The Problem With Your Brain

Welcome to today's episode. Today, I'm going to teach you a sneaky little thing that your brain does to hold yourself back. And I'm going to teach you how to get past it. Let's dive in. Today I'm going to be talking to you about one of the biggest problems that I see with the human mind. It's a good thing. But for trying to be successful and get outside of your comfort zone and build the life that you want, it is your biggest hang up most of the time. One of the biggest things that I see that stops people from taking action and creating the life that they want is this thing. If you can understand this first off and you can master will be so much easier for you to take action, to do the things that you need to do and stop holding yourself back. Very rarely do I talk to someone and they don't know what they need to do to create the life that they want. Usually, everybody has a pretty good idea of what it is they need to do to create whatever life it is that they want. Everybody listening to this podcast has something that you want to create in your life, but you probably aren't doing it. And if you are doing it, you probably aren't doing it to the full capacity that you could. And so a lot of times it's not that we don't know what we need to do, it's just that we're not doing it. And the most important decision that we can make is whether we decide that we're going to go for the life that we want or we're not, because it takes the decision like you gotta. You can't sit on the fence. You've just gotta decide. I'm either going like there's a fork in the road. I'm either going to stay exactly as I am in the same place and I'll Fast forward in 20 years and my life is gonna look pretty close to what it does right now, or I'm going to change. And it requires a decision. You've heard me say this many times in the podcast. The root word in Greek for decision is dicadare, which means to cut off, to cut off all other options. I am going to go down this path of creating the life that I want to, and that is it. And so if you do decide that you want to create the life that you want to want to create, the relationship that you want to, the family that you want to the body that you want to the health that you want to the business you want to all of that stuff, you've got to understand how your brain is going to work. And it's this little thing that I always call opportunity versus obligation. Okay? There's always opportunity that we have out there of what our life could be if we do this thing. But we usually don't focus on the opportunity of what it could be in one year or five years or 10 years. We usually focus on the obligation. And the obligation usually makes us a little bit negative and not want to do it. What you have to understand about your brain is it's got this incredible protection mechanism built in. And that protection mechanism built into it is to try to keep you inside of your comfort zone, to keep you alive. That is awesome for staying alive. It is terrible for building a life. That is amazing. The reason why is because if you're going to grow yourself, you're going to expand yourself, you're going to have to get out of your comfort zone. And that is absolutely terrifying to the human brain because the brain will almost always try to pull you back. And so you can consciously want to build the life that you want, but your brain is going to give you things and make things pop up and give you certain feelings that your body's going to create to try to keep you in the same place. And it is kind of a little bit of you versus your brain in a lot of cases. So, like, for instance, I'll give you an example of, like, opportunity versus obligation. You know, you're gonna go to the gym and you're, you know, you're a skinny little person. You're trying to put on some weight, right? You're trying to put on some weight. You're trying to put on some muscle. The opportunity versus the obligation, right? The obligation is that you have to put your body under strain. And it's a lot easier to do nothing. Life is. There's always an opportunity to do nothing. And it's always easier to do nothing. And if you're a skinny person, like, I was a skinny little guy for a long time, and I remember hitting the gym really hard one time, so hard that when I worked my biceps, I wasn't able to put my arms down. Like they were stuck at, like 90 degrees. Because it hurts so much to put it lower. And so in my mind, that hurt. That was a lot of pain. I don't wanna go do that again. It's easier to do nothing. And so what happens is our brain will immediately go to. Oh, yeah, well, working out whether it's putting on muscle or trying to lose weight oh, yeah, working out. Yeah, that's a lot of strain. That's a lot of. It's easier to sit on the couch. And so your brain is focusing on the obligation, what you have to do, but that's. Your unconscious is automatically gonna go to that, and it's gonna go, yeah, you know what? Maybe I should stay on the couch. You have to always start thinking about the opportunity on what you want to be. Well, the opportunity could be that. That I lose 30 pounds and I feel like there's less weight on my knees and I feel better about myself and I look great in a bikini this year. Or it could be, hey, I'm going to put on some muscle. So when I go to the beach and I take my shirt off, I look good and I have a six pack. Right? So it could be losing weight, being proud of the way that you look, gaining muscle, all of that stuff. There's always an obligation of what has to be done, which is what your brain usually focuses on and tries to make it feel as painful as possible. Because if it feels as painful as possible thinking about it, you're less likely to do it. But you have to consciously make yourself think of the opportunity of what can come from that. Right? So I'll give you another example. Right? Let's say eating healthy is another one. The obligation is you have to stay away from certain foods that maybe taste amazing right now. Is there good healthy food? Hell, yeah. There's great healthy food. And this is where most people usually don't eat healthy because they're like, I don't want to change. Like, I really like the taste of whatever this thing is. A bag of Skittles I really, really love. I don't know about you guys, but I really love the taste of ice cream. The obligation is I have to stop eating ice cream. That sounds like shit. I don't want to do that. Oh, no, I don't want to do that. Right. But. So that's the obligation of I have to give these things up or I have to prepare my meals. That takes a whole lot more energy to prepare my meals, to eat healthier, to meal prep for myself. It's easier to just watch Netflix and see what goes on in the world on Netflix. It's easier to do that than it is to meal prep for the week. That's the obligation. Right. Our brain will always go to the obligation, try to make it look as painful as possible. So therefore, what do we do? Stay in the same place. We have to know our brain's gonna do that we have to go. No, no, no. I'm focusing on the opportunity. I'm focusing on the fact that I'm going to live longer for my. For my kids. I'm going to walk my daughter down the aisle because I'm not going to have a heart attack early. I'm going to be able to play with my grandkids at 65 years old, right? That's the opportunity. Most of the time, though, we're focused on right here, right now. That's usually what your brain wants you to do. You have to get up and go to the gym, or you have to get up and meal prep, or you're not allowed to have certain. Certain meals that you're used to. We have to consciously to fast forward ourself into the future and say, no, I'm gonna make this decision because it's better for me and it's better for me long term. And I might not have any, any, any right now. I might not have any gratification in this moment, but long term, I will have gratification from it. So it's instant gratification versus delayed gratification. I would rather have the delayed gratification. Let's say you're in sales, right? And you've got to make phone calls because you want to be able to, you know, buy a new house for your family. So the obligation is you got to put in some work right now, right? I know salespeople. I've trained over 2,000 salespeople. I've had to do this before. It is hard to get yourself to go, all right, I got to make 100 calls right now. God, that sucks, right? So the obligation is you got to put in some work. You gotta call people up. You gotta have some people say, like, not even answer. You gotta have some people actually reject you. Ugh, God. Do you know how painful that is? Maybe some people are gonna hang up on you. So your brain immediately goes to that obligation. No, no, no. That's gonna be painful, right? Brain a lot of times immediately goes to negative, negative, negative, negative. Almost always a brain left to its own devices will go negative. Some people are gonna hang up on you. You're gonna get rejected. It's gonna make you feel like shit. It's gonna bring up all of your insecurities, but that's what our brain goes to. That's the obligation. We still have to make the phone calls, of course, but now I need to consciously take myself and be intentional and fast forward into the future of how making these phone calls is Going to help me create the life that I want. You know what? I'm gonna be able to make enough money to buy my first house, to put my children. We're going to move to a better part of town. They're going to get a better education. Yeah, that's way more important to me than someone rejecting me. I'm going to take my family on a trip. You know, I've been telling my wife that we're going to go to Spain for five years, and we haven't had the money to do so. So I'm going to start to think about how amazing it would be to be in Spain, which then makes. I'm thinking of the opportunity while I'm doing the obligation. You know what? I'm gonna buy my mom a car. My mom's never had a nice car before. I'm gonna buy my mom a nice car. And you start thinking about that, and all of that, I promise you, makes the hard work worth it. But a lot of times we're not focused on the opportunity. What do we focus on? The obligation. What we have to do. Waking up early. The obligation is you gotta get out of your warm, comfortable, amazing bed. And I don't know about you guys, but, like, the second that I wake up, my bed is the most comfortable place in the universe, and I have to get out of it. To get up early to do, like, a workout and meditation and stuff. Ugh. Yeah. It's much easier to stay in bed and just not do that. I have to leave the most comfortable place in the universe to go do a workout, to do a morning routine. It's so much easier to stay in bed. Hey, just stay in bed. So the obligation is. Yeah, you got to get out of this comfortable spot.