Give Me 30 Mins and You’ll Rewire Your Brain to Never Overthink Again!

1. 0:00 – 1:02

   Intro

   1. JSJay Shetty0:00

      We all talk to ourselves like our worst enemy. We talk to ourselves like someone we hate. We talk to ourselves like someone we don't believe in. You would never talk to your friend like that. Now, I'm not saying that you wanna falsely cheer yourself up either. I'm not saying you just wanna look at yourself and be like, "No, I'm amazing, and they were wrong," but you wanna have an honest assessment. So saying, "No, you're the best," isn't true, and saying, "You're the worst" also isn't true. The number one health and wellness podcast.

   2. SPSpeaker0:30

      Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.

   3. JSJay Shetty0:34

      [laughs] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. I'm Jay Shetty, the author of New York Times best-selling books, Think Like a Monk and Eight Rules of Love, and I'm so glad you're here today because I think one of the biggest challenges that I'm hearing so many of you dealing with right now is not the voices outside. It's not the voice of your friends. It's not the voice of your families. It's the voice inside your head. If

2. 1:02 – 2:16

   Is Your inner Voice Blocking You?

   1. JSJay Shetty1:02

      you've ever felt that you've got a critic sitting in your head twenty-four/seven, finding a way to overanalyze, criticize, complain about every move you make, every thought you have, every decision you're about to make, and you find that that critical voice is blocking you from living your best life, is blocking you from unleashing your potential, is blocking you from making that idea happen. Maybe you have an idea for a podcast, but the voice in your head always says, "Don't do it." Maybe you have an idea about how to impact the world positively, and you have a voice in your head saying, "You're not good enough." Maybe you have the desire to build your own business, to start your own company, and the voice in your head says, "It's a stupid idea." Whatever it is, we all go through moments in life where we keep beating ourselves up. If you're someone who wants to silence that critic in your head, this episode is for you. If you're someone who wants to break through that negative spiral in your mind, this episode is for you. And if you're someone who wants to stop beating yourself up and start lifting yourself up, this episode is for you. Let's dive

3. 2:16 – 6:32

   #1: Self Criticism is Self Sabotage

   1. JSJay Shetty2:16

      in. The first thing I wanna talk about is that self-criticism feels like control, but it's actually sabotage, right? When we criticize ourself, we think we're in control. We think we know everything. We think we're correcting ourselves. What we don't realize is we're actually sabotaging ourselves. Imagine a top tennis player keeps berating themselves after every missed shot. Instead of focusing, they actually are just beating themselves up about the last point. That self-criticism that they thought would motivate them actually destroys their rhythm. There's an incredible speech that was given by Roger Federer at Dartmouth University, and he said that in his career, he has missed so many points. He has lost so many points. But he said the biggest skill he had is that he never focused on the last point he missed. He said, "If I'm focused on the last point that I missed, or if I'm focused on the future point that I might miss, then guess what? I miss the present shot. I miss the present moment." So many of us are beating ourselves up for the past. So many of ourselves are beating ourselves up for not having the future we thought we were gonna build. What does that do? It makes the present lose time, money, energy, everything. Ask yourself to stop seeing self-criticism as motivating and control. Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion from two thousand and five shows that students who forgave themselves for procrastinating studied more effectively for the next exam, while harsh self-critics repeated the same cycle. Imagine that. Forgiving yourself makes you more focused. Forgiving yourself allows you to move forward. Resenting yourself holds you back. Criticizing yourself demotivates you. And think about it when you're talking to someone else or when someone's speaking to you. If someone criticizes your every move... I remember I've, I've not played golf very often, but I took a lesson once, and I had a coach who criticized me every quarter of a swing. So even before I swung and hit the ball, he would criticize every single time, and every time I was about to hit the ball, he'd have another criticism. It demotivated me. Think about yourself. If every time you share an idea with a friend, they just pull it apart, even if they're well-intentioned, it demotivates you. How many of you have called yourself stupid after making a mistake at work? And instead of fixing it quickly, you spiral into self-doubt, which means you make more errors. And what's really interesting to me about this is that it's not just about performance. It's not just about focus. It's even in relationships. Maybe you're beating yourself up for staying in a relationship for too long. Maybe you're beating yourself up for allowing someone to walk all over you. Maybe you're beating yourself up for allowing someone to mistreat you. When you beat yourself up for someone already treating you badly, it only gets worse. Forgive yourself for confusing attention with love. Forgive yourself for ignoring red flags because you wanted it to work. Forgive yourself for chasing validation instead of connection. Forgive yourself for being loyal to people who weren't loyal to you.Forgive yourself so that you can move on. Because we don't forgive ourselves, we don't heal. Healing is not just about forgiving others, about letting go of what's outside of ourselves. It's about saying, "You know that mistake I made? That's all I knew then. That's all the information I had then, and maybe I even knew better. But guess what? I'm now learning that lesson. I'm now applying it." That will free you from actually blocking yourself from growth.

4. 6:32 – 10:08

   #2: Negative Self Talk is Counterproductive

   1. JSJay Shetty6:32

      The second thing I wanna talk about is you wouldn't talk to a friend like that, so why talk to yourself like that? Imagine your best friend failed a job interview. Would you say, "You're useless. You should have prepared better. You'll never get hired now"? You would never say that to a friend, ever, yet that's how we all talk to ourselves. We all talk to ourselves like our worst enemy. We talk to ourselves like someone we hate. We talk to ourselves like someone we don't believe in. You would never talk to your friend like that. Now, I'm not saying that you wanna falsely cheer yourself up either. I'm not saying you just wanna look at yourself and be like, "No, I'm amazing, and they were wrong," but you wanna have an honest assessment. So saying, "No, you're the best," isn't true, and saying, "You're the worst" also isn't true. In the Bhagavad Gita, one of the books I studied as a monk, it talks about how attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. The feeling of I'm the best or I'm the worst are two sides of the same coin. It's just the ego playing games with you. When the ego makes you believe you're the best, well, you become complacent and fallible. When the ego makes you believe you're the worst, guess what? It doesn't help you grow. It's the honest introspection, the honest assessment that we all need. "Hey, this is what I got right in the interview, but you know what? I didn't really nail these three things." You're now not assessing it as you, you're assessing it as something you took part in. There's research on self-talk that found athletes who used positive instructional self-talk improved performance, while negative self-talk led to choking under pressure. Think about that. So we all have self-talk. You can't stop the self-talk, but those that were constructive, those that were positive, those that were focused forward made a difference. Imagine before a date you tell yourself, "I'm boring. I'm not sure they're gonna like me." So what happens? You walk in nervous and awkward. It's a prophecy you help fulfill. And what happens in that scenario? You end up being boring. You end up feeling more boring. Now, I'm not saying you walk in there and think you're the most interesting person on the planet, but you think, "Hey, you know what? I've got a couple of things that are interesting to talk about. Got a couple of things in my life that are important to talk about." Encourage yourself when no one else is clapping. Validate yourself when no one else is noticing. Challenge yourself when no one else is pushing. Forgive yourself when no one else understands. Believe in yourself before anyone else does. Push yourself without punishing yourself. Because if you don't do it, you'll always be waiting for someone else. Strong people did the difficult thing when no one was watching. Strong people did the challenging thing when no one was clapping. Strong people did the hardest thing when it was just in private. Do the hard thing, do the right thing when no one's there to notice, and you'll be able to do it brilliantly when they're all watching on the sidelines.

5. 10:08 – 13:28

   #3: Shaming Yourself Doesn't Build Accountability

   1. JSJay Shetty10:08

      The third thing I wanted to talk about is how beating yourself up doesn't build accountability, but it does build shame, right? When you keep beating yourself up, you think... And by the way, we do this to other people as well. Sometimes we'll be mean to someone, or we'll criticize them, hoping that helps them improve, but it just keeps beating them down. You can't beat someone down and lift them up at the same time, which is what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to beat ourselves up so that we do more, are more productive, and more effective. Doesn't work that way. Imagine a teenager caught cheating in exam. They feel so much shame, and they think, "I'm a terrible person." Instead of changing, they hide their mistakes and cheat again. Brené Brown's work distinguishes guilt, I did something bad, from shame, I am bad. Guilt drives corrective action. Shame fuels secrecy and withdrawal. Notice the difference: I did something bad, I am bad. Every time you say, "I am," and follow it up with a negative word, you start believing that is your identity. Every time you say, "I did something bad," you're able to recognize it as a habit or a pattern that you can change. It's a lot harder to feel we can change ourselves than change something we did. Let me give you a real-life example. Imagine you snap at your partner, and then afterwards you feel shame. You think, "I'm a horrible partner." What happens? Instead of apologizing, you avoid them because you feel so bad about yourself. What does that do? It only makes things worse. When you just shame yourself as a bad person, you actually wanna spend less time doing the good. It's almost like you get so comfortable in the dark that the light kind of exposes you, so you move away from the light.We don't wanna move away from the light. When the light comes on, you see things for what they are, and shame blocks us from seeing the way things they are because it's too scary. It's too hard. I'll give you a really interesting example. I remember the first time I went to Vegas. At night, there was all this glitz and glam and all the rest of it. In the morning, I remember with the lights on, the casino floor, seeing people glued to the slot machine, seeing vomit or drinks and popcorn all over the floor, and seeing people passed out, like it, it, it just wasn't the same sight because the light shows us what's actually there. So we move away from the light when it shows us what's actually there, but if we can not let shame take over, we can actually look at things for what they are. Don't shame yourself. It won't change you. Compassion will. Don't blame yourself. It won't change you. Accountability will. Don't criticize yourself. It won't change you. Action will. Don't beat yourself up. It won't change you. Challenges will. You don't grow because of guilt. It just slows you down. [whooshing sound]

6. 13:28 – 17:24

   #4: Your Brain is Wired to Focus on Mistakes

   1. JSJay Shetty13:28

      On eBay, every find has a story. Like, if you're looking for a vintage band tee, not just a tee, the band tee from the last show your favorite band ever played. You wore it everywhere, then your best friend started wearing it, which was cute until they unfriended you and took it with them, which was not so cool. Anyway, now you're on eBay, and there it is, same tee from the same tour, still living in your memory rent-free forever. See? The things you love have a way of finding their way back to you. But eBay isn't just for getting whatever your ex or ex-best friend stole back. It's also for that rare championship foul ball you caught, then heroically gave to the kid next to you. And where else are you going to find your first car? The one you wish you never sold, but now finally get the chance to take back home, for good this time. Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story. eBay: things people love. [whooshing sound] The fourth point today is your brain is wired to focus on mistakes. How many times have you had this? You do something right, and your brain will barely notice it. You do something wrong, and your brain will think about it all day. Let's say you were great in a meeting today at work. You'll forget about it in the next meeting. You say something sloppy or made a mistake at a meeting in work, you're now thinking about it for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, thinking that's all anyone can think about. Your brain is wired to focus on mistakes. Imagine this. A musician finishes their concert. Hundreds of thousands of people are clapping. One person frowns. One person isn't happy. One person posts on social media that they want their money back. Guess what the mind obsesses over? It obsesses over the negative comments. You may even see this on your social media. You'll have 10 of your friends respond. One of them doesn't in the group chat, and you're thinking about that one friend. "Why didn't they respond? Don't they like me?" You're forgetting about the 10 people over here who responded immediately. It's your birthday. Seven people show up to the party that you wanted to see. Three people don't show up. Where does your mind go? To the three people who didn't show up. One study showed that negative events weigh three to five times more heavily in our minds than positive ones. This is known as the negativity bias. So what do we do with that? Here's what I've learned. You remember the bad times more than the good times because when things go well, you celebrate for a night. But when things go bad, you cry for a month. We're used to going deeper into our harder emotions than we are into our happier emotions. We've gotta learn to rewire our mind. How do we do this? When something good happens to you, share it. When something good happens to you or someone does something good to you, share it. Talk about it. You're training your mind to spot what will change it positively. I could look around this room, and I can think about all the mistakes in how the furniture's placed and what I need to change. That's important, but at the same time, I can look around and see how beautiful it is. That's also important. It's valuable to know what needs to change in your life. It's valuable to know what's not going in the direction you want it to go in your life. But if that's all you have, then you'll just create more of it. There's something known as the frequency illusion. How many times have you said to yourself, "Oh, I really like that color," or, "I really like that shirt," or pants or whatever it is, and now you see them everywhere. Everyone's wearing them. Everyone's wearing that color. Or you wanna get a car, and you wanna get a black car, and now you see black cars everywhere. It's not like there, there's more black cars on the road or more people are wearing those skirts or shirts or whatever it may be. It's just that you have

7. 17:24 – 20:01

   #5: Progress Isn't Linear

   1. JSJay Shetty17:24

      a heightened awareness of it. This is why gratitude works so well. Gratitude doesn't work because it's magic. It's that when you become grateful for something, you notice more things to be grateful for. Right now, your brain is wired to spot negative things, so you spot more negative things than you do positive, not because there are more negative things in the world, just because you're trained to notice it. One of my favorite quotes from Wayne Dyer is this: "You don't see things as they are. You see things as you are." When you are focused on the negative, you see more negative. When you focus on the positive, you notice more positive. This isn't positive thinking. Positive thinking is pretending like the negative doesn't exist.Noticing good things is learning to tune yourself in to higher vibration and frequency. Point number five is that progress is not linear. Thomas Edison tested over one thousand prototypes before the light bulb worked. If he saw setbacks as failure, he'd have quit after attempt number ten. There's an amazing study that talks about the stages of change model, shows that relapse, i.e., slipping back into smoking, for example, isn't failure. It's part of how lasting behavior change happens. Think about this for a second. You commit to running three times a week. One week, you only manage once, and what usually happens is you quit. You go, "I messed up this week. Next week, I won't run at all." But what happens, you actually lose track. Whereas when you recognize that that's part of the process of change, when you set a new goal, when you set a new habit, you are gonna have days that you fall back. When you break up with someone, you might feel healed in a month, and then in seven months, you're gonna be sitting there thinking about your ex. That's part of the healing journey. When you realize that healing is three steps forward, two steps back, four steps forward, three steps back, sometimes one step forward, four steps back. When you realize that's what healing looks like, you're actually free to heal. When you want it all to happen today, w- when you want healing to all happen tomorrow, it will last forever. So when we fall off track, we beat ourselves up. "Oh, I did three times last week, but this time I only went to the gym once. I was eating really, really healthy, but last night I just crashed." Guess what? The less, the week doesn't matter, right? How many times have you done that? And

8. 20:01 – 22:35

   #6: Rest is Essential for Progress

   1. JSJay Shetty20:01

      it all happens because you beat yourself up. You don't fall back into bad habits because you're lazy. You fall back into bad habits because you beat yourself up when you have a bad day. Don't turn a bad day into a bad week. Don't turn a bad week into a bad month. And don't turn a bad month into a bad year. Let it be a bad day. That's okay. But tomorrow, pick yourself up and make it a great one. It's when you don't beat yourself up that you keep the power of turning a bad day into a good month, a bad day into a good week. I hope that resonates with you. Next time you set a goal, a habit, a change, or whatever you wanna do, and you fall off, know that that's part of it. Give yourself grace, and you'll be able to get back on track much quicker. The sixth thing I wanted to share with you today is that rest is part of progress, not the opposite of it. So many of us think that rest means we're not moving forward. My monk teacher used to say, "If you want to move three steps forward, you have to go three steps deep." So if you're struggling to move forward, ask yourself if you've gone inward already. Elite athletes schedule recovery days as strictly as training days. Serena Williams even naps before matches because rest is strategy, not laziness. For most of us, though, rest isn't something we plan. It's something we end up doing when we're exhausted. When you're resting when you're exhausted, that's not rest. That's survival. That's recovery. That's why it's so stressful. Whereas the highest performers in the world have scheduled rest. That scheduled rest is what helps them perform at their best in all the other times. On the podcast, I have into Matthew Walker, who has done a lot of research on sleep, and his study on why we sleep from twenty seventeen shows deep sleep consolidates learning and strengthens memory. Without it, performance and creativity drop. Some people think, "Oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead," or, "I'll sleep when I'm tired." That sleep is the reason you can be so productive. That sleep is the reason you can be proactive. That re- sleep is the reason you can be so effective. So no, don't beat yourself

9. 22:35 – 26:57

   #7: Self Kindness Builds Resilience

   1. JSJay Shetty22:35

      up for wanting to rest. Don't beat yourself up for wanting to take a break. Don't beat yourself up for wanting to slow down. And don't beat yourself up for wanting to have your own time. Allow yourself to slow down. Give yourself permission to be still. That's where your power is. Let me give you an example. You work late every night to get ahead, but you're so burned out, you're starting to make sloppy mistakes. A rested version of you would finish faster with fewer errors. Working more doesn't achieve more. Losing sleep doesn't achieve more. Trying to do everything doesn't achieve more. Sometimes you achieve more by more rest, more stillness, and more calm. Point number seven is that self-kindness builds resilience more than self-criticism ever will. Navy SEALs in training who used encouraging self-talk were far more likely to complete Hell Week than those who tore themselves down. Now, for those of you who don't know, Hell Week is the most grueling training that a Navy SEAL goes through. I interviewed David Goggins, and if you wanna know more about it, you can go back to that episode and watch and listen to what that week actually entails. It's a five-and-a-half-day period during the first phase of SEAL training. Candidates average about four hours of sleep for the entire week, less than one hour per night. They're constantly exposed to cold water, mud, sand.physical drills, and team challenges. Training goes day and night, running in formation, carrying boats and logs, swimming in the Pacific, obstacle courses. The goal isn't just to push the body, it's to test the mind and spirit under exhaustion. Instructors want to see who breaks under stress, who stays calm when freezing, exhausted, and in pain, who can lead and support teammates when everyone is suffering. About 70 to 80% of candidates quit during Hell Week. Those who survive don't necessarily have the strongest bodies. They have the strongest mental resilience because their self-talk is not negative. They found that breaking down the week into moments, just get through the next meal, not survive five days. Neff and Germer in 2013 found people who practice self-compassion meditation increased resilience, life satisfaction, and reduced anxiety. Imagine after bombing a presentation, you tell yourself, "It's one talk, not my whole career. Next time I'll be sharper." That mindset keeps you moving forward instead of giving up. You don't get stronger by beating yourself down. You get stronger by giving yourself the same kindness you'd give to anyone you love. I really hope that this episode is able to help you quiet that inner critic. It's not going anywhere. It's not going away. We're not trying to get rid of it. What we're trying to do is that we make sure we have the new scripts in our mind that have positive self-talk, that focus on what we can be grateful for, that look for opportunities more than problems, and that when they look for problems, they look for systems and solutions, not criticism, not shame. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you'll share this with a friend who struggles with this too. I hope you'll discuss it with them, and I'll see you on the next episode. Thanks for being here. I'm forever in your corner, and I'm always rooting for you. If you loved this episode, you'll love my conversation with Dr. Joe Dispenza on why stress and overthinking negatively impacts your brain and heart and how to change your habits that are on autopilot. Listen to it right now.

   2. SPSpeaker26:45

      How many times do we have to forget until we stop forgetting and start remembering? That's the moment of change. No one cares how many times you fell off the bicycle if you ride the bicycle now. You ride the bike

Episode duration: 26:57