Welcome to my Mindset 101 Series! Throughout this series I will be sharing the fundamentals of mindset work. In this episode I’m going to discuss:

• What explains the concept, “when it rains, it pours”
• How to get yourself out of the rut of negativity using brain science

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What your brain chooses to look for, it sees more of. Your brain is designed to work like a funnel. There is so much data around us at any given moment, it would be impossible to observe, interpret, and store all of this information. In order to work efficiently, the brain accepts information into the funnel that feels more important or familiar and it lets the rest get filtered out.

Our brains tend to latch on to more of the same vs. taking in what feels contradictory. A great example is when you’ve decided you want to buy a red Jeep and then ALL you see on the road are red Jeeps. You feel like you’ve never seen so many red Jeeps on the road in all your life! This isn’t magic, there aren’t actually more red Jeeps around you, your brain is just taking notice of more examples to support what is already on your mind.

Your brain wants to collect more evidence to support whatever it believes. It’s like a lawyer that is working to build a case to support the story it wants to tell.

You know those people who always seem to be followed by a rainy cloud of gloom (maybe it’s you…) Well, when you believe “bad things always happen to me,” your perspective of the circumstances of your life center around finding the negative aspects of things. Your brain will offer you all the reasons why life is “terrible” and it overlooks the things that would suggest anything otherwise.

This is why having an “attitude of gratitude” is less cliché and more useful than you might think. When your brain is on the lookout for things to be grateful for, it will go to work to find more positive things happening around you. Your overall experience of your life takes on a more positive perspective and you feel better.

Your brain likes to prove itself right, it doesn’t like to be wrong. If you believe weight loss is HARD, you are someone who always gives up on yourself, you can’t do it for whatever reason, and that living a simple and comfortable life as a thin woman just isn’t in the cards for you…that is EXACTLY what your brain is going to seek to create. You will continue to subconsciously (or perhaps even consciously) create a very hard, difficult, or impossible experience trying to lose weight. You cannot have a simple and easy time losing weight until your brain chooses to believe that perhaps that is in fact possible.

As a coach, I help my clients get un-stuck from their current thought patterns that are preventing them from feeling better, having the experience of life they want, and having their ideal body.

The next time you feel stuck in a rut of negativity, remember that this is just your brain collecting more evidence to support what it believes to be true. Learning to intentionally redirect your brain to finding the evidence that actually supports and serves you is a total game changer. The positive evidence is there my friend, you just have to do a little work to discover it!

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