 You are the editor of your thoughts so the way that I think about it your brain gives you a thought and you say thank you for your input and then you edit your thoughts and you ask these two questions and I can honestly tell you this is at the core of what helped me really shift the first question is is this thought true. Because a lot of these thoughts are just not and I'm not rooted in reality for something to be true you need to have facts to support. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today we drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends a lot of what's glorified in popular culture not only with the hustling is just the effortlessness of which success comes to a select few. And we don't often hear about the trials and tribulations and the toll success has on friends family relationships etc and when I think about an awesome human. I think a lot about the human part and that's left out of these awesome stories of success and it's very easy to see someone else look up to them and not realize that they're making the same mistakes they started right where you started. And they're going to keep making those mistakes and one of the biggest things that I took away from the book is how you talk to yourself and rewriting and editing that conversation because many of us have a one way conversation. We just listen to all those thoughts and they take over our body and our emotions and our actions and all of a sudden we're off the road we're burning out. So what do you mean by editing those thoughts and changing the way that we talk to ourselves. Yeah I think that's probably the core if I had to pick there's many core themes in the book but it's it perhaps for me was the core kind of mindset shift is the recognition that your brain does like the thoughts your brain gives you are not accurate representation of objective reality. They're not it's just not the case our brain has a lot of filters right our thoughts are filtered by things like we all have a negativity bias we're all much more sensitive to anything that's wrong because anything that's wrong signifies possible danger your brain I like that this is like a great reminder. Your brain doesn't care about your success your achievement or your happiness your brain just wants to keep you safe. That's it so your brain is here to help you survive and so it's got this negativity bias so you we overblow everything that's wrong or could be wrong and we ignore a lot of good stuff which increases stress your brain has a filter of. A fear right so if anything is uncertain your brain hates uncertainty we humans would prefer severe physical pain that uncertainty they've done a lot of research. So your brain starts to make up a lot of worst case scenarios again not objective reality your brain has a filter of it loves patterns so if something happened before when any similar situation comes up your brains like oh I know I know this is how it's going to be I think your confirmation bias much more so the biggest recognition is. You are the editor of your thoughts so the way that I think about it your brain gives you a thought and you say thank you for your input and then you edit your thoughts and you ask these two questions and I can honestly tell you this is at the core of what helped me really shift the first question is is this thought true. Because a lot of these thoughts are just not and are not rooted in reality for something to be true you need to have facts to support it so as an entrepreneur you know I've run several companies I mean the stress that we feel as entrepreneurs and as leaders it's not stop right so what I remember I would just obsess about like. Oh my God what if this product is not going to work this release is not going to work what if it doesn't like those thoughts aren't free they drain my energy they prevent me from making good decisions so ask yourself is this thought true like how do I know the product is not good. How do I know my presentation will go well right so for something to be true you need facts and the second question that's perhaps even the more important. Is this thought helpful if I go along with this thought does it help me work through whatever the situation in the best way does it help me struggle less so I waste less energy. Does it help me honor this moment in the best way does it help me serve whoever I'm in service of in the best way so these two questions is this thought true and is this thought helpful they're really life changing in terms of first of all you just start to. Not take so much of the bullshit that your brain feeds and you're constantly filtering but it allows you to make better decisions both about your own energy and well being but also about whatever it is you're building you can make them from a place of clarity this is how it is versus from a place of fear or fear of uncertainty or all these different filters at the brain house. I think it's incredibly important to have this dialogue with yourself and challenge yourself but also allow these thoughts to come out so you and write them down so you can actually see how ridiculous a lot of this stuff actually is if if you allow it to continue to get out and you feed those thoughts and you mentioned one of our need for survival and our and our how our brain is interpreting everything and flat. And then you throw in our biological need to procreate on top of the the survival mechanism and we have all kind of firing of our brain with all kind of bizarre thoughts and the rationalizations and the mental gymnastics that we come up with because of both of those biological needs it's crazy and I think for a lot of people they have to be able to surrender to the idea that your brain though. Incredible as it is for everything that is able to do it's without guidance it's it why it'll wildly go off the reservation. One of my favorite quotes and I don't actually I it was in my first book and I we didn't come up with the actual source it's conflicted but one of my favorite quotes is your brain is a terrible master. But your brain is an awesome servant and awesome is definitely my substitution I think it's great so I'm just using awesome but your brain is a terrible master but a great servant and it's exactly what we're talking about so if you just and I love that you said about writing things down you know there's a great author Michael singer. His book the untethered soul and surrender experiments are to my favorites and he has this thing where he's like I realize there's a crazy roommate in my head and he's like I started writing down the stuff that he says and I was like oh my god if this person lived with me I'd kick them out and yet in my head and you know it's like completely crazy and so I think it is important like do this practice I did this when I was starting to practice this early on I would just write down everything I'm thinking about and I would look at it be like wow. Really crazy but to your point just to recognize that your brain the analogy I use in my work is your brain is a really scared child and to me that really really helps and for everyone listening you don't have to have your own kids we all know what little kids are like right. They one minute they're happy the next minute they're yelling the next it's a tantrum the completely illogical everything is the biggest deal right. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell and if you've gotten a lot of value out of this make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. So your brain is a scared child and you the greater wiser you be the grandparent because we all have like the grandparent they're wiser they're calmer but they're warm right one of the things that I don't advise is don't yell at your brain don't get mad at your brain it's part of you be the grandparent what does a grandparent do when the kids freaking out. Well they sort of sit on the floor with them you know Johnny to your point they acknowledge they're like okay so you spilled your cereal and you think it's the worst thing in the world and they'll never be cereal again. I understand that's upsetting but let's think about it could we get more cereal is it really true that there's no more cereal right so to me that's the analogy and also because I think a really important quality and this is something I also talk a lot about his compassion self compassion which then goes. So how self compassion like don't pummel yourself for having these ridiculous thoughts you're human that's your brain have compassion in this practice of being the grandparent and editing your thoughts so they're more helpful so you can move forward. And when I was younger. It was I for all the negative talk that I would have when my inner critic would speak up I would always rationalize it as well it's my thoughts so there's got to be something there there's got to be some kernel of truth. That is where this is originating and and I allowed that to happen and of course as I had gotten older and begun doing research on this very topic I realized that's just not the case at all and again that was be bullshitting myself in order to protect these thoughts because my brain was trying to protect me. From putting myself outside of my comfort zone where all the bad things happen but as we all grow up and know it's where all the good stuff is. That's right I just want to actually say one thing to what you said those thoughts sometimes do have a seed that could be helpful to us right. But it's about removing that judgment the pummeling and getting to the seed right so you know if you're working on launching a product or a company or a side hustle and you're lost in a lot of self doubt this is something I do a lot of work with because again I'm a Russian Jew I think like we have a black belt and doubt you know. Like in my family it's really not cool to feel confident about anything because then you're going to curse it you know that's a whole thing so self doubt is it so I do I've done a lot of work and self doubt and so you know for example let's say you know you want to start a company or launch a product and you're like oh my god what if it doesn't work I'm not good enough right. So what could be the seed there well this if you edit your thoughts you realize well the truth is I'm scared my brain is scared of what others will think of disappointing others and then there's a helpful action in that you could be like all right well let me do a little more research on the market or let me talk to some more successful entrepreneurs or let me remind my brain that you know what I might fail. That is a possibility but I know how to deal with disappointment I've done these things hard things before and so there might be a seed there but that's what we're doing when we're editing we're getting to that useful part and we're putting away all that other crap that the only thing it does it drains our energy prevents us from making good decisions and often creates that mental block that we actually as you said don't do the thing that is on the other side of comfort. Well you have brought up this idea of editing our thoughts a few times now so we might as well go ahead and lay that out for our audience so they can be in tune to what we're doing here. I shared the two questions at the core of it right so is this thought true is it helpful and I guess the other thing I want to mention as you just said it like that's why I got distracted popped into my head you know often. I hear from people when they do this practice they're like well I think this thought is true right like I work with a lot of leaders and companies and you know imposter syndrome comes up a lot right. Oh I've got this huge job but everyone's about to find out that I'm not good enough for it you know and by the way men and women this idea that women have more imposter syndrome I have now found it in my work I work with a lot of male executives like you're the same thing. And so I say to them okay well let's edit your thoughts is this thought true and they go yes I am convinced this is true it is true I know it true and so the reminder there is what you think other people think is not fact that's another filter that's another idea and so that when we do this practice of is this thought true is this thought helpful we actually. To use your expression we have to drop our own bullshit and that because you can answer the question like yes this thought is true yes it's helpful so another one I just want to address is self criticism. Again this is I grew up you know people in my family constantly criticize themselves and each other I thought it was the only way to improve a lot of people think that. Just for fun there are zero studies that show that endless self criticism helps you improve that one not to zero. But there are tons of studies that show that treating yourself with compassion actually helps you to work harder and improve what is treating yourself with compassion it's not saying to yourself you know what. I am great the way I am and I never have to change and everything is amazing now that's what I thought it was like I thought it would make me this lazy sloth. Treating yourself with compassion back to where we started this conversation means you recognize oh I'm a human being that means I mess up that means I can't do things perfectly. How can I treat myself in this challenging situation in a way that reduces struggle and suffering because guess what when I reduce my struggle and suffering I have more energy more intellectual and analytical capacity to actually figure out how to move forward I have more motivation. And so again I mentioned these parts of editing your thoughts because it's very easy to do that practice and sort of bullshit your way through it and then be like yes Natalie actually this thought is helpful thinking that I'm fat and ugly and unsuccessful and I should be further along with my career and I'm a failure it is helpful because it motivates me and so we have to kind of challenge ourselves on that to. To get to the seed because that is not what motivates us endless self criticism is not what motivates us.