This is the Mindset for Life podcast, a place for personal stories, coaching, neuroscience and my favorite positive psychology tools to master life, relationships and work. I'm your host. Bethanie Hansen.
Hello there, and welcome to the mindset for life podcast. This is Bethanie, and I'm going to talk with you today about automatic thoughts. But, more especially, I'm going to talk with you about when you're trying to make a change, and it seems like you're just stuck. Maybe you're the one thing getting in your own way. Let's talk about how to bust through that.
Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to talk to you today about this idea that I've been having over the past few days. It's this idea that we all have flaws. We all have habits that are negative or bad for us. We all have things we do that keep us from the success that we really want in those areas we care most about. Why is that?
A Coaching Example
Yesterday, I was coaching someone truly brilliant (Alice, name changed). And, she said to me, it's as if I'm just getting in my own way all the time. And, if it's really me, then I'm truly hopeless.
And I disagree.
In that moment, I thought, if it's really me, then I can do anything to change it, and it's within my power.
But why do some of us think that we are so incapable?
And others think we are so powerful?
Well, I don't think it's just who you are. I don't think it's a fixed thing, at all. I think all of us have those experiences over time, and we each think these things at different times.
There are times when I, too, have thought my flaws were so great I could never overcome them. And then, if I just look back to myself 3, 4, or 5, years ago, I'm currently now capable of so much more than I was in the past.
And there are some problems from the past I just don't have anymore. So she was kind of doubting herself, but also seeing that she was sabotaging herself. And her goal was to change that.
The First Step: Build a Path in the Woods
So the coaching neuroscience piece for today is about building a path in the woods. Building a path in the woods is a truly amazing concept, because it's a piece of neuroscience that's actually quite complicated. But when we think of it as building a path in the woods, it becomes easy.
And this is the idea: The brain has neural connections that it fuses together over time. When we think a thought, it creates a connection. All those connections get stronger and stronger, the more we think that thought.
So it's as if traveling that pathway makes it a better pathway. So the brain is building superhighways in the brain. It wants to have automation, because when it automates thoughts, then it doesn't have to work too hard to get there. And it's going to make your life easier, because it will get to those thoughts much faster.
The problem is, each of us has thoughts that we're thinking automatically over time because we've thought them before. And, some of those thoughts are not very helpful to us. Like, for example, when we self-criticize. Or, when we doubt our own abilities. Or, when we collect evidence of our own failures, and then stack it up with evidence of the past, till pretty soon, we don't believe in ourselves at all.
The problem just becomes worse when the brain is helping us in this regard, because that superhighway becomes the preferred mental pathway. Until we can't think anything else but that.
Someone else might come along and compliment us, or tell us what a great job we did, and we're going to doubt them completely. Because that pathway in the brain is so strong.
New habits in our brains, like thinking a new thought about ourself, is like blazing a trail in the woods.
Ready for Your Own Coach?
How to Create New Thought Habits to Get Out of Your Own Way
You're going to go off to the side, and you're going to start walking this pathway to get to maybe a new camp spot. Or maybe you're looking for somewhere beautiful to just appreciate, or a new fishing spot. Whatever it is, you're going to be walking a path in the woods that really is less traveled.
So maybe it isn't even there at all. If you walk that path a little bit every day, pretty soon, a little bit of the dirt starts to appear and the plants start to die on the place that you're walking, and you're building a path that gets wider and wider.
Now, if you go on that same pathway every single day, let's just say you live near the woods, and that path is next to your house, you get up every day and you walk on that path. Pretty soon, you have it wide enough where you could pave it.
Maybe you put some gravel down at first and have a nice little gravel walkway. Or maybe you'll actually put cement down and pave it. Maybe you want to ride your bicycle down that path. And pretty soon, you think, “I'd like to ride my motorcycle down that path and get to my fishing spot a lot faster.” Since it is by my house, I just want to go there faster.
So pretty soon, you make it a little wider so you and your friend can go on that path, or more people can enjoy this path. In your family, maybe you decided it would be so cool to drive to that spot in your car, and you could turn that path into a road. Well, the more you travel that path, and the more you focus on that path, and the more you widen it, the more it's going to become the fastest route.
That's just like you. And, the neuroscience piece that I'm sharing with you today. These pathways in the brain, the way to think new thoughts, is to realize that all of the thoughts we are thinking right now are brought from our past self. Our brain has a habit of thinking these thoughts.
To think new thoughts, or to experience anything new outside of what we understand currently, we have to think something new by creating a new pathway. Creating new pathways is a stretch.
It's really hard at first. And if we go back to my client, Alice, who was thinking she was getting in her own way. The more we talked about this, the more she realized she had a brick wall in front of herself that couldn't be moved, or at least she felt like it couldn't be moved. And the more she tried to get around it, the more she saw the brick wall.
When we played with this a little bit and imagined this brick wall, looked at it, figured out what it felt like, how tall it was, how thick it was, how what color it was, the more it just became a small thing instead of everything. And then we talked about what might be on the other side of that brick wall.
You ever think about that?
When we feel stuck, it feels like that stuck-ness is everything, like the space we're in, where we just can't do things. And we start to gather all this evidence about how incapable we are, or why we can't move forward. Well, that's because we have no idea what's on the other side of that wall. And, if we can even imagine it, then we're already getting to the other side of the wall.
We can create it even in our minds, and have a different place to be.
It’s Your Turn
I'm imagining for you. That on the other side of your brick walls is the beautiful, brighter, more glorious and joyful version of you, the one that naturally does those things you care about doing and moves forward without doubting your abilities. The one that just operates in the world as a confident, wonderful human being. And the more you can envision that, the more you can get there.
It's like walking that trail in the woods to think that thought every time. Today, I want to leave you with some thoughts to inspire yourself to really reach for the bright opportunity in each new day by imagining the better version of you on the other side of the obstacle you're currently facing right now.
I faced a really big obstacle recently, and I felt like giving up. I struggled, I delayed. I couldn't imagine getting beyond this obstacle. And the more I talked about it, the more my husband gave me encouragement and said, “You know, this isn't really like you. You bust through obstacles.”
Well, it may seem that I bust through obstacles, but that's not exactly true. I wrestle them, I work with them. I have to remind myself all the time of what my direction is, where I'm headed, what I'm trying to do. And then I need to feed myself with things that help me be the person that's on that other side of the wall.
And then pretty soon I forget about the wall. It's as if it just disappeared, when really, it probably was never there in the first place. Instead, I was busy traveling that superhighway in my brain of those old, familiar thoughts that say, “You've never done this before. This is how you behaved in the past. So you're gonna keep doing it. This is how it's always gonna be.”
The truth is, the path in the woods may feel like a stretch because it's new. And it's out there in its undiscovered territory, just like the woods.
It may feel threatening. May feel like something's going to get us. Maybe there'll be mosquitoes. Who knows?
But the more we travel it, the more familiar it's going to be. And, the more likely it is we're going to be open to new things and new ways of thinking. And we'll develop new thought habits that start to support our efforts.
I hope you'll find encouragement thinking about your path in the woods, and the other side of the obstacle you're facing right now.
And I wish you all the best this week in being that best version of you.
As we started out this podcast episode with “sometimes, you're the one thing getting in your own way, and even when you're stuck, and it seems like you just have this habit of getting yourself stuck over and over again.” You bust through that. Let's get started.
This episode's theme song is "Take It Up A Level" by Bethanie Hansen and SUNO AI. Used with Permission.
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