If You Worry, Listen To This!

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Welcome to today's episode of the the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. If you're out there and you love this podcast, please do me personally a massive favor. Give this podcast a rating and review however you listen to it, whether it's on Apple Podcasts or whether it's on Spotify. Reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews we get, the more these platforms show this to people who have never listened to it before allows the podcast to grow and allows you to pay for. So if you would do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today we're gonna talk about how we distort our reality from what's actually truly happening and how that holds us back more than anything else. And my goal here for you today is to identify where you might be doing this in your life and where you might be catastrophizing different areas of your life so that you stop holding yourself back, but also give you some tools to get yourself out of it. And when you do notice that you're holding yourself back. And so like I said, what we're going to be talking about something is what we're going to be talking about today is something that's called catastrophizing. And catastrophizing basically means that you become fixated on the worst possible outcome for something that you're worrying about. Now, you know, if. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you realize, and you've heard me say this before, there's psychological studies that have found that approximately 85% of what you worry about never happens. And out of the remaining 15% of it, usually only about 3% happens as bad as you think it's going to happen. Which means that if you look at the whole vast amount of things that you worry about on a daily and weekly and monthly basis, 97% of them will never happen the way that you think that it's going to. But what we end up doing is we end up thinking of this thing and worrying about this thing, and then we don't just think about what could happen. What we do is we think about the absolute worst case scenario. And it's a psychological term, like I said, called catastrophizing. Becoming fixated on the worst possible outcome. You know, and it looks kind of like this. If I don't pass this test, I'm gonna fail this class, and if I fail this class, I'm probably gonna fail out of school. And if I fail out of school, I'm gonna be a complete failure in life. And so the anxiety of thinking about a test automatically goes to being a complete failure in life. And our brain works so ridiculously fast, you don't even really necessarily notice what cognitive behavioral therapy calls automatic negative thoughts. Right? It's usually, oh, my God, I've got a test coming up, and if I fail this test, I'm gonna be a complete failure in life. And we don't really notice because our brain works so quickly and makes so many connections so fast, that what's actually happening is, if I don't pass this test, I'm gonna fail this class. If I fail this class, I'm gonna fail at school. If I fail at school, I'm gonna be a complete failure, and I'm going to be poor and homeless for the rest of my life, whatever it might be. So that the anxiety of just a test, our brain goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And just thinking about a test immediately brings us anxiety because we think, oh, my gosh, if I fail this test, I'm going to be a failure. You know, and another example would be, you know, maybe you're out of school now, and it's like, well, you get into a fight with your girlfriend and, you know, you're thinking that the moments that the boom boom, boom, boom boom would be I get into a fight with my girlfriend, and if I get into a fight with my girlfriend, she's gonna leave me. And if my girlfriend leaves me, I'll be destroyed. And if I, if I'm destroyed, then maybe I'll never be able to trust again. And if I never trust again, then I'm gonna be alone forever. And so what turning into a fight turns into being alone forever. The anxiety of a fight or the anxiety of thinking of saying something to your girlfriend or boyfriend or significant other that is authentic to you turns into. Well, I can't say this because if it turns into a fight, then she could leave me and then I'll be alone forever, Right? And so what we tend to happen is we take these little teeny tiny things and make them massive. And you know, another phrase that really psychologists call this is catastrophizing. Catastrophizing. God, I'm trying my best with this catastrophizing magnifying. And so basically what it is is we look at the worst and then we only look at the worst thing and we're looking at it and we're making it huge. So it's like, she's gon leave me. I'll be alone forever. If I'm alone forever, I'm going to be a complete failure. I'm not going to have any friends. People are not going to want to be around me. And your brain makes all of these connections so fast that a lot of times just the thought of getting into an argument with your girlfriend turns into immediate anxiety because your brain makes all of these connections a lot of times without you even having to think about it. And so you're taking something small, like wanting to bring up how you don't feel appreciated or something like that in the relationship and turn it into something massive. So you're taking a, you're making a mountain out of an anthill is what you're doing. Now immediately when I start thinking about psychological things, it's very common for people. My immediate thing that I ask myself is, well, why the hell do we do this? Like, why? What's the point of this? And what we think. And I know some people who worry a lot, people that I'm close to that are just, they will admit that they worry a lot. We think that worrying, in doing this catastrophizing actually serves us. And we think that it's something that we should do. It's a way of protecting ourselves, what we think, but it's actually what, what psychologists call a cognitive dysfunction. So we think that we're protecting ourselves. You know, and this is what it looks like. If my girlfriend, if I get into a fight and then my girlfriend ends up getting mad and then she leaves me. If she leaves me, well, I won't be as let down because I was already expecting this. So we think we're protecting ourselves. We think we're protecting ourselves psychologically. If I fail this test, well, I won't be as surprised because I knew it was going to happen anyways. It's a, it's a way of protecting ourselves. We think it's not protecting us at all. And it also justifies us not taking the right action or putting as much effort into something or even trying at something that we want because we don't want to be let down. So it's like, well, I'm not, you know, I was expecting not to fail anyways. I was expecting to fail anyway, so I'm not going to study as hard.

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dial and so what we end up doing is we end up putting less effort of the thing that we want, which is to successfully take that test and pass and graduate. But we don't study as hard because it's like I'm going to fail anyways and I'd rather not put a whole lot of effort into it and then be let down. And it feels better in the short term, but in the long term it absolutely feels ridiculously terrible, right? So you don't start a business because you think it's going to fail. So you don't feel like a failure in the short term. But you never get to be as successful as you truly want in the long term. So it protects us a little bit in the short term. But in the long term, time, I always say is time always works its way out. Time is either your best friend or your worst enemy. And it will either be your best friend or your worst enemy based off of the actions that you take today. Time always works its way out. So you know, you don't ask somebody out because you're afraid. And so in the short term, you won't be rejected, so you'll feel better. But in the long term, if you don't ever come, it, you could be alone forever. And so catastrophizing at its core is an attempt to avoid feeling something that we would deem negative. Catastrophizing, at its core is an attempt to avoid some sort of feeling, imagining the absolute worst so that we don't take the action that we want to or that we need to, and therefore we protect ourself from the worst thing happening. And so we don't put as much effort into it. So something happens. Fight with a girlfriend, and then we think that something bad is going to happen from it. And then what also happens is there's another thing that's involved in this, and it's called a thinking error. And you think that she's going to leave you and you're going to be alone forever. But the best way to really start to become aware of the catastrophizing, the dysfunction, but also the thinking error is to take a step back out of your own head and to start to look at yourself as if you're a coach and you're coaching somebody else, or if you're. You are your own friend coming to you for advice. And you can take your emotions out of it and start to look at it very objectively and not really as subjectively. So the best way to help yourself is to take yourself out of your own head and to look at it and to develop the awareness around your thoughts and what's actually happening. You know, you've heard me say it on this podcast before. When you're in the jar, you can't read the label. Or when you're in your own head, you can't really see exactly what's going on. There's too much emotion. There's too many little tiny things happening. But when you take yourself out of your head and you look at yourself as if you're a friend coming to you for advice, what would you say to that friend? What would you. What are you now noticing about that friend that you weren't noticing about yourself? Usually we think that if we imagine the worst, we can prevent it. But the crazy part about it is, you know, studies actually show that's completely false. It's the exact opposite. Usually if we imagine the worst, we actually create. Create worse circumstances in our life. So we think, oh, I'm going to imagine the worse so that I can protect myself. But when you imagine the worst, you actually create worse circumstances. And so researchers have found that catastrophizing actually worsens both your physical and your mental outcomes. Well, that sounds fun, doesn't it? In other words, you will make the situation worse ultimately than it was originally. So we think we're protecting ourselves. We're actually kicking ourself in the crotch. Seeing the worst usually invites the worst into your life. Usually we invite in exactly what we're trying to avoid. That's the crazy part about it. And so I don't think people really truly understand. It took me years to understand how incredible of creators of our reality that we are. And so when we're constantly trying to avoid something, we're usually going to get that thing because our focus is trying to avoid that thing. Our focus is on that thing. And you're going to attract that thing into your life if you're constantly thinking about it, whether you're thinking that you want it, whether you think that you don't want it. So we usually invite exactly what we're trying to avoid, you know, so I'll give you a couple, give you a couple examples of what it means, right? Like let's say someone has chronic pain. One of the things that I had for years and I've changed my, my complete language around it is I had chronic pain. I had to go, you know, I was 27 years old, I had four torn labrum. My labrum in each shoulder were torn, my labrum in each hip were torn. And I went to some white coats that told me that I needed surgery. Some surgeons that said, yeah, you definitely need surgery on your hips at 27 years old. Luckily, my uncle is a physical therapist. And he said, hey, you're doing physical therapy, right? And I said, yeah, he said, he said, send me over your workouts. So I sent him over my workouts. And his exact phrase, he looked in, he said, you're doing some Mickey Mouse shit. That was what he said to me. He goes, you're 27 years old, they're making you do workouts in physical therapy that you would give an 80 year old woman that has shoulder problems and hip problems. He goes, you need to go to a functional therapy. And he said, the other thing that you want to do is stop identifying with the pain, right? And so what we tend to do is, what I was doing is I was thinking to myself, oh, somebody smarter than me tells me that I have a problem. And so then I would be around people and go to work out and I'd say, well, I can't do that. Because I'm injured. I can't do that because I'm injured. And I started actually speaking, speaking my problem that I didn't want anymore, even more into reality. And so I think about the pain and because I'm thinking about the pain so much, because I've identified with the pain and I started thinking about that, I speak to other people about the pain, my brain focuses on the pain, which ultimately makes it more painful. So I'm focusing on the pain, not focusing on the healing. And so what I started doing is I started doing the workouts that would ultimately lead to healing, not towards just trying to stay the same. I went to do the works, there were more healing. And I stopped identifying with the pain. I stopped saying that I was. I had shoulder issues and hip issues. And I would say I'm recovering, I'm healing from. And those might seem like little teeny tiny things, but ultimately what I was doing was I was actually saying out loud, what is it I wanted? Now you. Fast forward 10 years, I don't have nears. I used to. It was. It was hard for me to sit down for longer than 30 minutes. Right? It was so crazy. Now I don't have that problem. So if the brain focuses on the pain, ultimately it's going to make more pain. We are creators of our reality. Now. I'm not saying if somebody needs to have like, heart surgery, they should just sit around and be like, no, I don't need heart surgery. Obviously be smart with what's going on in your life. But it's just an example of my chronic pain and how I was able to switch it and ultimately change the way my body felt and my brain was focusing on it. You know, another example would be someone, let's say someone is, is misdiagnosed with adhd, right? Which is very common nowadays to be misdiagnosed. Because usually what tends to happen is doctors come in, they spend 15 minutes with you, they ask you what's going on, they label you really quickly. And then what happens is, let's say they misdiagnose somebody with adhd, that becomes their story. In truth, to them, that becomes their story. That becomes their truth. Oh, Well, I have ADHD, so I can't do this. Well, I have ADHD, so I Can't do this. I have ADHD, so I can'T do this. And they start actually limiting themselves. They say, oh, I can't build a business because I can't focus. I can't do this because I can't focus. I'm not focused enough because I have adhd, there's no way I'll grow a business. And they get a job and believe that they can't focus. And then because they can't focus, they get fired, whatever it might be. And the crazy part about it is, when you do the research, so many people think, oh, I have ADHD or I have add, I can't focus. Which ultimately, if somebody's not interested in something and they have adhd, it's very hard for them to focus. But ADHD diagnoses have gone up 38% in the past eight years. Studies have found that at least 20% of those people are misdiagnosed. And only 4.4% of adults actually have ADHD. 4.4%. And people with ADHD, which is incredible when you actually find this in the studies, people with ADHD actually concentrate and focus better than people who don't have it. It just has to be something that they're actually interested in. And so if I'm sitting there, I'm like, well, I really want to grow this business around xyz, and it's something that I'm passionate about, but I'm thinking, well, I can't do it because I have adhd. And then you realize, if it's something that you're passionate about, you will probably be able to have superhuman focus on that thing. And so when I've worked with people with adhd, I said, what would it be like if ADHD was actually your superpower and you stopped looking at it as a deficit, which is what most people tend to look at it as. So we can see how taking a diagnosis, which could be a false diagnosis, and making it our story can actually hold us back even more. And so we've got to start actually thinking about this and say, like, when things happen to me, am I imagining the worst? If I'm going to go and think about these things, am I imagining the worst possible outcome? And if I am imagining the worst, well, if I'm gonna imagine all the way over to the worst side, I also need to give myself the benefit and imagine the best thing that can happen. If I'm imagine the worst thing that could happen, I need to also imagine the best thing that could happen as well. So what's the best thing that could happen? Usually it ends up in the middle. It's usually not the worst. It's usually not the best, but it ends up somewhere in the middle. But if we're constantly thinking about the worst thing that could happen and not really Thinking about the best thing that could happen, we're naturally gonna move towards the negative. We're gonna avoid things that we should actually pursue. We're gonna not put ourself out of our comfort zone because of fear. And so usually it's gonna end up in the middle of some sort of way. So an example, like another example would be someone who has social anxiety and wants to go to the mall. And then they start imagining themselves having a panic attack at the mall. And then they feel, you know, they feel in their body right now how embarrassed they would feel if they had a panic attack at the house. And so they just say, you know what? It's just easier to stay home. And over time, this develops into a pattern of them just never leaving the house. Well, that's imagining the worst that could happen. If I'm going to imagine the worst, I have to imagine the best as well. So if I'm imagining the worst, let me imagine the best. Okay, let's say I go to the mall. Let's say that everything is great. Let's say I don't have a panic attack. Let's say I start to feel a little bit more confident in myself because I'm out of my comfort zone. I buy what I need at the mall. I see a friend at the mall I haven't seen in a while, and we decide to go get some coffee, and we have a coffee, and we connect, and I have an amazing day, and I come home with what I needed, and I feel great about reconnecting with a friend. Either way, that future is uncertain. If I'm gonna imagine the negative, I have to also make sure I imagine the positive. We also have to just accept that there's uncertainty in life. That's what life is. And so focus on what you want, not what you don't want. There was a speech that I saw years ago, and it was this guy brought somebody on stage, and he said, hey, here's two chairs. I want you to sit in this chair. This is what the what you don't want chair. And the other one is the what you do want chair. So go ahead and sit in the what you don't want chair. And I want you to tell me everything that you don't want in your life. And so the lady was like, well, I don't want to be cheated on. I don't want to be broke. I don't want to be homeless. I don't want this thing. I don't want this. I don't want this. And she just Gave this laundry list of all these things that she wants or doesn't want. And then he said, okay, we're going to switch to the other chair. This is the what you do want chair. What do you want?

She's like, well, I do want this. I do want this.

And what's really crazy is she went off on what she doesn't want. And then when he asked her what she does want, she had a couple ideas. And then she immediately started going to, well, I also, like, don't want this, and I don't want this. I kind of do want this, but I don't want this. And she started going in the do want chair. She started going to all of the things that she doesn't want again. And it shows you. What we tend to do as humans as a protection mechanism is focus on all the things that we don't want. But in reality, what we focus on, we will get. So if we want to get something in our life, we need to focus on that thing, not the opposite. It's like when you're driving a motorcycle, they always say, don't look anywhere else except for through the turn where you want to go, because where you want to go, where you're looking is where you will end up. And so really, what it comes down to is just a couple quick things. Number one, we have to develop this awareness. Am I somebody who catastrophizes? Am I somebody who always looks at the worst in things? Then what we need to do is start challenging what we're thinking. Is it possible that this is actually going to happen? Or am I just going way off and just imagining something that's ridiculous? And then if we're going to be imagining the worst, number that's, you know, awareness is number one. Number two is challenging what you're thinking. Number three is imagining the best. Let's start imagining all the best things that could happen. And number four is just learn to accept uncertainty. Take small steps in the right direction. They don't have to be huge steps. You don't have to take huge steps in the right direction every single day. Just make sure every single day you're just taking a little bit of a step in the direction that you want to be. Because ultimately, I promise you this, 90%, 97% of what you focus on and you think is going to happen doesn't happen as bad as you think it's going to. Things will be better than you possibly imagine. But you've got to start focusing on the things that you want and not the things that you don't want. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on Instagram. Stories Tag me Obdial junior R O B D I A L J R It allows this podcast to grow. I'm sure there's probably people who follow you on Instagram that if they see this story, might become aware of this podcast in this episode and might help them. So if you do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it it. And also, last but not least, if you love this podcast, you'll also probably love my book that came out a few months ago. It is on the psychology of taking action. It is called Level up, How to get focused, stop procrastinating and upgrade your life. It is available wherever books are and it is my Life's work into 250 pages. So if you want that, once again, it's called Level up and I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.

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