How To Rewire Your Brain and Build a Success Habit - Shorty EP #106

G', day, guys. Dan Lenny here with a shorty of the how to Scale a Video Business podcast. It's Tuesday, July 14th, week 29 of the year. Someone was asking me recently, why do I always ident the week of the year? And it's a great question and it's all to do with building habits. I like to track things based on the week of the year because we have 52 weeks every year, let's call it 48 working, and that I look as, I look at as, you know, opportunities to achieve outcomes.

And so when I see week 29 of the year, I'm like, how close am I to my targets, my goals, my, my, my achievements? I wanted to set out at the beginning of the year.

And I think if you don't track and you don't measure, then how do you know if you're close to your goal or not? I think as creatives, we tend to be a little bit slapdash at times. I think we tend to kind of flip flop from one idea to another. And, and that's what I wanted to share with you today off the back of the amazing podcast we did last week with Lauren Kress, the, the business scientist. I was looking over my, my back catalog of coaching work and events that I've done. And so what I was sharing in the group today with the video business accelerator clients was this idea of how to avoid the cycle of failure and the role of neuroscience in business. And so taking that idea of the brain and what it can and can't do and understanding it better, and I guess the thing that helps has been blowing my mind recently is.

That awareness that the brain can change, you can rewire your brain. I've been doing a lot of meditation in the last few months and.

Following the work of Joe Dispenza, Dr. Joe Dispenza. He's a neuroscientist and also delves deep into quantum physics, which is the fifth dimension. It's the dimension we can't see, feel, hear or touch. And I've just been doing more and more research and finding it more and more fascinating and more than anything, experiencing a change in how I operate and how I work. And that's had an enormous impact on me, my business, my wife comments on it. And, you know, we think about the brain, you know, as creators, this kind of left brain, right brain, you know, left brain's kind of supposed to be, you know, all the logic and right brain's all the creative. And I think as a creative business owner, we flip flop between the two, I think I have more of a bias towards left brain. I'm probably 60, 40, left brain, right brain. I don't think I'm the most creative person, but I can add a lot of creativity when collaborating.

But more than that, it's like, let's go deeper than that. You know, the fact that the brain has these neural pathways that, the ability to connect one thought to another.

And the fact that with, with discipline and repetition and with consistency, you can rewire those pathways. You can rewire those pathways and think new thoughts and think a new you. And that is kind of mind blowing for a lot of people. But the fact is, you know, when we do.

Process a thought, you know, there's all sorts of things going on. There's the belief systems, there's a response, there's the action, there's the reaction, there's urges, there's association, anxiety, there's a reflex, there's perception, there's meaning, there's instinct. You know, is there a yearning? What kind of feeling is it? Is there an experience?

And.

There can be a memory attached to that. So there's all sorts of things going on with these billions and billions of neural pathways. But what's fascinating is this notion of neuroplasticity where the brain can find new ways to wire itself. There's a fascinating experiment done where.

The a group of people in the experiment were taught to play piano and over a two week period were asked to play for two hours a day, this one song. And at the end of the two weeks, they wired their brain up at the beginning of the process and they wired their brain up at the end and they could tell there was different brain activity at the end because someone, this test group had learned a new way of playing piano. It had actually wired in the new memory of how to do that. The second test group were given a piano and told, just play for two hours a day, play whatever you want. At the end of two weeks, there was no change because they didn't have any repetition, they didn't have any learnings being embedded. So the brain didn't wire any new pathways. And the third group were given a piece of paper with piano keys on it and they were taught how to play a song. And they were told to practice this for two hours every day for two weeks. And they, like the first test group, also got a new pathways being created. There was new brain activity in an area that hadn't been there before. And so you might be thinking, what's this got to do with filmmaking? Then, well, everything. It's got everything to do with how we think and how we respond and how we react, and the fact that with disciplined practice and with essentially consistent implementation, you are going to get consistent results. I, you know, we've seen a few businesses recently in the video space, you know, really struggle. And what I observe is the businesses that struggle are the ones that are not consistent, the ones that spend too much time thinking about a problem, trying to work out a solution, as opposed to the ones who just take advice, implement diligently, do it consistently, do it frequently, they get results. So what I want to share with you in this shorty is that neuroplasticity is a thing, and you have the ability to rewire your brain. Brain plasticity can be adjusted to enhance and change brain function and behavioral outcomes. And this is all backed by scientific research. There's two. There's two core areas. One is called neuroplasticity. It's the brain's malleability to reorganize and change its structure and function across the lifespan, and neurogenesis, which is the process by which new neurons are generated. So basically, your brain can create new neurons and create new ways of communicating, and you can do that with the power of thought. Now, let me put some context around that. The power of thought. Meditation. That's what we're talking about here. We're talking about slowing the brain down. And I've talked about meditation before where you wouldn't race a Formula One car around the track at 200 miles an hour for 24 hours a day. Well, you can't expect your brain to function at the same rate. And Lauren talked about this last week, is the brain gets tired. But she also talked last week about the fact that if you want to lose weight, read, because the reading will burn calories. So your brain has the ability to rewire itself. And you can do that through meditation. You can do that through repeated habit forming. You may have heard the phrase, it takes 21 days to change a habit. Or sometimes it's referred to as between 21 and 66 days to change a habit. Now, in the research that I've done, it's not actually as much about the number of days as the frequency of repetition. So if you repeat something 21 to 66 times consistently, the brain will hardwire a new way of processing that, and you can see it yourself with exercise or with food or anything that you do on a regular basis. I think about my journey in business, where I was five, six years ago, to where I Am now I'm an awful lot more disciplined. I have a default diary which I work to every single week. I've been using that default diary for about 18 months. And so I know every single day of the week what I'm doing. And that removes thinking time, that removes time where I have to go, oh, what shall I do next? So I've created a system, a process in which I can make my life easier by removing choice. And so to double up on that, I meditate twice a day. And I meditate for one hour a day. I do 30 minutes in the morning or 25 minutes in the morning, 25 minutes in the evening. And I follow a guided meditation from Joe Dispenza, who's a neuroscientist and quantum physicist. And I've been doing that for probably two months solid now. And it's had an enormous impact on me and my life. I'm able to be very consistent with my analysis of problems. I'm able to make decisions in a very calm and non emotional way. And I am just calmer. And actually my business has been expanding during what has been a challenging time for a lot of people in the world. And I put that down in large part to the meditation and the habits. So, you know, I guess the question you've got to ask yourself is if you are a business operator, someone who runs a business, and you want to become a business owner where you're not as involved in the day to day, what needs to change to help you to achieve that? Well, one might be some coaching and some guidance, but the other thing is your mindset. If your mindset is stuck being a freelancer, then you're only ever going to be the control. You're going to be the person that wants to control. And Keith Cunningham, he says, you know, an owner of a business has access to leverage and a desire to create structure and a machine. So is that you or are you the operator? And he said the operator is the freelancer. Operators, they don't want structure. They launch and react to whatever demands are current. They have no clue how to delegate and they abdicate responsibility. And most operators are about control. So I want to leave you with that thought because I think it's fascinating. And if you, if you want some guidance on meditation, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'll send you some resources. And if you'd like to kind of explore coaching, happy to have a chat about that as well. But yeah, it's fascinating subject, the old idea of neuroplasticity and I hope to be digging more into this topic as we go because it's so interesting. Anyway, guys, I will see you on Thursday.

You've been listening to the how to Scale a Video Business podcast with me, your host, Dan Lenny. If you're a video business owner who's hit a ceiling and we benefit from mentorship, support, and coaching, then check out how you can work with me over@denlenny.com don't forget to subscribe and rate the show over on itunes, and we'd really appreciate you taking a few minutes to leave a review. And don't forget to share. If you feel you've gotten value from this episode and you think it would be useful for other filmmakers you know, then please do me a massive favor and share it on social media and in groups that you might be in. We'll see you next week.