everywhere. And those jeeps were always there. The green was always all around me. But my attention changed. The same thing happens with beliefs. If you repeatedly tell yourself people can't be trusted, or your life just keeps getting better, your brain actually starts to notice improvements, betrayal, it notices whatever you tell it you expect. And this is big because we need to be a little bit more careful, actually a lot more careful of the things we say that were expressions or beliefs that we just said without even thinking about them, and how we're actually programming things. If you repeatedly tell yourself opportunities are everywhere, your brain actually starts noticing possibilities. There's bound to be a solution to this problem. Your brain is going to start noticing solutions. The world hasn't necessarily changed. Your filter has. What you line up with has. So let's go one step further

Neuroplasticity And Identity Habits

SPEAKER_00 7:00

with this. Neuroscience also talks to us about neuroplasticity, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast. Your brain changes based on repetition. And the pathways we use become stronger. Just like when you make a path in the snow and you break that first path in the snow, make a trail, it's easier to go down that path again and again. The pathways strengthen and then they become habits. The habits end up becoming your truth, your part of your identity, and that makes a life. What starts as a thought that can eventually become the lens through which we see the world. This is not about pretending everything is wonderful. It's not about false positivity. It's about recognizing the language that we rehearse and how it becomes more of the reality that we're more likely to perceive. So what do you want to be picking up on more? Right? Just think about that and think about the way you're speaking to yourself as parents and as employers and as teachers. This matters

How Labels Shape Kids And Adults

SPEAKER_00 8:10

enormously. Children borrow our language because they create their own. If a child repeatedly hears you're lazy, you're difficult, you're shy, you're irresponsible, you're not good at math, those labels can become their identity. And I work with kids all the time that picked up on these little nuanced statements that they hear when they're being described. And nobody means anything by it, but it definitely creates part of who they are. Their developing brains organize around the story, and everybody's brain organizes around stories that it hears the most often. It's amazing how many adults, and I was one also, are still carrying narratives that never really even belong to them in the first place. So a really important question that you can ask yourself is whose voice do I hear when I'm saying this? Whose voice do I hear when I say to myself, money doesn't grow on trees? Whose voice do I hear when I look in the mirror and criticize myself? Because for many people, it's not actually their own.

Language Builds Leadership Culture

SPEAKER_00 9:19

Leaders create cultures in exactly the same way. Language becomes culture long before it becomes policy. A leader who constantly says, we can't, we're behind, nobody cares. It's a stressful profession, everything's falling apart, creates a really different environment than a leader who says, We're learning, we're adapting, we're solving, we're growing, we'll figure it out. The facts may be identical, their situation may be identical. 99% sure that they're going to get a different outcome when their attention changes. Where your attention goes, energy flows. This applies to entire groups of people. Many men grow up hearing, don't cry, man up, handle it. You are as valuable as what you produce. Stay strong. Many women grow up hearing, don't be too much, don't take up too much space, make sure you keep everybody happy, don't make people too uncomfortable. Many teenagers carry scripts like I'm never gonna fit in, I'm really not good enough, nobody really gets me. I've got to be perfect or I'm not even gonna try. These aren't just thoughts, they're rehearsed neural pathways. And when you start to think of them that way, your script flips. Every time they're repeated, they become easier and easier to access. So what are you creating in your business, in your marriage, in your friendships with your children? It's a lot. The beautiful news is that neuroplasticity works both ways. The brain can change. We had somebody in our family that was 102 years old, I want to say, and she completely changed. New language can create new attention, new attention can create new experiences. Then new experiences give your brain evidence and it makes it more and more familiar. We know the brain likes familiar so that it feels safe. So you feel more and more safe thinking these thoughts.

A One-Day Challenge To Notice

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So today I want to offer a little bit of a challenge. For one day, just take a moment and listen. Notice your words, notice how often you say, I have to, I feel overwhelmed, I'm stressed. I always, I never, they always, they never. Nothing works. This is just who I am. And then ask yourself, am I describing reality or am I programming it? Because your words are instructions and your brain is always listening. Every day, your brain is asking, what should I notice? What should I expect? Who exactly am I? What kind of world am I living in? And the words you repeat become the lens through which you experience your life. If I say to myself, I really can't trust people, my brain is going to start collecting evidence that supports that statement. Contrary to that, if I say to myself, the world is an awesome place, and I always meet the best people wherever I go, I'm going to be looking for that evidence,

Negative Self-Talk Triggers Threat Mode

SPEAKER_00 13:06

supporting evidence. Repeated thoughts create repeated neural pathways. Repeated neural pathways become really efficient. Efficient pathways become automatic to us. We don't even think about it to put our directional on between before we turn our cars. We don't think about a lot of things because they're pretty automatic. Eventually, what started out as a thought becomes like a habit of the way we perceive the world. And your brain literally becomes better at running the pattern that you practice. So what are you practicing? Are you practicing gratitude? Are you practicing anxiety? Are you practicing optimism? Are you practicing being a victim? Are you practicing possibility? Are you practicing cynicism? I mean, the list goes on and on, but start paying attention because the repetition really matters. And the language is what helps us reinforce the repetition. When someone repeatedly says, I'm overwhelmed, I can't do this, everything is a disaster, think about what those words really mean. Because your brain is taking those statements as meaningful information. It doesn't know. Research shows that negative self-talk actually increases stress responses and it activates threat networks in your brain. When threat networks are active, creativity decreases, problem solving narrows, emotional regulation weakens, and you have a harder time making decisions because it becomes more reactive. In other words, the language isn't just describing your experience, it's actually sustaining it. Children borrow language before they create their own. Whatever you're repeatedly saying to your children, their developing brain organizes around these stories. And years later, many adults are still speaking to themselves in the voice of someone else. Always stop and ask whose voice is living inside your head when you talk to yourself. Leaders, if leadership repeatedly says things like, we're behind, we're struggling, nobody really wants to work, everything is changing. People begin operating from scarcity and threat, and that's just not healthy. Compare that too. We're learning, we're adapting, we're building, we're solving, we're creative, we're pretty unstoppable. The feeling is completely different. And part of being an aligned leader is getting your own feeling right, getting your own language in place, maybe flipping some of your own scripts, because the facts that you're dealing with might be identical, but the outcome is going to be different.

Flip The Script With Better Prompts

SPEAKER_00 16:09

The goal is intentional thinking, not putting a band-aid of false positive phrases on everything that you don't really feel or believe. It's accurate and intentional thinking. For example, instead of everything is too much, you could say this is challenging and we're trying to figure it out. Instead of I have to do this, you could say, I get to do this. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, I need to clean up my act a little bit, I need to flip the script, you can journal these prompts and see what you come up with. What phrase do I repeat most often about myself? Where did that phrase actually come from? Is it objectively true? What evidence contradicts it? And what scripts did I inherit from my family? What script might I have inherited from culture? What script am I modeling for my employees or my children? What am I saying to my partner? What would be a healthier version of this belief? What would it sound like? If my brain is listening, what do I want it to hear?

Message Me Share And Closing

SPEAKER_00 17:28

I would really be interested in your comments about this. So please message me. I'm hearing from people and I love it. This is a two-way street. It's not supposed to be just a monologue. So please interact and get back to me, and please share this episode with anyone that you think might benefit from hearing it. And until then, think about flipping your script. Just count me in.