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Useful Thinking is a weekly practice for your mind, hosted by clinical professor and mind coach Laura. Each episode works the fundamentals of how your brain actually operates: your mental patterns, your identity, your limiting beliefs, your subconscious wiring. You'll learn practical tools to direct your attention, filter out the noise, and think with more clarity and power. This is mindset work for people who want science-backed strategies for real personal growth. Think of it as a gym for your mind. Show up weekly and master the one skill that will impact every other area of your life.
Hello and welcome back to Useful Thinking.
I'm Laura and this is your space
to engage with me in a deliberate
practice for training your mind.
If you are new here, welcome.
However, I do want to invite you to
pause and start at the beginning because
these foundational episodes are really
designed to build upon each other.
And for all of you out there
who are returning, welcome back.
I am so happy that you are committing
to doing this work each week.
I always start every
episode with an intention.
What is my intention for you?
As you listen?
And I do this for a couple of reasons.
It really helps me when I'm sitting
down to organize what I want to say.
It keeps me.
Locked into what I see happening.
For anyone who invests their time
listening, I wanna be focused on that.
What is it that I see happening
to you as you listen to this?
What do I expect you to gain?
Because your time is an investment and
there are countless ways you can spend it.
And it's my job to make sure that your
mind walks away from each episode.
With a new tool, a new goodie.
And the second reason I said intentions
is because it really helps your
brain anticipate what to prioritize.
It takes you from being someone who's just
simply consuming something passively into
actively expecting that to occur for you.
So today's intention is
that you will understand.
The exact components that need to be
in place for your brain to allow any
kind of substantial change to happen.
Once you understand this, you should
also expect for it to be much easier
for you to see why some changes feel
very difficult or almost impossible,
no matter how badly you want them
and what you can do about it.
So last week we talked
about the glass box.
If you haven't heard that
episode, please listen to that.
First, the glass box is the invisible
structure that your identity lives inside.
The glass box is essentially
all the walls that we can't see,
but we keep bumping into them.
Whenever we try to move
towards something we want.
Today I want to answer the next natural
question, which is, what does it
actually take for that box to move?
Because the box can move, your
identity can change, but it changes
under dairy specific conditions.
So let's talk about that
back in episode three.
We talked about your brain as a
kind of historian, a meticulous
record keeper that has stored every
single experience you've ever had.
I wanna add something
to that picture today.
Our brains don't just
store our experiences.
They also store.
Everything we have ever witnessed,
every person we watched do something.
Every story someone has told
us about what happened to them.
It stores every movie, every show,
every news segment, every cautionary
tale that our grandma told us while
they were babysitting us one weekend.
Okay?
All of that is in there.
Your brain has been collecting data your
entire life, not just about what happened
to you, but about what happens to people.
And here's what the brain
does with all that data.
The moment that we set our sights
on something we want, the brain
starts to run a calculation.
It goes back up to that library and
starts scanning the entire record.
Of all those stored experiences
and it starts pattern matching.
It's looking at the thing you want
your new goal, and it's comparing
that goal to every single reference
point about it a can find on file.
Imagine your brain's historian going
through all your records and automatically
making an objective comparison between
each one of those records and your goal.
Your brain is looking at this
thing you want and it's going, huh?
This is a 63% match to what
happened to that person.
You knew over there.
This experience from five
years ago is 17% relevant.
This story your friend
told you is 83% applicable.
This memory from when you were 12
and you saw someone on Oprah has
a 29% overlap with your new goal.
I mean, the brain is amazing.
It runs through all of these historical
events very quickly, and it's doing
that below the level of your awareness.
Then it takes all those and adds
them all up into this very elaborate
calculation and issues of verdict.
So that mathematical biological
calculation is running constantly and
is trying to answer two questions.
Everything about whether or not
your brain is going to get on
board with what you want to change
comes down to these two questions.
So I wanna walk you through both of them.
The first question your brain
is calculating an answer for is,
is this actually possible to do?
And in particular, is it possible
for someone like me fundamentally?
Your brain has to believe that something
is even possible to do, and it wants
to know if it's possible for you
specifically, you given everything it
has on file about who you are and what
tends to happen to people like you.
Think about your goal as a recipe
that you're handing to your brain.
Your brain is going to decide whether or
not you're capable of making that recipe.
If you handed a recipe for something
really simple, something that is in
the general neighborhood of things
you've made before, your brain goes,
yeah, okay, I can see how we get from
mac and cheese to some other kind of
pasta dish here with a simple sauce.
But if you hand your brain
a recipe for something like.
Cro Bush, if you've watched any baking
competition shows, maybe you've seen this.
It's its very elaborate French dessert.
Looks like a giant tower made of dozens
of delicate little cream puffs all
assembled into this tall cone shape
and held together with spun caramel.
If you decide to hand your brain
that recipe, and it requires.
All kinds of tools you've never
even heard of, let alone have in
your kitchen and techniques that
you've never attempted before.
Your brain is going to very
quickly conclude, Nope, this is
not possible for people like us.
Okay, so that's the first question.
Is this possible for someone like me and
your brain is going to answer it using
whatever files are stored in the library?
Second question.
It's a little sneak here.
The second question your brain asks is,
what is this really going to cost me?
So even if our brain decides something is
possible for us to do, it runs a second
calculation on the price of doing it.
And this usually happens outside of our
awareness as well, because when we want
something, when we genuinely want it.
We have a desire to be that way
or to achieve that goal, we wanna
really wake up to that reality.
We think about how good it's
gonna feel to have that.
We don't sit around consciously
cataloging all the things that it might
cost us to have, but our brain does.
Our brains are always doing that.
Let's go back to the kitchen
for a second, 'cause I think
this might help make this clear.
Say you finally make that showstopper
dish your big cro bush, the giant
cream puff bonanza, and it comes out.
Beautifully.
It is spectacular.
Everyone's jaws drop when they see it.
Everyone's amazed.
Everyone's taking pictures of it and
posting it to their social media.
They're talking to their friends about it.
They're going on and on about it.
Every time they talk to you for weeks
to come, they remind you of that
amazing dish because it is amazing.
Now, think about everything your
brain is noticing about all of this.
It noticed how long you spent
sourcing all the ingredients.
It noticed the enormous mess and all the
frustration you had when your caramel got
ruined 32 times or something collapsed,
or the cream filling smushed out in the
wrong places, or all the countless other
things that went wrong along the way.
Your brain also noticed your
sore back from standing all
day for three days straight.
The strain on your wrist from
squeezing the filling bag over and
over with just the right pressure.
Your brain noticed all of that,
but it also noticed something else.
It noticed that everyone now knows
you can do this, which means.
The next gathering or the next holiday,
or the next so-and-so's party, people
are going to expect you to do it again.
In fact, your brain noticed
all of the attention you got.
You noticed all those people giving
you so much praise and attention
and focus for your amazing creation.
That it's calculating the probability
that all those people are now
going to expect more from you.
'cause you can do this thing they can't.
Okay?
And that right there is one of the
most common hidden little secret
costs that your brain calculates
the expectation to reproduce
something or to maintain something.
The expectation that you might
be on the hook for making these
fancy tower doodads forever.
So your brain looks at all of that
effort that it took you to build
this, and it files that effort as this
permanent, ongoing, eternal price of
staying there and maintaining that.
There's actually a whole mechanism behind
why your brain does This has to do with
how the brain handles time, which is super
fascinating and deserves its own episode.
But the quick version you
need today is the brain does
not know how to segment time.
Brain time assumes that what is
happening right now is the official
plan on how you are going to spend
time for the rest of your life.
Because the brain is just not
great at separating out timelines,
tends to bundle them all into one
everlasting energetic expenditure.
So the more effort we spend doing
something, the higher the hidden cost of
maintaining that thing is gonna be, which
is no wonder we feel so much resistance.
And it's not just the expectation
to maintain something, your brain is
running these calculations on everything
that makes up your glass walls that
we talked about in the last episode.
If you expand your financial
situation significantly, your
brain is going to start running
calculations on the hidden costs.
Maybe that means a lot more
complexity in your life.
More headaches.
You have to deal with more taxes,
more people asking you for things.
More decisions you have to make more
attention on how you're spending your
money, or if you become more visible
or start attracting more attention.
If more eyes land on your work, your
brain is gonna start running calculations.
It's gonna pull up every
single time in your life.
You were watched or studied or
observed, or had some kind of
attention put on you, it's gonna
notice what that attention resulted in.
Did it feel good or did it feel unsafe?
This is when we start to see ourselves
finding reasons we should quit or
watch ourselves take actions that
directly oppose what we say we want.
People tend to call this self-sabotage.
That's not a thing.
Your brain is not trying to take
you down and bust your dreams.
Your brain is trying to protect you from
a hidden cost that it has calculated
is definitely headed your way if you
keep going, so it genuinely is doing
you a favor, you're like, thanks a lot.
So those are the two questions.
Is this possible for me and what are
the hidden costs of having this thing?
And if either one of those two comes
back with the wrong answer, your
brain does something very specific
and biological, it applies the breaks.
You feel that as procrastination,
sudden loss of motivation, you feel
it as doubt that comes outta nowhere.
You feel it as watching yourself
intentionally doing things you
know you shouldn't be doing.
You feel it as confusion.
Or avoidance or suddenly deciding
you need to do way more research.
For me personally, I can tell when
my brain has started applying the
breaks because I will start to
make something way more complicated
than it actually needs to be.
That's my tell.
That's my brain's calculator,
deciding this is gonna be too
hard to sustain, and sure enough.
I will see myself watch myself
proving that to be true.
So when I start saying things like, this
isn't worth all this work, this isn't
worth all the hassle, that is always my
little invitation to look at this area
and everyone has their own version of
these quitting zone thoughts that pop up.
So let's bring this back to something
you can use right now, this week.
We've covered the two questions Your
brain is constantly calculating, is
this even possible for someone like me?
And what is this really going to cost me?
And we've talked about how when one or
both of those calculations are off, your
brain applies the breaks, and you're
going to experience that as resistance.
So here's your practice.
Pick something, pick a goal.
You have.
Something that you have struggled
to maintain over the long term,
probably already have an idea of
what this is, and ask yourself
those two questions one at a time.
Start with the first one.
Is this actually possible
for someone like me?
Just sit with it and listen to what
your mind starts thinking about.
Pay attention to whether it immediately
starts providing you with examples.
Or if you have to hunt for them, or if it
feels quiet, or even if you start getting
reasons why it won't work, notice what
evidence your mind starts reaching for
notice whether it can even find examples
at all, and then ask the second question,
what is this actually going to cost me?
And the first things that come up are
probably gonna be the obvious things.
Time, money, a whole lot of effort.
I want you to stay with it longer.
Go through all of that.
Imagine that you had all the time, the
money, and the effort in the world.
Imagine you could just snap your
fingers and now you have it.
You're living the life with it already.
Now what's gonna happen?
What's gonna change in your
life when you have that thing?
What's going to have to shift?
Who's gonna have
something to say about it?
Who will notice it?
Okay?
Go in those directions
and see what comes up.
And you'll know when you hit a hidden
cost because it feels like this won in
your heart, like you landed on a truth.
Okay, so that's your work this week.
Pick the thing and then go
through those two questions
and listen for what comes up.
Feel free to reach out to me on
Instagram or my substack at any time.
I love hearing from you.
And also, please take a moment
to make sure you're subscribed
to this show or that you're
following it on your podcast app.
I do not want you to miss an episode,
and if you find this podcast helpful, if
this is doing something useful for you.
It would mean so much to me if
you would share it with anyone you
think might also enjoy this work.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening and
for giving yourself this investment.
Your mind and what you do with it is the
key to everything else in your world,
so thank you for sharing it with me.
Sending you all love.
I'll see you next week.