Hacking Your Brain and Rewiring it For Success

Foreign. This is Busy Getting Better, the podcast for women who are committed to prioritizing their own personal growth. I'm your host, Madison J. A mindset and money coach, a first generation wealth builder and a woman on a mission to help you master your finances and live your best life. Money is not all we are covering though, because in order to live your best life, you have to become your best self. So we are diving deep into all things personal development and bringing you the mindset, shift money, tips and inspiration you need to go out there, be bold and build the life you can't stop daydreaming about. It's time to get busy, babe. Busy getting better. What is up you guys? Welcome to the podcast. Today we are talking about, debatably my favorite topic ever and that is the power of your own mind. I fell into a deep rabbit hole years ago learning about the power of our mind, the power of positive thinking, brain works and really like what is in control of our day to day decisions, how our thoughts and beliefs around the world come to be and how they're formed, and how we can start hacking our brain in adulthood to shift our beliefs, to truly shift the deepest beliefs that we have about certain topics in the world and to really just develop such a strong belief in yourself through the power of leveraging your own brain and your own thoughts. And so I am definitely, definitely going to be geeking out about the brain. If you are into human psychology at all, if you are into just understanding more about why we are the way that we are and how our brain works, you are definitely going to enjoy the insights in this. And I hope that you learn something new that empowers you to go out and implement it in your day to day life. Because I fundamentally believe that the power of your own brain and the power of your thoughts is the foundation to your life. There is a really famous quote that I quote like any chance I can get because it's so simple, but it's so powerful when you actually understand what our brain can do and how impactful our own thoughts are in how our life comes to be. And this is a quote by Henry Ford. The quote is simply whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right. I think we've all probably heard this quote before, but I really want to deep dive into how accurate it is. Whether you think you can do something or you think you cannot do something, you're a hundred percent right. And so I want to deep dive into this concept of our conscious and our subconscious mind. I think I was first introduced to the concept of our subconscious mind and our the power of our thoughts through two different books. One of them was think and grow rich and the second one was a book called the power of your subconscious mind. And I started to learn a lot about how our brain operates and how obviously our thoughts can impact our, how we show up in the world and how that ends up, you know, becoming our reality. And then I decided to take it a step further because I saw so much, how so much of this was true. I started to implement some of this stuff into my life and I became a significantly more positive person. And when that happened, other opportunities were popping up around me. More money started flowing into my life. I started to become a bigger and a better version of myself. And so I took it a step further and I actually went and got certified identified as a mindset coach in the subconscious mind. I started to learn about this concept of neuro linguistic programming which essentially is hacking into your brain and rewiring your subconscious beliefs about yourself. So I, needless to say, very obsessed with this topic, definitely believe that it is super impactful in your life. And so I want to talk about our brain from a subconscious and a conscious perspective. So I feel like most of us before I learned this information, like you probably feel pretty in control of your life. You feel like you're making your decisions every single day. You're waking up, you're going about your life and you probably feel in control. Well, I hate to break it to you, but your conscious mind that you're actively thinking with all day, every day to go about your life is only in control of about 5% of the daily decisions that you make. 95% of the decisions that you make in a day are coming from your subconscious mind. And you want to think about your subconscious mind as if it is like a computer programming system that is just running on autopilot. I feel like when this topic gets brought up it kind of feels like there's, it's always negative, like oh, we're always talking about bad beliefs that might get programmed into your mind that become what you think. But I want to talk about what the purpose is of the subconscious mind and why it's really beneficial. And so your subconscious mind, it's running on autopilot, it's doing all the things that you don't need to be thinking about doing every single day that you've already learned think about, right? You're waking up, you're getting out of bed, you're brushing your teeth. You're tying your shoes, maybe you're running through your face wash routine, you are walking up to a new group of people, you're automatically smiling like there's all these things that you learn to do. And then your brain is like, okay, I learned this activity, I'm going to file it away in my subconscious mind so I can run this part of my day to day life on autopilot. And that opens up your ability to continue to, to learn and evolve and to move on to new types of tasks. This is really important because otherwise we would just be relearning the same stuff every single day. We'd be using way more brain capacity to do day to day activities that we don't need to be really thinking about that much. So we love the fact that our brain has this subconscious mind because it helps us like make a decision on something, move forward and let your brain focus on different activities that you need to be doing in the day that you're learning or you're just getting you through your life. So we love the fact that our brain operates like this. But I think it's really important to recognize the fact that our brain is running 95% of it is just on what our subconscious mind filed away at one point as truth, as belief, and this is again beneficial. But it can also show up later in life and it often does for everyone. We all have some sort of limiting beliefs or some sort of beliefs that get filed away when we're younger, that show up as adults as how we operate through the world as beliefs that we now have as adults. And so this is really hypercritical to understand is during our first seven years of life, our brains are in super learning mode. Our brains are just absorbing the everything and filing it away as a belief so that we can learn and grow and, you know, continue to develop and show up in society. So, right. How often do we say, like kids are like sponges, right? They just see something, they emulate it, or they learn something and they just are in a hyper growth state during those first seven years. What's also important to know about our brain during that time frame is that our prefrontal cortex of our brain is not yet formed. And our prefrontal cortex is the part of our brain that helps us think with logic, so it helps us with our decision making abilities. And during the first seven years of our life, our brain is also only operating in specific brainwave states. So as an adult, our brain goes through five different brainwave states throughout the day based on what we're doing. If we're in a super deep sleep, like REM sleep, our brainwave states, like picture the brainwaves. They're like long and low and slow and the spaces between the waves are really wide. And then as you move up and throughout the day, when you're at work and you're writing emails and you're thinking and you're problem solving and you're making decision and you're planning that girls trip, like whatever it is, your brain is in problem solving mode. It is in a different brainwave state. It is in a brainwave state that is faster and higher and closer together. And you are just essentially utilizing a different, your brain at a different capacity. So when we're in the lower brain waves in the slower brain waves, what our brain are, it's actually a pathway to our subconscious mind. This is a brainwave state that you want to get into when you are doing something like meditation or hypnosis, or you're trying to slow down your brain. And when you are needing to think a lot and problem solve, you need to be in these higher brainwave states because you need to be able to have that logical thinking that happens in your brain to be able to problem solve, right? And so when we're in ages 0 to 7, we only operate in two brainwave states. We're only operating in the brainwave states that are a direct pathway to our subconscious mind. Because until age 7, we don't have that prefrontal cortex. We're not in our problem solving, logical thinking. We're not in this other brainwave state. This means that everything that we experience from the ages of 0 to 7 is going directly into our subconscious mind. It's going directly into our programming of our brain of how we think, and it's getting filed away as truth. And here's the thing about our brain. Our brain is going to constantly prove us right. It's going to find things in the world that prove us right. And a lot of the beliefs that we have about how the world works, or about what is good or what is bad, or about what is possible are filed away during these years by things that we experience that we might not even have real memories of. The thing about this time in our life is that we don't really understand what's going on. And so an example that shows up a lot, especially when we're talking about, let's say, money and people's beliefs about money, is maybe when you're a kid, you're watching your parents fight about a Bill. And you don't really have the logical brain power to understand really what's going on or to understand that, like, hey, this is normal. Sometimes parents, you know, bicker about this. Your brain is just going straight to, okay, people are fighting. It's about money. Money must be bad. And then your brain is filing away this belief that money is bad and that if you have money, you're going to cause fights into your programming, into your subconscious mind. And what is really interesting about this is that a lot of limiting beliefs that we have about what is possible come from situations like this. Experiences that we have when we are younger and we don't even realize that this is how our beliefs about the world are getting formed, because we're just moving on about life and we're moving on to the next thing. Well, what happens when we become adults and we have this programming, we have this belief that's deeply rooted in our brain, that again, for example, you know, you might think money is bad, or if you have money, people are going to fight with you. Well, what happens when you become an adult is that you are going to subconsciously not allow yourself to be in that type of situation. Because our brain is wired for survival. And that's another part of this subconscious programming, is that it wants to learn what is good and what is bad. And, and then it moves forward and it just is constantly trying to protect you from the bad because it wants you to survive. But the thing about our brains is that they're not wired to thrive, they're just wired to survive. And so it's just taking is this good or is this bad? And then putting it away as a belief in your brain. And so if you grow up to think that money is bad, then that is something that's gonna show up in your life. You're going to subconsciously make decisions that allow yourself to not have money. Something else that could come up is maybe when you're a kid, your parents are really gung ho on you going to college, and they're like, hey, the only way to make it in the world nowadays is to go to college and get a degree so you can get a good job and then you can be successful. And maybe this is something that your parents are just like innately teaching you at a very young age. Like, you got to get good grades, and if you don't get good grades, then you're not going to be able to live a, live a big life and go out there and succeed. Succeed. And then maybe you get to a point in life when you're older and you are not doing really good in school, or maybe you make the decision to not go to college and now you have this subconscious belief that you're not going to be successful because you don't have this education. So what comes from these is a lot of limiting beliefs around what we think is possible. And a limiting belief is just anything that you believe to be true about yourself that is holding you back from going after something or becoming a different version of yourself. And every single person has limiting beliefs. It's just a matter of what yours are. And I think this is really important to recognize because I think sometimes people will be like, oh, well, I have all these beliefs because of the way that I was raised. And you know, if my parents would have done something different, maybe I would have different beliefs and I could go out and be successful. But here's the thing is, again, remember our brain at that point when we're younger, we don't have logical thinking. So in the same capacity, like nothing, there's nothing that your parents could or couldn't do that would make you grow up with like absolutely no limiting beliefs. It's just a matter of where they show up. And when you start to recognize that everybody has limiting beliefs, it's just a matter of recognizing what they are and where they came from. Like what stemmed from this belief becoming true. Like what is the root cause of this belief? You can start to really recognize that, oh, that's really interesting that I picked up that belief because now that I'm an adult and I have, you know, the ability to logically think about these scenarios, maybe I can recognize that this isn't a true belief. Maybe this limiting belief is not real at all. Right? And the college example, I mean most really successful entrepreneurs like that we think about like Steve Jobs and like all these high up people, I don't think a lot of them actually went to college. So there's evidence out there, there's so much proof out there that, that limiting belief is not a factual thing. And that is what I think is really important for us to do is to take a look at what we actually believe to be true and to assess, not only do we think that this belief is factual, but is this a belief that we actually believe or is this a belief that maybe we just picked up from our parents? Right. If your parents really believe that you need to go to college in order to be successful, but now you're realizing there's all this proof that that's not actually true, like that's not a factual belief. And beliefs aren't based in truth. Beliefs are just based in what you decide you think is true. And what you think is true is not necessarily what is true out there. And so when I started to learn about this, the concept of limiting beliefs and how they showed up in people and how they got rooted, I was able to do a real reflection on my own life and I started to realize how impactful this stuff is. Because when you start to realize what beliefs you have about yourself, whether they're positive or negative, you can start to really identify, do I still want to believe this to be true? Because again, beliefs aren't necessary truths. Beliefs are just what you believe. And if you can go out there and find evidence that these beliefs, these limiting beliefs that you have aren't necessarily actually real, and maybe they aren't even yours to begin with, you can start to rewire what your beliefs are. You can start to actually tap into your subconscious mind and say, hey, I don't actually believe this to be true. I don't want to believe this anymore. I don't want to believe that having money is bad. I don't want to believe that the only way to be successful is to go and get a college degree. And when you start to realize that you don't have to believe your limiting beliefs anymore, then you can start to work on the fun stuff and you can start to work on rewiring your subconscious beliefs about yourself. And when we talk about rewiring your subconscious beliefs, what we're talking about is your brain has neural pathways, right? We think about learning these tasks, right? Like brushing your teeth. You probably don't even think about, okay, I am going to use my hand and I'm going to go grab my toothbrush and hold it. And then I'm going to grab my other hand and I'm going to stick squeeze some of the toothpaste out of the tube and put it on the toothpaste. And then I'm gonna brush a, brush a. Brush my teeth, right? 30 seconds here, 30 seconds there. Whatever. My dentist wants to hear about my phenomenal dental hygiene activities. And then I'm gonna be done brushing my teeth. Like, you're not thinking that anymore. You have likely gotten to a point where you just walk into your bathroom, you do your whole routine, you walk out and like, you might not even really think about what went into it, but you've got that minty fresh mouth and you know that you brushed your teeth. This is because you have built the neural pathways that your body and your brain knows when you walk in here, this is what you're gonna do to brush your teeth. And you can kind of just zone out a little bit. This comes up with any of the daily activities that we do often. And this also comes up with beliefs. So if this, then that, right? If you think this, then that your neural pathways in your brain are just connected and what you can start to do is form new neural pathways, you can start to believe, truly believe that money is good and that money doesn't lead to fights, money leads to opportunities, and that not going to college is not a bad thing, it's just not your path. And that you can still be successful and you can still go out into this world and accomplish all that you want without that type of education. And there are again, an endless amount examples of how these limiting beliefs show up. But when you start to realize what your limiting belief is, you can start to figure out what you want to believe. And when you figure out what you want to believe, you can start to tell your brain the new truth, the new belief that you have. And through a lot of different activities and through repetition, you can actually start to change the way that your brain thinks. And when you start to change the way your brain thinks, you can start to adopt new beliefs about yourself. And this is the power, this is the secret sauce to success in anything. When you can figure out your own limiting beliefs and start to rewire them and adopt new beliefs. And I don't mean just like fake it till you make it mentality like, oh, I'm just gonna say these things, right? And then sure. And just go about my life. I'm talking about, like, you can actually genuinely change your beliefs to the point where you're like, no, I am this thing. I am successful. I am gonna be rich. Money is good to me. I don't need these things to make me accompl. My goal is like, I'm going to go out and get it done. You really genuinely start to change, like your brain chemistry. And you can start to change the way that you think about yourself and about life. And that is the foundation. When you look at any successful person, I'm telling you, they are doing this work of working through their limiting beliefs and they are getting the beliefs behind themselves. They're getting a little. What is that saying? Like delulu. They're delulu right now. That's what you can do. You can get to the point of being delulu about yourself and about what you can go out and accomplish. Accomplish in this world. And some of the best ways to start this process of rewiring your subconscious beliefs. Like I said, step one, you've got to figure out what your current limiting beliefs are. And once you figure those out, you start to write the flip side. What do you actually want to believe about yourself? The reason this is so important is to start focusing on what you do want is because your brain has this super powerful tool in it called its reticular activating system. And our brain is constantly processing an endless amount of information. Our brain takes in something like 11 million pieces of information every single second. That is a lot of information for your brain to process. You are actually only able to process about 40 pieces of that yourself every second. And so what your brain is doing as it's intaking all this information about the world is it is constantly deleting, distorting or generalizing the information that's coming into your brain. And what it's doing is it's picking out the pieces of information that are important to you. And you are telling your brain what is important. And you are either telling it that all these negative, scarcity based, limiting belief things are important, or you're telling it all these abundance mindset based things, all these optimistic things that you want in this world are what are important. And so what do I mean by this? Your reticular activating system is. It often gets talked about in the example of going and buying a new car. So say you're deciding, okay, I am going to go buy a new car. The time is right, I'm so excited. And you're doing all the research and you're figuring out what kind of car that you want. And then you make the decision, I got it, my next car is going to be a white Volkswagen Jetta. And then you go out and all of a sudden everywhere you go is a frickin white Volkswagen Jetta. Like where the heck did all these cars come from? That's the car I wanted. I don't want to be driving the same car that everyone fricking has. Well, guess what, Those cars were always there. But you did not deem that information important until you decided that it was something that you wanted. Once you told your brain that you wanted a white Volkswagen Jetta, every time you see one, your brain is going to point it out to you. And now you're seeing it everywhere. This is the same concept for when you are focusing on opportunities. When you start to say, man, I really want to have more money in my life or I want more friends Or I want to learn about X, Y or Z, or I want to be in this type of environment. If you're telling your brain what you want, your brain is going to go work for you. Your brain is a superpower. It's going to go find all of the relevant information for everything that you're telling it is important. And then if you're telling it that the world is terrible and everybody's always out to get you and there's never enough money to go around and you can't save, succeed and all these negative based things, your brain is, guess what, it's going to go find all the proof to prove you right. It's going to go find everything to back up those beliefs. And so this is super important. This is why you need to figure out what you want and you need to focus on what you want, not what you don't want. A really good example I always use when we're talking about money is obviously people have a priority of getting out of debt. And if you're spending your whole time focused on the debt, the debt, debt, debt, I want to get out of debt, I want to get out of debt. Like all your brain can think about is debt. And all your brain hears because your subconscious mind doesn't hear negative words. This was really interesting to learn. Your subconscious mind does not hear negative words. What do I mean by that? If you are saying I don't want debt, all your brain is hearing is I want debt. That's all it's hearing. It's not hearing the don't, it's not hearing the negative component of that sentence. And so you need to stop focusing on what you don't want. And you've got to get really clear on what you do want. And when you shift your mindset and you start focusing on what you do want, abundance money left at the end of the month, being able to pay your bills every single month and have money left over, like whatever the opposite of that looks like for you, that is what you focus on. And when you start to focus on that, all of a sudden the whole world is going to be full of opportunities to help you make that a reality. And this is the biggest mindset shift, the biggest mindset hack that you can have in this world is to start getting really clear on what you want and start to tell your brain what is important to you. And again, focusing on the positive outcome, not the negative that you're trying to get away from. And so when you figure out what your limiting beliefs are and you start to write down what it is that you want to believe. And again, don't use the negative side of it. Start to use what you want. Once you're out of debt, what does your life look like once you have become successful? Like, what does that look like? And start to write out this stuff. Journaling is one of the best hacks that you can use for a couple of reasons. One is you are really tapping into your subconscious mind. So if you're journaling about certain things and you keep writing, all of a sudden things are going to start coming out of that pen that you didn't even know you were thinking. And that's because you're tapping in into your subconscious mind. You're starting to get into this flow state. You're trying to get into a brainwave state where you're just writing from a point of your subconscious mind. And so this is really eye opening to start learning about yourself. And on the flip side of that, as you're writing what you do want, again, you're tapping into your subconscious mind. You're starting to tell your brain what is important to you. And then all of a sudden these positive opportunities are going to start popping up for you in the world. And so journaling is one of the biggest hacks that I will say is a great place to start if you're looking to start rewiring your thoughts and starting to shift your perspective about things. The next one I want to talk about, I think this one is so important and one of the things that I actually got certified in in my certification course. And this is one of my favorite things to talk about because it has such a bad negative connotation with it. And it's hypnosis. And when I first started learning about hypnosis, I was like, what do you, you mean like, what are we to like put people on a stage and make them crack like a chicken or whatever and walk around all goofy and make a fool? No, not at all. Hypnosis is this idea of getting into a meditative state. So back to those brainwave states, right? We want to get our body into a calm brainwave state. And so when you're in that brainwave state, again, you're tapped into your subconscious mind. And hypnosis is essentially listening to different audio tracks that are affirmative of the things that you want to believe. They are positive affirmations. They're helping you visualize a future that you want. They're helping you tap into what that future state reality is. While you are in the brainwave state that can help you rewire your subconscious mind. Hypnosis, again, one of those things, it gets a bad rap. And it is something that I use every single week, multiple times a week, in order to really instill the beliefs that I want to have about myself. And so hypnosis has been super impactful for me and something that I have come to love and absolutely notice just a positive difference after being a part of it and after, after sitting down and utilizing that practice. The biggest hack in order to start shifting your mind from these limiting beliefs, from the scarcity based mindset into a positive mindset, is going to be having some sort of gratitude practice. This is like the ultimate hack. You need to start being incredibly grateful for everything that is currently around you. When you start to be grateful for your current reality while also desiring what that next step is, that is by far the best place to start. Just make it super simple. You want to wake up and start to identify what are you grateful for? What are things in your life that are bringing you joy, things that you are happy to have? Right? We've got, you've got a roof over your head, you've got food on the table, you've got people that love you, you've got a job, you've got income, you've got a pet that brings you joy. Whatever it is, there is always something to be grateful for, no matter what situation you're in. And you need to get into this state of gratitude because what you're doing is you're helping your brain find things to be thankful for. And when you are helping your brain find things to be thankful for again, utilizing something like your RAs, your brain is going to continue to go out into the world and find more things to be grateful for. If you wake up on, quote unquote, the wrong side of the bed and you're just angry and you're bitter and life is against you and oh, I hate this job and my co workers are annoying and I have this commute and everything's so expensive. Like guess what your day's gonna look like? I could tell you, it's gonna be full of negativity and everything's gonna go wrong and you're probably gonna spill your coffee while you're driving to work and someone's gonna rear end you or you're gonna have to get honked at in traffic. Like whatever it is, like you're gonna just find more negative situations. It's just like a negative funnel. Like you're in your own little negative bubble of things when you Start your day out like that. So instead you want to start your day with gratitude and start to find anything positive that hap that you're happy about. And you also can practice this at the beginning of your day and at the end of your day. So every day for me, I wake up and I say three things I'm great grateful for before I get out of bed in my head. And then every single night when I'm going to bed, I will usually run through my day and try and reflect on all of the positive things that happened that day. Because another thing that is good to know is that these brainwave states that tap into our subconscious mind, you're in them right when you wake up, like early in the morning, and then right before you go to bed when you're in that kind of dreamy, sleepy trance state. And so if you're starting your day and you're ending your day with these, these positive thoughts, with these gratitude thoughts, you're going into essentially, right, a whole eight hours of sleeping where your brain is just repairing itself, it's recovering, it's also filing stuff away into your subconscious mind. And so you wanna do the best that you can to pick out all of the good things that happened that day before you go to bed so that when you wake up the next morning, you're starting out on the right foot. So this has been a huge hack for me. Something that is so simple, it takes, takes minimal time. It's really just about developing the habit of starting your day like that and ending your day like that. And the last thing that I'm going to say on being able to shift your brain from scarcity to abundance and being able to really get in the driver's seat of your life and recognize how powerful your brain is and your subconscious mind is, is to go out and find evidence of what you want to be true. There is nothing more powerful than going to find somebody that completely demolishes the limiting belief that you have, that makes whatever you think you're trying to go after that feels impossible. Find people, find a community, find a mentor, find a coach, find a friend that has proven that it is not impossible, that you can accomplish it, that you can be that person, that you can have that goal. There is nothing more powerful than finding proof. And the proof is out there. If you let yourself go find it. I hope that you're able to take something away from this and just really resonate with this fact that your brain, your mindset, absolutely dictates your reality. And when you start to focus on the good, the good finds you. So I just want to remind you that whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are right. Thank you so much for listening today and I will see you all on the next next episode. Hey, before you go, I just want to go ahead and say thank you for spending a little bit of your time with me today. And also congratulations for finding a chunk of time to carve out and focus on you and moving the needle and becoming a better version of yourself. If there is anybody that you think could benefit from this podcast, please share it with a friend, share it with a family member. Feel free to share it on your socials and help me spread the word about busy getting better. Thank you so much and I will see you on the next episode. Master.