Join me as we peel back the layers of the top of mind theory, revealing the intricacies of our mental hierarchies. Together, we venture into the realm of the Zwicky Box Technique, a unique tool that dissects our top of mind concerns, helping us decode the urgency and importance of our daily tasks. Throughout our conversation, you'll be equipped with practical strategies to harmonize your immediate needs with your long-term dreams, ensuring that your actions are in sync with what truly matters to you.
This episode isn't just about task management; it's a profound look at the values that shape our lives. We share stories and insights on how personal goals and relationships influence our thoughts and actions, and why discomfort can be a powerful indicator of misalignment with our aspirations. By embracing the continuous cycle of learning and growth, we underscore the importance of self-reflection and self-love in keeping our priorities aligned with our personal growth. Don't miss out on this transformative dialogue that promises to leave you with a clearer vision of how to keep what's essential at the forefront of your mind.
Podcast Sponsors: Hi Voltage Bargains Robert Piper Ethan “Rooshock” The BOLO Hunter 2ndHandGang Vic Tiger4Life73
► SUBSCRIBE to the podcast on ▹ Spotify | https://bit.ly/FYL_Spotify ▹ Apple Podcast | https://bit.ly/FYL_Apple ▹ Google Podcast | https://bit.ly/FYL_GooglePod
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Join me as we peel back the layers of the top of mind theory, revealing the intricacies of our mental hierarchies. Together, we venture into the realm of the Zwicky Box Technique, a unique tool that dissects our top of mind concerns, helping us decode the urgency and importance of our daily tasks. Throughout our conversation, you'll be equipped with practical strategies to harmonize your immediate needs with your long-term dreams, ensuring that your actions are in sync with what truly matters to you.
This episode isn't just about task management; it's a profound look at the values that shape our lives. We share stories and insights on how personal goals and relationships influence our thoughts and actions, and why discomfort can be a powerful indicator of misalignment with our aspirations. By embracing the continuous cycle of learning and growth, we underscore the importance of self-reflection and self-love in keeping our priorities aligned with our personal growth. Don't miss out on this transformative dialogue that promises to leave you with a clearer vision of how to keep what's essential at the forefront of your mind.
Podcast Sponsors: Hi Voltage Bargains Robert Piper Ethan “Rooshock” The BOLO Hunter 2ndHandGang Vic Tiger4Life73
► SUBSCRIBE to the podcast on ▹ Spotify | https://bit.ly/FYL_Spotify ▹ Apple Podcast | https://bit.ly/FYL_Apple ▹ Google Podcast | https://bit.ly/FYL_GooglePod
► Let's CONNECT on social media: ▹ instagram | http://www.instagram.com/furtheryourlifestyle ▹ twitter | http://www.twitter.com/furtheryourlife ▹ email | hello@furtheryourlifestyle.com
Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I'm your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you Episode 162 today, and we are talking about the top of mind theory. For me personally, over the last couple of weeks I've been having the conversations actually with Carla regarding top of mind, and for me, top of mind, when I think about it, is the things that are literally sitting at the top of your mind that you need to address or the things that you're avoiding in doing, and usually when you complete the top of mind item, all of a sudden the next thing comes top of mind, and these are the things that usually are at our forefront and the most immediate things that need to happen. However, I wanted to challenge this perspective and I've been doing a little bit of research of how I could possibly do this, and there's this little thing called the Zwicky Box Technique. Now, I've never used this. You can have a look up on screen what it is yourself if you're here on the YouTube, and the Zwicky Box is a simple and effective way to create many unique ideas by breaking the problem down into categories, adding values to each category and then combining these values to create unique answers. And I thought why don't we do this around the psychology of our own individual personal lives? With the concept of top of mind? It sounds a bit complex, but hear me out, it's going to mean it'll be a little bit different to the usual context that it would be applied in, but I think it's a really great way that we can break it down top of mind. And what I'll be doing is I've put it into this little tool and it's come out with a whole bunch of different things that we're going to break down together about seven different points, and each point then has a dimension, our qualities and a dynamics breakdown of those different points. For example, we're going to be talking about priority setting. When we refer to top of mind, that means it's obviously something to do with priorities and what are the dimensions, what are the qualities and what are the dynamics when referring to priority setting? And we're going to do that for a number of different points, for seven points, and maybe there's something here that will really resonate with you, or maybe there's something here that you think someone else really needs to hear about, because they're always talking about all these different things top of mind. This could be absolutely crucial or key for them, so how about you share it with them? If you are new here, appreciate you being here. Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any more episodes.
Speaker 1:
We're going to roll the intro and we're going to get straight into it. Let's do it top of mind, in relation to personal psychology and life. We're going to use the zinky box approach again.
Speaker 1:
I've used a few different tools to make this happen leveraging chat, gpt, more so just to pull this together. And the first one is when we think about top of mind theory. It talks about priority setting and, in a personal life perspective, top of mind, this potentially could refer to the things that are most important to us or that are urgent to us at any given moment, and I think that's really what it is. It's really your natural body or your natural mind saying to you you've got to do this, this is the most important thing, that's why you're thinking about it, and this might include tasks, goals, concerns, relationships, thoughts and different influences that come together. That is going to influence your actions. So it can be quite hearty and quite, I guess, overwhelming at the same time.
Speaker 1:
Now, breaking it down into the different characteristics that I said before dimension, qualities and dynamics this is where it gets interesting. So if I refer to dimension, this involves evaluating tasks based on their urgency, importance and time sensitivity. So if you do have a whole bunch of things that are top of mind and you think maybe they are priority points, maybe we need to start evaluating these different points on their actual urgency, their actual importance, and are they actually that urgent? We can then refer to qualities around these. And when we think about qualities, we can then refer to qualities around this. And when we think about qualities, immediate needs are tasks that require immediate attention, right, such as paying bills, such as responding to urgent emails, or maybe it's long-term goals, such as things that are overarching as objectives. So it might different things that might contribute to your future. Or it might even be daily tasks or routine activities that are required for your daily functioning. So that helps you give the dynamic that sometimes top of mind are just little things, or they could be really big things as well, but everyone has different priorities, right? My priorities are going to be different to yours today, for the next year, for the next week, however, whatever right.
Speaker 1:
The other point of this is, then, the dynamics of priority setting. How do we then balance short-term demands with long-term aspiration, and in doing so, this requires effective time management and the ability to prioritize tasks, which is why they're probably top of mind, because your mind is throwing at you you got to do this, you got to do this, you got to do this, and that's why you're not able to sleep at night. So aligning our actions with priorities then involves evaluating how, maybe, if we do daily activities and put in daily reps, maybe that's going to then contribute to longer term goals and helping us then adjust our behavior accordingly. That is a lot to take in. That is a lot to take in. I've tried to paraphrase all this and bring it together with my notes, but really, what we're trying to say here is like, if you are having a whole bunch of things that are hitting you in the head top of mind, it could potentially be regarding priority settings, and that's a whole bunch of different understandings that we talked about, maybe how you can handle it, maybe why they're coming to you, but most of the time time it's probably because it's something you need to attend to.
Speaker 1:
The second way we can look at this is maybe a cognitive bias. Now, this one's an interesting one. Naturally, when someone has a conversation with you or when you see something, we have been influenced by people before us and, with that in mind, we have things that pop to mind. When we have a conversation, or when someone says something to us, or maybe someone refers to someone, or maybe someone shows you a brand, we naturally have this idea oh yeah, that's that. Or oh yeah, I know this.
Speaker 1:
Because, oh, we generalize or we stereotype or we and that really comes down to a confirmation bias, and it may lead us to focus on information that confirms our existing beliefs. Only because we assume that's what's being applied here and therefore it keeps it to our top of mind, it continues to re-bring that back as a confirmation, to know that this is, oh yeah, this is right. Now, what I'm saying here is this doesn't necessarily mean it is right. It's because of our own upbringing or our own understanding. So we need to be super careful with this. And if we look at the dimension around it, cognitive biases affect how individuals process information, perceive reality and form beliefs. It's quite important. So the qualities around this need to be really important, because confirmation bias is the tendency to favor information that confirms existing beliefs or hypothesis. Right, so it might mean we're making decisions based on readily available information rather than considering all the relevant data. If someone says, oh yeah, this is good because I said so, that's not all the relevant data, what about the other 10 people in the room? Right? So we need to be careful of that.
Speaker 1:
The other point is then the anchoring effect, which occurs when individuals rely too heavily on the first piece of information they've encountered, opposed to the nine other pieces of information that are available. So, when we bring into the dynamic factor, we need to recognize and we need to mitigate biases by bringing together questioning. We need to question the assumptions, we need to seek different perspectives, we need to consider alternative explanations, and when we do that, we can bring in this critical thinking and analysis, and by doing so, that will become obviously very important and very essential in ensuring that we're evaluating evidence in an objective way or a fair way and making better informed decisions. So that's the other thing we need to be mindful of. The first point was around priority setting. That's when you're by yourself, but when you're having conversations or things, we tend to naturally land where we just always assume. So this one is probably actually for us to go and rehab a bit of a self-reflection and understand. Is this actually true?
Speaker 1:
Number three was then emotional state top of mind. Now, look, I'm just going to read this out because I haven't had a look at this. I tried to keep it off the cuff. Emotions play a significant role in what occupies our thoughts, events or experiences that evoke strong emotions, whether positive or whether negative, and either of them are more likely to be top of mind. This can include recent experiences, unresolved conflicts or aspirations that stir powerful feelings. Yeah, look for me, like when I run. It gets me into this flow state, it gets me into an emotional state and it gets me into this position where I do. I reflect on positive experiences and sometimes negative experiences, but it stirs this powerful emotion to push forward, to strive to complete what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1:
Now, I don't know if that resonates with anyone else, but if we look at it from the dimension, qualities and dynamics, perspectives, emotions vary in different ways. Right, it can be positive or negative, but also with intensity and duration. Sometimes we can have emotions that last for days and sometimes they can be really strong or just really light. So, keeping that in mind, and then the qualities around, that is, are they joyful, are they sad, is it anger or is it fear, maybe it's excitement or maybe it's only when we're among others. So with this we can take into then the account of the dynamics of emotional state and understanding what are the triggers and when. We understand the emotional triggers, this basically involves understanding the different situations or maybe the different thoughts or the memories that push out certain responses that we have, and then if we can manage or regulate those emotions, this would mean we're able to cope with things better.
Speaker 1:
But we need to develop that right. We need to develop strategies on. It might be deep breathing or mindfulness or seeking support, asking help from a friend or someone else, but in the thick of it, maybe at the end of it, we really just need to foster emotional resilience and by doing so we're able to increase our emotional intelligence and we can build the skills to bounce back from, maybe when things aren't going emotionally secure or in an emotional safe environment. We need to be super careful because we can't become reliant on other people. We also can't let our emotions take control of us. We need to control our emotions, but that's not to say that we shouldn't also entertain having these and feeling these emotions as well. So it's a bit of a complex, complex feeling and it's interesting because usually when I think top of mind, I think of priorities. But this is really. That's deep. It is really deep.
Speaker 1:
The next one is stress and anxiety. I think when we're under stress or experiencing anxiety, we will dwell on or move to the thing that is causing that, which becomes top of mind, and I think that sometimes comes back to priorities because it's usually leading to something that we need to deal with and sometimes, by not handling that, it's very hard to focus on anything else or any aspects of life. So when we bring in the different dimensions stress and anxiety it encompasses a various number of different factors. Right, it's including triggers, coping mechanisms and how that impacts our behavior. But when we refer to the qualities, stresses can be related to anything. It can be related to work, it can be related to relationships, finances, life circumstances, and our coping mechanisms may include problem solving, seeking support, it might be engaging in relaxation activities or techniques, and then the other component of this is the impact of stress and the impact of stress and anxiety on behavior can manifest into things that means we become irrational. Is that the right way? Or we start to avoid other people, or we have changes in sleep patterns and we develop maybe bad eating patterns as well. So there's huge things to take into account there. And then when we look at the dynamics of all this, if we identify the different stresses, we can start to understand what's causing it. So, is it specific situations? Is it events that cause the stress or anxiety? If we can develop coping strategies, this requires maybe experimenting with different techniques or ways to determine what works best for you and what works best for someone else, but I think the key one is actually just seeking support from people and reaching out to friends, family, mental health professionals and asking for assistance.
Speaker 1:
Goals and aspirations Look, personal goals and aspirations can be top of mind, and I think this comes back to the priorities as well, and it might be around fitness, it might be around things that are important to us, and I think this really does play into it and it's probably a bit of a. It probably mirrors it very closely, because usually it's what's most important to you. If you're eating something and you start to feel bad, that emotion comes up All of a sudden, that's because it's reminding you that this isn't part of what you want, and I'm going to zoom through this quite quickly because it is very much the same. But when we think about the dimension, what are these goals aligned with our values? And that's why, when you do something, we challenge ourselves is this what we really want? The qualities we need to think about. Is it moving it towards our career objectives? What about our personal growth milestones? Or what about our health-related targets? In doing so, we can look at the different dynamics, such as how do we set the goals? Is it using smart goals methods, but also making sure that they're very clear and they're feasible? But I think the key thing with any goals is making sure that we monitor them and we track them and we adapt as things change and we make the relevant adaptions to ensure that we're still going to be on the path.
Speaker 1:
A lot of this does cross over. The next one is then relationships and look, I think, the people in our lives. As we surround ourselves with the people in our lives, we become a component of them. This might be family members, friends. With the people in our lives, we become a component of them. This might be family members, friends, romantic partners, and, look, they will occupy the top of our minds, and that might be because of emotions or concerns, or you miss them. So there is once again, this overlapping of emotions, and they're our priorities, and I think, when talking about that, when we look at the dimensions, relationships can be assessed based on quality, quantity, and how is that happening? On a back and forth transaction Like it's not a transaction, but what I'm saying, is it just you giving it all one way or is it coming back to you? And when it comes to qualities, we need to think about what is the bond there. Is it a friendship or is it a romantic partnership? So the dynamics here are nurturing relationships involves we have to invest time and effort into building and maintaining connections, and that can be top of mind, because we've got to figure out how to do that.
Speaker 1:
Communication is, then, a key and essential skill of this as well Expressing our thoughts and our feelings effectively, making sure that we're resolving conflicts or any issues or concerns, and then the conflict resolution also means that we need to have a lot of empathy, be active listeners and compromise to reach a mutual, satisfying outcome solution, it becomes quite complex as well. But here I actually struggle to see how those components of the top of mind are relevant, I think, for me, for the top of mind is, if it's top of mind you need to deal with it, and it could just mean that it's goal, or it could be a relationship, or it could be a different thing, right, or it could be some stress. So then, looking at the dynamics, I guess the key points of how we can handle that and manage that when it is top of mind, just in case people aren't seeing that clear. And the last one was then self-reflection and growth. So for individuals, when we prioritize personal development or self-awareness, we do, we get a lot of thoughts and we get a lot of reflections and that might come to our mind top of mind. So this might be, as we start to contemplate our past experiences, how we evaluate our values, our beliefs and how do we consider then future growth opportunities. Again, very similar to some of the other points Self-reflection in itself as a dimension and self-growth.
Speaker 1:
It requires us to be cultivating in self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-improvement and self-love, and the qualities of that includes reflecting on the past experiences, embracing our present identity but then also working towards who we want to be in the future and who we want to be for everyone else. And it's not about for everyone else, but I'm saying, like, what is the legacy we want to leave? So the dynamics on this one, practicing mindfulness for ourselves, that's hard right. I think the best way to look at this is and I say it and I struggle with it because I know I don't do it enough for myself is how can we love others if we don't even love ourselves? So I think we need to find ways that we can facilitate self-reflection in ensuring that we are giving ourselves the time, the emotional support that we need, the love, the care. Practicing that for ourselves, but also seeking feedback from others, can be valuable to get insights of our own personal growth. But you need to make sure that feedback is with love.
Speaker 1:
And I guess, as we continuously we're talking about dynamics here as we continuously learn or seek learning opportunities, we can then seek new experiences and acquire new skills and foster better development. I guess for me, that's why I've really enjoyed building out a business and creating this podcast, because each time I'm trying to push myself into a new position and, as I've done that each week. I'm learning and growing and I've got new things top of mind to share here on the podcast. It comes full circle. But I think the key thing about all of this and we're about to wrap it up is for me, top of mind is going to be one of these things. It's either going to be a priority, maybe it's a bias, maybe it's an emotional state, some stress or anxiety, goals or aspirations, relationships or self-reflection.
Speaker 1:
I think all of that kind of intertwines and overlaps and comes back to the point of if there is something top of mind, it's likely because it needs attention, and then leveraging the different dynamics or the different points we've spoken about here. That's how you go about handling it. If things are sitting in your top of mind and you're not doing anything about it, you're ignoring it and you're beating around the bush and you're only kicking the bucket down the line. So find which one it is, work through the different qualities, understand the different dynamics and look. Maybe it means you use the Zinky Box technique yourself and break it down. Make a decision of how you're going to handle it and deal with it. Some of these things are easy. A lot of these are hard too, so I'm going to leave it there.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to leave it there for you to now go do your own homework, but if you've got questions on this, by all means, please drop a comment down below. I would love to hear from you. Did this resonate with you? And if you think someone else needs to hear this or needed to hear this, send it to them. Share it with them. That would absolutely mean the world to me.
Speaker 1:
And, of course, if you are new here and you've made it this far, hit subscribe. Hit like If you are interested in becoming a supporter of the podcast. I do have memberships on my YouTube channel where you can become a podcast sponsor. There's no extra benefits other than you get to be a supporter of the podcast. Your name will come up at the end. I credit me being able to do this to the grateful people and to the generosity of the people that have already been sponsoring the podcast. It fluctuates between five and seven people on a monthly basis. If that would be something that you're interested in, just help keep the lights on it would absolutely mean the world to me. No pressure to do it, but I figured if I'm going to ask anyone, it's for those that are here at the end listening, and I really do appreciate it. You have a wonderful day, take it easy, and we'll be back here next week doing it all again, cheers.
