Shifting Your Mindset

Andrew Dewar [00:00:00]:

Do you find yourself stuck in a rut and needing to change the way you think? Today's episode is all about shifting your mindset. It's got some great tips in it, helping you shift from where you are to a new way of thinking. Welcome to the five year you podcast, a show dedicated to helping you become the best version of yourself one day at a time. I'm Andrew.

Catherine Collins [00:00:21]:

And I'm Cat. And we promise to keep it raw, real, and relatable.

Andrew Dewar [00:00:27]:

Are you ready to grow? How are you doing, Cat?

Catherine Collins [00:00:30]:

I'm doing great. How are you?

Andrew Dewar [00:00:32]:

I'm good. I am excited for this episode. I think shifting your mindset is something that in my experience, doing the little 1% shifts is better than big ones. But clearly, I'm not everyone.

Catherine Collins [00:00:45]:

I would agree with that. And on that note, I want to share with our listeners that shifting your mindset is actually a skill. It is a skill that you can learn how to do if you, like, get frustrated with yourself. You're like, I just want to be in a better mood. Like, I can't get out of it, or, I don't want to be this frustrated, don't want to be this angry. I don't want to yell at my kids or whatever it is. The fact that you don't know how to shift your mindset is okay. It's not your fault.

Catherine Collins [00:01:16]:

It's not something that we're taught. The good news is it's something that you can learn.

Andrew Dewar [00:01:22]:

Yeah, it absolutely is. And I think as we get older, our mindset tends to get stuck in park, you know, using the shifting car analogy, which I probably am going to beat on pretty harshly right now, but when you think about it. Yeah. The older you get, the more we get stuck in our beliefs. Right. We get stuck in our mindset and we're like. And things are just the way we see them. And when you want to change who you are and how you are, you have to have a little bit of an opening for a different way of thinking.

Andrew Dewar [00:01:53]:

And shifting your mindset is a lot easier when you give yourself permission to be bad at it at first. Like anything new, you're learning.

Catherine Collins [00:02:02]:

Yeah. And the predominant thought in the personal development community, and something a lot of people teach, including us, is that your thoughts determine your feelings. Everything that you feel comes from a thought that you have. And by that definition, it sounds like a piece of cake. But by that definition, all of us could just think some new thoughts and have some new feelings. If you're upset or you are having a hard time, it can be really hard to do that, though. One of the things you can do is instead of trying to go from sad to happy, angry to joyful, the good news is that there's a lot of in between feelings.

Andrew Dewar [00:02:50]:

That's right. And I think that's a nice way of giving ourselves permission to not get it right. And again, to use the car analogy, you go from reverse to neutral to drive. Because if you went from reverse to drive, you're going to just, it ain't good for the car. And that's, again, all I know about cars. So when you look at these things and you are going, okay, let's say you're bored. You know, you're sitting at home, you're like, this is boring. I'm doing the same thing I've always done.

Andrew Dewar [00:03:20]:

Getting to neutral might be just the act of going, I'm gonna do anything but this right now. Don't have to like it, but I'm going to give myself permission to change in this moment and shift into something else. It doesn't have to be anything that you actually like. It's just a matter of kind of taking that step away from where you are.

Catherine Collins [00:03:43]:

Yeah, you don't necessarily have to go from completely bored to doing cartwheels in your living room. You can just go from completely bored to, I don't know, organizing your sock drawer, which might be boring, but, you know, it's something else to do. And like, with the shift might come another shift, another shift, another shift until you can get to where you want to be. This is also something that's pretty common when people have negative views about their body, their weight. They might have the belief that if they were thin, they would be happy. And maybe you want to think better about yourself and your body, but you can't look at yourself in the mirror and think, I love my body. Because maybe you've spent a 30 plus years hating it. So it's really hard to go from I hate my body to I love my body because that's not coming from an authentic place.

Catherine Collins [00:04:36]:

And what we teach is that you have to be authentic to how you really, truly feel. And so an example of a neutral thought that you can move to is, I have a body, or my body is alive today and I have a body that moves. That is a true statement. So you're being authentic to yourself, but it's a neutral statement. It has no hate, no love. It's just a place that you can be until you're ready to get to the I like and I love you.

Andrew Dewar [00:05:11]:

Know, as you said, that my brain had a little. It had a little fight, which was interesting because it really wanted to be good or bad. And getting to that neutral place, it kind of negates the brain's attitude of going, well, no, it has to be one of these things. And you gave me a different option there. And that neutral option is so good, because I think going from, you know, no to yes in anything like that, or negative to positive, it's such a far leap. It's a chasm using that word inside out, too. Don't say it. Don't say.

Andrew Dewar [00:05:50]:

Okay, so it's like, there's a ravine that you have to get across to get there. And I think, you know, if you go from no to yes, I know my brain is gonna go like, right. I. So I don't like how I look, and now I look so good, and it's, you know, it's just like, it's gonna come across like that in my brain, and it's not gonna stick. But going and going, like, awesome, I have a body today, or, you know, like, I have a body. It doesn't have to be awesome. It can just be, like you said, neutral. Just have one.

Andrew Dewar [00:06:23]:

Just state the fact.

Catherine Collins [00:06:24]:

Yeah. Because a lot of people are looking for overnight changes and success and all these things. And, you know, this is not the overnight year you podcast, it's the five year you podcast. So we really want to emphasize that we are a big fan of 1% changes. We think that these are, like, longer lasting changes. If you just do a little 1% a day, it might take a year. It might take five years for you to go from I have a body to I appreciate my body. Then you might spend a year appreciating your body, and then you maybe will like it.

Catherine Collins [00:07:07]:

Right. Or whatever it is. But just know that this type of mental work, it's okay for it to take time. It should take time. We're rewiring decades of brain work and thoughts, and it is something that takes practice. It's a skill, like I said.

Andrew Dewar [00:07:24]:

Yeah. It's a new neural pathway that you're going. You've gotten so used to looking at your body and thinking these certain thoughts that to choose differently or just even to. Not to go down that same neural pathway and to pause and go, I'm just going to stay here and be okay with my body before I start trying to carve the new one out is a huge, huge action, and it should be acknowledged that it's worthwhile. And as far as Cat said, with the small changes. That's how it happens. It doesn't happen overnight. Once upon a time, long, long time ago, I used to own a gym and people would come in and our facetious, I'm gonna have to google that way of dealing with people.

Andrew Dewar [00:08:04]:

It was, they would come in and go, you know what? We've got this great plan, and you can lose seven pounds before you walk out of here. And they would get really excited and we would take out a saw and go, which arm do you want us to take off? You know, it was just to reinforce the fact that, you know, you don't really want fast change. You want slow, gradual change, because that is more manageable. Yeah. It's more permanent. It's manageable. It may not be exactly how you envision it. I mean, I think we all kind of walk into these ideas that we want and we think we should be a certain way.

Andrew Dewar [00:08:39]:

We hold ourselves to the standard. We get disappointed by the fact that we don't achieve this standard soon enough, fast enough, or maintain it, because we're not becoming the person in the process of becoming that. So, you know, if you want to have a positive mindset and you're a very negative person, neutral is a very long journey sometimes. And again, that comes from past experience where it's, you know, being critical, sarcastic, blocking. I've done all those things. And to be positive wasn't going to happen on day one. It wasn't probably going to happen on day 300 or 400. It had to be a process of acknowledging where you were and that you were shifting and that it wasn't going to be perfect, but to acknowledge the process and the progress.

Catherine Collins [00:09:26]:

Yeah, I really, really like that. And I feel like we're regularly mentioning this long term process and this long term change. On one hand, we are presenting a counter to the rest of the world who's like, oh, follow me on instagram and make $10,000 this month or whatever. But at the same time, we're also trying to help people's mental health by saying, don't beat yourselves up if these things take a while. I feel like the examples are really helpful. When I started doing this work, I feel like it was really good to understand, like, what a neutral thought was the thing that I am hard on myself. Are parenting always want to feel like I doing a better job, I should be a better mom or I shouldn't, you know, lose my temper or whatever it is, and I'm hard on myself. About the house.

Catherine Collins [00:10:17]:

Oh, my house should be cleaner. It should look like this. Whatever. And so instead of thinking I'm a bad mom, if this is a thought that anyone listening has had, but let's just say, like, I got frustrated with a kid or I raised my voice or just wasn't proud of how I handled something, I'm not going to jump, too. I'm a great mom. In that moment, I'm not feeling good. So you can. Some neutral thoughts might be, I am a mom and I love my kids.

Catherine Collins [00:10:46]:

That's just true. It's neutral with a bit of positivity. Because no matter what happens each day, and my kids know this, no matter what they do or what I do or whatever, there's nothing they can do to make me stop loving them. So that's a true statement. Or you can say, I am a mom who provides a safe home for her kids, or whatever it is. And so on those really hard days where you just feel like, kind of beat down by parenting, or it's just like a really tough moment, those neutral thoughts sometimes can, like, calm the anxiety spiral of I am a bad mom, or you're just beating yourself up for things.

Andrew Dewar [00:11:26]:

Yeah. Again, it's the truth. And you can't deny that you love your kids. One of the things that I learned a long time ago, and it'll help with this, is you may know better, but that doesn't mean you know how to do better. And to me, the distinction is we've all gotten upset with our kids and we will go, why did I do that? I knew better. Yeah, you did. We all watched, you know, tv shows and sitcoms of how, you know, something like that happens and, you know, the parent reacts calmly, but you have to know how to do it better. And that is, again, going through different stages of being able to acknowledge the behavior that you're doing that you don't like, recognizing it and stopping for that.

Andrew Dewar [00:12:11]:

Like just taking that pause, that half second pause before you say something or do something and go, oh, this isn't how I want to be. So I'm going to try something different. Or even getting outside the painting, as I like to say, where you see yourself doing this and you go, I don't like that I'm doing this, but I can understand why I'm doing it. I understand that this was the example that I followed, that it was done for. This is what I've just seen in the world, and I'm not happy with it, but I do. Now get outside of it and I can see what's happening, and I'm going to change this moving forward, whether it's just taking that pause or even coming out of it and going, you know, I wasn't as mad as long as I normally am or, you know, I held off, or it just, you have to acknowledge the shift as it's happening because that's how you grow, that's how you continue to grow. You have to positively reinforce the small things as you're going through. Otherwise, that overnight sensation, that overnight change that you're so yearning for, it's a ten year change for a lot of things, like the overnight success is a ten years of, you know, working in silence and then the one night where everything kind of clicks and that's how a lot of this stuff goes.

Andrew Dewar [00:13:20]:

So for you to be, and I'm using such big air quotes with this, but like perfect parent means that your grandparent by that point usually so, right?

Catherine Collins [00:13:30]:

And then it doesn't matter, you just spoil them rotten. But, uh, but I think you bring up a good point because we're talking about making our thoughts neutral. But a lot of times you can like physically go into neutral if you are having a moment of difficulty, of intense emotion. One thing I say to my kids pretty regularly is like, okay, like guys, I'm at an eight or I'm at a, okay, now I'm at a ten. And a lot of times that means I, as a sensitive person with some sensory sensitivities, I need to go and take 30 minutes in my room or whatever. That's me putting my entire nervous system in a neutral. That's me going from very heightened about to get upset to back down to neutral, which is a manageable point. And from that point I can parent in a healthier way for them.

Catherine Collins [00:14:28]:

And so your thoughts can go to neutral, but also your whole body can go to neutral too. You'll hear a lot of this as like a recommendation. If like you are fighting like with your spouse or having a disagreement with your partner or something like that, you can take ten, you can take ten minutes to just let your body return like the nervous system to kind of calm down and then you can go back. So this is a useful skill you can use for your own feelings, but also in your interactions with other people.

Andrew Dewar [00:15:02]:

I think we can all relate to those moments where kind of get into that fight or flight kind of tension moments in conversations or just in life and being able to give yourself that permission to go pause to go into neutral and take a break, go to your car, go to your bedroom, whatever it is, do some breathing, just kind of lower the intensity of it so that you can have a clear state of mind to make that shift. It doesn't happen immediately, but it happens a little bit at a time. So you're listening to this right now, and you're thinking, okay, well, how do I do this? Just bring some awareness to it. That is the biggest thing. It's always bringing awareness to the situation, to that thing that you're not happy with and you want to change. So if you get up every morning and you go, ugh, I think most of us have been there at some point, at least in this conversation. So if you feel like that, maybe you don't have to jump out of bed and do jumping jacks and, you know, be super peppy, and you can just kind of go, you wake up and you're like, the bed's warm, or, I got to wake up today in my bed is something that a lot of people don't get to do, you know, just find maybe a reason to be grateful. Maybe it's just.

Andrew Dewar [00:16:18]:

It doesn't matter what it is. It just matters that maybe it's just not as long of a feeling that you have when you wake up. Somebody's gonna make a sound bite out of that somewhere. Please, it's my ringtone. That would just be so terrible.

Catherine Collins [00:16:38]:

Are you calling me again?

Andrew Dewar [00:16:41]:

It doesn't even have to be a shift away from that. Maybe it's just you catch yourself and stop it a little sooner than you normally let it go.

Catherine Collins [00:16:49]:

So far this episode, we have really talked about shifting your mindset, sort of with day to day stuff. We've talked about weight. We've talked about parenting. But what about, like, because you mentioned when we first started this recording that some of our mindset is the result of a lot of long held beliefs. The way that we are raised and things like that. There are a lot of things that we regularly talk about. We talk about money mindset. We talk about worthiness.

Catherine Collins [00:17:16]:

And all of these things are much harder to change. So can you give advice on maybe a long term change, like, a money mindset change to give an example on how to go from, like, I'm broke or rich people are bad, and, like, how to change, like, such a big part of you that's really, like, baked into your upbringing?

Andrew Dewar [00:17:38]:

Yeah. When I work with people, it's often around the money stuff. And when we coach people, I mean, money's a heavy topic.

Catherine Collins [00:17:46]:

Yeah.

Andrew Dewar [00:17:46]:

Yeah, it is. And shifting a belief that rich people are bad, let's just say, because that's one that we see pretty often when we see that there's a conflict in that brain at that point because they also want to be rich. You know, I want more money, but rich people are bad. So we got to do some reorganizing and some letting go of some falsehoods.

Catherine Collins [00:18:07]:

There because your brain's not going to let you become something that you think is bad.

Andrew Dewar [00:18:12]:

Exactly. So when we start with that, when we go, okay, rich people are bad, find me one thing that's not. We can do belief work and all that stuff, but not every rich person has done their whole life is bad. And you probably know somebody that has more money than you, which by definition may be rich. You know, somebody who has more than you is richer than you, technically. You can look at that and go, you know, what about the people who have donated their money for research or to shelters or to universities or whatever, they've done good things with their money. Maybe that just puts that little nudge in your thought process there. Maybe it just kind of shifts that mindset a little bit to go, okay, it's not an absolute.

Andrew Dewar [00:18:55]:

And when you get kind of out of that 100% thought of rich people are bad, you can start to shift a little more at a time and go, well, maybe if I had money, a lot of money, I would do a lot of good with it. Okay, so now you're starting to feel differently around this topic. When you're discussing it with someone or just thinking about it internally, maybe you start thinking, okay, maybe I could do a lot of good if I had money. So maybe rich people aren't bad. Maybe I had a bad experience with a rich person. Maybe the stuff that's shown to me on the news and the media is the negative things because that's what the news is. It's not called positive news. It's the 1%.

Andrew Dewar [00:19:36]:

News is the difference of things that just don't usually happen in the world. And the 99.9% of stuff doesn't go televised. Okay, I'll get off that soapbox. But anyway, moving on. So it's just finding those little shifts again. It's never about walking out feeling that you've completely fixed 30, 40, 50 year belief of rich people are bad. It's coming out going that acknowledging that your belief may not be accurate and that you can choose a different belief by thinking differently around it. Once you can see that, it's kind of like, you know, you just got to get that door open just a crack to let the light in.

Andrew Dewar [00:20:15]:

And soon as that happens, you're able to make bigger changes because you realize it's actually a door and not a wall it can open and you can move into a new place.

Catherine Collins [00:20:24]:

Yeah. If you start to realize that some of your long held beliefs, if you start to recognize that they are actually holding you back from achieving your goals and living the life you want to live, well, then you start looking at them differently, and you don't hold so tightly to those beliefs anymore. You start to say, is this the reason why I haven't reached career success, business success? It's because I'm actually afraid to become wealthy. I don't want to be like, you know, one of those jerks who cut me off in their ferrari or whatever it is, you know, like you said, awareness and monitoring your thoughts. And that's just one example. But money beliefs come up a lot in the people that we help. And learning and uncovering what your money beliefs are is really important. It's also really helpful in relationships, because chances are, if you have a partner, you grew up with different money beliefs and different money teachings, and that can cause conflict later on.

Catherine Collins [00:21:27]:

And so there's tons of things, tons of work you can do around that belief specifically. But again, it's really important if you want to change your life to sort of shift those mindsets and perceptions in order to, like, take the next step and where you want to go.

Andrew Dewar [00:21:44]:

Yeah. One of the biggest shifts as you get older is that you're still young enough to change. You're still young enough to make these shifts. You're never too old.

Catherine Collins [00:21:54]:

Never too old.

Andrew Dewar [00:21:55]:

We have so many stories of people that have made these changes later on in life. It's not about your age. That's just your ego telling you a story that isn't true, and you can shift around that. So if you're hearing this and you're like, I don't know if I could do this. I'm this age, or you don't know my situation or you don't know my friends or my family or my spouse or whatever, just acknowledge that you can change. That's it. Just acknowledge. Say it's possible for me to change.

Andrew Dewar [00:22:23]:

That's it. You don't have to do anything else. But letting that in and putting that seed in a pot and letting it grow for a little bit will change your life over time. And that's all we're trying to do, is to improve your life to a place where you go and you get up and you're not going, ugh. Every time you get up in the morning. But where you get up and you're like, it's a good day. I'm looking forward to today. You do that one day at a time, and it happens faster than you think when you look back on it.

Catherine Collins [00:22:49]:

I love that so much. I think that's a good place to end and to move on to our glimmers, which are the happy, sparkly things that we just want to share with you just because it's fun to end on a glimmering note. So, Andrew, do you have a glimmer to share with the class today?

Andrew Dewar [00:23:06]:

I do, and it's been flashing for the last few minutes. I got a new lark water bottle. It was a little gift to myself for my birthday, and I like it. It tracks my water. I feel like I drink enough water, but then some days I'll get to, like, you know, 03:00 and I'll be, why? Why is my head foggy? All these things, like, yeah, you. You haven't had a drink of water today, so I like this. It's a fun new toy, but it also. It purifies the water, too, somehow, which is, you know, science.

Andrew Dewar [00:23:33]:

But it's cool. I'm really enjoying it. How about you, cat? What's your glimmer?

Catherine Collins [00:23:36]:

I'm just enjoying. You and I are both doing a good reads challenge. We're both reading. Our goal is to read 50 books each this year. I'm surprised I haven't been active on Goodreads before, but, like, I just got there, and I just posted on instagram, like, be my friend on Goodreads, because I think I have, like, Andrew and two other people so far. I'm enjoying putting all my. My different books down. Like, right now, I'm reading expiration dates by Rebecca Searle, I think is, how you say your last name.

Catherine Collins [00:24:05]:

I read her first book in five years, which was a bestseller. It's like a chicken fun, light hearted kind of book. But if you look at my Goodreads now, like, I'm kind of, like, actively reading five different things, and it's always, like, self help fiction. I'm reading a book to my kids and the, you know, like, through the audiobook in the car. And so it's just a big mix. But I'm kind of enjoying the social. It's like, making reading, like, almost like social media with Goodreads. Everyone who's had Goodreads is like, duh, listening to this, but I like it.

Catherine Collins [00:24:35]:

Yeah, Catherine Collins on there. If you want to be my friend.

Andrew Dewar [00:24:38]:

And I don't even know what my username is, but I have two less friends than Catherine does. I have Catherine on this. And that's it.

Catherine Collins [00:24:45]:

Just follow my only friend on there to find Andrew's account.

Andrew Dewar [00:24:49]:

There we go. And I like it. I like that I'm tracking it. It's really cool. So, yeah, good call with the Goodreads.

Catherine Collins [00:24:56]:

Yeah.

Andrew Dewar [00:24:57]:

And I really like today's talk. I feel like we. I feel like we shifted a little bit, and that's what it's all about.

Catherine Collins [00:25:03]:

I think we might have. All right, thanks for listening, everyone. We're rooting for you.

Andrew Dewar [00:25:08]:

Hey, one last thing. Don't forget to go to fiveyearyou.com future to start getting those emails from your future self. It will change your life.

Catherine Collins [00:25:18]:

Hey, guys, quick disclaimer. We're podcasters on the Internet. If you need to seek professional help, please go see your healthcare professional.