Hello my friends, and welcome to the Discover Your Personal Power Podcast, the show to help you live a life filled with peace, purpose, and power. My goal on this podcast is to give you something fun and meaningful to make your day a little brighter. I want to help you find your light and your personal power within.
My name is Peggy Moore and I am a wife and mother of over 30 years, a Nurse for over 20 years a Certified Professional Coach and wellness advocate with doTERRA essential oils.
Discover your personal power is for those of you that want more. Instead of barely getting by, or letting all the outside voices of expectation and opinions drive your actions, this program helps you stop and contemplate, evaluate and consider what you want most. Discovering your personal power is about figuring out what kind of life you want to have, what your core values and primary goals are, and how you want to show up in this world. Instead of just swimming to keep up, it is about thriving and flourishing and becoming the woman of your dreams. Sharon Eubanks said it like this: This world needs women who are joyfully righteous, articulate, different, and distinct. The world needs you, the best of you.
Eugen Burger said: You are the magician in your own life. You’re the agent of transformation, your own transformation. Let’s talk about ways to create change and by using our creative mind to help us solve problems, come up with ways to form new habits, and create the life that we desire most.
How many of you have ever watched the movie Working Girl with Harrison Ford and Melanie Griffith. Well super smart and savvy New York City receptionist Tess McGill played by Melanie Griffith gives her conniving boss, Katharine Parker played by Sigourney Weaver, an excellent business tip, but Katharine simply steals the idea without giving due credit to her secretary. After Katharine winds up in the hospital with an injured leg, Tess decides to exact revenge. Pretending to be her boss, Tess initiates a major deal with an investment broker (Harrison Ford) -- but things turn ugly after Katharine finds out what Tess has been up to. Tess is able to explain her credibility by explaining the way she came up with the idea for the pitch. She was reading a variety of material and interest to put her ideas together. Tess got Scrappy, she was thinking outside of the box and her many interests allowed her to come up with a unique perspective to solve a problem.
I love this movie because I love the underdog of course, but also it is a great example of how we can find great ideas and creative solutions in everyday life. We are all faced with challenges, trials, and obstacles in life. It is how we choose to go over, under, or through to leverage those challenges, obstacles, and trials to get the results we want that give us the vibrant and meaningful life we desire.
But we have to allow our minds that opportunity to be creative, to not be structured or overwhelmed or stressed. To find peace and in finding peace, we find our power.
One of the most powerful ways we can tap into our creative power and solve problems is by priming our minds. I love this idea of priming our mind and preparing our mind to help us solve problems, or come up with creative solutions to create better habits. Studies have shown that menial tasks that require little mental energy but a lot of physical energy can allow your mind to be it's most creative.
In a study done in 2009, a group of American and Canadian researchers conducted a study and found that letting your mind wander during menial tasks such as showering or doing the dishes can invoke a mental state conducive to more creative ideas.
Terry Sjodin in her book titled Scrappy talks about the shower being your ideal booth. She says something magical happens in the shower. Showers tend to be relaxing and stress-free. Showers give you uninterrupted alone time with no distractions and set the perfect setting for creativity and problem-solving. Showers are routine and mindless. Shampoo, Rinse, Conditioner, Rinse. Showers can be like recess for our brain. The shower provides white noise to block out all the outside noises and be creative. Next time you're in the shower, let your mind wander and see what creative solutions you come up with.
I love how Tess presents her solution as a result of different things she read and different people she has talked to. This week in talking with both my sons, they totally help feed my thoughts about this subject of creativity and allowing our minds the time to wander to create solutions for life’s challenges and dilemmas.
I was talking to my youngest son Connor, he is 24 and newly married. As I was talking to him, I noticed he was doing dishes at the time. Doing dishes, what? I am not sure my son ever touched a dish in my house except to put food on it. I was like kudos to your wife, Connor, I was impressed. And my wise son was like Bill Gates does the dishes in his house. What? and he told me Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world and founder of Microsoft, washes the dishes in his house. While I am happy to see my son following such a great role model, I wanted to know more. In an interview with Reddit in 2014, Gates was asked “What is something you enjoy doing that you think no one would expect from you?” Gates replied, “I do the dishes every night — other people volunteer, but I like the way I do it.”
And studies have found that doing the dishes can reduce stress and boost creativity.
A Florida State University study found that students who were primed to be mindful while washing dishes (i.e. focus on breathing and the touch, smell, and feel of the task) saw a decrease in their stress levels and a boost in inspiration. Concentrating on the feeling of the warm water or the smell of the soap stimulated the brain.
Bill Gates did the dishes in his household because it was a menial task that got the job done, but also gave his mind time to think.
In the book Neurowisdom, neuroscience researchers Mark Waldman and Chris Manning show the difference in brain activity between the “decision-making mind” and the “creative mind.” When one is focused on a task and working on completing a goal, he or she is using the decision making mind.
When you concentrate on a high-demand task, your prefrontal cortex (PFC) kicks into high gear to take in the new sensorial information for formulating an appropriate response. The PFC is the frontal lobe of the brain, behind your forehead, and is in charge of executive function, which includes complex planning, personality-expression, decision-making, and moderating social behavior. Your brain is fully dedicated to the task at hand, without distraction, even if multitasking.
But those “Aha moments” often come when one takes a break from a task and engages the creative mind by allowing for mind-wandering activities like daydreaming. On the other hand, low-demand tasks require a steady but minor level of focus. Going on a jog, catching up with a colleague over coffee, or counting the stops until your destination — these are low-demand tasks, which many may even deem meditative or therapeutic. Your PFC decelerates during low-demand tasks and the background of your brain is in a sweet spot of being turned on but having available space to make connections.
One of my favorite talks is the one where Steve Jobs addresses Stanford students at a graduation ceremony and says “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
But in order to connect those dots, we need life experiences and then the time to allow our mind to connect those dots. We have to allow our minds that time to wander and be creative.
So, this week when I was talking to my oldest son, Brian who is 31, a project manager, and is paid to think up creative solutions to business problems, he told me about the concept of “priming the mind” when you want to be creative. For example, Brian is also an aspiring author, he wants to write a book and the creative writing process requires him to take time to allow his mind the opportunity to explore new ideas and create.
I loved this concept of Priming the mind. So I did a little more research. In psychology, priming is when a person has first exposed to a stimulus than a second related stimulus. The first stimulus affects the person’s response to the second – it “primes” their second response. One example that’s easy to understand is priming with words: If someone is shown the word “sun,” they’ll be faster to recognize the word “moon” than if they were shown a completely unrelated word, like “train.”
Priming psychology has been studied for years and can have a profound effect on behaviors and habits. often without us even knowing. Psychologists theorize that priming occurs because we store information in our long-term memories in groups, or “schemas.” When we see a word or image, the rest of the group to which it belongs is also activated, and the related information is easier to access.
I am finishing my graduate work in psychology and addiction counseling and one of the interesting things I have learned is the profound effect of priming and preparing the mind. individuals addicted to specific substances often have rituals or routines associated with the intake of that substance. Studies have found that when individuals are in an unsafe situation or in a foreign environment and use the same amount of the substance as they typically use and when they don’t get the time needed to perform the specific rituals they are more likely to overdose. The ritual process serves as a mechanism to prepare their mind and body for the effects of that drug. So how can we use this in our life? We can create healthy rituals that can ready our minds and body to engage in health rituals that promote greater productivity and wellness.
So how can we use this in our life? We can create healthy rituals that prepare our mind and body to partake in health rituals to create greater productivity and wellness.
For example, creating a morning ritual that includes priming is the perfect way to start your day. What you do in the morning has a powerful and long-lasting impact on the rest of your day. Priming can help you start each day feeling more energized, focused, and clear about your goals.
One of the biggest morning routines that helps me the most is exercising. Getting my body moving first thing in the morning, helps to clear away the cobwebs and give my mind the opportunity to prepare for the day and come up with creative solutions for problems. I have been trying to be more consistent with my exercise routine and what I really love is getting up early and starting my day with a brisk walk or run. I find that it wakes me and gets me set for the day, but it also gives my mind the best chance to create. I don’t know how many times, I have scripted a talk or paper for school or just had a great idea about a problem I am trying to work through on my morning runs. So interestingly enough I found some help on this from my two sons this past week.
According to Stanford research, walking can boost creative output by 60 percent. Entrepreneurs can use walking, both alone and in groups, to boost their creative thinking. When stuck on a task with no apparent solution, a short walk can be the perfect catalyst to trigger an “aha” insight. If walking isn’t an option, an alternative way to engage the creative mind is taking a short break from being task-focused to allow yourself time for relaxation and daydreaming.
Denise Park said.
There are mental activations of which we are unaware and environmental cues to which we are not consciously attending that have a profound effect on our behavior and that help explain the complex puzzle of human motivation and actions that are seemingly inexplicable even to the individual performing the actions.
Study on the power of priming.
Researchers in the Netherlands investigated whether behavior could be triggered with scents. They investigated the impact of olfactory stimulation in several ways. In the first experiment, one group of subjects was placed in a cubical in which the citrus scent of cleaning fluid was present and a second group was placed in a cubical with no scent present. Each task was given a task of coming up with 20 random words. Reaction times to identifying words were recorded. As you may already expect, cleaning related words were identified more quickly when the citrus scent was present
In the process that occurred afterward, researchers confirmed subjects were unaware that the scent in the room was being studied and that it influenced their responses. This confirmed that the influence of the scent on response time occurred at an unconscious level. In this instance, how quickly one could mentally access cleaning-related words was enhanced by the citrus scent commonly associated with cleaning products. As demonstrated here, priming enhances the mind’s access to related concepts.
In a similar study, subjects were again placed in rooms with or without an orange scent and then asked to write down what activities they planned for the rest of the day. Of those subjects placed in the room with the citrus scent, 36% listed cleaning-related activities as opposed to only 11% placed in a neutral scent room. The difference was scientifically significant. Finally, subjects were placed in rooms with or without citrus scent and instructed to complete a questionnaire. After completing the questionnaire, they were moved to a room where they ate a cookie that was brittle and deliberately designed to produce crumbs. Their eating behavior was videoed and rated as to the degree they kept their eating area clean by picking up the crumbs produced. Those who rated the degree of crumb cleaning behavior did not know which subjects had been exposed to the citrus scent and which had not. In scientific terms, video raters were “blind” as to which subjects were in which group. As predicted, participants exposed to the citrus scent displayed significantly more crumb removal behavior than the no-scent group (p = .02). Specifically, subjects primed by the citrus scent removed crumbs over three times more often on average than the non-primed group. Post-experiment debriefing revealed that participants were unaware that the orange scent influenced their behavior. Once again, the automatic pilot was triggered and resulted in clean-up behavior of which no participant was aware they were doing.
Pretty crazy right, it is amazing what we can train our minds to do.
The reason I am telling you this is because we can ultimately use this knowledge to create the life that we want. We can use this knowledge of priming to create the habits that we want most. The more you are able to create routines that prime your brain to promote action, the more your actions will become the habits that you want for your life.
Even small adjustments in your routine can help to break negative habits and build new ones. We can use this information to prime our brain to help us create the life we want.
When we want to change a habit or break a particular routine that is affecting us negatively, we often think of the goal, beginning with the end in mind right. This allows our mind to create the vision, the mission, and develop the purpose for this change. We figure out our Why and that drives our focus.
We also need to change our process, for example, if you want to be more dedicated to exercising in the morning, but find that you are always hitting the snooze button, then maybe going to be a little earlier would help or get your clothes to getter the night before. The thing about the processes you can create to make the change easier. How can you prime your situation, your environment, and your mind to make that habit stick a little better?
As that habit sticks a little better, it becomes part of who we are.
James Clear in the book Atomic habits said “ The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician.
Use some time this week to let your mind wander. Prime your brain to help you come up with creative solutions to challenges or trials or obstacles in your life that are preventing you from having the life that you want. Do the dishes, Take a shower, or better yet take a walk,
I am a very task-focused person. I like to have direction and have a goal and an endpoint. So I am learning about this art of creativity and just allowing my mind to wander. I love when I am able to come up with creative solutions to solve challenges in my life or to create the habits that I know will bring me more happiness and joy. Use these skills this week to help you prime your mind and discover your personal power.
Also creating nighttime routines can prime your mind and body for sleep. For those who have trouble sleeping, I just did a sleep workshop that I recorded. In the workshop, we talk about why good quality sleep is important and some simple natural solutions for better sleep. We talk about how we can prime our mind and body to be ready for a good night of quality sleep. I will leave a link in the show notes.