A Three Step Practice for Change

Hello my friends. Today I want to talk to you about a thought you almost certainly had this week You probably had it more than once And you probably don't know that it's a thought. because it sounds to us like a fact. Three words long And it is quietly sabotaging every goal you have in your life that you care about By the end of this episode, you're going to know exactly what that thought is, why it sounds so much like a fact when it's not and what you can be practicing thinking instead Because changing this one thought is truly the difference between achieving the things you actually want in your life quitting before you ever really get to see the fruits of your labor. So let's get into it Welcome to Unfuck Your Brain. I'm your host Cara Loenthal, master certified coach and founder of the School of New Feminist Thought I'm here to help you turn down your anxiety, turn up your confidence and create a life on your own terms, one that you're truly excited to live Let's go All right, so if you have been listening to this podcast for more than twenty seconds, you know that some of the most destructive thoughts we have are the ones that we don't even recognize our thoughts. Our brain reports them like it's the weather. We say these thoughts to ourselves the way we would say Oh, it's going to be chill. I should bring aack R We think we're just describing what's happening around us when actually we are interpreting, evaluating and formulating a subjective opinion about what is happening But then we are telling it to ourselves like it is a fact And there is one thought that I see ruining more dreams than any other thought. And it is a thought that masquerades as reality, when it is in fact an interpretation And that thought is It's not working It's not working. or slightly more dramatic cousin, this isn't working. Either way This thought, it's not working or this isn't working, it sounds like a fact whether something's working or not seems subjective. likeike is the car driving? it's working. Is the car stalled? It's not working We think that we are just telling ourselves We think we've done it a objective analysis and our brain has been running that in the background and now it has the report ready to give us. And it's true and it's just not working This is a thought And having this thought is not inherently a problem This is just a thought that brains offer belieelving this thought and taking it to be a true circumstance about the world is an incredibly problematic mental habit that all of us share And so I'm going to walk you through four examples of this, four types of women and clients with this problem who I have coached over the years. and I know that at least one of these is going to resonate with you So let's take example number one is the entrepreneur, but this also can be you if you are working on creative project, it can be you if you are trying to do anything where there isn't like status reports submitted to a boss who gives you feedback, right? Anything that you're trying to like create or accomplish where you have to just figure it out yourself and keep going So like let's say you are an entrepreneur, just to pick one example to walk through for this. You spend four months building something you want to try to sell, like a new program, let's say in your business. And you agonize over the name and you read the sales page out loud to your bestie, and you review the emails over and over And you launch on a Monday and by Friday, let's say, four people have signed up and your goal was twenty or twelve, or fifty and you close your laptop the end of the week, you go into your weekend, you go into the kitchen, maybe you start dinner As you are turning on the stove and starting to chop an onion, you're thinking as if it's just fact This isn't working this program isn't working Maybe my business isn't working Maybe this whole career I want is a market. Or let me take an example from your interpersonal life. Let's say we imagine a woman who is dating with intention trying to find a partner So She's finally done the work. She got clear on what she actually wanted in a partner. She spent months doing coaching, journaling, thinking about it, reflecting on her values. She rewrote her dating profile three to four times. She went on a bunch of first dates, started out strong, went on eight first dates in the first two months But none of those turned into a second date And she's opening up the app, ready to swipe again. And her brain just says This isn't working So she puts it down and she gives up This can happen even with self development. So imagine The woman doing thought work. Maybe you've been listening to this podcast for a while and you've been doing some thought downloads. you've been trying to change your thoughts about your body. You've been listening to what I say about body image, you've been trying to practice new thoughts. But then over the weekend, you go try on jeans and you end up crying in the dressing room. And so you walk out, you get in your car or the subway And what you're thinking in the back of your head without even realizing that it's an interpretation is This isn't working thoughtought work isn't working. I can't change my thoughts. It's not working Let me give you one more example because I see this come up a lot with Let's say you are a mom, your seven year old has been struggling with bedtime. And you've like read the books about it. You made the chart with the stickers, right? And you did the sing song for the routine. And you've been trying your fourth approach And you've been trying it for two weeks, but last night your daughter got out of bed eight different times. She wanted water. She wanted a hug. She wanted her window shade down and then up, she said she couldn't sleep, right? And then eventually, you're so exhausted and so stressed out you end up yelling at her to get back in bed and stay there. And then when you get in bed, you're already drowning in shame And you think to yourself, this isn't working As I read each of those, it probably sounded to you like That's right. That shit isn't working Four sales when you wanted fifty. it's not working dates with no second date isn't working. Trying in a dressing room if you've been working on your thoughts about your body image shouldn't happen. That means it's not working Kid getting up eight times at night means the bedtime routine isn't working It seems so obvious. The thought that this isn't working sounds so real, right? It's so fact shaped It seems so neutral that your brain doesn't even pause on it. It really just reads it as like, yeah, this is reality. I'm just telling you the situation It's not reality. It's a decision to think that way. And so that's what this episode is about, right? How to tell the difference and what to tell yourself instead. There are two layers running underneath this one thought. So the first is patriarchal socialization and the second is cognitive psychology. and they intersect to form and reinforce the thought pattern and explains why smart, accomplished software people nevertheless have this thought constantly and don't even know that it is a thought. So Let's start with the patriarchy layer. Women are socialized from a very young age to expect a very specific version of what success looks like, right It should happen quickly, it should be perfect. It should look impressive. It should be visible to other people. You should get external validation for it. Ideally, someone with authority approves it and anoints it, right? And there shouldn't be struggle, there shouldn't be mess, there shouldn't be failure. It's like okay to fail like once or twice a little bit in the beginning just for seasoning But mostly you should just succeed right away O in whatever amount of time your brain has randomly decided is the right amount of time And so this leads to like very black and white thinking It's okay to not have done it maybe before you start, but once you start, you should have done it pretty fast So there's real perfectionism here We believe that falling short of a goal is not just disappointing R? It's not just like an indication that we need to revamp our approach. We take it to be evidence that we're fundamentally not enough that we're missing something, that there's something wrong with us and we can't do it And so the territory between perfect working perfectly and It not working at all. that like is a land that doesn't exist in our minds. There's just I did it or I didn't do it, and there's nothing in between So that's layer one. And then layer two is just how all human brains work, right? Our brains are built for efficiency and not accuracy efficiency, not accuracy. Your brain is not there trying to give you the truth Your brain is in there trying to give you the fastest, cheapest, most cognitively efficient answer it can produce to conserve energy And so your brain is three things that matter for this episode in this thought pattern The first is a binary categorization, and this relates that perfectionism, right Your brain likes clean, clear categories, good and bad wororking and not working, safe or dangerous Understanding a gradient or nuance takes cognitive effort to like think about it and see nuance and see different sides of things and See how you could see it different ways, and a binary takes no effort. So your brain will default to a binary every single time if you haven't trained it otherwise The second is confirmation bias. So your brain weighs evidence that fits the story. It's already telling more heavily than evidence that does not fit. This is one of the most well replicated findings in cognitive psychology, going all the way back to research by a man named Peter Watson in the sixties, so that's now sixty years ago. Once you've decided this isn't working, whatever this is, your brain will just amplify the evidence that supports that conclusion, meaning literally bring it to your awareness and think about it more. And it will minimize the evidence that contradicts it, right? It will either not even bring it to your conscious awareness, or it will quickly explain it away and then never think about it again You're not doing this consciously. You don't even know it's happening but it is. So your brain is Looking for binaries. Once it's decided on a binary and it almost always decides it's not working because you haven't done it perfectly immediately then confirmation bias kicks in, and so you believe that more and more. And then the third brain of pattern or tendency that makes this worse is something called motivated reasoning Your brain is not just biased towards evidence that confirms what you already believe. it's biased toward evidence that confirms what is emotionally easier to believe It is much emotionally easier quit doing something hard, then continue to keep going with something quote, unquote feels like it's not working. Now Sometimes this is kind of hard to understand because we feel kind of miserable about something not working. It doesn't seem to us like, oh, that's the emotionally easy way out is because it's so comfortable and familiar and efficient It is easy for your brain to default to, this isn't working, I can't change it, I can't do it Whereas it's emotionally difficult for your brain to try to like hold the faith, keep motivation, keep building confidence, even when you're not getting the results that you want right away So the second that you have a believable excuse to stop, your brain starts ranking the available evidence in a way that supports stopping. but you again think that your brain is just doing this like objectively clear analysis of it's not working. So when you put those three things together, right, you end up with brain that is socialized into an impossibly narrow definition of what it means for something to work, right? Nes to be like immediate and perfect, basically. rununning on a brain that prefers binary redients that filters evidence to match the story it already is telling itself And that is quietly motivated to find an off ramp when things get hard. So It's not about you not being able to succeed and it's not about what you're doing, not working You just have a very specific cognitive setup happening that you're not even aware of So the next time you hear yourself thinking, this isn't working I want you to flag for yourself that this is not and objective analysis. This is a predictable output of how your brain is programmed to think It's not a fact about reality It is just a thought error that your brain is already pre wired to make and then even more socialization wiring to reinforce We cannot run our lives letting that thought control us. So next I want to talk a little bit about the cost of having this thought, and then I'm going to tell you how to change it So let's talk about what this thought does in practice because it's not enough to just understand theoretically how thinking it's not working would kind of discourage you and like make you give up I really want to break down What happens so that you can start to see it happening in real time in your brain So first, you think the thought, this isn't working, it's not working. Immediately, you feel overwhelmed, you feel defeated, maybe you feel hopeless And your brain is now hunting for confirming evidence. And so it ignores and deletes the signs of progress that you have, and it amplifies the signs of struggle. And so it basically says to you like Yes, girl, you are right. This is not working. Here's all the things we can interpret as being evidence that it's not working Because of that motivated reasoning, your brain is quietly looking for permission to stop. fromrom that emotional place, you stopp taking the small things that actually would keep you moving forward So then step four, you do stall out And now step five, this is like the most fuckery part of how our brains are You now have proof that your original thought was correct. This is why I'm always saying that our results prove our thoughts true. When you believe it's not working, you stop working. You stop doing it It then becomes an impossibility for it to work. It becomes an inevitability that it doesn't And then your brain is like, lookook, M, no hands. I didn't do any of that. I just correctly predicted that this wasn't going to work. We end up in step six where it doesn't. It isn't working. It becomes an objective reality because you stop doing it What's so sad about it is you think you're being realistic You think that you're just reading the room, reading the report that your brain puts out, but actually you're the one who wrote the report You ran that whole production, you cast all the characters and then you took it to be reality. Again, nothing shameful about this. This is just how brains work But it is so powerful when you start to see it playing out in your own life So if we talk about those four case studies I talked about earlier If we look at those, we can see this process playing out. So for instance, that entrepreneur, she had for Wibbon by her program But her brain is like, this isn't working. So her brain ignores that four hundred new people joined her email list during this launch that she could now sell the program to again and do a little differently next time ignores that twelve people replied to her email and said, like, not this cohort, but I'd love to do the next one deletes the fact that she for the first time, put herself out there on video talking about the program even though she's really scared to do that She also ignores all of the opportunities that she could have spotted to actually make it better next time and iterate on it It ignores the feedback she got that would have helped her make the offer more enticing. All she sees is the number in her bank account and the thought it's not working So she doesn't ever try the program again And she'll have forgotten all about this. And then she will come up with another idea and do the same thing. And eventually she'll just tell herself the whole thing isn't working Or let's think about our dating example that woman tells herself, it's not working. And she ignores her brain, deletes the fact that She's clear on what she wants. that she went on more first dates in those two months than she went on in the entire previous year that she didn't cancel last minute like she used to do she showed up as herself instead of trying to people please and perform on the dates. It ignores that she actually turned down two of the people for second dates because they weren't the right fit for her, somethingomet she never would have done in the past She ignores all that evidence that she is making progress on this goal and becoming the person who can have the relationship she wants and putting herself out there to meet the person And instead, she deletes the app. She tells her sister, she's giving up on dating forever and her brain just says her see, it wasn't working Or we think about the woman who's doing that body image work And then she still feels like shit about herself trying on jeans. And she tells herself, like, it's not working. I can't change this Maybe I need to get on a GLP one. Maybe I need to get back on a diet. I can't lift my body the way it is becausecause what she thought she was supposed to experience was this perfection of loving her body and never having those moments again and her brain deletes the evidence that She's been wearing other stuff that's a little more outside her comfort zone. that she was even willing to go to the store to try on jeans, which she hasn't done for five years. that she was willing to wear a bathing suit at the pool party the week before that she was willing to have sex with the lights on It deletes and ignores all those little pieces of evidence that she is actually making progress And so instead she just stops doing her thought work practice, stops trying to love her body, just goes back to starting to try to change it instead. Or finally, let's think about our mother with the bedtime routine and the kid who gets out of bed eight times herer brain ignores the fact that Even though she did lose her temper at the end of the night, she kept her cool for two and a half hours deletes the fact that the chart she made has actually been working for the first three steps of the routine, like toothbrushing and showering. and book time I've been going great And it's actually just this last little part they're still having trouble with She doesn't see any of that She just sees, I'm not getting the exact result I wanted right away. It's not working. She gives up on the whole thing. And bedtime is back to chaos very quickly. But she just tells herself, see didn't work for me. all of these examples There was real progress. That change was happening, right? There was real proof that change was happening, that progress was being made The brain deletes it because it is just trying to confirm the thought that something isn't working And so you can see how this thought would sabotage literally anything you're trying to do in your life So We need to know how to think about things instead. Now you know how to spot this pattern But how do we disrupt it? So we're gonna take a quick break here but stick around because after the break, I'm going to tell you how to actually change that pattern. And I'm going give you a question to ask yourself the next time this thought shows up and a three step practice that you can run on yourself for the next week to actually rewire this pattern. D't tell yourself it can't work. We'll right back. If you've been dreaming or secretly thinking about becoming a coach But you're not sure how it works or how to coach a range of people effectively, or if coaching is even a real job Or if you're already certified, but you still feel a little shaky in sessions, especially if something sensitive comes up My life coaching certification, the Socratic coaching method, was built for you We teach evidence based coaching tools that combine radical inquiry and working with the emotions of the body to create lasting change. So you can coach with confidence, whether you're brand new or ready to fill the gaps your first training may have skipped This seven month certification program includes intensive training and foundational coaching skills also topic specific training on things like money, relationships, habits and career, plus live practice and feedback. So you're not just learning, you're actually doing and improving in real time We'll also dive into trauma, the nervous system and neurodiversity and how those things affect coaching. If you've been getting the sense you're meant for this work And if you're feeling that way, you are We will help you become world class ated it. To learn more, visit socratic cooaching. com or text your email to plus one, three, four, seven, nine nine seven, one seven, eight four and use the code word coach training, all one word To get the link, we'll send it straight to your phone Okay, welcome back, my friends So Here's how we're going to shift this It's not working. is just a thought. which means that it's optional. So your brain has been running this whole scheme based on a kind of seesaw. It's like an either or Black and white. It's working or it's not working. passass or fail It's done or it's not I'm success or I'm broken. But real things in real life weren't on a switch. They're not black and white. They are on a gradient business starts working in pieces O relationship starts improving little bit by little bit and there's lots of the old dysfunctional pattern in between those little bits of progress still pattern changes in bits here and there and you still have plenty of your old thoughts along the way parenting strategy succeeds and fails and succeeds and fails, the repetition has to be built The habit has to be built, the kid has to learn it creative practice starts producing in pieces So we have to move out of this black and white thinking, and we have to stop constantly evaluating whether something is working or not It's a binary question with a binary answer So up until the minute it changes for good The answer could always be it's not working So here's the question you're going to ask yourself instead What is the best case I can make that this is already starting to work That's not saying, is it perfect? Is it done? Do I have the result yet This is saying if I were hired as an attorney to represent the case that this is starting to work there is some sign this is working, that there has been some progress that it's possible this is beginning to work all the evidence that I could marshal Right? Your brain has not been asking this question. because of that confirmation bias, because of that motivated reasoning Be of that perfectionism, your brain has not been asking this. Your brain has been asking, is it working or not and then it has been looking for all the evidence that it's not working And what we need to do is look for the evidence that it is working So if we imagine that entrepreneur who's making dinner and thinking that lunch flopped, it failed, it's not working If she knows this, then at that moment, she stops, she opens her phone or she grabs her pad of paper in the kitchen, and she starts writing, okay, what's the best case I can make? This is starting to work And then she writes down everything we talked about, OkayK, well four people bought it. So obviously there is something here that people want ten people or fifteen people said they were interested the next time four hundred people joined my email list. So I'm definitely saying something that resonates with people and it's just a matter of right helping them understand the program better and show that value better. She is looking for all the evidence she can marshal for the case that it is starting to work. or our single woman in the parking lot, right? She goes through all those things that I said earlier She says herself, okay But I came on all these dates and I didn't cancel. so I am getting braver and more willing to put myself out there And I was willing to turn down dates with two of these guys, even though in the past, I would have gone anyway just because I was desperate for a partner She says, I told the truth when that controversial topic came up and I didn't people please. So she's like marshalling all the evidence Her work to change who she is and how she shows up in the world to find a real partner is starting to work woman in the dressing room, she writes down all that evidence we talked about Well, I wore a swimsuit the other week and I was willing to a try on Je. and she looks for the bravery she's al she's already displaying and the resilience she's already building And the same thing with the mom with the routine. She's like, okay, but shower, toothbrushing, that stuff's all going great I'm making it longer before I lose it, right? This is all evidence that something is working The circumstances in these examples did not change circumstances are exactly the same thoughtoughts changed And because the thought that gives the brain direction was consciously set to look for evidence this is working, thenen the brain was able to deliver all that evidence. Now, it doesn't always feel super smooth. Your brain might say, no, there isn't any. fuck you But we can't let our brain run the show We have to say, like, okay, but what if there was evidence that this was working? What microscopic bits could I find We have to tell our brains what to look for or they're just going to bring us trash So The reason this works is because confirmation bias and motivated reasoning can work both ways, right? It's just like driving. You can drive left or drive right. You just got to decide on purpose which way to drive If your brain's hunting for proof that something's failing, then that's what you're going to get But if you train your brain to hunt for the best case that something's starting to build to look for evidence That is helpful It will surface that data instead of deleting it, right? It will give you what it has, the information that it's gleaned and the evidence it has to help you improve and iterate and keep going. So it's not like manifesting, it's not gaslighting yourself is telling your brain like, okay, you've been arguing for the prosecution this whole time that this isn't working. and now I need you to argue for our side that this is starting to work and that it is worth keeping going So that. by itself is the one sentence way of working on this, right What is the evidence I can find that this is working? And if that feels too strong, you can sub in like that it's starting to work, that it might be working, that there's some evidence of progress If you want to take it to the next level, you can spend the next week doing this three step practice So step one is name the thought. For the next seven days, every time you catch yourself thinking or saying, this isn't working, it's not working, right? I'm not getting anywhere, any variation of that You name it to yourself, that's a thought. You interrupt that autopilot And you signal to your brain, hey, I know That's not just reality. I know you're giving me an interpretation right now This is not objective reality, this is a thought I am currently having. Two, you can ask yourself these three questions to really dig into this phenomenon. So question one is Do I even know what working is supposed to look like here Do I even have an idea of what that is? Sometimes when you even ask that, your brain gives you such a perfectionist fantasy that you can immediately be like, oh Right, okay. That's not realistic. That cannot be my standard You can also ask yourself, where did this idea of what it working is supposed to look like come from Did I absorb it? like where did this timeline come from? Where did this number come from How did I come up with it? Why is it so important? Start to question those kind of benchmarks your brain has given you that it's claiming you have to reach to be able to believe that anything is working Question two is what timeline am I measuring this against and where did I get it So what is it I think I'm supposed to do and how fast is it I think it's supposed to happen And then we come to that question three What's the best case I can make that this is already starting to work So like I said, if you want to just take one thing away from this episode, just practice what's the best case I can make that this is already starting to work If you know this is a big pattern for you and you really want to dig into it, then come to it as a real practice for the next week of noticing all the time when you're thinking this isn't working. asking yourself What is it I think working is supposed to look like, which means like how much of it on what timeline And then what is the best case I can make? It's already starting to work And then step three is continue to build that case. So once you've gone through that little self inquiry process, Keep a note on your phone or on a pad of paper or whatever, and keep adding to the list. So write down like the case that this is starting to work and then just like you were a lawyer doing discovery, finding evidence like keep adding to that list You got a reply from somebody who said they'd love to work from you with you in the future Your kid onlyn got out of bed six times the next night you tried on pair of jeans at home and you didn't c you were willing to go on a blind date with someone your coworker wanted to set you up with, even though it made you nervous, right? Whatever it is, look for those little bits of evidence This is not like a manifestation list or gratitude journal. This is we are being really concrete and logical building the case. becausecause again, your brain has been the prosecution for your entire life And it has been admitting evidence unopposed. Nobody has been objecting. because you didn't even know you were supposed to be objecting. And you didn't even know your brain was doing this Your job now is to start objecting. Start objecting when your brain says, this isn't working Objection. Speculation that's in court, right? That's not a truth. That's not a fact. That can't be admitted as evidence. That's just an argument and then start to build the argument on the other side What is the best case I can make that this is working or that this is starting to work or that there are signs of progress that this might be working So listen, this was a half hour episode on one thought and that should tell you how important that thought is. Every single pursuit in your life is going to have a point at which it doesn't seem like it's working. Sometimes it's a long stretch in which it feels that way Every business, every relationship Every time you're trying to build new habits, every creative project, every healing process, every friendship, all of it If your default interpretation is this isn't working, you are gonna to quit on yourself so many times And you will never find out what is on the other side of that. You'll never find out the business you would have had if you'd kept going, the relationship you would have had, if you'd kept going the creative project you have had, the peeaceful bedtime routine. like there's nothing too big or too small that the thought it's not working can't derail it And that can happen thousands of times over your life So the more work you do now to make your default thought pattern be, Let me make the best case I can for myself that this is already starting to work the more you're going to be able to accomplish and achieve in your life changing this one thought. can be the difference between achieving your wildest dreams and quitting before you get anywhere close. It's that big underestimate the power of working on and changing this thought. So go make a case that something you're working on is working for you and I'll see you next week Whether you're dreaming about becoming a coach or just secretly thinking about it, or if you're already certified, but you worry you're not saying the right things in sessions or clients aren't having the breakthroughs you'd hoped for that I have got an exciting announcement for you. We are officially opening enrollment for our next cohort of the Socratic Coaching method Certification. This seven month certification program includes intensive training and plenty of space for practice and integration We've got coach practicome calls, live coaching feedback sessions, and more o learn more visit socraticoaching dot com or text your email to one three four seven nine nine seven one seven eight four and the code word is coach training, all one word. We will send you the link to join straight to your phone