If you're struggling to embody a beginner's mindset or want to learn additional ways to help your brain in the face of change, schedule a free discovery session to learn how working with a neuroplasticity coach could help you.
Transcript:
And welcome back everyone to yet another episode of the Esoteric Wellness Blog. I am your host, Coach Kyle.
So today, what's been on my mind so far and really much of this week is I've been meeting with a lot of new clients. This week, which is always really cool. It's one of the one of the parts I love about this job is just getting to meet new people from all different walks of life, and that's always really interesting. And one of the first things I often discuss with the new client as they embark on this process, this journey of change of whatever they're focusing on in their life. Is trying to embrace this beginner's mindset as we approach change. And it's really, it's one of the most common things that gets in the way of change for people is we lose sight of that and we'll discuss how that happens later on today.
But what is a beginner's mindset? First of all, it's it's Having the ability to understand and recognize that we're trying to do something new, we're changing something about ourselves, about our lives, and we're not going to go into that as the expert. We are venturing into unfamiliar territory in many ways, and we're a beginner. And we're going to mess things up. We're going to get things wrong. We're going to forget. We're going to relapse into old habits that we're trying to get rid of. We're going to veer off course many times throughout the process of change. Change is not a graceful process. It never is. I don't care who you are, what you're trying to change. It's ugly sometimes.
So going into change with this mindset that, OK, I'm new at this, I'm learning new things, learning new habits, and it's not going to be perfect. Not carrying that extra self-imposed pressure to be perfect, to get it right the first time, every time can really make a big difference. Being gentle with ourselves that wow, I really messed that up. And that's OK, because that's how change happens.
I think in in a lot of ways, that repeated series of failures, of forgetting, of relapsing to old habits and patterns, that's really what drives change. That's how we learn. That's how our brains learn. It's not flipping a switch that suddenly I decide to be different and now I am. That's not how change works at all.
So just being gentle with ourselves as we're going through this process of change, that it's OK. It's not graceful for anyone. It's OK to feel like, wow, I really messed that up or I failed at this this time around, but I'm going to try again and I'm going to keep going. And each of these missteps or steps in the wrong direction or just another opportunity to learn, another opportunity to to improve and get better.
So why does this matter? Why does this matter? Why Why is being hard on ourselves like to be perfect, to get it right the first time, how does that get in the way? Well, looking at this through a lens of neuroscience and how neuroplasticity happens and how just how the brain functions. When we put that kind of pressure on ourselves to be perfect, to get it right, and we don't, and then we feel bad about it, we beat ourselves up. That kind of self-imposed pressure can be seen by our brains as a threat, as a potential danger that we need to do something about, get away from, whatever.
So what you must understand about change is our brains don't like change. This is why change is so hard. Our brains like everything to be the same, everything to be predictable, so that it can save energy and make predictions much easier, much sooner, so that it doesn't have to analyze all this information. We talked about this in more depth in our episode on uncertainty. Change is uncertain. That's just a fact about change. So our brains don't like change.
So anytime we go to change anything about ourselves, about our lives, our brains aren't going to be happy about that. Already out the gate. We can't address that. We can't change that. That's just how our brains are going to react to change. There's already going to be a fight from parts of your brain in this process.
That's why it's so easy to give up. That's why it's so easy to fall back into old habits, old patterns that we're trying to get rid of or change, because that's what our brain wants to do. This is not a matter of lack of willpower that we're not good enough to change. We don't want it enough. This is you're fighting a battle with parts of your brain, quite literally.
So when we put that extra pressure on ourselves to be perfect, to get it right, to not mess this up, to change somehow gracefully, that extra pressure is extra threat seen by our brain. And it's just gonna cause our brain to fight us that much more through this process of change. Change is going to be that much harder. We're more likely to give up and not make it through this process of change at all.
And then on the opposite end of this spectrum, if we embrace this beginner's mindset, the message we're sending our brain is that we're cared for, we're safe, we're okay. And when we can even create extra additional ways to make our brain feel safe,During times when we're trying to make changes and our brain feels more threatened than usual, that can act as like a counterbalance to outweigh or at least even out the extra threat that our brain is seeing in our life because of this change we're trying to create and by showing ourselves extra self-compassion, extra Maybe even humor. Being able to laugh at our situation. Just, you know, that gentleness with ourselves that it's OK, we screwed this up and that's OK. We don't need to feel threatened by that.
So having this beginner's mindset just makes change easier. It's helping ourselves to get through change more gracefully, to not mess us up as much. And by focusing on the opposite, trying to be perfect, we're going to be far less perfect and we're just going to feel bad about it. We're going to feel worse about the whole thing in general because we're going to mess it up more because the brain's going to fight us more.
So this is really what I focus on when I'm working with people in the process of change is how can we? Go through this process. It's already hard. We can't change that. It's going to be hard. But how can we make it as easy as we can? How can we help our brain to feel better about this process of change so that it's not fighting us as much? And this beginner's mindset is a big foundation of that. Let's not make this harder for ourselves. Harder than it needs to be, than it's already going to be.
So if you're struggling right now to change something in your life, to change the way you think, the way you feel, your behavior, whatever it might be, be gentle with yourself. Have that beginner's mindset. You're going to mess it up. Change is going to be hard. It has nothing to say about your character, about who you are. This is just what our brains do in the face of change and just having the willingness to accept and be present with those challenges that you face in change and recognize that this is normal, this is what everybody deals with. It's OK, you're going to mess it up and you're going to recover from that and try again. And it'll probably happen more times and you'll keep trying and eventually you will change.
But if you make this extra hard, you're far less likely to make it through that change into the long term. So be gentle with yourself. Have a beginner's mindset. Change is messy, change is ugly. No one gets to change gracefully. So. Keep that in mind.
I hope somebody finds this helpful. Change is hard for everyone. It always is.Â
So thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. And you are beautiful. You are loved. Until next time.
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