How To Re-Pattern Your Brain

Welcome to today's video. Today I'm going to be teaching you how to actually change the way that you feel and change the actions that you take to create the life that you want through re patterning yourself every single moment. Let's dive in. So this isn't going to be based in some weird pseudo science. This is actually going to be based in psychology and cognitive behavioral therapy. And I'm going to give you a specific behavioral technique to Technique, my goodness. To actually start to change yourself and rewire your brain. So, you know, when you look at life, oftentimes what we do, most times what we do is that we take actions that line up with how we feel. So this is a really important part, probably the most important part to understand for today. We feel a certain way and almost always we take actions that line up with how we feel. And that's all good. It's all great. When you're having a really good day, when the sun is shining, you've had your cup of coffee, you got a good night's sleep, and you're like, yeah, today's awesome. It's great in those cases. But what about the days when you aren't quote, unquote, feeling it as much? You know, you've been there before where you're not. We've all said it. I'm not really feeling it today. Maybe you got really crappy sleep. Maybe you don't feel all that upbeat. Maybe it's sun's not shining and you don't really feel like talking to anybody. You're like, I just don't really want to talk to somebody. And then the phone rings. You're like, eh, I'll just send it to voicemail. And then, you know, you call a friend that you were supposed to have dinner with tonight. You're like, hey, I don't really feel like going out tonight. I just, I'm just gonna stay home. And you decide to stay home and it's a little, teeny tiny thing. Like this right here is a very small example, but it's a little, teeny tiny thing. Oh, you don't really feel up to it. So you don't answer your phone, you don't get back to people. You cancel the dinner that you're gonna have your friend. It's teeny, teeny tiny things and most of the time they go unnoticeable. But you do this all day long. You unconsciously make decisions based off of how you feel. What happens though, when you end up bringing this to work? Oh, yeah, you don't really feel all that good. And now you gotta go to work and maybe you're a manager and you have some people that you really do care about on your team and you're not really feeling it today. And so you, you know what, you cancel that meeting that you had with your team to help them improve and get better. You don't do that one on one meeting with your most important team member. And then what happens when you end up getting off work and you are supposed to go work out? What happens to your fitness routine? You know what? I'm gonna skip the gym today. Just not really feeling it. Today was just so long. It wasn't a great day. Our feelings will always influence our actions. And if we're not conscious of it, we'll create our entire life. Because your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, your actions create your results, and your results end up making your entire life. And you know, it can even be something like having a bad day at work, which influences how you feel. And now you bring that shit home and put it on your family and you put it on your spouse and you put it on your children and they get the bad end of your emotions. And then when you calm down, you regret how you acted. This problem, the problem is that the problem is when you act consistent with how you feel, those actions and feelings become more hardwired into you as you continue to do them, and they become a pattern for you. And clearly this is not a pattern that you want. Now, before we go any further, I want to say this because I don't want to be misunderstood in this. I'm not saying don't feel your feelings. I'm not saying don't feel your emotions. I'm not saying become a shell of yourself and just push away all feelings and emotions and all your humanness. I'm not saying that. I'm saying what I really want you to be aware of is how little teeny tiny feelings make you change the way that you act. So for instance, let's say that you feel sad or you're in a low state and you decide to isolate yourself. It's a Saturday. I'm not really feeling today. I'm kind of sad today. I don't know why. I'm kind of melancholy, kind of in a low state. I'm gonna decide to stay in today. I'm gonna isolate myself. And most times isolation leads to more sadness. And so if you're staying in your room, your message to your brain might be, I'm sad, which Makes you more likely to stay in another day, and then can increase the sadness of how you feel. When being around someone that you really care about and cares about you might actually help you get out of that feeling of sadness or melancholy or the low state much quicker. When we take actions that line up with how we feel, all oftentimes what we're doing is we're adding fuel to the fire. When we take actions that line up with how we feel, which is what we unconsciously do all day long, oftentimes it's like adding fuel to the fire. So what do we do? Well, there's a thing in psychology that's called behavioral activation. And behavioral activation basically means when we identify how we feel and we don't want to feel that way, we do the opposite of how we feel. Once again, not saying don't be a human, not saying don't feel your emotions. What I'm saying though, is that sometimes when it ends up being too long and it just continues to keep going, you're actually digging the hole deeper. So we identify how we feel, and if that feeling is not how we want to feel, we do the opposite of how we feel. Because when we act in ways that are the opposite of how you're feeling, the feedback loop to the brain does not confirm the emotion. And in most cases, it eases that emotion and can even change the way that you're feeling. So this is really important. By acting how we feel, we are confirming that feeling. Okay, when we act how we feel, we are confirming that feeling. But by acting the opposite of how we feel, we are not confirming it in our brain and in turn makes it easier for us to change that feeling. Interesting, right? So if we want to start re patterning ourself, we need to actually start acting the opposite of how we feel. Start acting different than how we feel. And so I'll give you a lot of examples today so you can just kind of see how you fit within yourself. And so if you feel like isolating yourself, then what you really need to do is when you become aware, you know what? I feel like staying in. I feel like isolating myself. I don't feel good. I feel kind of sad today. Call a friend to come over and hang out with you. That will make you feel better. Or call a friend or facetime with a friend just to chat. Hey, I'm feeling kind of sad today. Can I talk to you? So instead of isolating, that could in turn make you perpetuate that and continue to be sad and continue on to Isolate. Continue to feel sad, and continue on. Isolate. You end up breaking that cycle and you do something different. You do the opposite of how you feel. If you're feeling very lazy today, oh, I don't feel like doing very much today. What's the opposite of that? Get moving. If you don't feel motivated to go and do something, start small. Find the little, teeniest, tiniest task. That's the first step to doing something. If you feel negative, take a step back and practice some gratitude. Think about all the amazing things that you've been blessed with in your life. If you feel judgmental towards someone, if you're scrolling on Instagram and you're like, oh, my God, this woman. Oh, my God, this guy, whatever it might be, and you're feeling really judgmental and you become aware of, oh, my God, I'm judging, make yourself compliment that person out loud. If you find someone that's in front of you and you're judging them in person, you're in the grocery store and you're judging that person in your head, walk up to that person and give them a compliment. Re pattern the way that you're feeling and the way that you're acting. If you're feeling anxious, you got a lot going on and you feel a whole lot of anxiety inside of you, slow down. Do some deep breathing. Repattern yourself. If you're starting to feel a certain way and you want to eat a lot of junk food or you want to eat a lot of sugar, eat something really greasy, fast. Don't eat anything. Repattern that side of you. If you're really pissed off and you're infuriated because something happened, somebody cut you off on the way to work, force yourself to smile. There's proof that shows when you smile, it actually starts to change the chemicals in your brain feeling too pessimistic. Find something positive. Force yourself to find something positive. If you feel like a little negative Nancy, and you're all up in your feelings, in your own moo, everything sucks and the world sucks, and my husband's an asshole and my kids are loud, and I don't like the way that I look and I don't like the way that I feel, and you get yourself all negative and you're finding all of the negative in the world, sit down and watch your comedy. If you feel like you're worthless, go out and help somebody else. The reason why this works is a couple different reasons why. Number one, the first thing is endorphins, right? So when you take action, your Body is going to react in some sort of way depending on what action that is, right? So, for instance, if you feel like staying in bed, but you're like, okay, I feel like staying in bed, you know what, I'm gonna go for a run instead. I'm gonna do the opposite of it. Your body will naturally react to that. Your body will naturally release endorphins, which are feel good chemicals. And those endorphins make you feel better in the moment. But the interesting thing about it is it also makes your brain and body want to do it again in the future. And so next time you find yourself feeling like staying in bed, you actually are going to be more motivated to get out because you've already had the endorphins and your brain's starting to go, hey, remember that time we went for a run instead? What if we did that again? So the first thing is endorphins. So the next reason why this works is something that's called dopamine rewards. I actually wrote an entire chapter about something that's called a dopamine reward system inside of my book. I think it's chapter 12, level up. If you want to get the book, it's called level up. But basically, dopamine rewards is this. When you don't feel good, but you do something regardless, you will make your brain release dopamine. So let's say, for instance, let's go back to, like, being a negative Nancy, right? And you're a negative Nancy. Oh, my gosh, I'm in my feelings. And you decide that you're gonna watch a comedy instead. Dopamine is a feel good chemical, and that feel good chemical is actually going to make you feel better in the moment. The other thing that it's also going to do besides that is it. It's actually the chemical of motivation. And so you could sit there and feel like you're having a really shitty day and be like, oh, I'm in my feelings and life sucks and blah, blah, blah. And you watch a comedy, and watching a comedy makes you feel good, and that feel good makes you release dopamine. That dopamine makes you feel good in the moment, but it's also the chemical of motivation. When you feel that chemical of motivation, it actually makes you more likely to go out and take action. So you could literally go from being a negative little shit to watching a comedy to actually getting up and taking action. You want to. You're breaking the pattern that you no longer want to have, and it makes you more likely to do Something different. And the interesting thing about dopamine is that we're basicallywhen you look at all the books around dopamine and all of the neurologists and what they're saying is we're kind of all dopamine fiends. Like, we all want dopamine, and when we get dopamine, we want more dopamine. And so we'll continue to do things like take more action to feel more dopamine. And so that's another chemical that's really important to understand. When we break the patterns that we have, and then that turns into the next thing, which is neuroplasticity, which is your brain's ability to change itself. But it does not change itself if nothing changes. Either you deepen the old wiring that you have, which is just the pattern that we've been in. We act how we feel. We act how we feel. We act how we feel. Or you change the wiring and over time, the new patterning becomes stronger than the one that you had before. And it doesn't. The important thing to understand is it doesn't change from just doing it once. It changes from doing it over and over and over and over and over again. And, and I will give you an anecdotal example, I am the perfect example of this. I was such a negative little shit before I found, you know, self development and wanting to get better and improving myself and reading and all that. I could find the bad in anything, like, anything. If you had something positive to come and I could find, I could just cut that thing down. I was like, I was so bad. Like, if you, like, you came to me like, rob, I just won the lottery. I'd be like, ugh, that's neat and stuff. But you may how much you're gonna have to pay in taxes. Taxes. You know what the government does with taxes? They spend it on war. And then they just quote, unquote, lose billions of dollars. That guy goes, just such a negative little shit, right? Like, I. And now for me, it's really hard for me to find the negative in something. And naturally my new patterning, and mind you, I'm 18 years of working on myself. My new patterning is basically like when something negative pops up, quote, unquote negative or a challenge pops up, it's way easier for me to immediately go to what's the silver lining? What good can come from this? But the point of all of this is to re pattern your. The things in your life do not change unless you change. Your feelings will not change. Unless you change. Your actions will not change unless you change. And so the important thing is to start identifying, okay, well, when do I like how I feel and when do I not like how I feel or how do you know what, what patterning happens when I, when I do this or I hang out with this person, I don't feel good, or when I have, don't have good sleep, or if I go to bed late, I don't, I wake up and I don't feel good. And you start notic. First off, the ways in your environment that you don't feel good. And then you start asking yourself, well, how can I get rid of those things in my environment or shift my environment in some sort of way so that I don't even have to not feel good? Then you start to ask yourself, well, when is it that I don't feel good? Do I feel angry because of this thing or do I feel unmotivated or do I feel lazy or whatever it might be? But the first thing more than anything else is awareness and to become very aware of yourself. And the reason why you probably haven't changed this within yourself is because you probably, number one, you probably weren't, you didn't know you could change it. And number two, you just weren't aware, right? You just weren't aware. So the first thing is awareness. How do I feel? And is this how I want to feel? Is this how I wanna feel? Like this sadness, this melancholy, this isolation that I'm feeling or whatever it is, is this how I want to feel? And if I don't, then I ask myself, what is the opposite action that I can take to re pattern myself? And so it's important for you to identify right now. What is the feeling that you don't want to feel? And then what is the opposite action that you can take to re pattern yourself? Because it's really important for us to all understand. You know, the beautiful thing, the thing that I love most about being a human is our ability to change ourself at any moment. I have a, my very first tattoo is. I only have two tattoos actually. Sorry, it's my second tattoo. I'm lying. My second tattoo is right on my wrist and it's the Roman numeral for the number 10,000. It's a Roman numeral X with a line above it. And because it goes back to the 10,000 hour rule, which is the ability to be able to master anything. I love that humans have the ability to be able to master anything that they want to master. That's an amazing part about being a human. The only thing is that it takes in order to master yourself. It takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice, which shows you it requires hard work to work on yourself. It requires hard work for you to change yourself. But it means that you can always change yourself at any moment. It's the difference between a fixed mindset, this is how I've always been, and this is how I'll always be, versus a growth mindset, which is I can be whatever the fuck I want to be, right? You don't have to be who you've always been. You can change. You. You can do whatever it is that you want to change. Do whatever it is you want to do. You could change whatever it is you want to change. So how do you want to change? How do you want to feel? And then what actions would you need to change in your life in order to feel the way that you want to feel? And so if you can identify those, you can start to re pattern yourself, change yourself and create yourself into whoever you want to be. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a huge favor. Share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it. Robdial Jr R O B D I A L J R and with Adam leave the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.