When attention flows, energy goes and the brain grows. Neuroscience tells us that we are growing our brain every single day and that through procedural learning, we can have a vastly different brain in a short amount of time. With depression on the rise, learning how to manage our thoughts and minds is ESSENTIAL. An unmanaged mind is an unhappy mind. In addition to this podcast, I teach this concept and the "how" in-depth in my course: https://beholdtheconnection.podia.com/connectedparenting
When attention flows, energy goes and the brain grows. Neuroscience tells us that we are growing our brain every single day and that through procedural learning, we can have a vastly different brain in a short amount of time. With depression on the rise, learning how to manage our thoughts and minds is ESSENTIAL. An unmanaged mind is an unhappy mind. In addition to this podcast, I teach this concept and the "how" in-depth in my course: https://beholdtheconnection.podia.com/connectedparenting
[inaudible] good morning, everyone. It is Ridell here from behold, the connection I'm going to warn you. You're probably going to hear some, um, paper moving in the background like this. I wrote my notes on paper today. Just I had a brain download and thought let's just do this. So I have two big pieces of paper in front of me with all my notes. I have a computer that is so loud today. It's like crunching in the background. Like it's working so hard. It is, it is working on a big upload for me. Nevertheless, I sorta feel like, get it together, computer. You sound well. It is old. I think this computer six years old, that probably says everything you need to know about my computer. Anyways, let me tell you a little bit about myself. Behold. The connection was born out of my heart. Um, about five years ago, I realized that we are not, what is my voice doing? One second. That's better. Is it better? We are not connected emotionally to those around us or ourselves enough. So it sorta became my mission to focus on connection and relationships and self compassion and compassion to our children and family life. As a whole. I want parents to understand how their brains work, how kids' brains work and how we can all just embrace our humanness, the amazing parts and the struggles for better mental health, better forgiveness of one, another better tolerance. I have put out a parenting course called being a happy and connected parent. And it's good. That's all. I'll say the reviews come in every week. This is changing my life. I encourage you to check it out at behold, the connection dot[inaudible] dot com. I really think there is nothing you can do to invest in your parenting and own mental health. So accessible for such a reasonable price. Um, as my parenting course, truly, I believe that, or I wouldn't have put it out. So today we are talking about our brains and how, what we think about matters and mindfulness and how our brains are constantly being shaped. Basically an unhappy mind is an unmanaged mind. So I believe, I believe this, the neuroscience backs this. I talk about it in the first few modules of my course, because it's that important. Most of us grew up just believing our thoughts. No one really told us to push back against our thoughts. No one said, Hey, your subconscious brain will offer you thoughts all day long. No one said, did you know that your brain is wired for survival? Not joy. We have to go in there and how car Brene for the joy and looking for the good, our brain's job is to keep us safe, to keep us small. And what I mean by that is it's our job, our brain's job, not to over exert itself. So sometimes when you're thinking of a big goal you have or something you want to do, that's gonna take a lot of effort. Your brain will shut it down. Like let's not expend that energy because you never know later we could be chased by a bear and we want our body, our mental energy. We want all of our energy ready to run. So don't worry about, you know, writing that book. You just conserve, you stay in the cave and just sit by the fire because you never know. So we have sort of assumed that if we're not feeling joy all the time, something's wrong with us, but really the brain's default is safety, safety, conserve, conserve, conserve energy. And so we wonder, well, what's gone wrong. Now, first of all, we are not meant to feel joy all the time. Their life is. I believe that life is meant to try us and grow us. Okay. There's always going to be that stretchy growy time as a person. It's the nature of life and why we're here. But how many of us spin in sadness? Just thinking something's wrong with our brain and when really so much of what our brain is spinning on is unmanaged thoughts. So there was a Harvard study that found out that 40%, seven 47, 40 per seven. Isn't a number I'll just tell you that 47% of our, our minds thoughts during the day are just wandering mind. Thoughts. That's crazy. That's half. That means there's room for improvement. That means that even if you have chemical imbalances or sensitivities to mental health struggles, we can still do better than 47% of just letting our mind run wild, like an unmanaged toddler, right? We can do better than that. Absolutely. But so many of us were never told that that's even something to do. Right. I actually had the privilege of growing up with a mother who taught me, especially in my teen years. I remember it, of course, who remembers much from their younger years, but I, in my teen years, I remember so many times her saying, and you can control those thoughts and you can change those thoughts when I would share something and not in an insensitive shutting down my feelings sort of way though. I'm sure there were times when that happened, but more so in a, Hey here's how you problem solve this. You can choose to think about it differently. So narrow science tells us that our brain learns things through two different ways and one is declarative learning and the other is procedural learning. So the one I want to focus on is procedural learning. This is how we make new neuro pathways and form new habits. So there was a study done where there were two groups of people. And one group of the one, the one group was given two weeks of compassion, training, self compassion, and compassion towards others as specific training and their brains were studied under brain scans. And there were significant differences in the brain circuitry after simply seven hours. So we need to hack this procedural learning ability of our brain to harness neuroplasticity, to be able to create new pathways and new habits. So essentially what this means is that if you want to have these type of changes in your brain, actual physical changes, you need to engage in procedural learning and create the creation of new habits. Essentially it takes effort is what I'm saying. So our brains are constantly being shaped. The fact is, is that where attention flows, energy goes and the brain grows. So when it says, whereas where I say here, where attention flows, that also means in attention. That just means what your brain is thinking about and really truly have you ever driven somewhere and you get there and you think, Whoa, I didn't even know as driving my mind was wandering, or if you've tried meditation and your mind has wandered. That is what I mean by procedural learning, building up this skill of being aware of what you're thinking. Because like I said, in the Harvard study, we learned that 47% of the time, our mind is just wandering half the time our brain is offering us most likely thoughts that are worst case scenario. And at the very least thoughts that are either in the future or in the past. Now most of the time when our brain is in the future, most of the time it's in fear. It is not that often that our brain is in the future and excited and cheering us on I'm going to succeed because the brain's natural default setting is to keep us safe. So it will go to the future and present worries. This is just natural unless you override it. And then same with if your brain is in the past, you're typically spinning in regret or shame. It's not very often that someone's brain naturally goes to the past and things. Gosh, you just killed it yesterday at that speech good for you or that type of thing. So we have to train our minds. I really want this to become part of school curriculum. Dang it. I'm going to write the curriculum dibs on that because we, we have to train our minds or our minds will just simply offer us thoughts all the day long, all the dang day long. And the truth of the matter is that one way or another, we are strengthening synaptic connections. We're either making our brain more anxious or we are making our brain more calm. The science supports this. You can have a very different brain a day from now let alone six months or a year based on the habits you create and the thoughts that you think where you focus your energy flows further, you get what's called cortical thinking or thickening. Pardon me? And what that means is the, the, the parts of your brain you're working on. Not only get different synoptic connections going, but you actually get a thickening in that area. So that matters. What that means is we shouldn't be spinning in shame. How is that serving us? It's not, it's creating depression and anxiety. It's making us live in the past fast and further shit name and negative. Self-talk the opposite of self-compassion shuts down learning. It actually shuts down the learning on brain scans. If someone sits in shame or thinks of shameful, thought the parts of the brain that help you learn and move forward, shut down. Bye bye. Contrast thinking, thoughts of self compassion or compassion to others. It creates an absolute wash in your body of dope. I mean, you truly feel better. Your prefrontal cortex comes back online. You make better decisions. It's essentially I'm propelling everything forward and up. Remember our brains are constantly being shaped. And so we look at well, what creates resilience in people? And how do we create this human flourishing? You'll see that. You'll see someone against the, you know, the winds of adversity, struggle, feel their pain and stand back up again. And what makes them mentally strong? Taking out the garbage is what makes the mentally strong. It is essential to a healthy mind. Managing your mind is essential to a healthy mind. Negative self talk is on the rise. Depression rates are on the rise. The last three years, they have escalated through the roof, even in our teens. And the fact is the PR medical, mental health professionals are scared. How do we get in front of this? Hence this podcast, there needs to be room in our life for some mindfulness, where we take the time to look at our thoughts and take the garbage out where we push against our thoughts where we have it's called the meta awareness in the, in the neuroscience world. And what that means is being aware of what your mind is doing. Have having a meta awareness, sort of hovering above your thoughts and looking at them and thinking that's not really true. That's just a story I've been telling myself, pushing back against certain thoughts. Um, mental awareness can even be asking a friend. Do you think this thought that I keep having about myself is true. It's challenging a negative narrative, and then changing it and offering your mind new thoughts. This isn't hippy dippy. This is actually how we wire our brains. And it is like I've said it a few times. It is the first few modules in my course, because it's that important to know how to do this, to know about thought loops and subconscious thought loops and how our thoughts create our feelings and our feelings drive our actions and our actions create our results. So sometimes we're looking at the results in our life and we're thinking, well, how did I get here? Your thoughts is how you got there. The quality of your relationships largely will come from your thoughts and your ability to have self compassion and compassion for a healthy mind. Connection is essential. And so by this, I mean connection to others, having these relationships where there's room, breathing room, having relationships with your kids, where you allow them to be humans and with yourself, pushing back against the negative narrative, you do not have to accept every negative thought your brain offers you about yourself. Every fear, every shortcoming you can love yourself. You need to love yourself. If you don't want to full susceptible to a lot of unnecessary struggles. If you want to have a men, a mentally strong and healthy mind, this meta awareness, this taking the garbage out, this procedural, learning this taking time for mindfulness and breath and building up the habit of guiding your thoughts instead of being controlled by them is essential. That was the longest sentence of all time. And I apologize. Remember an unhappy mind is an unmanaged mind today. I encourage you to open up your phone and start a phone note in the notes app of thoughts that I think, yeah, and I want you to write down any time you can be aware of it, even set alarms every 30 minutes. What am I thinking? And write it down at the end of the day, I want you to look through the thoughts you were thinking. Some will be conscious thoughts. Some will have been subconscious thoughts, but the goal here is adding in enough awareness and mindfulness that we stop our thinking when it's on a runaway train and change it to thoughts that serve us. I hope this podcast helped. If it did Ian any way, please take a screenshot text two, three, four, or five friends and say, this is a good podcast to listen, to share it to your social media. It's really the only way that people are able to find this podcast and get help. And I really don't pay for advertising because I have four children. So I'm not going to do that, but you can do it for me in one second, by taking a screenshot and spreading the word. I hope that I hope this helped. I hope that if this is a new, um, concept to you, that you think on it and consider it and see the difference over time, that changing your thoughts can make in your life. Remember after seven hours, there were changes in the brain from simply practicing and learning about self compassion. This is powerful stuff. And the moment that we learn and grow and start to master this, our kids will too. And imagine the future of the world and our kids' mental health. If we can ma learn model and teach this be well, my friends have a great day and thanks for listening.