Pathway 2 Empowerment
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Pathway 2 Empowerment
Manifestation - Cognitive Tools
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Today we are discussing cognitive and psychological tools that we can use in the manifestation process. Some of these include journaling and scripting, goal priming, confirmation bias, and mental rehearsal. We describe what each of these things are, how to use them, and why they work. Giving you the tools you need to help you thrive in your life.
Did you know that writing down your goals by hand alters your brain's neuroplasticity? I'm your host, Shalee. And I'm your co-host Sam.
SPEAKER_01And you're listening to Pathway to Empowerment, where we believe in thriving, not surviving.
SPEAKER_00Scripting is more than just journaling, it is a cognitive tool designed to lock in new neural pathways and shift your identity. Today we're going to discuss some cognitive tools that are great to utilize in the manifestation process. These include mental rehearsal, scripting, and confirmation bias. So confirmation bias is holding a strong expectation. And that changes how your brain predicts sensory input. Your brain continually matches incoming data against what it expects to see. A strong belief in your potential biases your perception to actively notice and utilize the evidence that confirms your goals are achievable for you. Why it happens, psychologists note that these biases are fundamentally about energy conservation and self-protection. The brain prefers to use cognitive shortcuts to validate what it already knows rather than constantly evaluating every single piece of sensory information from scratch. Because we're constantly being bombarded with sensory information, so it literally cannot process every single thing from scratch. It's just a lot easier to go off of these biases.
SPEAKER_01Well, part of that, Sam, is if you think about how we read, we do the same type of thing with reading. Our brain only needs to see the first part of the word and the last part of the word, or the first part of a sentence and the last part of a sentence to read the whole sentence. They've done a lot of research on how you can mix all of you can even put different symbols and everything in. As long as you keep the first letter and the last letter, your brain will read it because of that biases effect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So our brain is actively seeking the evidence that validates what it already believes. Breaking that cycle requires conscious effort and deliberate consideration of opposing viewpoints. So we need to challenge our beliefs that we can't manifest and try to like challenge that to make it so that we can. Have you heard of the placebo effect? Yep, I sure have. Will you explain that to us?
SPEAKER_01So there's there's the medical placebo effect where we're predicting the expectation. So this is like patients are told they are receiving a powerful painkiller, right? And they often experience actual biological relief, regardless of whether it was the medicine or it was just a fake pill that did nothing. And so that sh that goes along with the confirmation bodies where you take something you expect to feel a certain way. And this happens for all kinds of things when we have when we have the placebo effect. When when some you can do this with kids that think that they're drinking soda that have never had soda, and they're told they're going to be hyper, uh, they get hyper. You can see kids that drink alcohol, right? And they're they're they're maybe thinking it's alcohol, but it's not really alcohol, and yet they appear to be intoxicated, right? And I I don't mean kids literally with the alcohol. I think of anybody under the age of 40 as a child still. So any adult that's drinking alcohol, if they feel like they're drinking alcohol, even if they're not, they're going to become intoxicated in appearance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we even do this predictive expectation within relationships. So let's say you're starting a new romantic relationship, but you harbor a deep fear that your partner will let you down, cheat on you, whatever it is, the confirmation bias for your brain, it goes into overdrive, looking for all the warning signs that what you believe is true. And so if your partner forgets to text you back, you're you're automatically thinking, well, it's because they're cheating on me, it's because they're losing interest, it's because they're doing this, they're ignoring me, where they may just be busy with work. But that's our confirmation bias at work right there.
SPEAKER_01It happens a lot in a lot of different act actions within a relationship as well. Like maybe you you see your partner glance at another person, and automatically you're believing I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not skinny enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, because that's that negative behavior loop that we go into, and we get into that confirmation bias bias for that belief system. 100%.
SPEAKER_00Last time we talked a little bit about mental rehearsal and visualization, but it's also a piece of this cognitive psychological tools as well. So visualization as a mental rehearsal boosts our preparation and our performance under pressure. So it's the process of immersing all senses into the experience of your goal to strengthen your neural pathways for success. So it's not you don't want to just visualize it like the all senses immersion, like you need to feel happy about it, you need to get excited, you need to have that emotion attached because that emotion is what like really kicks it into overdrive for us.
SPEAKER_01Right. So how that actually works, Sam, is that vivid the vivid imagination of our psyche actually conjures the sights, the sounds, emotions, the physical feelings, and the success that engages the brain's prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex more strongly than mere contemplation. Right. So the neuroscience science reveals that vividly imagining an action activates the exact same sensory and motor regions in the brain as physically performing it. And we see this happen a lot in sports, right? When a coach is hyping them up and like, we can do it, we're down seven. We gotta get that, we've got to get that touchdown and that extra field goal to beat this team. You can do it, you know, hyping them up, visualizing it, seeing it pass from person to person, sharing with them the the vivid vision of what it looks like the brain actually wires itself to make it happen.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've actually read a study where they with sports psychology where they took three different groups. One group they didn't let the guys practice shooting hoops, they just had them visualize themselves shooting making the hoop. Right. And the second group for that same amount of time just practiced but didn't visualize. And then the third group just did nothing, so that they would have you know the baseline. And the group that did nothing, you know, didn't have any kind of improvement. The two other groups they were almost equal, right? Yeah. They improved the same just by visualizing versus actually practicing. So that's pretty darn cool if you think about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. In fact, I have a I have a fun story to tell you about this and how and why it works. Okay. So I had a client once that I asked, I asked this client, like, if you can have your greatest wish, what's one thing you wish you could do? And he said, I wish I could dunk a basketball. And I said, Well, you can. And he said, No, I can't, Shulie. He says, I'm too tiny. I'm I'm not tall enough to dunk a basketball. I'll never be able to dunk a basketball. And I said, if you tell yourself you can't, you can't. If you tell yourself you can, you'll get there. And then there was a commercial for a few years where it was a girls' basketball team and they had post-it notes. So it was a post-it note commercial. And they had the post-it note, and the girl would jump as high as she could and stick the post-it note on the basket where she could reach it, right?
SPEAKER_02Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01And it got to where she finally reached the goal and she dunked the basketball. And so years later, this client came back to me and he was so happy. And I was like, Well, what's up? What happened? He's like, I dunked a basketball because he finally believed he could. It's exactly what we're talking about. So instead of just visualizing it, you have to completely immerse yourself in a belief system and visualize that as well as do the actions in order to get you there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And vision boards is another way of visualizing your it just puts it uh in picture form in front of you at all times. Right. So in the morning, when you get up, you can look at your vision board. At the end of the day, you can look at your vision board. It's what vision boards do is goal priming. So it primes your brain, your R RAS, like we talked about last time. It primes your goals for you by exposing yourself to your goals constantly. And then your brain prioritizes that information, shows you opportunities and resources that are aligned with your goals, and it prompts your unconscious mind to recognize those and to act on them.
SPEAKER_01So there's a really important factor here that I think we need to mention with this, because this can be a positive as well as a negative. Because if we have a vision board, but we don't truly believe that we can, it can actually work in the reverse. We can actually create a deeper belief that we're not capable unless we actually stay positive about it and looking at it, going, yes, I can do this. Yes, it's gonna come to me, yes, it's going, it's on its way, right? Or we can go back into that negative behavior loop and say, no, I'm not, this isn't possible. No, I'm never gonna be able to achieve this. This will never happen to me. So we have to use the vision boards and the goal priming as a way to keep us moving towards the goal and not in the negative.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then we've got another cognitive tool is scripting and journaling. And a lot of people use scripting and journaling kind of interchangeably, but they're not necessarily exactly the same thing.
SPEAKER_01Well, the reason why they're not exactly the same thing, Sam, is because we're using more senses. Does that make sense? So when when we're when we're working on scripting, we're actually using all of the sim systems that we have in order to increase the likelihood that we're going to follow through. We do this a lot with children when they're learning how to do certain things. Think about when you were a young kid. They don't do this today, which I think is terrible. I wish they would go back to this. But when you were young, and and I was young, we used to have a spelling list. Yeah. And that spelling list, we would have to say the word, we would have to spell the word, and we would have to write the word. So, and we'd would see that word, right? So we were hearing it, seeing it, speaking it, and using then using it in a sentence. That's what we're talking when we're using the scripting and the journaling. We're using all of our senses and using all of those pieces, which if you think about the the next part of the scripting and journaling is the cognitive offloading, putting the chaotic thoughts and the anxieties or limiting beliefs on paper frees up the working memory and reduces the cognitive load on your prefrontal cortex, which then allows you to think more clearly and make better decisions. So that's another piece of the scripting and the journaling that will help us achieve our goals because it, if we go back to what we just talked about with the goal priming, it takes away that negative and keeps us in the positive.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. It kind of reduces your stress about trying for your goals as well and builds your confidence.
SPEAKER_01Well, um, and if you think about it, we like we have a lot of emotions attached to things that we want to achieve. And so we need to have emotional congruency, which is script scripting bridges with the logical left brain and the emotional right brain through bilateral stimulation. We use bilateral stimulation a lot in EMDR and other other skills in therapy, which helps both sides of our brain be able to master the belief that it's possible. Because my right brain, when I'm thinking about that and doing that with this bridging, helps it believe it's possible. And then my left hemisphere can see it in a different light because our our right and left hemisphere speak different languages, they they process things differently. So when you're doing the emotional congruency or the scripting bridge, that allows your brain to fully engage in what you're wanting to achieve.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, and another important piece with scripting that I just want to add quickly is how you how you write things. So instead of writing, I'm not in debt, you want to say I feel completely financially secure. That brings such a different feeling and reality to you. It's not it's not dwelling in the negative or dwelling in the arc thereof.
SPEAKER_01I will always tell people the way we use our words is vital because we will believe something we're saying is actually positive when it's a negative, such as hope or wish. Those are both negative words, and how often we do we use those words in conjunction with something we want, yeah, and they're negative.
SPEAKER_00Most of us think of those as positive, but they're negative. When it comes to manifestation, that really like shows you that there's a lack. Like, I don't have that, I wish I had it. Yep.
SPEAKER_01Which is a negative that we're taking it into the deficit instead of increasing the positive above.
SPEAKER_00And so when when you're scripting, you want to use I am, I have, I, you know, rather than I not or I don't, or I want, or I wish, or I hope. Yep. Yep. You want to have it in the present tense and you know, as positive as you can. Uh-huh. So that your brain can believe in those things because once you believe it, you can achieve it. Absolutely. And then with journaling, there's I've never done this method. I've heard a lot of people have used it, the 369 method. Have you heard of that, Shuly? Uh-huh. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01So it's where numerology-based.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you're writing your affirmations three times in the morning, six times in the afternoon, and nine times in the evening, so that it just like keeps your affirmations and your goals at the forefront of your mind throughout the entire day.
SPEAKER_01Another thing that it does, and most people don't recognize this, and I learned this before I even got into psychology. And that is that our mind and our and the aesthetics for us sees sees sees things that are not so like you you don't want to have you don't want to have an even number, you want to have an odd number because odd numbers create a symmetry, symmetry for us. So it's aesthetically pleasing to us. So your brain holds on to three because three is an odd number. It holds on to six, even though six is an even number, but it it's sandwiched between the three and the nine, which are both odds, which brings it into an aligned force for us. So our brain actually focuses and makes it a beautiful thing for us to see pleasantly and positively.
SPEAKER_00Isn't that interesting? Yeah, that is. Another really important part with journaling is resistance release. So releasing your resistance to whatever it is is just as important as saying, like this is, you know, as in as bringing stuff in. So you want to dedicate some free writing time to write about your doubts, your limiting beliefs, so that you can label those emotions and challenge them. And therefore, it reduces the intensity of those.
SPEAKER_01Well, and belief patterns. So how many of us have thought about like, I can't ask for more money because that means I'm greedy? Or I can't ask for more money because money's evil.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right? Those are limiting beliefs, and we need to we need to find what emotions are connected to those, and we need to find out why that belief is so strongly held for us, or else they're gonna get in the way of manifesting a higher income or financial freedom.
SPEAKER_00Yep, exactly. So that resistance release is just as important as anything else that we do. Yep. As with most things, consistency and building a habit are key. Consistency is more effective than volume. Spending 10 to 15 minutes a day using these tools builds stronger, more sustainable benefits than say an hour-long session once a week. And if it feels more doable, you're more likely to follow through. Yeah, to follow through and not feel overwhelmed. So for this next week, set aside a few minutes a day to put these tools to the test and see how it helps you along your manifestation journey. Would love for you to click the link below and share the experiences you've already had with these techniques or to share how trying it goes for you this week. On Monday, we will be comparing the law of attraction with the law of assumption and sharing how they each contribute to the manifestation process. So be sure to tune in. We'll see you next time.
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