319: Dana Wilde: How To Train Your Brain For Better Results

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What is the difference between how average entrepreneurs think vs happy and highly successful business leaders?

Dana Wilde

Dana Wilde is an expert in how to intentionally and systematically change your mindset so you get better outcomes. After growing her own business from zero to a million dollars a year in under 19 months, Dana shows you how to make money by being happy and get paid for being YOU.

With nearly 100,000 followers in 87 countries, Dana is the bestselling author of Train Your Brain and featured in the movies, The Abundance Factor, The Truth About Prosperity, and Dream Big.

Fascinated by neuroscience and the power of the mind, she affects lives daily on The Mind Aware Show, where she interviews thought leaders, brain scientists, and celebrities about how to intentionally think wealthier, happier, and healthier thoughts.

Her concepts are relevant at any time in your business and life and especially now, as the world is in turmoil and fear abounds. Listen as she shares valuable tips.

What We Discuss With Dana Wilde In This Episode

What to do when you feel stuck or afraid
How to change your results quickly
How to use your mindset if “positive thinking” has never worked for you
Easy mindset shifts for people who feel like they’re lying to themselves when they use affirmations

Episode Transcript Highlights

Dana, in 19 months you built a business that did over $1 million a year. How did you do it and why is action not the way to do it? (1:43)

The thing that most people think is that it’s the actions you take or that it’s working more, and working harder. We have all these messages in the culture today. Let’s just think about this logically. If you line up a hundred entrepreneurs who are all at the top of their game and at the top of their niches and you ask them what did you do to get there? They’re going to give you a hundred different answers. But the one thing that those hundred people at the top of their game will have in common is the way they think.

So if you’re going to grow your business slowly, you can do that by plodding away and trudging and working hard and doing all those things. But if you want to grow quickly, like zero to a million in 19 months, and that was the first business – we did it again where we went from zero to a million and under two years, with 60,000 followers.

You don’t do that with action. There’s only one way to do that and that’s mindset. You have to think differently. You have to think like those people who are at the top of their game. And the thing we’ve learned with train your brain is that you can learn how to think like that no matter what your background.

We’ve got to dispel the myth of some people who watched The Secret when it came out a few years ago that they can just lay on their couch, imagine and think happy thoughts and it’s all just going to come. So dispel that myth because that’s not what you’re talking about. (3:29)

No, that’s not what I’m talking about. Although that could happen. The thing is that we are raised in cultures where we feel like we have to do something for the money. In The Secret, I think they called it inspired action. You get a hit to like, oh, I should do this, and then you take an action. For Train Your Brain, I love the idea of inspired action, but I sometimes had a challenge thinking like, am I inspired right now? Is this inspired? I couldn’t tell if what I wanted to do was inspired or not. So I call it intentional action. You feel good first, then take action. That’s intentional action.

Mindset matters most. Focus on feeling good, focus on telling good stories, and focusing on the positive. Focus on thinking differently, focus on getting happy because when you get happy, try to hold yourself back from action. When you’re happy, you open up the creative pathways in your brain. When you’re thinking frustrated, you close those down. You can’t even access good ideas. When you’re happy, you open them up. When you’re happy, you feel like engaging. When you’re happy, you make better decisions. When you’re happy, the action you take goes really quick, and you get better results. You like people better, and they like you better.

Intentional action is what works to build your business quickly. Can you sit in a room and meditate and think happy thoughts and have money fall in your lap? Probably. But most of us, we wouldn’t do that. We’d start thinking happy thoughts and we’d want to get into the world and engage and do stuff. You’re going to meet with more success that way.

I love what you said there about intentional action. If we’re too busy and we’re working, working, working, doing, doing, doing, we don’t have that space for those ideas to even reach us. (5:39)

Exactly. I’ll tell you something else too, since you brought up The Secret. I thought it was a great movie. I’m a spiritual and spiritually connected and I gain a lot of strength from my spiritual practices, but Train Your Brain is not bent that way. It’s strictly about the brain and brain science, how we’re designed to be successful and how your brain is your best friend.

Most of us are scared of our brains. We hear all this stuff about your brain sabotaging you and all this stuff. It’s like the brain is a mugger waiting to jump from behind a tree. I’m here to say your brain is your best friend. There’s a part of your brain called the reticular activating system.

You can call it the Raz or the RAS – whatever is comfortable. I like to tell people to think about it like a little matchmaker that lives in your head. It stands at attention all day, every day listening. What are you thinking about and what are you talking about?

It sifts through the mucky muck like, look at the room you’re in now or the car you’re in now. As you’re listening to this, look at the tons of stimuli we’ve got – sounds, sights, colors, information, sensations and smells and all this stuff. We’d go crazy if we had to process that. So you’re a little Raz, your little matchmaker, does it and it looks for whatever you’re thinking about, and whatever you’re talking about.

That’s why if you ever go out to buy a new car, you see that car everywhere because your brain goes, oh, this must be important to you. You’re sure thinking about this a lot. That’s also why if you’re thinking things like, it’s hard to build a business or I can’t make money or I’m not confident enough to do this or do that, your brain says, got it. I’m your matchmaker. I’m going to help you out with that. Let’s keep that going.

When you say that all the successful entrepreneurs think the same way – how do they think? (8:06)

I’ve been deciphering this and really trying to watch my own thought process and the changes that happen as I attain each level and it comes down to two words. I think that difference between the people who end up at the upper echelon and those that aren’t there yet is positive expectation. They have a certain level of expectation for success. Which words can you say to help you get there? Any words that make you feel good.

The words I was saying when I was doing it were words like, well I’ll figure this out. The first business I didn’t really have any doubt about my possibility for success. I was in what we like to call the knowing. I knew I was going to be able to figure it out. I knew I was going to be able to do it. I knew I was going to be successful.

The second business, surprisingly enough, I didn’t have as much knowing about because it was on the internet. I’d never done anything like that before. I was saying I’ll figure it out, but there was part of me that was like, I’m not feeling so positive about it, but I was very hopeful. And so what I like to tell people is that it’s nice if we can talk perfectly to ourselves and say things like, money is flowing to me in great quantities on a daily basis. Or I am abundant, or all these things.

It’s nice if we can be in knowing. Of course those are great, but most of us were not there. So if you can instead think of it as just staying consistently more hopeful on a day to day basis.

If you’re in frustration, you’re not gaining any traction towards your goals or your business or anything you want to do – building your movement, building your following. You’re working against yourself. But if you can stay more hopeful, if you can say those soothing words that help you to feel better – there’s really only four steps to the whole train your brain process and I’d be happy to share them with you. But really that’s it. When you feel good, you get better results.

What are your 4 steps to Train Your Brain when someone feels doubt? (10:17)

This is the whole program. Everything inside and out. You can implement this immediately right now.

Step One: I call it the wakeup step. Be aware that you have a little matchmaker that lives in your head. When you hear your brain, and you have that yucky feeling in your body, and then you have that thought, ooh, maybe this is a pipe dream. Maybe I bit off more than I can chew. Maybe I can’t do this. You start to get those thoughts – we like to call it busting yourself. That’s the time to bust yourself and wake up and be aware.

A lot of times people have this idea of like, Oh, cancel, cancel or bad me or why do I always think negative, right? They want to use the negative thinking to beat themselves up. I like to tell people, when you catch yourself, celebrate and do a happy dance because you just woke up. You’re not walking around on automatic pilot anymore. You are now aware. Get happy right now and be like, Oh my God, there it is. There’s that belief. I see it.

Step two is to decide. Do you want your reticular activating system to match it up or not? Because if you do, don’t do anything. I used to say for years, I’m not a morning person and I didn’t care. If you say, no, I don’t want this to match up, I want to feel differently and I want different results, then step three is you must find a way to talk about the current situation in a way that feels good and better.

Step four is to feel that positive emotion. All of the work is in step three.

If your friend came up to you and said, I don’t know if I’m going make it, I don’t know if I’m going to do this. You wouldn’t go, yeah, you probably should give it up. Never do that. So why don’t we start talking to ourselves like that? Be nice to ourselves.

That’s true. We are way more comfortable encouraging another person and saying, Oh no, no, no. It’ll be okay. Everything’s going to work out. Then when it comes to ourselves, we say things like, I can’t believe you did that. You idiot, why did you do that? You always do that. Things like that. (12:51)

You always do that. That is such a common one, isn’t it? You know, you can’t always be happy, but you can be soothing. You have to find the words that work. If you’re feeling self-doubt or you’re feeling not confident, you’re going to start saying, ‘I’m so confident’ right away. But you might start saying things to yourself just gently like, okay, I remember what Dana said on that show. Here I am, I caught that thought and I don’t want my reticular activating system to match this, so I want to find a way to soothe myself. So I’m going to start to say to myself, okay, if I was my best friend, I would say, look at other people who have figured this out.

I don’t feel all that soused by that. So I’m going try a different sentence. Just take a deep breath and realize that you’re in a different place now because you do understand the brain better now. So that’s a good plus. Okay, that feels better. You start to reach for those sentences which feel good. I do know the brain now and I do know how to think now. I am busting myself. I’m not feeling sorry for myself. That’s an improvement. I’m getting better at busting myself. I’m getting better at being aware. I’m getting better at being a positive thinker and I have learned a lot. And frankly compared to where I was when I started, I’m learning a lot. I’m getting better. I’ve learned a lot already.

Of course I’m going to love to learn and I’m going to continue to learn. This is really important to me, what I’m doing. I love that it’s important to me and I’m actually quite passionate about it. And when I weigh that against my little bit of tiny self-doubt, that feels kind of foolish now almost. So I’d rather just focus on my passion because that makes more sense. This is important what I’m doing. I want to be successful with this and that desire alone is going to carry me most of the way there.

Now you start to get some momentum and then the good old brain kicks in, your reticular activating system, and all those creative pathways open up. This is how you do it.

I love what you said there. … How many times have we heard people say that positive affirmations that don’t work? Well maybe because they’re just too much of a jump from where they are, to where they want to be. (16:03)

I love all of the different verbiage that you’re using here about facing things and confronting is actually just getting in front and not negating things. I love everything you just said and you’re right. We think that the only way to be positive is to be just ‘peel me off the ceiling’ happy or to be saying all this 100% perfect language.

The brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and imagined and we’ve got a part of our brain that’s like a little matchmaker right? We are continually, we like to say ‘matching the outside picture and the inside picture’. Whatever you’re thinking about, the brain just seems to make it happen, right? That’s as much as we know right now. If that’s the case, rather than saying things like, I easily build a million dollar business in under two years, what would you really be saying if your movement was rocking right now?

What would you really be saying if you were adding a bunch of people to your pond or your sandbox or your email list or whatever it is – what would you really be saying? Because if you were saying those things now and you were thinking those things now, then your reticular activating system would start to match that up in the outside world.

We do promote affirmations – we call them mantras – and they’re great. When you feel good, say affirmations because when you feel good, mantras work. When you’re already buzzing and feeling good, you can say, yeah, I’m abundant and it feels great. But when you’re getting there and you’re trying to start the engine, think of how you’d be talking if you were already successful.

Most of us would be saying things like, things are going really well. I’m having little successes, I’m seeing things happen, I’m feeling the momentum. I’m feeling like things are starting to happen. It seems like people are joining my list every day or it seems like people are joining our world every day.

One of the most practical exercises I can give to anybody who’s building a business or doing anything – whether you’re trying to lose weight or whether you’re looking for a relationship or whatever it is – is every day talk about your successes and think about your successes and milk them and just talk about them over and over in your head.

Think about all the stuff is going right and only focus on that. Only focus on what’s going right no matter how little. So it can be like, oh, I had such a good day. I heard this great podcast today. It was Leaders Of Transformation. It was so good and I had another success because I talked to a client and she was so nice and complimentary. I had another success because I got my business cards in the mail.

Every little thing, no matter how little, make it a big deal and then your brain makes it so.

A lot of people talk about mindset but what you’re doing is diving into the finer distinctions. I love that. Those finer distinctions from just the positive psychology – think good thoughts, affirmations and all that, to the inner workings of what makes it effective. (20:29)

I can tell you from experience I had really vivid memories of the first time I built a million dollar business of the exact things I was thinking. These may or may not be the exact things that other successful people think or they may not be the exact things you should think if you are doing it yourself, but when you hear them, they are so counterintuitive from what we hear about mantras.

I was saying things like, I’ll figure it out and I figured out other things, I could figure this out. Things are going so great. I had such a good day today. Oh my gosh, it’s so exciting. This is so fun. Who says, say this mantra, this is so fun. You wouldn’t say that. But those are the things you’re really thinking when you’re having a good day. And so start to be aware of your own thoughts when you’re having a good day and you’re having a good moment.

Just like when you’re having a bad moment, bust yourself and catch yourself in those good moments and say, what am I thinking now? I’m thinking that was fun and I like that. I’m good at this and that went better than I thought it would, Things are going so well and it’s so fun. I just signed my first client, I just signed another client. I got my new prices and they worked, that felt so good. What are you really thinking and mimic that, because when you mimic it, your brain thinks it’s so.

This is proven. They have taken even athletes and they hook them up to those machines where their muscles fire and they think about doing the routine and all of those muscles fire just like they’re doing their routine. Their body doesn’t even know that they’re only thinking it.

They’ve got study after study; a really good one was done in the University of Chicago. You can look it up. It’s the basketball study and basically when you think about shooting the basket, you get the same result as when you do it.

We’re in an exciting age now. We are learning more about the brand than ever before. We’re able to understand our reality more than ever before and the people who are interested in this – like yourself – we’re on the cutting edge of this.

So what do you notice in terms of new discoveries in brain science from 50-70 years ago? (22:59)

The biggest shift we’ve had now is that we can start to study the brain and if we go down this rabbit hole, we’ll be on quantum physics and quantum mechanics and all that, but the biggest shift in our lifetime is the idea that your brain can change. It is not stagnant. You can change your thinking.

This is the kind of message of hope that I especially want to bring to people who were raised in negative environments or have been negative their whole lives. If you implement what we’re talking about here, the four steps I just talked about and really try to start thinking differently, you’ll have the biggest, fastest results.

I can take someone who’s relatively positive, like yourself. Maybe somebody out there says, well, I’m pretty much an optimist. I can take a person who’s at a level seven and bring them to a 10 but if you’ve been banging around at a level three your whole life and you implement just a little bit of this – boom – your brain’s going to blow your mind. You’re going to be amazed at how fast things can change, your brain can change. It’s possible to think different thoughts and create different outcomes. It really becomes like a game and it becomes fun. This is the biggest thing I think that we’ve become aware of.

Let’s talk about the word “CAN’T”, or “Easy for you to say, you’re positive and everything went well for you, but you don’t understand my situation.” How do you deal with that? (24:55)

Here’s the thing, people have to have a desire to change. They have to have a desire to think differently. My hope is by spreading one piece of information about the reticular activating system being a matchmaker that lives in your head, that you can start to make the association that what I think matters.

Some people don’t want to change and they won’t and that’s fine. They can live their life however they want to. But those who do want to change, I can give some technique that I think works for anybody who’s got self-doubt or who has wondering if this can work for them. And it’s my favorite word, which is going to surprise you. It’s the word BUT because the word BUT is very powerful in that it negates everything that comes before it.

Sometimes people have a limiting thought and they’ve had it for a long time and they see it as the reason they’re not successful and they can’t change it. For example, somebody I was working with was really shy and needed to network to get a project done. He’s like, I’m not going to walk around saying, I’m an extrovert, and he couldn’t even find soothing words to soothe him. So he started using the word BUT.

He would say, I’m shy, but I’m connecting with the right people. The brain only hears the second half of that. I’m shy, but people like my style. I’m shy, but my projects are getting done. I’m shy, but things are going well for me. So these things that we think are so set in stone in our lives, really aren’t, but we sometimes think they are.

I’m a procrastinator, I’m not techie, I’m too busy. All of these things that we think are unchangeable, you can continue to think them and you can continue to say them, but every time you say them, follow them up with the word BUT and your brain doesn’t hear it.

Positive thinking has never worked for me, but I’m open to giving it a go. Positive thinking has never worked for me, but I do like the idea of being aware. But I’m getting better at this. But it does kind of feel good to think better thoughts. But I will give her that. But it does feel good.

The one that I have to bust myself a lot in that I get a lot, is I’m so busy, I’m so overwhelmed. I don’t have time to work my business. I don’t have time. When you take out of this equation, that action is what builds your business, first of all, you don’t even need time anymore now, right?

You can be cleaning your kitchen and building your business, if you’re thinking positive thoughts and dreaming and making that list of everything that went right today. The second thing is it’s not being busy that’s the problem. It’s how you talk about being busy. We have a saying where we say the problem is not the problem. The problem is that you keep thinking and talking about the problem.

So it’s not that you’re busy, it’s the way you talk about it. You can say different words about it. I’m busy, but I do love my full life. I wouldn’t change a thing. I love being of service and I love the things I do and I’m busy, but I’m fulfilled. I’m busy, but I have so many passions. I’m busy because I’m a passionate person. All these things I do, they’re all desires that flow through me and I love that about myself. I’m busy, but I’m finding more time for myself. I’m busy, but I’m making better choices and I’m doing more things that I love and I’m saying yes to the right things. I’m getting to be a better decider.

There are so many ways we can talk about things. We live in a world where people care about so many things. They care about the car they drive or the house they live in or the clothes they wear or the food they eat – all of these things. I just want people to care about the thoughts they think. That’s really it.

My natural inclination is to be a doer. So I’m doing all this positive mindset stuff, Dana, when do we get to work? How do we do that? (29:49)

Here is the first thing I like to say. When you’re thinking positive thoughts, the time to take action is when you get that thought that goes like, ‘I just got the best idea.’ Now you know that is a result of your brain being primed positively, and you get that thought like, oh my gosh, I’m going to do this. Act. Do it.

The next thing is if you’re going to sit down and you say, well, I already have a list of things that I said I’m going to do. I said that I’m going to do a webinar. I need to make a PowerPoint for it. Or I said, I’m going to give a speech or I’m going to do a presentation. I have to do that. So if you’ve got that list of things that you’re doing as just part of your business, like you’re following the formula that everybody says out there for building a following. If that’s the case, then before you do it, get yourself fired up. Whatever that means to you.

Say some mantras, listen to music, dance, move your body, say something positive. Jump up and down. Say one word that’s really awesome. Like fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun, fun a hundred times and then sit down and work. That alone is going to decrease your work time drastically because you’re going to be in the flow, you’re going to be feeling good, things are going to be happening, it’s going to go better, and then take breaks. You can do that often because you’ll notice your energy waning.

The next thing is, and I have a quiz for this by the way, if anybody’s interested. It’s called your marketingsuperpower.com. What I like to tell people who are building a business is that you only need one marketing method. There’s something that you already do well. Some people are writers. Some people love to speak from stage. They love to have the people listening to what they’re saying. They’re entertaining, they’re funny or whatever. Some connect by shining a light on others. Some are good teachers.

Everybody has a super power that they already have. If they would do only that, they would build their business so much faster. So much of the noise that we’re getting from the culture now is that you have to be everywhere and you have to do everything. I’m the opposite. I am not Miss, ‘get out of your comfort zone’ and do a bunch of stuff that you hate doing and force yourself to do it until you feel better.

I am Miss ‘get into your comfort zone.’ Figure out what you love and nail it. Do that and do only that and then train your brain to tell yourself that that’s why you’re successful. So it will say like, I have a podcast, I love my podcast, I do great with my podcast, and it’s killing it on iTunes. I’m doing fantastic. And you go to my YouTube channel and I got 28 views on my videos. Nobody’s watching my videos.

And so I had to bust myself and go like, why do I keep trying to do this be everywhere thing? So I thought, you know what? Screw that. I’m not going to be on YouTube. I’m going to do the thing that I do. Do it well and go all in with that. That’s the easiest way is train your brain. Feel good before you work, and then do the things that you love to build your business.

What’s your superpower? (34:23)

My superpower is what we’re calling on the test, The Orator. So the orator is doing what I’m doing with you right now. Speaking, speaking, speaking. I’m audio, you know, this is how I learn. I learn audio. If I have to read a long email or if you can just tell me, just tell me. I don’t want to read the long email. That’s my superpower.

The other thing that’s fun about this particular way to build a business is that when you start to realize that success really comes through your joy. Success comes from showing up as your joyful self, and being your joyful self, and your brain works better, when you’re happy, and you get better results. Now you start to look at everything differently. You start to look at like, is building that funnel going to bring me joy? I’m not sure that it is. I think I would rather find an easier, faster, funner way to the money. So you don’t give up the money, you’ve just got a story that the funnel is what gives you the money, but it’s not the funnel that gives you the money. There is an easier, funner, faster way to the money than that for you because that doesn’t sound fun.

Now for some people, building a funnel is their joy, which is great, but it’s their joy.

Suddenly now you realize you can have the money come in any way, shape or form you want to. You just have to tell your brain it’s so.

Episode Resources

Free Marketing SuperPower Quiz: yourmarketingsuperpower.com
Free Audio Book: Danawilde.com/nicolejansen

Connect With Dana Wilde

Website: https://danawilde.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/themindaware
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Dana_Wilde
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danawilde

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What is the difference between how average entrepreneurs think vs happy and highly successful business leaders?