17. 3 Easy Ways to Rewire Your Brain
Every week on the podcast, I’m here to offer you tools and concepts to shift your perspective of your work life. These coaching ideas are a great glimpse into what is possible for you, to see that burnout and stress are not mandatory parts of your life. But this week, we’re taking things a little deeper.
My goal today is to get you practicing new beliefs and thought patterns to build long-term habits that produce real results. This work is not one-and-done, and if we really want to transform any area of our life, we’ve got to replace our entrenched, long-held beliefs with new ones that serve us in getting to the life and career we dream of.
Tune in this week as I show you how to take advantage of your brain’s natural tendencies to make them work for you. Just because you’ve thought something all your life doesn’t mean it has to stay with you, and I’m sharing my top 3 favorite tips for teaching your brain new thoughts to create a different habitual mindset.
If you love the podcast and want to take this work deeper, I have great news! I have space for new one-to-one coaching clients starting this month, so click here to schedule a call with me and we’ll see if we’re a good fit to start working together!
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WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
How I’m using a tool I call “too small to fail.”
What it takes for a new thought to become habitual.
How coaching taps into your neuroplasticity to change your life.
Where your brain will go when left to its own devices.
What rewiring your brain is about and what it’s not about.
3 of my favorite ways to teach the brain new thoughts.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
Leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts to receive an email from me with my deep-dive strategy session PDF document so you can walk yourself through it!
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week, we are talking about easy ways to rewire your brain for more productivity, success, and fun.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving womxn who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. I just got back from what is probably the world’s shortest run. I’m doing this thing, I’m trying to get back into a running practice, so I’m doing what I teach y’all to do, which is taking it really small and doing small steps to create consistency before I create larger steps.
And so I call this tool sometimes too small to fail, and the idea is, like I said, you start with something that’s very doable. So doable it’s easier to do than it is to skip doing. And so like I said, I’m trying to get back into the habit of running because before the pandemic I used to go dancing every week and I got a lot of exercise doing that, I love it so much.
It’s a very particular kind of dancing. It’s like country two step and line dancing, which is very particular. And I’ve been doing it since I lived in North Carolina. And like I said, I love it so much. But I’m not doing that now. I could dance at home alone and I do sometimes, but it’s kind of not the same for me without the whole community and all the people to dance with, especially because my favorite part is the partner dancing.
So I wanted to do something else to kind of have some movement in my life. I think movement can feel really good for the body and help with sleep and other things like that, so I was like, okay, I’m going to reinstitute my little running practice that I had last year.
And to start out, I’m just doing like, three really easy - I call them walk-runs because it’s like I walk a little, I run a little, a week. One on Monday, one on Wednesday, one on Friday. And so I didn’t want to do it today, which like, shocker, right? We remember from a few weeks ago the in-the-moment brain, which of course wants to seek pleasure, conserve energy, and avoid pain.
And so wanting to not run is wanting to conserve energy, it’s wanting to avoid the pain of going out into the cold day, it’s wanting to do something pleasurable instead. But I have made this commitment to myself and I was like, okay, I’m going to do it, what are the obstacles?
And hilariously, my brain was like, “Okay fine, we’ll do it, but I don’t want to change into my running outfit.” Because normally I run in leggings and all that stuff. So I was like, alright brain, and I just put on my sneakers and went out in my jeans, which might sound terrible but they’re very stretchy jeans. They’re basically leggings. And it was a really short walk-run because I’m at the point now where it’s not even about how long I go out for. It’s not about even breaking a sweat. It’s about building that consistency, that habit that on these days that we said we were going to do this, we go out and do it.
So actually, doing it in my jeans wasn’t a problem. There was nothing about that that didn’t work. But it’s so funny because in the past I would have been like, no, I have to change into the running outfit and if I don’t change into the running outfit why do it at all. And that would have actually been me being in perfectionism, it would have prevented me from building the consistent habit.
So that’s what I just did. Literally I walked a block, ran one block, walked another block, and then walked home, and that was the whole thing. That is what too small to fail is about. So small of an effort that your brain is like, does this even count? That’s how small it should be to be too small to fail.
Okay, before we get into this week’s topic, I also just want to say thank you to everyone who has been rating and reviewing the podcast. And we’re going to read one of the reviews. This review is titled, “Thank you,” and it’s from MLMCLM.
Thank you so much, MLMCLM for leaving this review. I love it. Here’s what it says. “I am a perfectionist and last week was one of the worst weeks in my career. To the point that I was highly considering just throwing in the towel. A friend recommended your podcast on burnout and immediately I realized that while work was a contributing factor to my workload, my brain was the contributing factor to my burnout. I had a discussion with my manager and things are changing as a result. Thank you. I am enjoying the quick to-the-point episodes for a quick listen in the morning to jumpstart my day.”
Thank you so much for that review and it’s my pleasure to have the podcast and to create the podcast and to share all the coaching tools and tips and tricks that I have to help y’all have more fun in your careers, create more meaning in your work, do a better job if that’s something you’re interested in, and also just have a lot more fun. Why not have a lot more fun?
I’m a firm believer in fun and especially in fun at work and fun as a way to get work things accomplished. I think it’s great fuel. Okay, without further ado, let’s dig into our topic this week, which is easy ways to rewire your brain.
So people who listen to this podcast mostly want to feel better, they want to enjoy their work more, maybe they want to be more productive, they want to get more done. And you can do all of those things, and that’s what we talk about all the time. And most weeks I teach a lesson about what’s going on and how to see the world differently and how to implement a certain tool.
And that’s essential, but what I’m going to teach you this week is an important part of the work also because this work isn’t just about learning to see the world differently once. Don’t get me wrong. Even one glimpse of a new perspective can change everything, can really shift things in a long-term way, but a lot of the thought patterns you have that lead to the stuff we talk about on the podcast all the time are really old, they’re really entrenched, and you’ve probably been thinking some of those thoughts for years.
Like I talk about sometimes some of these thoughts have been with us since childhood, sometimes some of our work thoughts were originally our thoughts about school. Work and schoolwork. It makes sense. And so even if you listen to the podcast a few times and get some really good ideas for different ways to see the world, that’s not necessarily going to change those long-term neural pathways that you have and that consistent habitual mindset you have about how you see the world.
And in order to really learn how to crush it at work without crushing you, learn how to enjoy your work, whether you want to stay in this job or not, you need to learn to inhabit the new perspective, not just consider it once or from time to time.
So what does this mean? This means we need to create new neutral pathing. We’re getting a little science-y this week. So the way you currently think about things is your current mindset and your current mindset is your current neural pathing.
What we know about the brain is that it has neuroplasticity. And what neuroplasticity means is that the brain can change. I remember when I was a kid, people told me that the brain could change when you are a kid and then when you’re an adult it couldn’t change, but that’s not true. Even as adults, we can still change our brains, we can change how we think about things.
And that is what coaching teaches people how to do. Coaching teaches people how to identify the thoughts that they’re currently having, see what those thoughts are creating for them, and think about like, do I want to create something else? If I do, what thoughts could help me do that? What mindset could help me do that?
And then we go to work building that new mindset, building that new neural pathing. So when we learn to think new thoughts, when we practice new thoughts and new ways of seeing the world, it’s like we’re building a muscle in our brains, except for neurons aren’t muscles exactly I don’t think.
Listen, I actually don’t know about this part because that’s more science-y than I am. But I love the metaphor that it’s like we’re building a muscle. We’re building a path. I like to think about it like a path through the woods. So if there are woods behind your house and you always walk the same way, that path is going to be more worn, it’s going to be more familiar.
If you don’t pay attention, your brain will just walk the path it always walks. So when we’re learning how to think differently, when we’re rewiring our brain, we’re building a new path. So it’s like going into those woods behind your house and we’re day by day kind of clearing the way to have a new walkway.
And this is essential because for the neural pathing we have, it’s easy for the brain to use it, even if it doesn’t get us things that we want in life. It’s easy for the brain to do it, and the brain, while it’s a really smart organ is also - it can be a little dumb sometimes. It really likes efficiency, so it’ll choose that path it already knows over and over again, even if it doesn’t go where you want to go.
So for example, if the path its used to using is its habitual path, always goes to burnout canyon, if we don’t create a new path for the brain to take, the brain will just keep taking that habitual path even if it does not like the sensation of burnouts, even if you hate the experience of burnout, if that’s the habitual path, that’s what the brain will keep taking.
But if instead let’s say you want to go to the waterfall of meaningful, joyful work instead, we have to build the path that gets there, and that part is a little bit of work. Like I said, the brain likes to be efficient, it wants to just go with all the path that you already know, the path that already exists.
But when we’re creating the path to - what did I call it? The waterfall of joyful, meaningful work, it’s like we have to start day by day and we’re clearing some trees and we’re building a little pathway. And we don’t necessarily need big construction equipment in there to pave it or anything, but it does require consistency and it requires practice.
And the practice we do in thinking about things in new ways is how we build that path, but once that path is built, then our brain will happily take that new trail. Just like before it would efficiently take the same trail to the burnout canyon, we don’t want to go there anymore. We can build this new neutral pathway and practice it over and over again to go to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work, and then that will become habitual.
And this is a way that we can take advantage of our brain’s natural tendencies and make them work for us. But we have to do the work upfront. We have to do the work upfront to create that new neutral pathways so then our brain can take it.
Left to its own devices, like I was saying, the brain will always choose its current ways of thinking about things or its habitual ways of thinking about things. Those neural pathways are already strong.
And so sometimes, if you’ve thought about things a certain way for 20 years and then you start thinking about them differently only a year ago, and something stressful happens in your life, the brain in that stressful moment will go back to that old neural pathway.
So we kind of always have to be wise to our brains and bring them back to the paths we want them to be working on. Because remember that the habitual ways of thinking we have include a lot of social conditioning that we didn’t necessarily actually choose or agree to and a lot of that social conditioning was not designed with our best interests at heart and does not help us show up in the ways that we want to show up in our lives and at our jobs.
And second of all, that current neutral thinking often isn’t creating the results that we want. Don’t get me wrong. Some of your current habitual thinking is creating things you want, right? But the ones that we’re changing, we’re changing them because they aren’t. We’re changing them because we want to create something else.
Or maybe we actually do like the results that they’re creating but we just want even more. So as an example, it’s like you might be creating the result of making $95,000 a year and you’re like, this is great. But if you want to make $150,000 a year, we might need to level up. The same path, the same line of thinking that got us to $95,000 a year isn’t necessarily going to get us to $150,000 a year. So in that case, it’s like we like the result, we just want to create something we like even more.
As we talked about last week, there already are so many things that are going well, and it is important to bring our brain’s attention back to that because the brain has that negativity bias. But this week, and what I’m talking about, it’s a little bit more about the things that aren’t working or the things that we do want to change. But even when we want to change things, it’s not because you’re not doing amazingly well. That’s like, with the example of the $95,000. You’re already doing really well. You’re already crushing it in so many ways. And I think that’s one of the messages that I want to be at the heart of this podcast is we’re not learning to love our jobs before we leave them because there’s something wrong with how we’re doing it now or because we’re bad or not good enough.
I think everyone listening to the podcast and all humans are already good enough. We’re just learning some new skills if we want to create some new experiences for ourselves. So I wanted to be very clear about that because I don’t ever want it to be like, well, I have to rewire my brain so I can be okay. You already are okay. You’re already doing great, even if you want to learn to do other things. So like I’m saying, we can be doing great, we already are, and we can learn to crush it on a new level with a new sense of ease and new sense of delight without burning ourselves out in the process, and that’s where it gets magical. Because for a lot of people who’ve gotten to the $95,000 a year, they’ve been getting there with fighting their current social conditioning, or really struggling, or experiencing a lot of anxiety or burnout.
So when they’re thinking about getting to $150,000 a year, they’re like, that’s going to feel terrible because I’ll have to work so hard. And I’m like, what if it doesn’t have to feel terrible? What if it could actually feel easier? And doing the work to rewire our brains around that is part of that. It’s part of how we create bigger results than we already have with more ease, with more delight, with less burnout.
Also, I don’t know if you can hear him in the background but there’s Cowboy back there making his feelings known. He would also like to have some new results. The new results he would like is he would like me to feed him early, and sorry my love, it’s not going to happen. So let’s get back to it. This work is not about shitting all over where we already are, even if we want to get to a new place. It’s about opening up to the possibility that we can create results that we have not heretofore been able to create. And that it actually doesn’t necessarily have to feel harder.
It’s about learning how to do things you don’t know how to do yet, but that you maybe deeply want to do, and believing that we can do them. And changing our neural pathing is part of how we do that. Like I was saying, in order to create new results, we need to create new neural pathing. And new results can be increasing our salary from $95,000 to $150,000 a year, but new results could also be doing the job you’ve already been doing but doing it in 40 hours a week, whereas you’ve actually been working more like 60.
So it’s not always very obviously different. It can be subtly different. It can even just be different in the way we feel about it inside our own heads, even if the deliverables we create look the same to other people. So to say it again, in order to create new results, you need to create new neural pathing.
And to put that even more simply, in order to do new things, you need to be able to think new thoughts. Not just be able to think the new thoughts. You need to actually also think them. And that’s all new neural paths are, they’re just new ways of thinking that we have practiced enough times to create that new path. Like I was talking about before, the path through the woods to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work.
So this week, we’re going to talk about how we actually think new thoughts and apply them to our real life and use them to actually create changes. But mostly we’re going to focus on the part where we think them. If you come to coaching, to a coaching call or come and study a coaching podcast or follow my posts on social media, I will offer new ways of thinking about things all the time.
And the new ways of thinking about things that I offer; people often write back or comment that it blows their mind. And that’s amazing, but unless we actually practice that new way of thinking, we’re not actually going to get real results.
And when I say practice that new way of thinking, that’s something we have to actually do. And so a lot of times people are like, how do I actually practice the new way of thinking? How do I actually build these new neural pathways? They’re on board, they want to go to the waterfall of meaning and joyful work. That sounds great. How do they build that path through the woods?
It’s a great question and there are so many different ways you can do this, but just for constraint, I’m going to tell you about three of my favorite ways of teaching the brain new thoughts. And the three ways are Post-It notes, pop-up reminders, and pen and paper.
So I personally love the Post-It note method. Probably because I love Post-It notes and let’s be honest, pretty much all office supplies. And I can’t prove this scientifically, but I think it works better if you get colorful Post-It notes and pens you love. And listen, if you’re not into colors, you can go for black and white or whatever you like. But I think using materials that we delight in does help. It’s more fun. And when it’s more fun, we’re more likely to do it. And then it’s basically super simple. Whatever you want to teach your brain to think, write it on a Post-It note and stick it somewhere you will see it often. So I have Post-Its like this all over my office and in other places around my house. Sometimes I make them and put them - I remember when I worked at Expedia, I think I had one inside my phone case on the back of my phone case so that I would see it when I turned my phone over.
So I’ve been doing this for a long time. But I want to be clear that new thoughts are not the same as affirmations. It’s not about writing the things you think you should be thinking. It’s about writing the things you want to teach yourself to believe.
Okay, and that distinction probably isn’t very clear, so let me give you an example. It’s not about writing I love myself, or I’m amazing and powerful unless you want to write and think those things. Mine say things more like, how could this be more fun? And maybe things are going well for me in ways I can’t even see yet.
So I think it’s important to call that out because while people love affirmations sometimes, a lot of the affirmations that we read in books, they’re not personalized. And so sometimes, when we try to practice them, they don’t actually feel good to us. And if they don’t feel good to us, then they don’t necessarily lead to the actions we want to take. They’re not necessarily helpful neutral pathing at that point.
And this is especially important because sometimes we try to take too big of a leap when we’re trying to think a new thought and it can sort of backfire. If we have a really negative thought about something, trying to think that we love it probably isn’t going to feel good. It’s not going to be fun to practice. It’s not going to create that path to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work. So for example, the ones that I wrote, the second one is actually based on a thought that a coaching peer of mine was practicing and I loved it immediately. So that was how I knew this was a good thought for me to practice because when I thought it, when I heard it, it felt really good to me.
So you don’t have to come up with them on your own. So when I’m saying not all mantras and affirmations are helpful, it doesn’t mean you can’t use stuff from other people. You totally can. But you want to check in with your body to see how the thought feels in your body when you think it.
If it feels worse, it’s probably not a good fit for you. You want something that feels good or at least interesting or compelling in some way. Like I said, you don’t have to come up with these on your own, you can use quotes or things other people say or what you imagine your mentor or bestie would say to you. You can use stuff you learned on the podcast.
For all of you, it could be very beneficial to just have a Post-It note that says what is working? What is going well? But again, if you feel worse when you think that, maybe not the ideal one for you. So you really have to kind of tune into your own knowing here.
That sounds very woo-woo, but it really just means try on the thoughts the way you would try on clothes. Do you like the way these feel? Do you feel like this would be a helpful neutral path for you? Is this thought going to help you get to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work?
I made that metaphor up in this call and I’m in love with it. I already had the metaphor about the woods, but the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work is new and I’m very into it. It’s my new favorite thing ever. Anyway, let’s get back to the Post-It notes. I know that some of y’all do not want to stick Post-It notes everywhere. I love the Post-It notes. I love making them colorful, I love making them fun, I like to do really cute handwriting on mine. But it’s not for everyone. Some people are not into that. And if you’re not into that, no problem. You can use idea number two instead, which is pop-up reminders.
And I do these two ways. The first way is that I set reminders on my phone using the built-in reminder app. And I set them to go off with a noise, sometimes a Beyoncé song is a good choice. I’m just saying. And when you do that, it will obviously be loud and interrupt things, and I like that because then I stop and notice them going off and I read the message that the reminder says.
But if you work in an officer or don’t want to blast Beyoncé, there’s another option for you and that second option is using an app like Hi Future Self. The app will pop up reminders at pre-designated times and they’ll just kind of stay there like an alert so that when you pick your phone up, you’ll see it the same way you would see a text message or a missed call.
And I think there are also settings like if you don’t want the message to be visible, the same way with text messages, you can make it so it’s not visible until it’s unlocked. If you, like me, want to have fun cheesy thoughts that you’re practicing that you don't want other people to see, I think there’s a way to do that.
But I think this is such a fun thing because the phone is so often a source of distraction and this way, we are actually using the phone to remind us of how we want to think and to help us build that new neural pathing we want. And since most of us are on our phones all of the time, it is a really great way for us to engage with ourselves in a way that’s more useful and meaningful and intentional than a lot of what we do on the phone.
Okay, so those two methods are great. But to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to thinking new thoughts, the method I think works the best, and you’re welcome to do your own science about this, but the method I think works the best for me is good old-fashioned pen and paper.
And by that, I mean writing the new thought out over and over again. You don’t have to do it over and over and over all at once. But if you pick one or two thoughts and write them once or twice every day, you will see a difference. And sometimes I get really intense with this. I’ve had one where I was writing it five or 10 times a day.
And that might seem like a lot, but you got to remember, every time I write the thought, that’s me building that path through the woods. It’s me building the path through the woods over and over. So if I do it 10 times a day for 10 days, that is going to be as strong as if I had done it like, 100 times once a day. Did I do that math right? I think that math is right.
Either way, the more you do it, the stronger that path gets. So I kind of like to think about writing it a lot in the beginning to kind of get that new path going. And then you can take the amount you’re writing it daily down so it’s more reasonable, and then it’s kind of just like upkeep on the new neural path.
By writing the new thought over and over again, you’re building a neural pathing. And after a while, the new thought will become something your brain just thinks on its own, and that’s when the magic happens. That’s when your whole life changes.
Because it’s one thing to be able to choose a new thought when you’re sitting quietly by yourself and it’s one thing to remember something I said in a podcast while you’re in a situation at work. But when you do the work to create new neural pathing and your brain starts using the new thought as a default, that’s when the new thought can actually create huge results in your life.
And that’s when it can happen on its own, versus you having to use your mental bandwidth to sort of switch from the old thought to the new thought. Alright y’all, so to review, in order for new thoughts to be useful, we want to make them into new habitual neural pathing in our brain.
So we want to take them from a new insight that we just heard about and build them into a new path that our brain is choosing over and over again and that takes us to the place we want to go. So instead of using all the old neural pathing that our brain has, which takes us to burnout canyon, we’re building these new paths through repetition, whether it’s the repetition of seeing Post-It notes, the repetition of the pop-up reminders, or the repetition of writing, or any other methodology that you personally want to try.
You can cross stitch it on a pillow if you want. I’m all in. Please post that on social media and tag me if you do that. I would love to see that. But it doesn’t really matter, I don’t think, how you do the repetition. But doing the repetition over and over again is what creates the new neural path.
And when you create that new neural path, then it can become a default. It can become a habit. And then you can let your brain take that path, which it will want to do for efficiency, and you can go to that - what did I call it? The waterfall of joyful and meaningful work more often with less effort.
In the beginning it is effort. It’s effort to learn this new neural path. So we have to kind of do the effort upfront. It’s like paying the fine or paying a fee maybe. It’s not really a fine. It’s more of a fee. So we pay the fee with our effort, but then we can have that new neural path and get all the rewards from it over and over again forever as long as we keep practicing it and using it.
So I want to leave you with this question, which is if you could think anything or create any result, what would you want to be able to think? What would you want to be able to create? And what is a thought that you can begin practicing today that can move you in that direction?
And if you love what I teach and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life, I’ve got good news for you.
I’ve got space for a few new one-on-one coaching clients starting this month, so let’s hop on a call. I’ll give you some coaching right away to help you get going and if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the Work With Me button and get started there. Also bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience, and yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers and we’ve had great success doing that.
There’s even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category so you can check that out on the testimonials page. Alright y’all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye. Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
You are listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It, the podcast for ambitious, high-achieving womxn who are ready to stop feeling stressed about work and kiss burnout goodbye forever. Whether you’re starting a business or staying in your day job, this show will give you the coaching and guidance you need to start loving your work today. Here’s your host, Career Coach, Kori Linn.
Hey y’all. I just got back from what is probably the world’s shortest run. I’m doing this thing, I’m trying to get back into a running practice, so I’m doing what I teach y’all to do, which is taking it really small and doing small steps to create consistency before I create larger steps.
And so I call this tool sometimes too small to fail, and the idea is, like I said, you start with something that’s very doable. So doable it’s easier to do than it is to skip doing. And so like I said, I’m trying to get back into the habit of running because before the pandemic I used to go dancing every week and I got a lot of exercise doing that, I love it so much.
It’s a very particular kind of dancing. It’s like country two step and line dancing, which is very particular. And I’ve been doing it since I lived in North Carolina. And like I said, I love it so much. But I’m not doing that now. I could dance at home alone and I do sometimes, but it’s kind of not the same for me without the whole community and all the people to dance with, especially because my favorite part is the partner dancing.
So I wanted to do something else to kind of have some movement in my life. I think movement can feel really good for the body and help with sleep and other things like that, so I was like, okay, I’m going to reinstitute my little running practice that I had last year.
And to start out, I’m just doing like, three really easy - I call them walk-runs because it’s like I walk a little, I run a little, a week. One on Monday, one on Wednesday, one on Friday. And so I didn’t want to do it today, which like, shocker, right? We remember from a few weeks ago the in-the-moment brain, which of course wants to seek pleasure, conserve energy, and avoid pain.
And so wanting to not run is wanting to conserve energy, it’s wanting to avoid the pain of going out into the cold day, it’s wanting to do something pleasurable instead. But I have made this commitment to myself and I was like, okay, I’m going to do it, what are the obstacles?
And hilariously, my brain was like, “Okay fine, we’ll do it, but I don’t want to change into my running outfit.” Because normally I run in leggings and all that stuff. So I was like, alright brain, and I just put on my sneakers and went out in my jeans, which might sound terrible but they’re very stretchy jeans. They’re basically leggings. And it was a really short walk-run because I’m at the point now where it’s not even about how long I go out for. It’s not about even breaking a sweat. It’s about building that consistency, that habit that on these days that we said we were going to do this, we go out and do it.
So actually, doing it in my jeans wasn’t a problem. There was nothing about that that didn’t work. But it’s so funny because in the past I would have been like, no, I have to change into the running outfit and if I don’t change into the running outfit why do it at all. And that would have actually been me being in perfectionism, it would have prevented me from building the consistent habit.
So that’s what I just did. Literally I walked a block, ran one block, walked another block, and then walked home, and that was the whole thing. That is what too small to fail is about. So small of an effort that your brain is like, does this even count? That’s how small it should be to be too small to fail.
Okay, before we get into this week’s topic, I also just want to say thank you to everyone who has been rating and reviewing the podcast. And we’re going to read one of the reviews. This review is titled, “Thank you,” and it’s from MLMCLM.
Thank you so much, MLMCLM for leaving this review. I love it. Here’s what it says. “I am a perfectionist and last week was one of the worst weeks in my career. To the point that I was highly considering just throwing in the towel. A friend recommended your podcast on burnout and immediately I realized that while work was a contributing factor to my workload, my brain was the contributing factor to my burnout. I had a discussion with my manager and things are changing as a result. Thank you. I am enjoying the quick to-the-point episodes for a quick listen in the morning to jumpstart my day.”
Thank you so much for that review and it’s my pleasure to have the podcast and to create the podcast and to share all the coaching tools and tips and tricks that I have to help y’all have more fun in your careers, create more meaning in your work, do a better job if that’s something you’re interested in, and also just have a lot more fun. Why not have a lot more fun?
I’m a firm believer in fun and especially in fun at work and fun as a way to get work things accomplished. I think it’s great fuel. Okay, without further ado, let’s dig into our topic this week, which is easy ways to rewire your brain.
So people who listen to this podcast mostly want to feel better, they want to enjoy their work more, maybe they want to be more productive, they want to get more done. And you can do all of those things, and that’s what we talk about all the time. And most weeks I teach a lesson about what’s going on and how to see the world differently and how to implement a certain tool.
And that’s essential, but what I’m going to teach you this week is an important part of the work also because this work isn’t just about learning to see the world differently once. Don’t get me wrong. Even one glimpse of a new perspective can change everything, can really shift things in a long-term way, but a lot of the thought patterns you have that lead to the stuff we talk about on the podcast all the time are really old, they’re really entrenched, and you’ve probably been thinking some of those thoughts for years.
Like I talk about sometimes some of these thoughts have been with us since childhood, sometimes some of our work thoughts were originally our thoughts about school. Work and schoolwork. It makes sense. And so even if you listen to the podcast a few times and get some really good ideas for different ways to see the world, that’s not necessarily going to change those long-term neural pathways that you have and that consistent habitual mindset you have about how you see the world.
And in order to really learn how to crush it at work without crushing you, learn how to enjoy your work, whether you want to stay in this job or not, you need to learn to inhabit the new perspective, not just consider it once or from time to time.
So what does this mean? This means we need to create new neutral pathing. We’re getting a little science-y this week. So the way you currently think about things is your current mindset and your current mindset is your current neural pathing.
What we know about the brain is that it has neuroplasticity. And what neuroplasticity means is that the brain can change. I remember when I was a kid, people told me that the brain could change when you are a kid and then when you’re an adult it couldn’t change, but that’s not true. Even as adults, we can still change our brains, we can change how we think about things.
And that is what coaching teaches people how to do. Coaching teaches people how to identify the thoughts that they’re currently having, see what those thoughts are creating for them, and think about like, do I want to create something else? If I do, what thoughts could help me do that? What mindset could help me do that?
And then we go to work building that new mindset, building that new neural pathing. So when we learn to think new thoughts, when we practice new thoughts and new ways of seeing the world, it’s like we’re building a muscle in our brains, except for neurons aren’t muscles exactly I don’t think.
Listen, I actually don’t know about this part because that’s more science-y than I am. But I love the metaphor that it’s like we’re building a muscle. We’re building a path. I like to think about it like a path through the woods. So if there are woods behind your house and you always walk the same way, that path is going to be more worn, it’s going to be more familiar.
If you don’t pay attention, your brain will just walk the path it always walks. So when we’re learning how to think differently, when we’re rewiring our brain, we’re building a new path. So it’s like going into those woods behind your house and we’re day by day kind of clearing the way to have a new walkway.
And this is essential because for the neural pathing we have, it’s easy for the brain to use it, even if it doesn’t get us things that we want in life. It’s easy for the brain to do it, and the brain, while it’s a really smart organ is also - it can be a little dumb sometimes. It really likes efficiency, so it’ll choose that path it already knows over and over again, even if it doesn’t go where you want to go.
So for example, if the path its used to using is its habitual path, always goes to burnout canyon, if we don’t create a new path for the brain to take, the brain will just keep taking that habitual path even if it does not like the sensation of burnouts, even if you hate the experience of burnout, if that’s the habitual path, that’s what the brain will keep taking.
But if instead let’s say you want to go to the waterfall of meaningful, joyful work instead, we have to build the path that gets there, and that part is a little bit of work. Like I said, the brain likes to be efficient, it wants to just go with all the path that you already know, the path that already exists.
But when we’re creating the path to - what did I call it? The waterfall of joyful, meaningful work, it’s like we have to start day by day and we’re clearing some trees and we’re building a little pathway. And we don’t necessarily need big construction equipment in there to pave it or anything, but it does require consistency and it requires practice.
And the practice we do in thinking about things in new ways is how we build that path, but once that path is built, then our brain will happily take that new trail. Just like before it would efficiently take the same trail to the burnout canyon, we don’t want to go there anymore. We can build this new neutral pathway and practice it over and over again to go to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work, and then that will become habitual.
And this is a way that we can take advantage of our brain’s natural tendencies and make them work for us. But we have to do the work upfront. We have to do the work upfront to create that new neutral pathways so then our brain can take it.
Left to its own devices, like I was saying, the brain will always choose its current ways of thinking about things or its habitual ways of thinking about things. Those neural pathways are already strong.
And so sometimes, if you’ve thought about things a certain way for 20 years and then you start thinking about them differently only a year ago, and something stressful happens in your life, the brain in that stressful moment will go back to that old neural pathway.
So we kind of always have to be wise to our brains and bring them back to the paths we want them to be working on. Because remember that the habitual ways of thinking we have include a lot of social conditioning that we didn’t necessarily actually choose or agree to and a lot of that social conditioning was not designed with our best interests at heart and does not help us show up in the ways that we want to show up in our lives and at our jobs.
And second of all, that current neutral thinking often isn’t creating the results that we want. Don’t get me wrong. Some of your current habitual thinking is creating things you want, right? But the ones that we’re changing, we’re changing them because they aren’t. We’re changing them because we want to create something else.
Or maybe we actually do like the results that they’re creating but we just want even more. So as an example, it’s like you might be creating the result of making $95,000 a year and you’re like, this is great. But if you want to make $150,000 a year, we might need to level up. The same path, the same line of thinking that got us to $95,000 a year isn’t necessarily going to get us to $150,000 a year. So in that case, it’s like we like the result, we just want to create something we like even more.
As we talked about last week, there already are so many things that are going well, and it is important to bring our brain’s attention back to that because the brain has that negativity bias. But this week, and what I’m talking about, it’s a little bit more about the things that aren’t working or the things that we do want to change. But even when we want to change things, it’s not because you’re not doing amazingly well. That’s like, with the example of the $95,000. You’re already doing really well. You’re already crushing it in so many ways. And I think that’s one of the messages that I want to be at the heart of this podcast is we’re not learning to love our jobs before we leave them because there’s something wrong with how we’re doing it now or because we’re bad or not good enough.
I think everyone listening to the podcast and all humans are already good enough. We’re just learning some new skills if we want to create some new experiences for ourselves. So I wanted to be very clear about that because I don’t ever want it to be like, well, I have to rewire my brain so I can be okay. You already are okay. You’re already doing great, even if you want to learn to do other things. So like I’m saying, we can be doing great, we already are, and we can learn to crush it on a new level with a new sense of ease and new sense of delight without burning ourselves out in the process, and that’s where it gets magical. Because for a lot of people who’ve gotten to the $95,000 a year, they’ve been getting there with fighting their current social conditioning, or really struggling, or experiencing a lot of anxiety or burnout.
So when they’re thinking about getting to $150,000 a year, they’re like, that’s going to feel terrible because I’ll have to work so hard. And I’m like, what if it doesn’t have to feel terrible? What if it could actually feel easier? And doing the work to rewire our brains around that is part of that. It’s part of how we create bigger results than we already have with more ease, with more delight, with less burnout.
Also, I don’t know if you can hear him in the background but there’s Cowboy back there making his feelings known. He would also like to have some new results. The new results he would like is he would like me to feed him early, and sorry my love, it’s not going to happen. So let’s get back to it. This work is not about shitting all over where we already are, even if we want to get to a new place. It’s about opening up to the possibility that we can create results that we have not heretofore been able to create. And that it actually doesn’t necessarily have to feel harder.
It’s about learning how to do things you don’t know how to do yet, but that you maybe deeply want to do, and believing that we can do them. And changing our neural pathing is part of how we do that. Like I was saying, in order to create new results, we need to create new neural pathing. And new results can be increasing our salary from $95,000 to $150,000 a year, but new results could also be doing the job you’ve already been doing but doing it in 40 hours a week, whereas you’ve actually been working more like 60.
So it’s not always very obviously different. It can be subtly different. It can even just be different in the way we feel about it inside our own heads, even if the deliverables we create look the same to other people. So to say it again, in order to create new results, you need to create new neural pathing.
And to put that even more simply, in order to do new things, you need to be able to think new thoughts. Not just be able to think the new thoughts. You need to actually also think them. And that’s all new neural paths are, they’re just new ways of thinking that we have practiced enough times to create that new path. Like I was talking about before, the path through the woods to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work.
So this week, we’re going to talk about how we actually think new thoughts and apply them to our real life and use them to actually create changes. But mostly we’re going to focus on the part where we think them. If you come to coaching, to a coaching call or come and study a coaching podcast or follow my posts on social media, I will offer new ways of thinking about things all the time.
And the new ways of thinking about things that I offer; people often write back or comment that it blows their mind. And that’s amazing, but unless we actually practice that new way of thinking, we’re not actually going to get real results.
And when I say practice that new way of thinking, that’s something we have to actually do. And so a lot of times people are like, how do I actually practice the new way of thinking? How do I actually build these new neural pathways? They’re on board, they want to go to the waterfall of meaning and joyful work. That sounds great. How do they build that path through the woods?
It’s a great question and there are so many different ways you can do this, but just for constraint, I’m going to tell you about three of my favorite ways of teaching the brain new thoughts. And the three ways are Post-It notes, pop-up reminders, and pen and paper.
So I personally love the Post-It note method. Probably because I love Post-It notes and let’s be honest, pretty much all office supplies. And I can’t prove this scientifically, but I think it works better if you get colorful Post-It notes and pens you love. And listen, if you’re not into colors, you can go for black and white or whatever you like. But I think using materials that we delight in does help. It’s more fun. And when it’s more fun, we’re more likely to do it. And then it’s basically super simple. Whatever you want to teach your brain to think, write it on a Post-It note and stick it somewhere you will see it often. So I have Post-Its like this all over my office and in other places around my house. Sometimes I make them and put them - I remember when I worked at Expedia, I think I had one inside my phone case on the back of my phone case so that I would see it when I turned my phone over.
So I’ve been doing this for a long time. But I want to be clear that new thoughts are not the same as affirmations. It’s not about writing the things you think you should be thinking. It’s about writing the things you want to teach yourself to believe.
Okay, and that distinction probably isn’t very clear, so let me give you an example. It’s not about writing I love myself, or I’m amazing and powerful unless you want to write and think those things. Mine say things more like, how could this be more fun? And maybe things are going well for me in ways I can’t even see yet.
So I think it’s important to call that out because while people love affirmations sometimes, a lot of the affirmations that we read in books, they’re not personalized. And so sometimes, when we try to practice them, they don’t actually feel good to us. And if they don’t feel good to us, then they don’t necessarily lead to the actions we want to take. They’re not necessarily helpful neutral pathing at that point.
And this is especially important because sometimes we try to take too big of a leap when we’re trying to think a new thought and it can sort of backfire. If we have a really negative thought about something, trying to think that we love it probably isn’t going to feel good. It’s not going to be fun to practice. It’s not going to create that path to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work. So for example, the ones that I wrote, the second one is actually based on a thought that a coaching peer of mine was practicing and I loved it immediately. So that was how I knew this was a good thought for me to practice because when I thought it, when I heard it, it felt really good to me.
So you don’t have to come up with them on your own. So when I’m saying not all mantras and affirmations are helpful, it doesn’t mean you can’t use stuff from other people. You totally can. But you want to check in with your body to see how the thought feels in your body when you think it.
If it feels worse, it’s probably not a good fit for you. You want something that feels good or at least interesting or compelling in some way. Like I said, you don’t have to come up with these on your own, you can use quotes or things other people say or what you imagine your mentor or bestie would say to you. You can use stuff you learned on the podcast.
For all of you, it could be very beneficial to just have a Post-It note that says what is working? What is going well? But again, if you feel worse when you think that, maybe not the ideal one for you. So you really have to kind of tune into your own knowing here.
That sounds very woo-woo, but it really just means try on the thoughts the way you would try on clothes. Do you like the way these feel? Do you feel like this would be a helpful neutral path for you? Is this thought going to help you get to the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work?
I made that metaphor up in this call and I’m in love with it. I already had the metaphor about the woods, but the waterfall of joyful, meaningful work is new and I’m very into it. It’s my new favorite thing ever. Anyway, let’s get back to the Post-It notes. I know that some of y’all do not want to stick Post-It notes everywhere. I love the Post-It notes. I love making them colorful, I love making them fun, I like to do really cute handwriting on mine. But it’s not for everyone. Some people are not into that. And if you’re not into that, no problem. You can use idea number two instead, which is pop-up reminders.
And I do these two ways. The first way is that I set reminders on my phone using the built-in reminder app. And I set them to go off with a noise, sometimes a Beyoncé song is a good choice. I’m just saying. And when you do that, it will obviously be loud and interrupt things, and I like that because then I stop and notice them going off and I read the message that the reminder says.
But if you work in an officer or don’t want to blast Beyoncé, there’s another option for you and that second option is using an app like Hi Future Self. The app will pop up reminders at pre-designated times and they’ll just kind of stay there like an alert so that when you pick your phone up, you’ll see it the same way you would see a text message or a missed call.
And I think there are also settings like if you don’t want the message to be visible, the same way with text messages, you can make it so it’s not visible until it’s unlocked. If you, like me, want to have fun cheesy thoughts that you’re practicing that you don't want other people to see, I think there’s a way to do that.
But I think this is such a fun thing because the phone is so often a source of distraction and this way, we are actually using the phone to remind us of how we want to think and to help us build that new neural pathing we want. And since most of us are on our phones all of the time, it is a really great way for us to engage with ourselves in a way that’s more useful and meaningful and intentional than a lot of what we do on the phone.
Okay, so those two methods are great. But to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to thinking new thoughts, the method I think works the best, and you’re welcome to do your own science about this, but the method I think works the best for me is good old-fashioned pen and paper.
And by that, I mean writing the new thought out over and over again. You don’t have to do it over and over and over all at once. But if you pick one or two thoughts and write them once or twice every day, you will see a difference. And sometimes I get really intense with this. I’ve had one where I was writing it five or 10 times a day.
And that might seem like a lot, but you got to remember, every time I write the thought, that’s me building that path through the woods. It’s me building the path through the woods over and over. So if I do it 10 times a day for 10 days, that is going to be as strong as if I had done it like, 100 times once a day. Did I do that math right? I think that math is right.
Either way, the more you do it, the stronger that path gets. So I kind of like to think about writing it a lot in the beginning to kind of get that new path going. And then you can take the amount you’re writing it daily down so it’s more reasonable, and then it’s kind of just like upkeep on the new neural path.
By writing the new thought over and over again, you’re building a neural pathing. And after a while, the new thought will become something your brain just thinks on its own, and that’s when the magic happens. That’s when your whole life changes.
Because it’s one thing to be able to choose a new thought when you’re sitting quietly by yourself and it’s one thing to remember something I said in a podcast while you’re in a situation at work. But when you do the work to create new neural pathing and your brain starts using the new thought as a default, that’s when the new thought can actually create huge results in your life.
And that’s when it can happen on its own, versus you having to use your mental bandwidth to sort of switch from the old thought to the new thought. Alright y’all, so to review, in order for new thoughts to be useful, we want to make them into new habitual neural pathing in our brain.
So we want to take them from a new insight that we just heard about and build them into a new path that our brain is choosing over and over again and that takes us to the place we want to go. So instead of using all the old neural pathing that our brain has, which takes us to burnout canyon, we’re building these new paths through repetition, whether it’s the repetition of seeing Post-It notes, the repetition of the pop-up reminders, or the repetition of writing, or any other methodology that you personally want to try.
You can cross stitch it on a pillow if you want. I’m all in. Please post that on social media and tag me if you do that. I would love to see that. But it doesn’t really matter, I don’t think, how you do the repetition. But doing the repetition over and over again is what creates the new neural path.
And when you create that new neural path, then it can become a default. It can become a habit. And then you can let your brain take that path, which it will want to do for efficiency, and you can go to that - what did I call it? The waterfall of joyful and meaningful work more often with less effort.
In the beginning it is effort. It’s effort to learn this new neural path. So we have to kind of do the effort upfront. It’s like paying the fine or paying a fee maybe. It’s not really a fine. It’s more of a fee. So we pay the fee with our effort, but then we can have that new neural path and get all the rewards from it over and over again forever as long as we keep practicing it and using it.
So I want to leave you with this question, which is if you could think anything or create any result, what would you want to be able to think? What would you want to be able to create? And what is a thought that you can begin practicing today that can move you in that direction?
And if you love what I teach and you want some help taking things a little bit deeper and figuring out how this all applies to your own life, I’ve got good news for you.
I’ve got space for a few new one-on-one coaching clients starting this month, so let’s hop on a call. I’ll give you some coaching right away to help you get going and if it seems like a good fit, I will share with you how we can work together. Just head on over to my website and click on the Work With Me button and get started there. Also bonus, my coaching offering is totally virtual so as to better serve my global audience, and yes, I do work with people who are not native English speakers and we’ve had great success doing that.
There’s even a testimonial on my website with someone in that category so you can check that out on the testimonials page. Alright y’all, have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye. Thank you for listening to Love Your Job Before You Leave It. We'll have another episode for you next week. And in the meantime, if you're feeling super fired up, head on over to korilinn.com for more guidance and resources.
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