This is the Mindset for Life podcast, a place for personal stories, coaching, neuroscience and my favorite positive psychology tools to master life, relationships and work. I'm your host. Bethanie Hansen.

Hello there, and welcome to the mindset for life podcast. This is Bethanie, and I'm going to talk with you today about automatic thoughts. But, more especially, I'm going to talk with you about when you're trying to make a change, and it seems like you're just stuck. Maybe you're the one thing getting in your own way. Let's talk about how to bust through that.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to talk to you today about this idea that I've been having over the past few days. It's this idea that we all have flaws. We all have habits that are negative or bad for us. We all have things we do that keep us from the success that we really want in those areas we care most about. Why is that?
A Coaching Example
Yesterday, I was coaching someone truly brilliant (Alice, name changed). And, she said to me, it's as if I'm just getting in my own way all the time. And, if it's really me, then I'm truly hopeless.

And I disagree.

In that moment, I thought, if it's really me, then I can do anything to change it, and it's within my power.

But why do some of us think that we are so incapable?

And others think we are so powerful?

Well, I don't think it's just who you are. I don't think it's a fixed thing, at all. I think all of us have those experiences over time, and we each think these things at different times.

There are times when I, too, have thought my flaws were so great I could never overcome them. And then, if I just look back to myself 3, 4, or 5, years ago, I'm currently now capable of so much more than I was in the past.

And there are some problems from the past I just don't have anymore. So she was kind of doubting herself, but also seeing that she was sabotaging herself. And her goal was to change that.
The First Step: Build a Path in the Woods
So the coaching neuroscience piece for today is about building a path in the woods. Building a path in the woods is a truly amazing concept, because it's a piece of neuroscience that's actually quite complicated. But when we think of it as building a path in the woods, it becomes easy.

And this is the idea: The brain has neural connections that it fuses together over time. When we think a thought, it creates a connection. All those connections get stronger and stronger, the more we think that thought.

So it's as if traveling that pathway makes it a better pathway. So the brain is building superhighways in the brain. It wants to have automation, because when it automates thoughts, then it doesn't have to work too hard to get there. And it's going to make your life easier, because it will get to those thoughts much faster.

The problem is, each of us has thoughts that we're thinking automatically over time because we've thought them before. And, some of those thoughts are not very helpful to us. Like, for example, when we self-criticize. Or, when we doubt our own abilities. Or, when we collect evidence of our own failures, and then stack it up with evidence of the past, till pretty soon, we don't believe in ourselves at all.

The problem just becomes worse when the brain is helping us in this regard, because that superhighway becomes the preferred mental pathway. Until we can't think anything else but that.

Someone else might come along and compliment us, or tell us what a great job we did, and we're going to doubt them completely. Because that pathway in the brain is so strong.

New habits in our brains, like thinking a new thought about ourself, is like blazing a trail in the woods.
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How to Create New Thought Habits to Get Out of Your Own Way