Episode 22 - How to retrain your brain to see possibility
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/It's time for my favorite topic of all, which is possibility. I love all things possibility. The aim of all the work that I do is to help mums see possibilities so that they can get out there. And make the difference that they are here to make in the world. And possibility is key to that. But here's the thing. And I know many of you have felt those. If you're not still feeling it. It's hard to get into a space of possibility. When you have the Motherload. You have so many responsibilities in your life. And your brain is full. Right. Is it hard to get into possibility when there's so many things? That are filling your time. But also just your brain capacity. So today. [00:01:00] We're going to accept that that has been challenging thus far, that it will continue to be challenging. But give you.
Five really practical things that you can do to start to get into this space of possibility and to retrain your brain. To get into that space again. Whether you were able to do it before, which actually I would argue all of us have been able to be in this space of possibility at some point in our life. Think about when you were a child. And. You were playing freely somewhere. Right. You're always in that space of possibility. No matter the upbringing that you've had some. More easily than others because of that. But our brains as children. Go straight to possibility. We don't see the things that will get in our way. And. Getting into a place of possibility means. Getting back to that feeling that we had when we were a kid where anything was possible. So let's [00:02:00] dive into how the heck. Do you do that? So the first thing, which I say with every thing. That I bring on here is that we need to get you regulated. So. Find something that makes you feel good. That slows down your heart rate. That gets you back in your body. And out of your head. And makes you feel regulated, like your heart's going a normal pace, your breathing at a normal pace. And you get back to that feeling. If we're not in that feeling, it's very difficult to be in a place of possibility, especially if we are actually feeling a lot of the less pleasant emotions. So one way. In fact, many ways that you can do this. Here's a few examples that, that have helped me and that have helped others. And many of them. Our science proven [00:03:00] ways.
But you might also have things that are your go tos. Right. What is it that you do to get yourself regulated? It can be a ten second thing. It can be a 10 minute thing. It can be much longer than that. So. Here's some things that happened to help me. , one is nature. You will know if you've been listening to this. That nature is my go-to for getting regulated. So. The first easiest, quickest way to do that is to notice, to sit and notice the nature around you. If you're inside, are there plants? Or can you see something outside the window? Maybe a tree notice how it blows in the wind. Or is still because it's not windy. Notice how the colors change based on where you are, start to notice. And then notice what you feel when you're. Noticing the nature. Also just go outside barefoot. I [00:04:00] know. Back to the earth. It's stupid, super hairy fairy, but I love. Being barefoot. And. No, I don't necessarily, I'm not someone that goes and. You know, it goes to the local festival with no shoes on. But I do love barefoot and I understand why people do do that. And I do constantly have their feet in my house and outside and.
If your health allows you to do so, going outside, even just for a few moments, sitting on the ground. Putting your feet on the ground. Putting as much of you. On the ground as you can. We'll help to regulate your emotions, your body. All parts of you. , movement is another one. So go for a walk or go for a run. Even just walk up and down the stairs a few times or get on your bike. Or if you're in a wheelchair, go for a wheel. Right.
Something that [00:05:00] involves movement. It could even be as simple as like I shake my leg sometimes. That's, that's actually, I think a lot of people do. That's helping get us regulated. Our body wants to get something out.
, breathing exercises. You can do many in many of them. I like a four breaths in. For breath, hold for breath out and go in through that square. Meditation, if that's your thing. And if you, if it isn't. I heard you to try it, even in the tiniest amount, talking to someone else.
And sometimes that can be. I professional. And sometimes that might be a friend or your dog. Hugging someone. Petting your dog, right? Getting that connection. Happy feelies. So let's do something that helps you feel good and that will help you get regulated. Now, once you've done that. And you're feeling like just, maybe you'll be able to [00:06:00] move into possibility. The next step is to really dig into the self-compassion. Again, this is a step I talk about frequently. First we get regulated, then we have to have that self-compassion. Over the fact that it has been hard to get into this place of possibility. Right.
We beat ourselves up all the time. I beat myself up all the time and I'm quite certain. That many, many other women, moms, humans do out there. And. Instead of beating ourselves up, what would it be like to. Simply notice that possibility has been hard for you to find lately. And it's been hard to get into that mindset. And. Accepting all the reasons for that. And deciding to do something that will shift that. Without being hard on the self that was. If you envision, if you're a metaphor person, like I am. [00:07:00] Then this might help you. I like to envision that we are. There's some sort of wall in front of us. Right. And when you're deregulated, when you've got this mother load of responsibilities, when you. Have everything that comes up at us and. You have yet to be able to feel more positive emotion than the less pleasant ones. It's like this big wall and no matter how hard we try to climb. It's hard to see, see over the top until we get there. Right. And every once in awhile we might get a peak and then we fall down a few feet and then we try it again. And. It's hard to see into the distance. Even when we get to the top, it's like, oh, I can only see right in front of me. Right. So what can you see if it's a little further, a little further, a little further, and that's what we're going to be working on today is some practices that we can put into place to allow us to start to see further [00:08:00] once we've come over that wall and got ourselves regulated. Even just for a moment. So step three, here is practice elsewhere. So you're going to practice possibility outside of your own life. Because digging into our own life. It's, it's much more likely that we will. Get. Come up with the challenges that are in place.
Such as I don't have time, I don't have money. So-and-so won't like it. There's no way I can do that because my kid has a disability or there's no way, et cetera, et cetera, or there should and. It's just a lot easier to come up with that when you start looking at your own life. Right? So first to ease ourselves in, we're going to practice. Possibility elsewhere. Okay. And the real key here is practice and play. Just play with possibility. The awesome thing about this is by the way, is so much of this can be done with your kids. So there isn't really a time, excuse kids love playing with [00:09:00] possibility. It is a favorite of so, so many, so involve them when you want to, and also take the time to time to get into that space yourself. Depending on who you are, you might find it easier with your kids or harder.
So one of my favorite activities is how many things could this object be? Now, just look around your room. Wherever you are. There's a million objects around you. If you're in nature, maybe there's a stick. If you're on your desk, maybe there's a pen or a scissors or. Uh, mug right. Someone told us that this is what that thing is. Right. So I'm going to go with this cup of water that I have next to me. And someone told me that that's a cup. And that it's meant to put. Liquid in. And then I meant to put my mouth up to it. I'm meant to drink it. Right. And what if that role wasn't there anymore? What if it could be anything I wanted it to be. And this game is as simple as that. [00:10:00] You just think of as many things as you possibly can. That would.
Be a possibility for this cup to be. And maybe it's called something else who knows, like it could be a hat or a nose or a magnifier. Like voice magnifier. Or a musical instrument. If I, if I dig it with something. You know, I can come up with a million different things. And at first it'll be hard. And the more you do it, the more fun it is. And this is definitely a game that's fun to play with someone else because we can feed off of each other's ideas and energy. I highly recommend doesn't even have to be your kids. It could be like your partner or your friend or your neighbor. Just it's a great activity to get the mind starting to go.
Another thing that you could do and a little kind of game for yourself. Might be. When you [00:11:00] start to see that someone else's hitting a wall and they're struggling to come up with an idea or get into possibilities, just to give yourself a scenario of somebody else. Right. It could be a real person or not. But sometimes real people, like we can see things in other people's lives that we can't see in our own very easily. So let's say you, you know, the mom at school drop off was telling you a story about something that you can see that they can't get. They can't see what's possible. On the other side of this. You know, theoretical wall. Go home and come up with a million ideas. You don't have to share this with them. It's not about them. It's about using a scenario of somebody else to come up with possibility. So.
You can get your sticky notes out and write, and you can mind map. You can draw, you can just talk out loud, whatever method actually works with you.
Just start to come up with ideas of like, I dunno, maybe someone couldn't come up with a [00:12:00] name for their baby or maybe.
Or maybe they could, and you just still would love to come up with a name for someone's babies or you go through and like come up with a million lists of people, , or their dog or their cat or whatever it might be.
Or maybe they are. Trying to figure out.
What they could do with their toddler. Every day who's home when they're still working. Right. So come up with. A bunch of ideas, as many as you can, of things that they could do to entertain their kid. Well, also. Doing their work. Right. Now, depending on how you know that, well, you know that person, you may or may not want to give it to them, but that's that again? That's not the point, right? You don't have to tell them you've even done it. It's just about getting us in the mindset.
One more exercise you can do is [00:13:00] to find a book, any book. Or a newspaper, anything with words in your house? Flipped to any page and then randomly put your finger on a word. And depending on what that word is, come up with five names for cereal. That is prompted by that word. So new names for different types of cereal that you're creating right now. And come up with five names based on that word that you read. So let's say, , the quickest word that I can. See around me as epic. I can see that word on my desk right now. So based on the word epic, I would try to come up with. Five or more serial names of.
Using that word, epic. So like, Epically smart. That'd be like, I I'd feed my kid that cereal. You can just come up with anything you want. Right. You're probably doing it in your head right now. Feel free to try if you're gotten into that mode just by listening to me, the like, Like, press pause, take a [00:14:00] second. And like come up with some right now.
Okay. You get the jest.
So that's practicing with somebody else or externally to your own life. And the next step, once you've started to practice that. And these might be different times by the way. These are like kind of stages you can go through and you might need to practice with other things or people much more often before you feel like you're ready to get into your own life. But whenever you start to feel just a little bit ready, a little excited by the idea of possibility in your own life. Then you can start to practice with your life.
Start with something really easy and really fun. Again, you can involve your kids if you want to, depending on whether you think that will actually assist you in what you're doing. So some examples of things you could do just to, just to play again [00:15:00] with possibility is name 20 places you'd like to go.
With your kids.
Like adventures that you'd like to go on. Like, oh, I really, we should go to. The butterfly gardens and, oh, there's this park with the woods. I want to go there and we should go in those water slides I saw are those zip lines or there's just this beautiful piece of water that I'd love to show. My little list, you know, just make a list of as many things as you could possibly think of. And it could be lists. It could be drawing. It can be mind map. If you haven't heard of a mind map, I recommend looking it up. It is much more in tune to how the neural pathways work in our brain. So. You know, it's, it's the concept of, we used to call it brainstorming. It's not necessarily politically correct anymore, but. If you have the main topic in the middle, you're going out from it with an idea which you can then get an idea off of and keep going outwards and color-coding will, , help your memory and mind work [00:16:00] even better. If you're doing that. But honestly, you can do anything you want to do. And that is working for you to just jot down these ideas. You can just shout them out if that works for you too. If it's something that you don't necessarily need to access later. By all means. Just shout it out.
Another example is you could do name 10 different walks, bikes, or again, in a wheelchair, maybe wheels. That you could do right from your house. 10 different places that you could walk to. Right from your house, little walks. It doesn't have to be a destination, just 10 different walks that you could take. Maybe dry it out. Maybe create some little maps. Right.
Another example is named 10 places. I'm just saying 10, you can make as many numbers as you want, but name 10 places you'd like to travel to. I want to go to Iceland. Africa. That's not a country that's continent, but I'd also like to go to many places in, in the African continent continent.
Back to [00:17:00] England, to France, to Spain, to Greece, to Italy, like all of the things that you can think of. Do Zealand Australia. So yeah, I'm just going on and on now I'd like to go everywhere basically, but. Name the places you'd love to travel to.
And. Another example might be to make up a game that you could play with just natural things that you find outside your house. So sticks or rocks or other pieces of nature. What game could you play? You can put some more parameters around that if you want with your kid or with another adult or whatever it might be, what, what game could you play? With the nature around you and try to, you know, be creative and come up with something.
And the key in all of these things is that you're entering a space of possibility. And note that there are rules around this, right? And the rules are, this is play. POS a place of possibility is not somewhere [00:18:00] where you have constraints of money or time or energy. This is somewhere where you have no limits. Right. No limits whatsoever.
Those little things that will naturally come into your head and say, but.
You just say, oh yeah. We'll think about that later. Right because those things do come into play, but first is the place of possibility.
So once you've done. The things above. So you've gotten yourself regulated. You've seen compassion for yourself. Maybe sat with that a little bit. You've practiced playing with possibility in someone else's life, like something external to yours. And then you've practiced playing in your life. Then you might gently practice the harder things in your life. So. I love doing this for myself. I actually did it just this morning. Where Jen, you can gently practice the harder things by. [00:19:00] Giving yourself an uninterrupted, certain length of time you decide I gave 30 minutes or so. And I got a bunch of sticky notes out, but you can mind map, like I just described. I put some background music on because it kind of gets me going and I. Was overwhelmed to choose what that was so good. Old Google told me, I just said. For it to. Put background music on and it did. Amazingly chose some good stuff.
And then I sit there and I let myself explore. I think of what the question is in my life, which might be. What's next or what's possible. Like, what do I really, if I, if I could do anything right now, What would it be? Who do I really want to work with? And let my mind come up with whatever it comes up with.
Because this is a practice. And it's not about getting it. Perfect. It's [00:20:00] not about getting it right. It's about allowing our brain to enter different places because after that 30 minutes stops, your brain is going to keep going on this, even when you're not intentionally doing it. It'll be going when you're sleeping. Right. Once we put something into movement. It continues in that movement without us trying. And how cool would that be if suddenly. One of the things that you thought was possible, or that was really, really big. You started working towards it without almost even noticing.
So remember that this is all about play. It's about being in a space of possibility. That means not looking at why something can't work. Or what's in the way. Or what needs to be overcome? Yet, because like I say, that comes later. It's about being in a space of play with no rules or limits.
Because it's in this space that [00:21:00] ideas, cravings, desires, and possibilities that we didn't even know existed. We'll start to peak through and eventually shine. So go on. Retrain your brain to get into this place of possibility. And I can't wait to see. What you will eventually see as possible. [00:22:00] [00:23:00]
