Latest / HEY, AMBITIOUS / 32. From Pressure to Possibility: How to Train Your Brain to See What’s Possible

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32. From Pressure to Possibility: How to Train Your Brain to See What’s Possible · HEY, AMBITIOUS

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey ambitious! I want to start today with a very old story about two shoe salesmen.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Two shoe salesmen ascend to a faraway place to explore a new market.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: They arrive and discover something rather unfortunate.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody there wears shoes.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: The first salesman takes one look around and sends a message back to the company.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hopeless.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody here wears shoes.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: The second salesman looks around at the exact same location.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the same people, the exact same bare feet, the exact same circumstances, and sends back Incredible Opportunity.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody here has shoes yet.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Same reality, same evidence, completely different possibility.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is such a perfect story for ambitious women because we are exceptionally good at looking at reality and figuring it out.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: We analyze, we strategize, we look at what worked before, we look at what didn't work, we look at the bank account, the business, the relationship, our age, our body, the algorithm, the economy.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: How many people signed up, how many people didn't sign up, and then a brilliant brain says, okay, based on all available evidence, here is what is probably going to happen.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Very responsible, yep, very intelligent, very efficient, and sometimes very limiting.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because your brain isn't necessarily showing you everything that's possible, it's helping you navigate an enormous amount of information by filtering what gets your attention.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why I want to bring a little bit of neuroscience.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: There is a network in the brain commonly associated with attention and arousal called the reticular activating system.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard me talk about it.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Your brain is receiving far more sensory information that you could consciously process at any given moment.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: So attention has to be selective.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Something has to essentially say, This matters.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to this.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You've probably experienced this.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You decide you want a certain car, and suddenly that car is everywhere.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: How many times has that happened to you?
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Did everybody run out and buy your car overnight?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Probably not.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Your attention changed.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: The information was already there.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: You simply began noticing it.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And let's just do a quick experiment right now.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever you are right now, hopefully you're in the room, maybe you're outside.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine too.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: What I'd love for you to do is just to look around and see everything that is green in your environment.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just look around, look around, green, green, green, green, green.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention to green, green, green, green, and green.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now come back.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And make sure you're not driving for this one.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now I just want you to close your eyes.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe stop if you're walking outside.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then tell everything that you saw blue.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And now open your eyes and see the blue around you.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So what did you learn from that experiment?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: I bet you could tell me like so many green things and not so many blue, but when you opened your eyes and you looked around, the blue was there too.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: But that selective reticular activating system did its job.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: It brought to your attention what you decided that matters to you.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it is an unconscious decision.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's go into our experiment.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the car.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very common example, right?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um expectations, beliefs, goals, previous experiences, and emotional states can influence what captures the attention and how we interpret what we notice.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, that subconscious that carries whatever was happening in the childhood is still influencing your attention right now.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's essentially what I do in my work quite a bit when I work one-on-one.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's exactly what I help my women access, those subconscious patterns that they weren't even aware, but they're actually influencing your life right now.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So your brain has been shaped by evolution to pay particular attention to potential threats.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: If our ancestors heard something rustling in the bushes, the nervous system that said, Oh, I wonder what delightful possibility is waiting for me in there.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was not necessarily the nervous system most likely to pass along its genes, right?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, like we would not be alive here.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you needed to assume tiger.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: So human beings have what researchers often describe as a negativity bias.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Negative or potentially threatening information can have a particular strong influence on our attention, learning, and decision making.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Which is wonderful when there is an actual tiger.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not always so wonderful when you're launching a business or changing careers or dating again or creating something nobody around you understands, or stepping into a version of yourself you've never been before.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because now the rustling in the bushes sounds like, what if nobody buys it?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: What if I embarrass myself?
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: What if I'm too old?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: What if I'm behind?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: What if I lose what I built?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: What if this does not work?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: What if I make the wrong decision?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And your brain says, excellent questions.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: I have evidence and answers to all of those questions.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's why the quality of the questions you ask changes the quality of the life that you experience.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what we're going to be doing in our possibility experiments.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly your brain gets busy and it produces an entire PowerPoint presentation called 17 Reasons, you should stay exactly where you are, with graphs and citations.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because we still essentially operate from one of the most like oldest systems, the reptilian brain.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And for the reptilian brain, survival is the number one priority.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Does not care if you're happy or satisfied or abundant.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It cares if you're dead or alive.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Survival is the priority.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why 17 reasons you should stay exactly where you are come from that part of you.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it comes with graphs, citations, and probably an appendix.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because, well, you know, ambitious women, we're very good at figuring things out.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the question I want to play with.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: What happens when the brain that is trying to protect you from uncertainty becomes the brain you're asking to imagine your future?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because possibility lives beyond what you already know.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Creation requires something that does not exist yet.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Your next level, by definition, cannot be entirely proven by your current reality.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think we sometimes misunderstand possibility.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Possibility is not positive thinking.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't everything is amazing.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't nothing bad will ever happen.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's certainly not ignoring reality.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Remember a shoe salesman?
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: The second salesman did not pretend everyone was wearing shoes.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: He saw the bare feet too.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: He simply didn't decide that bare feet could have only one meaning.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's possibility.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there is enormous freedom in that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because if your mind can create this is not working, it can also create what haven't I seen yet?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: If it can say I'm behind, it can ask, what if I'm not behind at all?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: If it can say there isn't enough, it can ask, where is life already supporting me that I haven't been noticing?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And do you see how different questions create different sensations in your body, different emotions?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that also redirects your reticular activating system to answer, to produce different answers.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, yeah, if your brain can say, I don't know how, instead of immediately trying to figure everything out, perhaps we can ask a different question.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder, what could happen that I cannot predict from here?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're accessing the imagination, your infinite potential.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love the quote by Albert Einstein who says, logic can only take us from A to B, but imagination can take us everywhere.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a really good skill to have.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Just notice the energy of that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: There is that sense of wonder, curiosity, exploration.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: There is room, there is space to breathe, there is space to expand, there is space to be in the floor of contract, expand, expand, contract, contract, expand, be do, do, be do.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I believe this is where ambitious women need to play more.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because somewhere along the road to becoming capable, successful, responsible, many of us became professional figure it outers.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: We can like literally get a PhD in figuring it out.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a problem and we'll solve it.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Give us a vision and we'll make a spreadsheet.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: Give us uncertainty and we'll have a strategic plan by Tuesday.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that part of us.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's brilliant, it's amazing.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes our competence becomes a cage.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: We become so good at creating from what we know that we stop leaving room for what we don't know?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what if unknown isn't just where danger lives?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: What if it's also where possibility lives?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: What if ease lives there?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: What if unexpected support lives there?
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: What if the person you haven't met yet lives there?
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: The idea you haven't had yet, the opportunity you couldn't have planned, the version of you that you haven't experienced yet.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons I've been creating something new called possibility experiments.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And truthfully, when I look back at my experience and everything that I've created at this point, you know what?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: None of it really, well, pretty much none of it.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't say not none of it, but a lot of it came from unexpected circumstances that were opening up opportunities that were coming through, people that were coming in uh the universe creating some reconfigurations and those serendipities and synchronicities were happening.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And when I look back, I can say, well, this is how I did it.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a beautiful moment to recognize that what if you don't have to figure it out or all of it?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back to what I've created for you that I call possibility experiments.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: They're not another program for you to work hard at.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Please, let's not do that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: We have enough homework.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're little experiments in noticing, playing, wondering, interrupting the automatic prediction, and essentially rewiring your brain to perceive more possibilities than limitations.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: We are really good at creating limitations, but possibilities also exist.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So, over 10 days, I'm going to send you five possibility experiments every other day directly to your inbox.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And each one is an invitation to catch the familiar lens your mind is looking through and experiment with another one.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not because the new interpretation is automatically right, that's the experiment.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: We're simply asking, what else could be possible?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: We're opening up.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps one of my favorite parts is the space between the experiments.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't want you consuming more information.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want you living differently with the information.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to go back into your actual life and notice.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the conversation you could not have predicted, the idea that arrives while you're walking, the person who suddenly emails you, the opportunity you almost dismissed, the tiny coincidence, the unexpected yes, the thing that works more easily than your mind thought it should.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I call those little moments possibility wings.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're looking for them, you're gonna see more of them.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps they were always happening, and they always are happening, and you simply weren't looking for them.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So here's your tiny experiment before you even join me.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Think of one area of your life where you've already decided what the circumstances mean.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe business, money, love, your body, your age, your future, and what it also means about you.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Something you've looked at and unconsciously concluded, well, obviously this means.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now imagine our two shoe salesmen standing beside you.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: One looks at your circumstances and says, hopeless, nobody wears shoes.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the other one leans over, looks at the exact same evidence, and says, Ha! Nobody has shoes yet.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: That little word changes something.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not because it guarantees an outcome, but because it leaves the future open.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: And an open future gives your imagination somewhere to go and redirects your reticular activating system to go along with the imagination.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It gives curiosity somewhere to go.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: It gives creativity somewhere to go.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: It gives you somewhere to go.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: So ambitious.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: You've tried working harder, you've tried figure it out, you've tried controlling the outcome.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's time to try wandering bigger.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Come play with me inside the possibility experiments.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Five experiments, ten days, delivered directly to your inbox.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: No pressure to perform, no perfect way to do them, just an invitation to interrupt what you've been predicting long enough to discover what else might be there.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe there are more possibilities around you than you think.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe your brain has simply gotten very practiced at figuring the familiar ones.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe nobody has it nobody has shoes yet.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you inside.