Rewiring

Lasting change doesn’t come from willpower—it comes from Rewiring. In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna Williams builds on past conversations around stress, awareness, and the brain by exploring how habits, thoughts, and small daily actions quietly shape who we become. She explains that nearly half of what we do each day isn’t a conscious decision, but a pattern the brain has learned to repeat—and that real transformation happens when we intentionally interrupt and retrain those patterns.

Jenna breaks down the science behind neuroplasticity and resiliency, showing how the brain is constantly adapting based on repetition, environment, and emotional signals. From mirror neurons and learned behaviors to the power of reframing thoughts in real time, she reveals how even a single breath or a two-minute shift can begin teaching the brain a new way to operate. Growth, she explains, doesn’t come from massive change—it comes from small, consistent actions that feel safe enough for the brain to accept.

She also explores the deeper emotional side of rewiring, including forgiveness, identity, and the beliefs we carry about ourselves. Through personal reflection and relatable examples, Jenna highlights how the way we see ourselves internally is often reflected back to us in the world around us—and how changing that internal narrative can shift everything.

The episode closes with a grounded reminder that resiliency isn’t about strength—it’s about strategy. Every time you recover, reframe, or choose differently, you are actively rewiring your brain. You’re not stuck—you’re conditioned. And with awareness, that conditioning can change.

Through science, storytelling, and simple daily practices, Jenna reminds listeners that you don’t find yourself—you build yourself, one intentional choice at a time.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Welcome back. Today I want to talk about rewiring. Like I talk about neuroplasticity a lot, but how do you actually rewire your brain? That sounds hard. It probably is, but it's actually really simple. So let's talk about mirror neurons. These are the cells in your brain that fire, simply put, like monkeys see, monkey do, but they help you sink. So, some examples of that. Have you ever been in a movie theater when some the actor on the screen gets hurt and the whole theater groans? Those are mirror neurons. You're mirroring what you see. Have you ever watched someone stub their toe and you wince in pain? Have you ever been in a stadium where the team scores and everybody screams and the loudness is just infectious? Those are mirror neurons. Those excitements are happening. Those are neutral. They can be good and bad. Remember, the brain doesn't know the difference. It's going to mirror what's good for you or what's bad for you. It will mirror based on what you're around. So it has a system for mirroring others. For example, you might watch someone do something and you learn. You could watch maybe imitate a movement, you might catch a feeling, or you can feel what others feel, like empathy. Those are all mirror neurons. They sink. The groups sink. So let's talk about that in some story formats. One of my favorites is the bad apple study. They took six work groups and they put a bad apple in four of the work groups. They let them work for a week, something fascinating happened. After about a week, those work groups that had the bad apple negative person, they were 25% on average less productive and less engaged. Some of us have had a bad apple person in our lives for a really long time. So who you surround yourself with matters. My grandma used to say, Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. To me, there was an impact that happened when I saw a photo that had a bowl with five oranges, like the little mini oranges. One, then two, then three. The first one was completely rotted, had started rotting the second ones, but had not approached the third ones yet. And it was be careful who you hang out with. Think about that. Like the bad apple or the rotten fruit. Our brains don't know the difference of what's good for us or bad for us. They literally just do what we repeat. It's monkey see, monkey do. Be careful who you surround yourself with. When they study chanting and drum beats and like the group collective, what happens with those is in drum beats, the brain frequencies actually sink to them. They have studied, like Native American drum circles, when the drum beats are between seven and ten hertz. That the collective group, their brains will hit the frequencies of theta so that they can actually process. It's almost trance-like. Chanting is much the same. So there have been actual studies that you will sync to the beats, the music, the chanting, if you will, and you will sink to that frequency. They've done the similar study with drums where they get a whole field of people banging on drums, completely out of rhythm, complete chaos. And the study sent six professional drummers into the crowd, and those six people kept beating the same beat. Within like 20, 30 minutes, the entire stadium, field, whatever we want to call it, is beating to that beat because mirror neurons sync. That is what we're designed to do. We are social animals. That is just a natural thing in the brain. So you will sync to what you see. Monkey see, monkey do. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Are you surrounding yourself with people that are past you, or are you surrounding yourself with people that are future you? So there are some things you can do to find your people and get yourself a little further. So I worked with a life coach, fabulous woman, brought out sides of me that I didn't even know existed. But really what it was was a test that I was given was for a week, I was just supposed to say thank you to everything that I could. Thank you, I found a penny on the ground. Thank you, someone held the door open. Thank you. I somebody gave me my change in my receipt. Thank you to everything. Not just what was above and beyond, but thank you as often as I could. And within a week, people were thanking me before I thanked them. Well, now thank you for me is my pleasure. So when somebody says thank you, I go, My pleasure. But that simple practice started mirroring with others. Everybody syncs up. There is a law of divine oneness that has effect there. One of her practices, this life coach, she likes to say up until now. So anytime she would say something limiting, I do this, I do that, up until now, because there's room to change. So when thinking about that, my thank you practice was like that. Up until now, I I say thank you now. I don't even have to say that. Sometimes you'll hear me say, until today, until today I did X. But that's kind of how that works. So that applies also to the placebo effect. The placebo effect is there's so many studies of it out there, but you know, what somebody believes in their mind is what happens. There are so many stories of we have these two groups of sick people, one gets a sugar pill, one gets the medicine. People with the sugar pill actually heal faster or better than the people who got the medicine because they truly believed they were getting a medicine to make them better. They've done studies with go to a bar and they told half the groups they were getting just tonic water and the other half that they were getting vodka and tonic water. Well, everybody got tonic water. Nobody got alcohol, but the group that believed they were getting alcohol started acting drunk, slurring their words and having physical symptoms. That's sort of how the placebo works in the mind. What you believe in the mind, the body will respond to. So if you believe you're getting a placebo, you're gonna get a placebo. If you believe you're getting the magic pill, you're getting the magic pill. If you believe you're thankful, you're thankful. If you believe positive, positive. For me, that really manifested itself in seeing myself as healed. Not because the prognosis was good. I just refused to accept that my life was going to be spent not being able to go to the bathroom by myself and spending my life on a walker. I refused. It felt delusional some days. Some days I even wonder how I even got through it. I just refused to let anything in my brain in, but I'm getting better, seeing myself healed. I had to choose not to spend time with friends, family, or anyone around me. When you think about that practice, I tell you, which hopefully you're at the 10 minutes now, but no phone, no frequency. Right? That's it, no frequency. Don't let anybody else in. The mirror neurons of you will sink to other people's frequencies. If there's something you need to accomplish, you need to protect your boundary, container, frequency, whatever you want to call it. You have to protect that and not let anybody else come in because your brain is designed to sync to theirs. So if you don't want somebody to be something you sink with, I don't suggest you let them into your private space. Like my friend the coach, right? Up until now, until today, those were my people. They may not be anymore. And that's okay. Like my example in a previous episode of the hot air balloon, you can drop the sandbag, nothing wrong with them. But if they are not mirroring who you are becoming, you have to let that go. So along with mirror neurons, we have to think about habits and intentional thought. Habits, remember, the brain just does what you repeat. Whether that's good or bad, the more you repeat it, like water from a period previous episode, it will just erode down. So we need to repeat positive things. That's how consistency works. But if we try to go too big, the brain's gonna fight us. So small daily actions. Let that be two minutes, let that be five minutes, let that be ten minutes. It tells the brain we do this now. So in a great book, Atomic Habits, uh, there's a guy that they talk about that wanted to be someone that went to the gym. And so what did he repeat? 30 days, every day. He put on his gym shoes, went to the gym, worked out for five minutes, went home. That he repeated for 30 days. And when somebody asked him why, he said, I want to be the person who goes to the gym every day. It wasn't about the workout, it was about creating a habit loop. I every day put on my clothes, I go to the gym, and then it can be stretched. Much like I've asked a lot of you to just take that five-minute daily practice and now make it 10 minutes. It is a repeatable pattern. What is repeated, the brain will do. What got you here won't get you there. Habits might be holding you back. There might be habits that were good to get you here, but they shouldn't be going with you forward. When you find what habits you can replace with a new habit, that will help you stretch your comfort zone and get to something else. But it needs to be small, repeatable habits. Growth often means unlearning what we already know. But you can make small shifts. There's the story about the one degree. If you take a plane leaving Los Angeles and you set the autopilot off by one degree, in the first hour, not a big deal. Maybe you're 50 miles, maybe 60 miles off course, and I'm probably terrible at that navigation. But by the time you get to New York, you might be in Canada or in the middle of the ocean because that degree is compounded over time. So just like compound interest in a savings account, just like anything else, compounding is how things happen. So we have to think about the habits we've been compounding. And they might have gotten us to this destination, but they might not be what we need to get us going forward. So we might have to unlearn some things. Small shifts are massive over time. That's how consistency works. Habits do not rely on motivation, willpower, or memory. They rely on consistent repetition, just like the brain. The more you do something it says, oh, we do these now. It doesn't care if that's good for you or bad for you. It's extremely neutral. Your perception is how you determine your experience. But the more you repeat it, the more your brain will automate it. It wants heuristics. It wants mental shortcuts. It wants things to be quick. It wants to be lazy. Your brain actually wants to be lazy. It does not want to think and process. It wants things to be easy. It's going to automate everything it can. Mental shortcuts are how the brain works. It's not holding you back. It's just waiting for instruction. We have to create what we're going to repeat. You are going to repeat things. The more you repeat it, the more it sinks in. But that's how you memorize it. And once it becomes a memory, your brain automates it. So I think about what I call my three musts a day. These are three things I have to do today. I have to do these. I can't go to bed until these are complete. I still need to move myself forward. I am still a productive member of society. I still have a job. I still have responsibilities. What are the three things I must do today? These are required. These are non-negotiables. So my brain has practiced that there are three must-do's every day. I have three thoughts I'm aware of. Today, what are three things that I'm thinking that I can just be aware of? What am I aware of? Huh? That's how I feel about that. Huh, that's what I think. Those are important. Three thoughts I'm aware of that I take the time to take a few breaths and just be aware of. Just be interested in how I'm feeling, that I am aware that I'm thinking that. What am I thinking about that? How do I feel about that? Is this serving me? These are all my processes. But if I have three musts a day and three thoughts that I'm aware of a day, the other thing is one time of a day for me. So that 10-minute practice that I've asked you to do, where you just sit, no phone, no frequency, and just observe, you might have to combine some of that into there. You might be thinking your three aware thoughts during that time, and that's okay. But that that's just mine. That's mine. I have three things I must do a day, three thoughts that I'm aware of, that's how I feel, and one time of a day for me, one space that is nothing but me observing what I think. That's it. It's really simple, but these are the important things of how we rewire. And remember, the brain will just do what you repeat. It doesn't care if that practice is good or bad for me, but it's good for me. I'm being productive. Three things are happening a day to move me forward, whether that be business, life, whatever. There's three musts. I need to accomplish these today. It allows me to set down all the other things. They might go on a list, they might be a wish list, but there are only three I have to do. Those are no matter what. Those are face the firing squat if I don't. Those are must-dos. Those are not an option. Those are must. It's a must for me that on top of those, I have three thoughts that I'm aware of every day. I am constantly thinking about what I'm thinking. Is that serving me? Is it moving me in the direction of where I want to go? And there's one time of a day for me. Now, my practice has expanded that my time for myself is about an hour every morning. I have time to think, process, and read. But that time of day belongs to me. No matter what, I don't sacrifice that time. I set a boundary around that time. It belongs to me. I don't care how anyone else feels. That's for me. So you might have a different practice and find what works for you. But rewiring requires you to have something you do daily that becomes what your brain learns, huh? We do this now. So in rewiring, resiliency creates neuroplasticity. Every time you recover from a setback, you rewire. Think about that. Every time you recover from a setback, using resiliency, you rewire. So it's how you're doing things is how you're rewiring. Neuroplasticity is creating the pathways, new connections in your brain. So resiliency is a huge piece of that. But every time you recover from a setback, you're rewiring. One of the things I learned from a neurologist when I was recovering is the injury in my brain, it had had a full setback. The way he explained it to me, whether right or wrong, that I understood, was that when I think about like a helix of DNA, there's a connection. My stroke essentially knocked out a connection. But the other strands of the DNA could learn to talk to each other. There just weren't connections there. So they had to literally rewire. When you have a brain injury, neuroplasticity is used to rewire your brain. We use neuroplasticity to make new connections. So one of the things that happens from setbacks is you gain new resiliency. It's not personality, luck, or the universe picking favorites. Resiliency is biology. And biology, you can train. So that's what rewiring is for to become resilient. They did this fascinating study in Kauai in the 80s. Super high stress environment that children were growing up in. And about a third of them actually became successful against all odds. But what they found is that there were three things that set those students apart from the other ones that didn't succeed. They had a sense of purpose. They had a sense of purpose. They had at least one supportive relationship, and they believed that they could influence their outcome. What made them different was they had to rewire, but they had at least one supportive relationship. They had a sense of purpose and a belief that they could influence their outcomes. And so the decisions they made for their resiliency, their neuroplasticity, was all those decisions supported them to where they were going. Yet the factors that were aside from rewiring were that they had a sense of purpose. They had at least one supportive relationship and a belief that they could influence their outcomes. That's resiliency. So you can train resiliency, right? It's biology. You can train it. We've been talking for many episodes now about training the brain. This is how resiliency works. You can train it. You can reframe failures, you can repeat things, but you have to understand you can train it. Stress activates the HPA access or the communication line between the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the adrenal gland. It's the system in the brain. It's stress, it releases cortisol and adrenaline. It's your stress system. And resilient people don't have less stress, they just recover faster. Go back to the study of the ones in Kauai. What happened? They had a belief. So they trained resiliency naturally. But the resiliency literally is about recovering faster. The vagus nerve actually helps your body return to a state of calm. It does that quickly. The vagus nerve is required for resiliency. It's the recovery. So slow breathing, laughter, humming, they all stimulate the vagus nerve. That helps restore your body's balance. That is how you recover. That is why resilient people recover faster. They've just trained themselves to do it. They might appear stronger, but they've just trained themselves to recover faster. That's it. It's like having a mental immune system, right? That's kind of what it's for. But you can do that. You can train that. It's biology, and biology you can train. Isn't that fascinating? You can actually train yourself to be resilient. Some people seem stronger. Some of us have recovered from strokes. We may appear stronger, but I'm human too. A Joe can think that, you know, they say you won't get more than you can handle in life. Well, I'd like to stop being trusted for a while. But I think that that's important to understand is part of what makes me resilient is that I've recovered. I can reframe setbacks. I don't take it. Meaning is a biological advantage. That's part of resiliency. Meaning is a biological advantage. Purpose activates the reward circuitry and the dopamine centers of your brain. When something matters, the brain becomes more resourceful, helpful, and creative. So meaning is actually medicine. You can train yourself to be more resilient, but meaning is actually your biological. Advantage. It's your placebo. It's your medicine. Meaning will give you fuel in the brain. Your brain will go, huh? We do this now. It will filter in more of those. It will become resourceful, adaptable, and give you more of that. It's like a thermostat. Someone might take longer to cool down than others. Right? Some people are going to do that. Resiliency can be trained. It's like your thermostat. It's your cool down period. When something happens, do you get back up and fight another day? Or you do you turn into hoom poor is me. We all know the person that does. Every one of us has a friend or a family member. And you're like, ugh, right? Everybody knows. Don't spend too much time with those people. Your mirror neurons will sink. But really, recovery is influenced by the prefrontal cortex. That's your decision-making brain. It is how you can process where emotion is regulated. Reframing situations can occur. It's the neuroscience of getting back up. Let's think about that again. Like a thermostat, some people take forever to recover and some can do it quickly. Resiliency is that cool down period. The recovery is influenced by the prefrontal cortex. That is the decision part of the brain where emotion is regulated. That's resiliency. It helps regulate emotions. Reframing solutions can occur in the prefrontal cortex. That is the neuroscience of getting back up. Think about that. You have to allow resiliency to happen because you have to turn off the fight or flight response to get back into the prefrontal cortex. So you can regulate your emotions, so you can reframe situations to tell your brain, give me more of this. Breathing is again stimulating the vagus nerve that actually helps you recover faster. Slow breaths. That's what we want to do. Laughter. Oh, I laughed a lot in healing. But you have to get that vagus nerve back. Breathing, laughing, humming, pick them. But in stimulating that, you're stimulating resiliency, which is how you get back up, how many times, and you can train yourself to get back up faster. You don't find yourself, you rebuild yourself, choice by choice, practice returning to calm, reframe the story, choose a small action, lean into connections, do whatever it is that you need to do to give yourself that place. You have to get from the fight or flight amygdala that's in the fear and alarm system to let you get back to your prefrontal cortex so that you can regulate your emotion, so that you can reframe situations and tell your brain, this is how I do it, and get faster and faster at recovery. These are things that you can train. I think it's overwhelming when you try to do it all at once. So I say that the best thing you can do for yourself in rewiring is learn how to take a slow deep breath. That's the very first step. If you can just before responding, you'll be fine. It may not be easy. There are gonna be moments that aren't, but that's part of training your brain to get back up faster. If you can learn how to take a breath, you can get all the other steps turned on. Take a deep breath. That's the biggest one. Thanks for joining today. Remember, karma is real, energy is contagious, and vibes matter.