Episode 17: Magnetic

Hello and Welcome to the Love Your Life Podcast! This is Episode # 17, Magnetic. I have been thinking about you all week! I left you with an invitation last episode to consider stepping towards something that scares you or you don’t think you can do. Did you come up with something in your life that feels like this? Are you considering tackling it anytime soon? I would love to hear what that is in the comments of the show. This week I want to teach you about a superpower you have that is also a weakness. This is not surprising because strengths are almost always connected with weaknesses. I think of them like different sides of the same coin. If you pick up a quarter off the counter it always comes with a head and a tail. They are inseparable. Most of our strengths and weaknesses are like this. I’ll give you an example. Early on, I noticed my husband’s talent for organizing processes and paying attention to detail—especially at work. It was great for us because he was highly valued by his employers. He quickly earned promotions and saved companies money. However, that same strength became a challenge at home. I prioritize efficiency and speed whereas he is more focused on doing things “right”. I do recognize that I have benefited from his measure 29 times cut once approach, but it is painful during the 28th measurement. This became especially evident when my kids hit middle school and started struggling with math homework. What should have been a 30-minute homework session often turned into a 3-hour marathons when dad was involved because he wanted to refine their processes and teach them why his way was better than the teacher’s way. Many tears have been shed at that kitchen table covered with math papers. I’m not sure my children will ever understand that his focused and detailed strength is anything but a weakness! To be fair he is not the only one around this place with strengths masqueraded as weaknesses. We’ve got a couple of daughters that are the most stubborn humans I have ever run into, and I come from Missouri so that is saying something. They are virtually immovable when they have dug into a decision on something they will or will not do. I perceived it as a weakness as I have butted heads with their younger selves. I will never forget the standoffs with these tiny tyrant toddlers. Once we lost an entire morning of happiness because I wouldn't let her have ice cream for breakfast. I can’t even begin to describe what travelling was like when she knew how to get out of car seats and refused to stay in them anywhere we went or fought like a tiger every time I put her in. Even though the struggle has produced plenty of tears, it is admittedly one of their greatest strengths. Being immovable when you are going after a goal in your life or when you believe yourself to be in the right, especially as a woman in a patriarchal society, is actually a gift. I pity the fool who tries to cross them! And I take great comfort now that they are out of my house, that they will hold their own in this big wide world. I invite you to think about the people you love the most, and also think about how this applies to yourself. What is it that you love about them? Or what do you see as their greatest strength? You were probably attracted to that thing at the beginning of knowing them and hopefully still are today. But consider with me now what the weakness is that comes from that very same strength? Then ask yourself which one you spend the most time thinking about? The strength, or the weakness? The thing you like, or the thing you don’t? Even though we are initially attracted by the strength in others, we find that over time we notice the weakness more than the strength. This happens because our brains come wired with a negativity bias. A bias is simply a mental shortcut that helps us process information quickly. I touched on this a little in episode 3 when I introduced you to your sweet little lizard brain. Negativity bias is the brain’s tendency to give more weight to negative experiences, thoughts, and emotions than to positive ones. This means that we notice, remember, and react to negative stimuli more strongly than positive ones of equal intensity. It's a survival mechanism. Our ancestors had to be highly attuned to threats (predators, poisonous food, social rejection etc.) to stay alive. While modern life is far less dangerous, our brains still operate as if detecting and avoiding threats is the priority. And our brain has many biases - or shortcuts that help us process information quickly. It is amazing how efficient it can be, so that it can reserve its energy to scan for danger and keep us personally and our species in general alive. I want to introduce to you to another bias today called confirmation bias. It is basically a mental habit of favoring information that matches what we already think or believe and ignoring or rejecting what doesn’t, it is the shortcut the brain uses to reinforce the thoughts that we think. It’s easy to see how biases like negativity and confirmation create problems, so why do we have them? Because, just like any coin, they have a strength or purpose—they help us process the world faster. Our negativity bias kept our ancestors alive by making sure they remembered which berries made them sick or which rustling in the bushes meant danger. And confirmation bias is actually a sign of efficiency—our brain is designed to recognize patterns quickly and reinforce what we already ‘know’ so we don’t have to start from scratch every time. But The problem isn’t that we have these biases; it’s that we’re often using them against ourselves instead of for us. But once we recognize them, we can redirect them—using the same mental shortcuts to focus on strengths, possibilities, and proof that life is working in our favor There are plenty of studies out there that help us understand these processes in the brain. Donald Hebb who is known as the father of neuropsychology discovered back in 1949 that our neurological connections become faster and faster the more often they are used. Today Hebb’s Rule is a foundational principle in neuroscience, stating that the more we think a thought, the stronger the neural pathway becomes. There are lots of studies, big words, and technical language that can teach us this information, but my simple way to describe it helps my clients and I cut through the sludge in our thinking patterns quickly and easily by picturing our brain as a magnet, and the thoughts we think are the directors that select what we attract to the magnet. Once we think a thought, our brain goes to work bringing every bit of evidence it can to our awareness that the thought we think is correct. Brains are such powerful magnets for the thoughts we think, BUT they are not doing any work to filter out if those thoughts are actually TRUE when fueled by confirmation bias- and they certainly don’t care if the evidence they bring to us to support our thoughts makes us feel good. This means our brains want to be right- more than they want to feel good. So think of this giant magnet in your head that is continually pulling evidence around you to prove to you that you are right, and remember that your brain also has a negativity bias. Which as a reminder means that when your brain is left unmonitored it will highlight to you all the things that it doesn’t like or is scared of. And you will start to see how easy it is to constantly believe the thoughts you think about the weaknesses of yourself and those you love. And you will notice that it does not feel bueno. Soooooo what does the brain do when you think the thought “my child is so stubborn? She doesn’t listen to me?” Your brain instantly goes on the hunt for every shred of evidence it can find to show you that your child is stubborn and doesn’t listen to you (which it has thousands of little memories of, especially the older the child gets,) and as those pieces of evidence pile in, they start to compound. So you can easily go from being annoyed that your child is stubborn and doesn’t listen to you, to a full on panic that your child is going to die because they will one day be so stubborn that they won’t listen to the airline directions when they tell them to put their seatbelt on and then they die in a plane crash because of it. I know this is a funny exaggerated ending, but this is one of the most common thought processes I help people see in themselves on a daily basis.Because our brain is such a powerful magnet for evidence that the thoughts we think are true - It will end up creating the wildest stories. I’m not joking, and you are probably believing some exaggerated stories right now, and are not even aware of it. You are more likely to notice that you are worried, sad, disappointed, scared, or lonely than you are to notice what the thoughts are that magnetize the evidence that makes you feel so wretched. I run into these thoughts on a daily basis with my clients. Here are some very common ones. -I have too big of a personality. I am not enough. My child will never be happy. My partner doesn’t see me. I can’t handle this circumstance. I can never have what I want. My daughter doesn’t care about me. My spouse is driving our children away. I am too old for this. My body can’t do the things it used to. No one listens to me around here. I’ve ruined my children. -my sons never call. The best parts of my life have already happened. I can go on and on = and I have no doubt that if you don’t hear yourself in one of these lines, you have something similar that is a thought you completely believe, have tons of evidence for, and is absolutely limiting you from seeing the positive in an area of yourself, your life, or your people, I promised you as I started today that I was going to tell you that you have a super power and that it is also a weakness. AS I have talked you might have noticed that negativity and confirmation biases definitely create weaknesses, I mean they are magnetizing evidence for things that make us feel horrible without any effort on our part. This is true, but remember that every coin has a head and a tail. The flip side of every weakness is a strength. What if all it takes is to wake up and be aware that we have a wired in bias, and that when we think things we are magnets for evidence - that evidence will make us feel bad or good - it just depends on the evidence we are calling in. If you have gotten in the habit of only noticing your weaknesses or the weaknesses of the people around you, you will not be feeling great about them or yourself, or your life. But if you use the information I am offering today to examine what the strengths are that are connected to those weaknesses, you will then have the opportunity to give more thought and attention to the strengths. Once you start noticing what the strengths are you can use the great magnet of your brain to attract evidence that these thoughts are true. And The higher the quality of the thoughts about people, the better the relationship you have with them will be. I have mentioned before that I am a firm believer that the quality of our life is determined by the quality of the relationships in our life. I also believe that the quality of the relationships in my life is determined by me. Namely by what I think about them. I start with the relationship I have with myself. If that is fueled by negative thinking that attracts evidence of everything I am lacking and limits everything I think I can do, nothing outside of me is going to make that feel better. Which means, I have to start working on those thoughts first. Then I work outward from there. I have a relationship with my husband, with my family members in all generational directions, with my friends, with my clients, and with my life. Every time I think a thought about any person or thing I relate to, I am sending my brain on the errand to collect evidence that I am right about them. So instead of being right that your child is stubborn, your spouse doesn’t know when to let up, you are too much, or your life is not what you hoped it would be - Practice thinking thoughts that are the opposite of these and see what evidence you can look for on purpose in your life until your brain starts easily magnetizing the new thoughts. It will feel a lot better to think that your child is determined, that your spouse is dependable, that you are enough, and that your life is constantly evolving towards more of what you want and less of what you don’t want. If your negative lizard brain gets loud and tries to tell you that these new thoughts are wrong, give it a little nudge with your curiosity instead of a free pass of acceptance. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again - you don’t HAVE to believe every thought you think. Your brain is a magnet, but you get to choose what it attracts. Choose wisely, and you’ll shape a life that feels amazing —not just one where you’re ‘right. And that my friend, will definitely help you love your life more today than you did yesterday, and it makes the promise of tomorrow even more sweet because after you have done the initial work to challenge the old patterns, and start to establish new ones, the new ones will eventually run on auto pilot because you will have become a magnet for good. Thanks for spending your time with me today! Make sure to like this podcast, leave a comment, and share it with those who want better relationships in their life. Talk to you soon!