I’ve been watching a lot of Tom Bilyeu and Impact Theory lately. I recently watched one of his talks at Mindvalley and the line below really speaks to me:

“It doesn’t matter who you are today. The only thing that matters is who you want to become and the price you are willing to pay to get there.”

He mentions in this talk that humans are the ultimate adaptation machines. And it all starts by making an intentional choice. We must choose to believe in ourselves.

To believe in yourself, we must have self-esteem built on an unshakeable foundation. Often times, our self-esteem is centered around how smart we are, how right we are, how good we are. Unfortunately, these are very fragile traits. Once we meet someone smarter, proven wrong, or fail at something, our self-esteem crumbles.

Instead, Tom Bilyeu states to build your self-esteem around something that is anti-fragile. Something that the more it is attacked, the stronger it becomes. He says the one identity that he has come across that is anti-fragile, is that of a learner.

A learner is someone that takes advantage of all situations. By wanting to learn in all scenarios, a learner finds out where they are most weak and are able to build themselves from that point. They develop their self-esteem around their growth, and not based on what others think of them.

The shift to a learner mindset will also help you confront who you actually are. It’s only when you honestly acknowledge where you are, when change can occur. Because now you can identify your starting point, and the skills you’ll need to cover the gap to where you want to be. Once you know where you want to go, you will have the right intention to start to rebuild yourself.

Dig into yourself. Really question your current values and belief system. Shift your mentality to become a learner. Then make an intentional choice on where you want to be. As you progress, you will find and learn the skills you need to get from here, to your future.

I’ve been stuck trying to change for quite some time. I realized that my adult life has been a few sets of giant cycles of trying to create change. The cycle is some form of something new: move to a new city, start a new relationship, find a new job. I believe the “change” I’m looking for is to fill a feeling of void in myself, a sense of “emptiness” that I’ve felt since a very early age.

What’s extremely frustrating is that no matter what new thing I have tried to do, I have not changed much. I do not feel the opposite of “empty” or any sort of life satisfaction.

Albert Einstein’s quote comes to mind: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” I feel insane.

I feel so insane, that thoughts of suicide pop into my head. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I don’t want to die. Then why thoughts of suicide?

It’s because I desperately want change, and death is the quickest and easiest way to immediate change. It’s not the best long term solution though, so I just revert to my normal cycle of moving from city to city and staying insane inside my head. Very unhealthy, I know.

Most of my research lately has been trying to figure out why change is so hard. I last wrote about Mel Robbins saying that it is simple to change, but not easy.

Then I came across Dr. Joe Dispenza on Impact Theory. He explains that change is extremely difficult for people because our bodies are on a completely different programing. By the time we are 35 years old, 95% of who we are is a memorized set of behaviors, emotional reactions, unconscious habits, hardwired attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions. These all act as a program in our subconscious mind, running on autopilot. Even if the other 5% wants change, we are fighting against years of programming and against our own bodies.

So how can we get past ourselves? If we are already programmed to respond in one way, what can we do? Many people, myself included, wait for something outside to drive this change. But true change has to come from yourself.

In order to do this, we have to start mentally rehearsing the action that we want. When we mentally rehearse, if we are truly present, our brain will not know the difference between what we are imagining and what we’re experiencing in real life. This practice will start to install the neurological hardware into our brain to look like the event has already occurred. And slowly the brain ceases to become a record of the past. It transforms into a map of the future.

The hardest thing about this exercise is to teach your body emotionally what the future will feel like ahead of the actual experience. You cannot wait for your success to feel empowered. You cannot wait for wealth to feel abundant.

“The moment you start feeling abundant and worthy, you are generating wealth. The moment you are empowered and feel it you are beginning to step towards your success. The moment you start feeling whole, your healing begins and when you love yourself and you love all of life, you will create an equal and now you are causing an effect.”

That’s the difference between living as a victim versus a creator. As a creator, you are saying “my thinking and my feeling is changing an outcome in my life.” We need to start defining ourselves using a vision of a future that we define.

To begin this visualization process, we must start by disconnecting from our environment and focusing on the present. Often times, it’s our environment and our daily routines that represent ourselves. By disconnecting and focusing on the present, we are teaching ourselves to overcoming our current instincts to revert to a routine or feel past emotions. If we focus on past emotions, we are sending our energy into the past.

However, by catching ourselves in those moments and telling our minds to focus on the present, we are reprogramming ourselves that our will is greater than our subconscious program. As we repeat this practice, we eventually reprogram our subconscious.

This will help free us from the chains of emotions that keep us in the past and it’s the beginning of the change we are looking for.

I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll do it later. I’ll try.

If I utter any of those phrases above, I already know it’s a lie. I definitely will not start tomorrow. I won’t do it later. I will sort of try, but not really. My behavior won’t change at all.

I’m being brutally honest in this article. Honest, not with my imaginary readers, but more with myself. I suck at change and I am stuck. But is this really that shocking? The more I read about mental health, the more I realize that many people struggle with this. So being honest about this is not jaw dropping news.

Here’s the real issue: deep down, I don’t want to change. Because changing requires a shift in values. It requires course correction. It requires energy to do something different. It requires me to step outside my comfort zone of being negative and depressed.

Yeah, you read that right. Feeling negative and down about myself is my comfort zone. How can this be?

I have been struggling with depression, anxiety, negative thinking for so long, that I can’t even remember what it feels like to be in an opposite state of depression. My mental state has been negative for so long, that being negative is the status quo. Being negative has become my habit.

I recently watched an episode of Impact Theory with Mel Robbins where she explains that anxiety is actually a habit of worrying spiraling out of control. We are not “worriers”, but actually people that have a habit of worrying.

This made me think that maybe I am not actually a negative person. I’m just someone who has the habit of negative thinking. I have a habit of worrying. And it’s gotten out of control. It’s at a point where most of my waking moments are filled with worrying, hate, anger, fear, sadness. I fall asleep thinking negative things and wake up with negative thoughts. It’s no surprise that I am a negative person!

So what the fuck do I do? How can I get myself out of this negative spiral? Mel Robbins says the answer is actually within you already. It’s just been buried underneath the fake belief that “I have to be ready to change” and that “I need the motivation to do it.” It’s buried underneath hesitating to make a move.

When we hesitate, we send a stress signal to our brain saying something is wrong. Our brain will find some risk associated with our hesitation and blow it out of proportion. It’s doing this to protect us, to keep things easy because we were not designed to be uncomfortable or scared.

The irony is that to build the life we want, we have to do the uncertain things, the things that make us uncomfortable, the things that make us scared.

I realized that change will not happen by constantly telling myself that “I am not negative” and “I am not a depressed person.” I cannot change by telling myself to “think positive” and that “everything’s fine.” My mind will never wake up one day wanting to do the hard thing of stepping outside my comfort zone. It’s why getting out of bed is so difficult. Who wants to get out of a comfortable, warm bed?

This is the genius of Mel Robbins counting backwards from 5 practice. There’s a small window where we can move from idea to action before your brain kicks in and sabotages the idea. It’s a simple act of counting, out loud, backwards from 5.

The action of counting back from 5 interrupts our habit loops that are encoded in the part of the brain called the basal ganglia. This is where feelings and emotions exist. Once the habit is interrupted, our prefrontal cortex is activated. This is important because this part of the brain is required to change behavior. It’s the part of the brain that lights up when learning new things.

Once you hit 1, this prompts you to get started. It’s the trigger for your brain to start moving, to shift into a different gear.

Mel Robbins explains further on how this works: “It requires you to focus. It’s not a habit. It will become a habit that prompts you to have confidence and courage. But at the beginning it interrupts patterns of behavior that you do on autopilot. It helps you assert control and it teaches you how to become the kind of person that moves from thinking about something to actually doing it.”

In 5 seconds, our brain can fill us with self-doubt and rob us of our power and potential. Or we can take the 5 seconds, kick ourselves out of autopilot and become the decision maker.

I’ve started using this practice to take back control over my thinking. Because worrying and negative thinking have become a habit, when my brain loses focus, it shifts to one of these habits. When I catch myself thinking negative thoughts, I count back from 5 to interrupt my autopilot. Once I hit 1, my prefrontal cortex has been activated and is ready to accept a new thought. I focus on my breathing and repeat a couple mantras. Lately, it’s been “I am enough” and “I have all the answers within me.” Then I refocus on what I was doing, whether it’s writing, reading, watching TV, cooking, whatever.

I don’t expect this counting backwards practice to immediately change my life. (I feel like I’ve said this before about other practices.) I’m not all of a sudden going to become an optimistic person loving life. However, what I really love about this practice is how simple it is. To be clear, it’s not easy because I still have to act, but at least I am interrupting my negative behavior patterns. And just like practicing anything, if I can practice interrupting even one negative thought a day, I believe that I will see the changes over time.

If you’re struggling with constant negative thoughts, try this practice out for a few weeks and see if it can help you. Also, please check out Mel Robbins on Impact Theory for more. There’s a lot of great things in the episode.

Framing a question, study, or a marketing scheme makes a huge impact on the outcomes. For example, consider how doctors often speak of surgeries. They can say either one of the phrases below:

A: The survival rate is 90%.

B: There is a 10% mortality rate.

The sentences provide the same information. However, surgery was more favored from Phrase A vs. Phrase B. This is due to how the surgery was framed.

In another experiment, two gambles are framed with the word KEEP or LOSE. The outcome of the gamble is actually the same, but our minds tend to be biased towards the word KEEP versus LOSE.

It seems that it would be in our best interest to reframe decisions to find a different point of view. But, reframing is effortful and requires System 2 to step in. As we know, our System 2 is quite lazy and “unless there is an obvious reason to do otherwise, most of us passively accept decision problems as they are framed and therefore rarely have an opportunity to discover the extent to which our preferences are frame-bound rather than reality-bound.” (Thinking, Fast and Slow, Loc 6677)

Priming of a day seems similar to framing of questions. Our minds can easily be manipulated by simply framing questions. I believe this is why priming can do wonders.

By priming ourselves throughout the day to look for what we want to see, then our minds start to look out for what we want.

Personally, I prime my days in the morning by telling myself that “today is going to be an awesome day.” I’m framing my day with “awesome” to bring a positive spin to my days. This is actually quite difficult for me, because I currently struggle with constant negative thoughts. So priming my mind to look for “awesome” things throughout the day is a big part of my effort to get out of my negative thinking pattern.

As I continue the priming practice in the morning, the hope is that my mind will start to frame activities and decisions in a more positive mindset as the day unfolds. The more I read into Thinking, Fast and Slow, the more I realize that our minds are very pliable and can be reprogramed. We are not stuck in the mindset that we are at. We can overcome bad habits and patterns with the right mindset.