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Further Your Lifestyle
Further Your Lifestyle
EP. 172 - Retraining Your Mindset for Personal Growth | Further Your Lifestyle Podcast
Watch here: https://youtu.be/Uzd_EtJQ6tE
In this episode of Further Your Lifestyle podcast, host Chris delves into the concept of changing our mindset by understanding and managing the gap between our expectations and reality. He shares personal experiences and research on how our perceptions shape our emotions and reactions. Topics covered include handling emotions, controlled hallucination, overcoming biases, and cultivating personal growth. Chris provides insights on retraining the brain and balancing positivity and negativity for personal development. Tune in for a deep, insightful conversation aimed at enhancing your lifestyle.
00:00 Welcome to Further Your Lifestyle Podcast
01:20 Understanding Expectations vs. Reality
02:12 Managing Emotions and Triggers
04:39 Perception vs. Reality
09:37 Overcoming Biases and Heuristics
14:16 Personal Reflections and Call to Action
17:05 Conclusion and Listener Engagement
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Yo yo yo. Welcome back to the Further your Lifestyle podcast conversations on lifestyle passions and hustles. My name's Chris, I am your host and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 172 today, and the topic we're talking about today is mixed between how do we change what we can control, but also, at the same time, focusing on how do we change our mindset by changing our reality. Now, this is a bit of a it might sound a little fluffy. I have actually spoken about this on a regular basis on the podcast as well about maybe sometimes we need to come to grasp with expectations versus reality. Now, the reason why I bring this topic up is it's something very close to my heart at the moment, because I am dealing with a bit of a struggle between the reality of what I want versus sorry, the reality of what I'm getting versus the expectations of what I want. But we're really going to be exploring the perception of reality that maybe it isn't as concrete as we might think, because we have this idea in our head and then there's a reality that is actually happening. So how do we go about understanding this? But also, how do we manage it with our emotions and how do we manage it with our reactions for the better. So it's a bit of a deep one. It is a lot of information. I have done a little bit of research myself, just finding a few different pointers, a few different things that people are talking about, and we're going to dive in and talk all about that. The reason why I think this is so important for furthering our lifestyles is because, if you want to go in a direction, to where you want to be and we did speak about this last week there's a whole bunch of different things that we need to think about. Why are we struggling to get there? Are we actually doing the steps that it takes? What's holding us back? Do you even want this Now? That aside, when we start to pursue furthering our lifestyles, we do need to make sure that we do have a clear understanding of expectation versus reality, of what are we doing, and is it doing what the reality of it requires, or are we doing something that doesn't really align to it? And that's really what we're diving in today. So it's a bit of a deep and meaningful one. Might be not your cup of tea, but I think some of you will really enjoy this. So buckle up, get cozy and let's roll the intro.
Speaker 1:So the first area that I want to talk about is finding your trigger. Now this comes into play when we talk about how do we handle our emotions. When we first learn how to handle our emotions, we often rely on, unfortunately, repression. We try to hide our feelings. We don't want to have them come out and show who we really are. We get scared around other people. Unless you're an outgoing butterfly, social butterfly, maybe you like everyone to know how you're feeling and that's fine. But I think naturally, as a generalization, we tend to hide our feelings. Naturally and in the long term, this is probably not a really good solution. It really isn't going to help us in the long run. I think repressing emotions, it leads to burnout and it leads to negatively impacting our mental health. I know that personally. Right, when we don't talk about things, when you build things up, it's when it's going to open you up to having a obviously cracking it, snapping, getting worked up to a boiling point at when there's no context and someone else says something and you get triggered, you get the point. I think the more effective approach around this is, instead of hiding the emotions, it's more effective to stop triggering them in the first place. I think an example of this could be getting very open here For me.
Speaker 1:I tend to feel threatened by disagreements, or I feel threatened when someone gives me a feedback or leaves me a comment and it's not easy to deal with. I'm getting better at doing it and sometimes it's warranted and sometimes it really isn't, because it's my own insecurities or my own issues that I need to deal with. And working through that has been a bit of a trial and error, and changing how we react it does. It requires us to do this on a trial and error basis and I had to understand why is it actually threatening me or why is it getting me worked up or why is it triggering me so I can work on changing that perception and work on having a better understanding. Doing that is easier said than done. I totally get it, I really do, but I think if you're not willing to have that conversation, entertain that, then it is going to be very hard to work through that. The other way for me has been actually just talking about it, bringing it out open, being very open about it, not letting it build up, because when you do let it build up, it makes it worse. So do not letting it build up, because when you do let it build up, it makes it worse. So do not let it boil up to a boiling point. You want to get it out and you want to deal with it and you want to figure out why is this causing me to feel this way? And then you're able to move on With that, I think, which moves on to point number two, which is understanding your reality.
Speaker 1:There is a perception versus a reality, and most of us believe we interpret life in real time, but there's actually like this kind of delay in how our senses process information. It's like reflexes right, you see something, you quickly go to catch it right. But sometimes we might be too slow, especially when we're younger. We might be slower than we can expect, and that's because our brain compensates for this delay by predicting what's going to happen next. As I just said, for example, when we throw a ball, we think about when we go to catch it right. Your brain predicts where the ball's going to be. Therefore, that's where we try to catch it on time. But if we didn't figure that out or we weren't paying attention, we miss it altogether. So there's that element of it, but then there's this other element of controlled hallucination. Now, this is just some scientists. I can't say if this is 100% accurate or whatever, just from what I've been reading and finding. But some scientists are suggesting that our understanding of reality is a controlled hallucination, where our brain's predictions are shaping our perception of what we really want to see.
Speaker 1:This is an interesting one because, depending on what you've read, what you've seen, if you keep telling yourself negative things, you're going to be a negative person. If you keep being a positive person and going through a positive approach, you will become a positive person. Now we can't just be all happy as Larry and think that everything's all good and rainbows and butterflies and unicorn farts. The reality is that's not what is the perception right? The perception might seem like that sorry, but that's not the reality. The reality is that things need to have that balance of positive and negative. There's always going to be that level of positivity and negativity.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we can get so worked up in being too positive that it's saturating, but also we don't want to be and I say this in quotations and I don't mean it in a mad way to the person called Debbie but a Debbie Downer, right? We don't want to be that negative person. How do we find that balance? But if you surround yourself or continue to back yourself up with the same emotions, that's going to confirm your bias. You'll get confirmation bias. It's that simple. What can we do about it? We can take control of our predictions. It's all about fine-tuning our predictions. Changing our predicted reality can help manage our emotions more effectively.
Speaker 1:Now, what I mean by this is, instead of seeing a disagreement as a threat for myself, I think I can aim to see it as an opportunity to learn. So shifting the perception, shifting what that prediction is going to look like. Now you don't want to trick yourself here in the sense of being a fool, and I tend to. Always I do this at two extremes. I either get really up on my high horse or I go to the lengths of nah. Surely they can't mean that and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. So it's needing to find that middle ground. To understand is maybe we just need to look at this from an objective way. It's not personal, but there is some sense of what are they trying to say here. Obviously, when someone says something, it's coming from them, it's coming from their perceived ideas, their realities, their ideas, all these different things. That doesn't mean that's what you should follow, but it does open you up to having a conversation of, maybe, something you did not know. All right, so we need to adjust our objectives. By updating our objectives to reflect on this insight, we can transform our reactions when we have a different idea, a different perception of the reality, we can then start to react in a more controlled manner or a better way of reacting.
Speaker 1:And there's this book Thinking Fast and Slow. Is that what it's called? Thinking Fast, go Slow? I can't remember what it is. It's by Daniel Kahneman, I believe it is. And our brains use shortcuts and heuristics to make predictions, to quickly do things right and this is just an example right, in order to go fast, we need to go slow. And I can understand it. It's like in the theory where sometimes, when you have less time, you tend to get more things done. I know, when I've been sick, I still manage to get things done. It's all these different perspectives. Now I personally haven't read that. I don't think I've read that one. This was just what other people have been referring to. But my analogy of this is you know, sometimes it isn't all about going fast, but how do we take something in, understand it and then react to it in a slow but very meaningful way. And when we say slow, it's not in the sense of being bad, it's just doing in the appropriate manners. Okay, so now we get into the juice of how do we start to retrain our brain from these different perspectives. Right, our brains, they're like.
Speaker 1:It's a very relevant topic machine learning systems. We're trained on our experiences. When we do something, we get an experience. Therefore, we're able to learn from it that we want to do that again. We do not want to do that again. We do not want to do that again. How does that then play into our world of what we believe? A good example of this is this thing called gender shades, and it's a study that showed how biases in training data affected facial recognition systems, similar to how experiences shape our biases. So how do we overcome biases? We have to identify and focus on data that is contributing to undesirable predictions. What I mean by that is you don't want to have something that's just pure confirmation bias.
Speaker 1:Now a little sidestep here. There are five generally accepted types of heuristics in our brain that are used to speed up our decision-making, and some of this might be relevant to you and you might think huh, that's why I do what I do. So there's an availability heuristic judging that something is more likely if examples can more easily be brought to mind. So if you already have a concept of it or an understanding of it, you're able to make a better judgment out of it because you already have. Oh yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense, right, representativeness.
Speaker 1:Heuristic is using stereotypes or categories to group something along with similar mental examples. That's where you get the generalizations. I've already spoken about a few generalizations. It's what groups of things that people tend to know, and it's very similar of mental understanding, a tendency to mentally gravitate towards initially established thoughts. So these are preconceived ideas. Oh, we've always done it like that, so that's why I've done it. Or you just assume everyone else has done it the same way because that's the way that you've always done it, your way. You've been brought up the way you cut something or the way you use your pencil. If you were taught to do it a certain way and no one else told you otherwise, you might get to an adult and someone's oh, you do it that way? Yeah, isn't that how everyone does it? So it's from your initial established thoughts.
Speaker 1:There's then the effect heuristic, judging that if a decision feels good, then it must be the right decision. This one's dangerous. I think it speaks for itself. Just because it's good doesn't mean it's good right. It doesn't mean it's the right decision for you. Then there's the commitment heuristic, believing that if we've already made a decision, we should continue to stick with it. Now, this one is where you need to realize when do you jump off a sinking boat and not be stubborn? I think we can relate to that. So that gives you that understanding around. How do we overcome those biases? So, listening to those different points, you might say, oh, I do that, or I've got that, or that's actually something I didn't realize. So maybe go back and listen to that if you need to.
Speaker 1:Cultivating your personal data set. So, in order to change predictions, we want to create more experiences that reinforce a desired outcome. But we have to be careful here. We don't want to be doing the same thing that gets us the reinforcement of our desired outcome. We want to make sure we're expanding our data set to validate our experiences that reinforce our desired outcome. So an example you might want to read more. You might want to attend different webinars, get different interactions with different people.
Speaker 1:Do things that expand your knowledge, right? If I want to test and see can I sell 500 kilos of clothing, the only way I'm going to know that is do a subset of that and then actually do the full amount of that, and it pushes me to think beyond, it pushes me out of my boundaries. It pushes me to do something different, right? So there is a level of ongoing effort that is required. So, like this process requires dedicated effort over time, you can't just do one thing and expect you've got all the answers. You have to continuously have that data set growing that's going to enhance your experience to then able to provide the reinforcement you need that gets you to the desired prediction, making it easier over time.
Speaker 1:That sounds a bit confusing, but the idea is we want to be able to. If you only know this much like I'm just holding up, like a little gap between my fingers, and you only are doing things that confirm this much, that I'm just holding up like a little gap between my fingers and you only are doing things that confirm this much, that is all that you will think you know and is all that everyone needs to know. But there could be all these other things in this big circle around that gap that we don't know because we haven't gone out and understood it, we haven't gone out and researched it, experienced it. All of a sudden, the gap, or the amount that we know, has broadened, and that will change how much we think. Oh okay, yeah, my point still stands, but there's also these other things I need to take into account. Therefore, I'm going to still believe what I believe, but also with these other factors, and it also means it avoids any limited belief.
Speaker 1:This is pretty complex, right? So we've spoken about a lot, right? We've spoken about how our brains predictions shape our reality and how we can change these predictions to manage our emotions better. When we have a better understanding of things, when we take the time to just process it, understand it, look at it from a constructive perspective, we can really understand how we can shape our experiences and predictions for the better. It's really not easy to do. I'm not here to say tomorrow you're going to have this all figured out. If you're really interested in this, you're probably going to have to do a little bit more listening back and applying for yourself. But for me, let me share a good example. So I've been talking about this over the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:For me, there's this perceived perception of what I'm doing versus the reality of what's actually happening in my running journey Over the last few years, I've been running multiple half marathons and I've been doing my ultra marathons as well. Now the only thing that changed going into this year is I had a 12-week break because I was sick. I took some time off. I had COVID, I had some heart issues and then I had some other stuff which we've now dealt with and that in itself gave me a 12-week time off block, which is the longest time I've ever taken off running. But I naturally assumed oh, I'll just jump back on the bandwagon and do what I've always done. But the thing is, I've missed. Your body slows down so quickly in terms that it lost all that foundation of the ability to ramp up just as quick. I can still ramp up, but I have 12 weeks extra to gain. So here I am not doing all this extra work in lead up to me starting a training plan in June.
Speaker 1:I didn't make up for that lost time of 12 weeks. I just assumed it would just come, but I wasn't doing anything that's going to make those differences. My perceived reality was like it's fine, it's all going to figure out when the reality is there's. No, I need to be doing that uptick of what I've lost in the 12 weeks to be able to confirm, to be able to continue to move on Six weeks into the training plan. Unfortunately, because I didn't do that, I've come up with a running injury due to some strength issues and just some stuff in the back Still figuring all that out.
Speaker 1:But the reality is is I can't expect to be able to do three things at once. I can't expect to be able to rebuild that 12 week lost. I can't expect to then manage an injury and recover from that and also train to a peak performance level to be able to do a 50K. Those three things cannot happen simultaneously. It's just not possible. I need to prioritize. What is most important, and most important is getting back to a stable foundation from a running injury. Then I need to rebuild the base and then you jump from that and you go straight into training for a 50k.
Speaker 1:So that's my personal reflection and I think you need to my call action to you is right. You need to start thinking about what do you need to be actively doing to shape your reality and get it back to where the reality is, in terms of if the reality that is existing but you have this perception that doesn't match, that, something's wrong. It's either your perception or it's either the reality. It's probably not the reality. So how do we get to the perception that we want and change the reality to get us to that perception? And usually it means we have to do some work, we have to make some changes, we have to figure out how do we interact with different experiences to understand things better. I already have gone through that experience and I now understand what I need to do for the running side. When we talk about me getting defensive, that still is an ongoing thing. I get defenses very quickly.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I could talk about this a bit more, but I want to hear from you. What are your thoughts, what are your experiences? Let me know down below in the comments. Share your experiences. Let's continue the conversation. I would really enjoy hearing from you. Even if you just enjoyed the episode, let me know If you think this resonates with you and maybe it will resonate with someone else. Please go ahead and share this, send it to someone, let them know, and that would mean the absolute world to me. Otherwise, we'll be back here next week doing it all again. You have a wonderful week and I appreciate you being here. You have a wonderful day as well. Cheers.
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