 Let's switch things up today and talk about getting inside the mind of one of the world's greatest horror writers. What is up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. And if you're new to my channel, my channel is all about mental health and what I like to do is pull different topics from pop culture to try to teach you how to improve your mental and emotional well-being. So if you're into that make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and for all of my lovely people out there who are following me on Instagram because you know I'm trying to get to 10,000 followers, I just put up my first ever, first ever Instagram giveaway. I'm giving away 20 free copies of my new book, Rewire Your Anger. So head over to Instagram right now. If you're not following me yet, go follow me at the Rewired Soul. Enter the giveaway. All you got to do is tag a friend, let them know how much they mean to you. Boom! You're entered in the giveaway. All right? So yeah. A little, little disclosure here. I'm a big wuss. I don't like scary stuff, but my beautiful girlfriend Tristan loves the spooky stuff. She's got me into like scary movies. I go see him with her because I'm just a great boyfriend like that. But anyways, we were reading together like, not like, you know, she's reading to me. I'm reading to her. Actually, we kind of do that anyways. She's reading this book by Stephen King. It's called, what is it called? The Bizarre of Bad Dreams. So last night I was reading my little book about psychology and she's reading this book. And we do share with each other, like what's going on in each book. And she was telling me in this book, like kind of how it was laid out, and I was like, oh my God, that gives me an idea for a video. So I'll link this book down below if any of you want to check it out. But anyways, it's a collection of short stories that Stephen King wrote. And basically at the beginning of each short story, he talks about his thought process and what inspired him to write the story. And it was really fascinating because I can definitely relate. So in this video, what we're going to be talking about is actually mindfulness. I talk to you guys about mindfulness and meditation all the time. And a lot of you have so many questions. So in this video, we're going to be talking about one of the biggest benefits of mindfulness, which is understanding and keeping track of your own mind, all right? So in this book, just a couple of examples, there's a story in this book that Tristan was telling me about where it's about like this guy and his father who has like dementia and it gets kind of crazy. I won't spoil it. But anyways, Stephen King was inspired just by driving and he saw some guy in a truck cut off this old guy and his older father in a car. And he got this whole idea for a story. Then there's another story in here that has to do with like this magic sand dune. And basically Stephen King was walking his dog on the beach. And he saw what looked like writing in the sand and then he got closer and it was just like the way the light was reflecting. But just based on that, it inspired a whole story. So there's so many people like Tristan, my girlfriend is a great example of this. There's so many of you who are already being mindful. You just don't really know what mindfulness is. So mindfulness summed up is being aware of the present moment, okay? Knowing what's happening right here, right now, right externally as well as internally. This isn't about stopping your thoughts, it's about noticing your thoughts. So what Stephen King's doing is he's noticing thoughts that come up because so many things trigger memories or whatever like in the story about the sand, Stephen King was reminded of a quote, right? And then that kind of led to somewhere. So my question for you is have you ever been sitting there and you just kind of daydream or your mind starts going away and you're just thinking about something crazy like maybe like a cartoon from when you were a kid or just like, what if dinosaurs could ride motorcycles or just something weird? Then you're sitting there and you're like, why the hell am I thinking about dinosaurs riding motorcycles, right? Because our brains on average, on average, we have 50 to 70,000 thoughts per day. 90% of those thoughts are repetitive, okay? But the problem is with most of us, we're just kind of on this autopilot and we're not noticing our thoughts, all right? But it's important to keep track of our thoughts for a multitude of reasons. One of them is Stephen King has been able to turn this into a benefit. He sees where his mind's going, right? And he can turn that into a story. Now I'm going to share kind of, you know, just an example of myself and how my crazy brain can work. And one of them is a great example of how I get inspired to make these videos, right? And then another example is how my mind can start playing tricks on me and get me into a really negative headspace. So let's start out with the negative, right? So basically, and this is something a lot of YouTubers struggle with. Sometimes you might struggle with this if you're reading your own comments or whatever on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or whatever it is. So we start in one place. So let's say me, for example, I'll use myself as an example. I see one negative comment and I look at it and I'm like, oh my God, why is it this person like me? Why don't they like me? What did I do? What did I say? What did I do wrong in this video, right? So think about that. I know a lot of you have told me that you care too much about what people think and you want everybody to like you. So this small little thing, some negative comment, right? And then all of a sudden my mind can start thinking like, what if nobody likes me? What if my entire channel is a fraud? What if everybody's just here to watch me fail? What if everybody hates me? Oh my God, I'm letting my audience down. I'm letting myself down. I'm letting my son down. I'm letting my girlfriend down. I'm letting my family down. What is happening? You know what? Maybe I should just quit this YouTube channel and I should just find something else and maybe I should go work at a restaurant or a drive-through or I don't know what I should do, right? So think about that. Just that one little thing, that one little thing, that one little comment can make my brain go to a crazy place, all right? Part of what mindfulness is, is noticing when that thought comes up and then you bring it back. So a lot of mindfulness practices, you use some type of anchor, okay? A formal meditation, you'll use like your breath as the anchor. So every time you get a thought, you bring it back. Every time you get a thought, you bring it back. And what you're doing is you're training your brain to catch that first thought so it doesn't run away, all right? So like they call it an anchor and I always think about it. Like think about what an anchor does for a boat. It keeps it in one place. It keeps the boat from drifting out to sea, okay? So when we have an anchor, like what I say is when I start practicing mindfulness rather than the boat drifting like 500 miles out to sea, it would only drift about five feet and then I bring it back to shore. Does that make sense? So this is one of the reasons you should practice mindfulness. And here's a good example of how my brain works when it comes to mindfulness and being a positive thing. So my brain, it can link a bunch of negative things together, but it can also link a bunch of positive things together. A great example is this video that I'm creating right now. As Tristan was just telling me about this book and Stephen King's thought process, I'm like, huh, that kind of sounds like mindfulness. You know what, I'm trying to teach my audience about mindfulness. I know a lot of my audience likes horror stuff. Maybe they like Stephen King. Maybe I can make a video about that. You see what I mean? Like my brain, it's just a wacky way my brain works. It starts linking things together. My brain works in a way where I see similarities rather than differences and I'm always trying to find things that you can relate to to teach you about your mental health. So that's what happens. There was actually a really funny tweet that I'm putting up on the screen right now and I just started cracking up and I showed it to Tristan too because that's kind of how my brain works. Whenever I'm watching YouTube or whatever, my brain's just like, what kind of topics? What kind of topics? What kind of topics? So somebody like Stephen King is asking, what kind of story can he write from this? So you guys, I want to just start sprinkling in little tips for mindfulness and meditation. I'm going to do a big mindfulness Q&A. One of our awesome rewired soldiers out there, Mimi. She got me together a list. Mimi, if you're watching this, I still have that list. I need to do a video on it. But I want to answer these things because there's so many misconceptions about what mindfulness is, what meditation is. But what I want you to think about today is just practicing mindfulness is going to help you keep track of your thoughts a little bit better. So that way you can discard the bad ones, focus on the positive ones and use them to your benefit to proceed and do great things in life, all right? So my channel is officially partnered with the Calm app. Like, even though they are partnered with me, Calm is legit, my favorite meditation app. That's why I reached out to them. I'm like, yo, you want to do some type of partnership? So if you're interested in getting started with mindfulness, go ahead and check out the description as well as the pinned comment. Check out the Calm app. It's awesome. They have a ton, a ton of meditations in there from anxiety, to stress, to how to love yourself. Somebody the other day was asking me about motivation. They have motivation ones that help you get into the mood to just do something. I don't know if I mentioned it yet, but they asked some for sleep. I love me some sleep meditations for any of my fellow Insomniacs out there. But anyways, just give it a try. One of your goals for 2019 should be to just give meditation a try. All right? But anyways, let me know. Let me know how your mind works. Like, do you keep track of your thoughts? Do you feel like you have a million thoughts going through your brain? Do you feel a little bit better knowing that every human being has 50 to 70,000 thoughts running through their head every day? Let me know. Let's have a conversation down in the comments below. Also, don't forget, I'm doing my first Instagram giveaway over on Instagram. So if you're not yet, make sure you're following me at the Rewired Soul. Best thing you could do is turn notifications on because this is my first giveaway, but I plan on doing even more. I'm gonna be giving away not only my books, but other mental health books that I really like. Maybe someday I'll give away some Stephen King books. I don't know, but I'm also gonna give away some Rewired Soul merch and all sorts of cool stuff. So make sure that you follow me on Instagram with the notifications turned on. All right? But anyways, that's all I got for this video. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell because I make a ton of videos. And a huge, huge, huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on Patreon. You are all amazing. And I'm still getting your questions for this month's Patreon Q&A. All right? Thanks so much for watching. Be a little bit more mindful today and I'll see you next time.