Crosstrain Your Brain

Our mind is so powerful. 

It has the ability to create magic and possibility anywhere in our lives. 

To harness this power more easily, we need a little mental workout regimen.

Let’s strengthen our mental muscles and manifest our desires. 

Let me show you how.

Subscribe! Apple | Pandora | Spotify | TuneIn | YouTube

Mentioned:

Everyday Channeling is three live magical sessions beginning May 18, 2024. Register here: https://buy.stripe.com/3cscOO4WMeq273GeV2

Make Magic:

To unlock the power of your mind, manifest your desires,

and shift toward possibility, practice counterbalancing your negativity bias

and integrate gratitude and mindfulness rituals like Everyday Channelling.

Transcript: Crosstrain Your Brain

Natalie Miller: Welcome to Mind Witchery. I’m your host, Natalie Miller, and I’m so glad you’re here. 

Hello. I am so excited to jump right into today's episode, which is like quintessential Mind Witchery [laugh], meaning that I think about this podcast as helping us, me, hopefully you, to really make the most of this creative, magical organ that we have, resource that we have, our human minds. And today I'm speaking very particularly about cultivating a more co-creative, a more possibilities-oriented perspective. 

It is our ability to tap into that kind of perspective, that very creative-potential and possibilities-oriented way of seeing our lives, ourselves, our businesses, our relationships, our families, our whole lives. That is what I have found very most powerful about coaching, both as a client of coaches and as a coach myself, and to me it really is this kind of perspective that is fundamental to our ability to grow, our ability to evolve, not only in and of ourselves but also to shift our circumstances. 

When I am only ever looking at what is wrong, what is not working, what is in my way, what I don't have, right, when I'm only, when looking at myself and my life and my world with a negative perspective, it's very difficult to tap into creativity. It is very difficult to see potential and possibility. It is incredibly difficult to summon the resources, the courage, the self-trust that is necessary for making changes in the way we live our lives. 

I've spoken before about negativity bias. I don't think negativity bias [laugh] is brand new to you. You have no doubt heard about it before, but I'll just remind you what it is. Basically, we humans, the way that our brains work, we tend to pay much more attention to that which is negative than we do to that which is positive. And you have no doubt experienced this. It's like 30 people had an incredible experience in the class you taught, but one person did not like it, and it is that one person's feedback that sticks out.

I will see this with my kids and their report cards. You know, their report cards will come back with all A's except for this one B, and the one B is that which sticks out, right? You might be having eight credit cards, and on seven of them, you never carry a balance forward. But that one credit card where you do carry a balance forward makes you believe you are terrible with money. Yeah?

So negativity bias is the human tendency to weigh and consider and attend to negative information more than positive information. And I looked into this a little bit just to like—I don't know—learn more. You know, I like to learn. And I learned that one theory about this is that our brains use more energy processing negative information than they do positive information.

Like, there's literally more activity required to process that which is negative than that which is positive. And so the idea there is that, well, you spent more energy on it, you spent more time and more brain wave processing it, and so it takes up more space in your mind. Yeah? 

Now, negativity bias isn't going anywhere, nor do I think that it should. It makes sense that we humans would want to attend to that which is not working, that which is undesirable. At the same time, it is so easy to become overwhelmed by negativity bias, to only see what's wrong, what isn't working, what I don't have, what I don't want. 

And, like I said, from that place, it's very difficult to be courageous, to be creative, to be resourceful, to fully exercise the power of our minds to find solutions, to create different ways of doing things, to envision different ways of being. So in this situation where negativity bias is very strong in our minds, I think what is called for is a little intellectual cross-training, is a rebalancing of our perspective, our way of seeing ourselves in the world.

I really like this idea of cross-training. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, I was a fitness instructor. You can kind of see it, right? Like, I totally did the sports bra and short shorts, like, headphone [laugh] aerobics instructor gig. I did that. I taught weight lifting at the Y in Berkeley, California, and then of course I taught yoga for years and years. 

And a concept in those worlds, of course, is the idea of balanced strength, right, of cross-training, of using antagonist muscles. So the idea is if you are really good at pushing with your arms, it's very important to practice pulling with your arms; or if your quadriceps, the fronts of your thighs are really strong, it's really important to strengthen the backs of your thighs, your hamstrings. 

And this, of course, doesn't mean that I'm not any longer going to be able to push with my arms, or I'm not any longer going to have strong quads. Really what it means is that instead of being overdeveloped in a certain direction, I have a more balanced strength, and that promotes the health and the development, the growth of balanced strength in my whole human body.

I am by no means the first person to think this might be a good idea. And there are in fact a number of practices. There are so many modalities that are designed to help us to strengthen our capacity for more positive, more possibility-oriented thinking, right? I mean, coaching in and of itself is about that. It is about seeing yourself differently, your life differently, your circumstances differently, and through that perspective to spark creativity. 

Gratitude practice is about that, right? In gratitude practice, we are actively appreciating, we are actively giving more value to that which is good in our lives, that which is working for us. Mindfulness practices that get us to be very present, very grounded in the here and now, rather than flip-flopping back to the past, where we don't have any power, or forward to the future, where we don't have any power because we're not there yet, mindfulness practices help us to get very present, very here in this moment.

And these can be complemented with practices that help us to look to the future with a sense of what's possible, with a sense of hope, with an orientation toward desire, toward what we do want, rather than an aversion from what we don't want. Yeah? 

So there are lots of ways to cultivate this more possibilities-oriented, resourceful approach to looking to the future. And some of them can be quite practical, like a bucket list, really, right [laugh], like a list of the kinds of things that you want to do in this life. 

They could be also very mystical, like a visualization where you imagine yourself looking into a desired future, right, and then anything in between, like affirmations, like vision boarding, like practicing Sankalpa, that sort of thing. Perhaps unsurprisingly [laugh] to you, I love to lean toward the more magical, mystical side of intentionality, and visualization, guided visualization is something I use a lot with my clients. And I am delighted, gratified [laugh], cheered every time I get a call from a client. It happens actually quite often that they'll say, "Natalie, do you remember the visualization where I was at the shore, and I was watching my daughter playing in the waves? It happened today." 

"Natalie, do you remember the visualization where I was on the stage enjoying the audience's laughter?" It's like, "Yes, I do. [laugh] I remember when you looked into the future, and saw these things." And I'm, I mean, I am surpri…it always does surprise me, right? It surprises and delights me when those visions become realities. 

And, I mean, here's the thing: we do understand that our brains have a negativity bias, but what we don't fully understand is what all else they are capable of. Truly, it's extraordinary what else our brains can do. And this kind of cross-training that I'm suggesting, where we counterbalance negativity bias with appreciation, with intentionality practices, with a dedication to thinking on purpose—not by default but on purpose—by directing our attention to that which works or that which could be, or that which we want, there's so much power in there. And when we step more fully into that power, it truly feels like magic. 

I mean, I say this all the time. Our minds are magic wands. Are we using them as if they are? Do we know how to use them? We all need, I think, a little bit of magic school to learn how to use our minds as magic wands.

So I was thinking, you know, there's a very common phenomenon that I imagine you have experienced that can kind of convey to you the kind of magic that I'm talking about. And this phenomenon is called frequency illusion or the Baader-Meinhof effect. I will explain that by describing it, and you'll know what I mean.

So I was reading a novel, and one of the like sub-characters in the novel had the name Katriona [sp]. Katriona, it's a beautiful name. I had never heard it before or read it before, and my mind looked at it as, oh, interesting. You know, I took a moment to pronounce it in my head, and I was like, I like that. I like that name, Katriona. 

Maybe three days later, I was at a bookstore, and my eyes lighted on a spine of a book where the author's name was Katriona. Another couple of days later, I was flipping through a catalog that I got in the mail, and in this catalog were some T-shirts and tank tops from the Katriona Collection, right? 

So that's the frequency illusion, or Baader-Meinhof effect. It's when you learn about something, or you learn a new word, or your attention is drawn to something that it hasn't been drawn to before, and all of a sudden you're seeing it everywhere. Doesn't that feel like magic? [laugh] I mean, isn't it like, oh, I was just talking about that, or I just heard a podcast about that, or I just read about that, and here it is again, right?

So a psychologist or a neuroscientist might say to you, "Hmm, that's not really magic; it's just selective attention." My mind has decided that this thing is important, and so as I'm moving through the world and I'm filtering all kinds of information, I am choosing to, subconsciously, I am choosing to pay attention to this thing because my mind already told me it was worth paying attention to, right?

Or they might say, "Yeah, there's also some confirmation bias happening, right? You believe in this effect, and so when you see the Katriona Collection of tops in the catalog, you're very happy to pat yourself on the back and to say, oh, look, I'm experiencing the thing that I believe is real." 

So are all of these Katrionas magically coming my way? No, not necessarily. And/but isn't it incredible, doesn't it feel magical that my amazing plastic, evolving mind has the ability to find the Katriona needles in the enormous haystack of all of the stimuli and information and just world that is surrounding me? 

I find that magical, and I have the ability to enhance that magic by practicing, by giving more attention to, awareness of, energy to, brain wave to, intentionality to, appreciation to, present moment focus. That way, my mind begins to filter in more and more of what I want, more and more of what's good, more and more of what supports me, more and more of what might be possible. And I counterbalance all that negativity bias around what's wrong, what's hard, what's not working. 

So in last week's episode, I talked to you about Everyday Channeling. Everyday Channeling is a practice that I have distilled through years and years and years of trying out different ways of helping my mind to become more possibility-oriented. 

I call the practice Everyday Channeling—well, first, everyday because I love the double meaning of that. To me, "everyday" means that this can be ritualized, that this is something that could be a daily practice. And also for me, everyday indicates—I don't know—almost a mundaneness to it, right? Just like I wash my face, just like I brush my teeth, I do my Everyday Channeling. I do my very simple, basic mind magic maintenance practice. 

Now, if you are listening to this episode before May 18th, you are invited to come and learn Everyday Channeling with me live. I'm very excited to offer it. [laugh] Like I said, I've been distilling it for a long time, I've taught it to a core group of clients, and I feel ready to share it with all of you now.

If you're listening to this after May 18th, Everyday Channeling will most certainly still be available for you to learn and practice. All you have to do is check the Show Notes, and the link will take you where you need to go to learn Everyday Channeling.

The practice is definitely customizable. I mean, everything I offer you is customizable because I get that we're all different. And the practice could take anywhere from like—I don't know—7 minutes to 77 minutes. It's adjustable based on what will serve you best in the moment. So I super hope that you will join me for this little, I mean, in light of today's episode, we might call it an exercise routine. It's a little sequence that can help you to build your ability to call in what you want. 

Oh yeah, I did want to talk about the channeling part, right? When I'm thinking about channeling, I'm thinking two things. I'm thinking about kind of a dialing into a frequency, like into a channel, like on an old-fashioned radio dial, right? Part of what we're doing is we're starting to calibrate our attention to this more appreciative and creative and activated frequency. 

And I also call this channeling because what I find happens is then I am able to call in, with my selective attention, with my confirmation bias working in my favor for a change [laugh], that is, I'm not getting proof that nothing I do works. I'm getting proof that what I want is possible, yeah?

In that way, I am using my magic wand of a mind to connect me more fully to the co-creative current, right, to help me call in opportunities and resources and possibilities upon which I can build my best life, my bigger impact, my most helpful contribution to all of us.

So I hope you are intrigued by this practice. I hope you are interested in coming to learn it. I cannot wait to hear how you make it your own, and I cannot wait to get a message from you someday saying, "It happened, the magic happened. I had the experience of encountering something in my real life that once was a vision in my head and heart."

All right, my friend, whether you are cross-training your mind [laugh], counterbalancing negativity bias with some of these practices that I mentioned here in the episode today, or whether you come and learn my Everyday Channeling mental workout routine, I am so hopeful that you will join your magic mind with all of ours in a world that—whew—can really look so dark, so riddled with problems.

We really do need everyone's creativity, everyone's envisioning of a better way, everyone's desire for healing and equity and justice, and so many counterbalances to the troubles here on planet Earth. It's a solemn note to end on, but I do want to assure you that this is not about toxic positivity or spiritual bypassing. That is not what I'm talking about at all. 

Like I said, our negativity bias isn't going anywhere, and the problems on planet Earth are plentiful. All we are doing is enhancing our ability to work through them in an empowered and intentional way. 

Well, on that light note [laugh], thank you so much as always for listening. I hope I get to teach you Everyday Channeling, either live or in a recording, and I'll be back with another new episode next week. Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Mind Witchery. To catch all the magic I’m offering, please subscribe to the show, or if you want a little bit of weekly witchiness in your inbox, sign up for my Sunday Letter at mindwitchery.com. If today’s episode made you think of a friend or loved one, your sister, your neighbor, please tell them about it. We need more magic-makers in this troubled world. 

Like all good things, this podcast is co-created by stellar people. Our music is by fabulous DJ, artist, and producer, Shammy Dee. Our gorgeous art is by the sorcerers at New Moon Creative. Mind Witchery is produced in conjunction with Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, executive producer. And I am Natalie Miller. Till next time. 

End of recording