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I recently was a guest on a webinar, speaking to entrepreneurs about how to hack their brains.  We covered so many cool hacks and shared quite a few laughs.  Today, I want to focus on one comment that I made which really resonated with the participants.  In fact, one of the participants wrote that she needed to make a t-shirt with this quote! 

“Just because you have a thought, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

It’s interesting how we often don’t question the thoughts that run through our mind, and often just blindly accept that they are true.

 I’m just no good at marketing.  I’ll never lose weight.  I can’t do anything right.  I’ll never get ahead.  No one wants to buy what I’m selling.  

We all have times when self-limiting beliefs run through our mind.  Deb recently wrote a blog post challenging you to think of yourself as being...

Do some of your best ideas come to you while you are taking a shower? 

Or when you are driving? How about when standing in line at the grocery store? 

Chances are your best ideas have come to you when you were NOT actively trying to analyze the problem. 

Our tendency to come up with creative ideas when we are not consciously working on them is not mere coincidence. In fact, it makes perfect sense from a neuroscience perspective. That’s because when your brain stops the conscious, analytical thinking of the prefrontal cortex, other parts of your brain are free to make associations. Our brains have a default mode network that is constantly working when the prefrontal cortex takes a break. The default mode network is made up of “association” areas of the brain that communicate and make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas. It’s when we are not consciously thinking about a problem that our brain has...

Research has found that our brains, particularly our limbic systems (important in emotional regulation), are wired to be Velcro for the negative and Teflon for the positive.

From an evolutionary perspective, this bias towards the negative (and potentially life-threatening) was highly adaptive.

However, in today's world, this bias can have negative consequences in our businesses. We tend to overlook our accomplishments, and focus on the small percentage of our business that is not going well.

This bias has a negative effect on our mood, and can lead to demoralization and thoughts about giving up.

I believe that it is important for every business owner to regularly schedule time to review his or her accomplishments. From a practical perspective, it helps make us aware of what worked, so we can do more of it. We often talk about learning from our mistakes, but how about learning from our accomplishments? From a psychological perspective, reviewing our accomplishments boosts our mood...