245. Input and Output

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy episode 245: Input and Output.

Welcome to Better Than Happy. I’m your host, Jody Moore. I’m a mother to four children. I’m a huge Taylor Swift fan, and I’m a master certified life coach. I’m here to teach you how to manage your brain and manage your emotions so that you can create a life that’s even better than happy. Are you ready? Let’s go.

Hey, friends. How are we doing today? Welcome to another podcast episode. Thanks for joining me today. I have a message that I want to share with you. I got to tell you, this is like the third podcast episode I’ve recorded this week. The other two, I was like, “No, that’s not right. No, that’s not good,” which is not like me at all. I don’t tend to overthink things.

I do put a lot of thought in and a lot of care into this podcast, but I’m pretty good at just trusting myself and publishing what I think is on my mind and I think might help you. This week, I’ve been so second guessing it all because I know how fragile all of our minds are right now and all of our emotions are. There’s just so much going on in the world, that I want to be honest and genuine with you.

I am a human being experiencing my own emotions about everything going on, having all my own thoughts. I have all the same thoughts you guys do. Not sitting over here meditating all Zen and peace. I get anxiety, I get fear, I get scarcity. I have all of those things that you are, and at the same time, I want to put a message out that is helpful and useful.

So, I think this is going to be the one. Let’s just see when I get done recording if I publish this one or I trashed it again, but I feel excited about the outline I have here. I’ve thought through what I want to say, and I want to talk about input and output when it comes to what you’re putting into your mind, and into your head, and into your brain, and into your heart, and what’s going to come out based on what we put in.

There is a scripture in The Book of Mormon that is in the Book of Mosiah. King Benjamin is talking to his people. He’s giving them some words of wisdom, and the scripture talks about watching your thoughts, and it’s, of course, my most favorite scripture for obvious reasons, but he talks about watching your thoughts and how our thoughts matter. That we need to keep our thoughts towards things of God, and we need to do our best to keep the commandments.

I want to just talk about that for just a minute. I want to talk about why I think that’s so important. When I was growing up, I always heard that scripture, and then it was related to the topic of morality, and that if I’m putting a lot of dirty movies and things in my head, it’s going to be hard to behave myself. I think that’s still true, but I think there’s a lot more to this scripture than that.

I think it has to do with everything that we put in our heads in all the ways that we show up, and not even necessarily ways that we would say are righteous or evil, but just things that serve us and things that don’t serve us. So, I want to elaborate on that today, and I want to talk about it with regards to input and output.

Our thoughts matter. You know that if you’ve listened to me, and so if that’s true, and if we’re trying to control our thinking, which is, by the way, exhausting. It’s a lot easier to just let the brain run on default, and I want you to be able to do that as much as possible.

In order to do that, in order to minimize the amount of brain management necessary, I think it’s powerful to stop and ask ourselves where do our thoughts even come from? What generates thoughts in our brain? How do our brains come up with the things they come up with? I always find this to be such a fascinating topic when it comes to our dreams  because our dreams are truly our subconscious brains driving.

I don’t know, some of my kids tell me that sometimes in the middle of their dream, they become aware that they’re in a dream, and then they can sort of make things happen in their dream. I’ve had that experience of knowing that I’m in a dream, but I can’t say I’ve ever been able to then control the story or control my brain in my dream. So, I don’t know if that’s possible or not, but I think for the most part, it’s our subconscious brain driving when we’re sleeping and dreaming. Not in our control.

Where do all those stories come from? Why is it that some people get nightmares and others don’t? Have you ever had a dream that you woke up and were like, “Whoa, I hope nobody knows that I dreamt that. I don’t know where that came from. I think that was not okay”?

The brain has all kinds of crazy stuff happening in there. I’m not an expert on this. I don’t know the scientific answer as to where thoughts come from, but I have some ideas I want to share with you, and some of my own thoughts and beliefs.

So, there is a book that my dear friend Bev Aron told me about a couple of years ago. It’s called Before You Were Born. It’s a children’s book, and it’s such a beautiful story. It talks about that when you were growing in your mother’s belly, the angel Lailah used to come and visit you, and she whispered to you all the secrets of the universe, and she taught you the language of all the animals, and all the wisdom of the world.

Then she would come and visit you there often and teach you all of these things. Then just before you were born, she pressed her fingers to your lips as though to say, “Shh,” and that’s why you have an indent in the top of your lip because of her finger pressed on your lips, and she made you forget all of it, and then you were born.

But as you go through life, and you learn things, and you remember things, it’s like this reawakening of that knowledge that the angel Lailah taught you that you once knew. If you had that feeling like, “This makes sense. I think I knew this on some level, but I just forgot.”

Now, that’s a story. It’s a metaphor. I’m not talking about a literal angel coming to visit you, but I do think that there’s some truth to the idea of that, that we existed before we came to earth. We lived in the preexistence, and maybe we knew a lot of things. Maybe we knew all the things that were going to happen on earth, or maybe we understood this earthly experience. Who knows? We certainly knew a lot of things that we then forgot when we were born.

So, I think that we have some sort of pre-wired knowledge. Sometimes we even think about the instincts that we’re born with as human beings. All human beings are born with certain knowing that is just instinctual, that doesn’t have to be taught. There’s thoughts that come from that whole realm. Pre-wired, instinctual knowing. Then we have thought patterns that we are prone to or more likely to develop based in our DNA.

According to the study of human biology, there are certain types of thoughts that are going to be easier to adopt and more natural for your brain than others. Some of that is genetic. So, if you have a parent who worries a lot, you may get some DNA that says we should worry. Now, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible to manage that, but that just might be a more natural pattern for you.

Maybe you have a parent who’s very laid back. It might be more natural for you to be more laid back. There’s some things that are biologically wired that make certain thoughts easier, or more available, or more natural to us. We also, I think, receive thoughts from the spirit. I think the spirit can offer us thoughts. It’s up to us whether we’re going to accept them, and hear them, and even be in a place to hear the spirit at all, but I think the spirit offers us useful thoughts, and likewise, the adversary offers us thoughts as well that aren’t useful.

All of those things, I’m putting in this somewhat outside of your control bucket. Now, those things are not entirely outside of your control, like whether or not you’re hearing the spirit, or giving into the adversary, or again, overriding the natural DNA patterns or not. There is some control, but I’m just going to put those in the mostly outside of your control bucket because they’re challenging to control.

So, we have thoughts that come from that bucket, but then we have the input output bucket, which is a much larger part of your brain. It’s a much larger part of who you are. This bucket changes based on the input that you’re putting into your brain. The thoughts that you’re going to think, the thoughts your brain will offer you will be different based on the experiences that you have and based on input in your life.

Your brain changes, and I dare say, that your heart changes based on brain input because by heart, I mean your emotions, the emotions you live from and experience the most often. So, the first way that we get input is through the experiences that we have in life.

Our brain takes notes majorly. Our brain is super good at learning from life experiences, and anything that we experience in life that has a lot of emotion behind it is especially relevant and especially impactful. It could be an experience that is really challenging, overwhelming, especially if it’s very traumatizing.

The brain says, “Hey, this is extremely relevant, extremely impactful,” and the brain actually rewires itself based on that experience in order to try to protect us in the future. Now, it can also be an experience that is full of positive emotion, a really joy filled, or happy, or enjoyable experience. The brain also takes note, “This is good. This is pleasurable. We should seek this more.”

Because of this, emotions matter tremendously. This is why the things that you remember from your past seems so random. Maybe your parents took you on a really expensive vacation somewhere, and maybe you kind of have memories of that, but it’s that one road trip that you took that was a long time in the car.

That wasn’t even as fancy of a place, but you had experiences in the car really laughing with your siblings, or just enjoying something about that experience, or challenging experiences, that that’s the one that stands out to you. That’s the one you remember because to your brain, emotion equals relevancy and impact.

So, again, emotions matter. They tell the brain what’s important. Now, I want to give another example of how our experiences shape our thoughts, shape our heart, shape who we become. There is a gentleman who is a pretty well-known entrepreneur and investor who I won’t name because in all honesty, I had some judgment of this guy. I’ve read at least a part of one of his books, and I’ve heard him speak before, but every time I hear him, I find him to be so offensive.

He uses pretty foul language, and I feel like the way he talks about women is pretty derogatory. So, I’ve always been like, “Ugh, I just can’t handle that guy. I can’t handle his tone and his approach.” I definitely had some judgment like, “He’s just not a good guy. He’s just out trying to make money,” was my thought.

Well, the other day, I was sort of needing something to listen to that didn’t have to do with Coronavirus. I came across something by him, a talk of his, and I thought, “All right, let’s just give this guy try,” because I know he’s smart. I know he has some good tips and things to offer. So, I started listening, and there was a little bit of language and a little bit of things that I didn’t care for. Then he started telling his story.

He started telling the story of how his dad died when he was really young. I want to say he was 10 years old when his dad died, and his mom was a struggling, single mother. He didn’t have anybody looking out for him, and he was sort of a lost child. Eventually, the person that took him under his wings was a drug dealer. So, he first of all, started using drugs and found that to be a real relief from life.

His drug dealer then said, “Hey, you know, you could make a couple hundred bucks a week in a really easy way if you want, and I can show you how.” He said, “This drug dealer saw me as an entrepreneur. He was the first one.” Again, this kid being lost, and confused, and now using drugs, started selling drugs.

Anyway, he tells a story of ending up addicted to drugs, and really lost, and really without guidance and without anyone to teach him, until he finally was able to get help. Hearing his story really changed things for me. I started looking at him differently. I started thinking like, “Well, that’s why he speaks that way, and that’s why he has some of the views he has, and some of the thoughts he has, and some of the behaviors he has.”

His life has been so different from mine. I have no idea what it would be like to grow up in that environment. I started to feel all kinds of respect for him, and the way he turned things around, and the way he now helps others to do the same. Yes, he has a lot of money, but he also gives a lot of money to charities, and I don’t think that having a lot of money is a bad thing. I think that he seems to be using his money to try to do good in the world.

So, I just suddenly had this totally different view of him because I realized the reason he thinks that way and the reason he feels the way he does is because of some experiences he has had that have wired his brain a certain way. And to his credit, he’s overridden a lot of that damaging wiring that took place as a child.

This is true of everyone, by the way. We don’t have to hear their story to know that it’s true. The way that we end up thinking, and behaving, and feeling the way we do is because of input in our lives, and some of that input comes from circumstances that are, in many ways, outside of our control.

One of the things I also thought was interesting, the day I’m recording this is March 18^th, so I woke up this morning to news of the earthquake that occurred in the Salt Lake City area early this morning, and having lots of friends, and family, and a lot of you listeners I know live in that area. My heart was just hurting for all of you with already the stress, and then to add this on top of it.

I was texting some close friends and family members to make sure everybody was okay. In particular, my sister. I said, “Is everyone okay?” She said, “Yeah, we’re all okay. Just a little shaken up, like emotionally shaken up,” and my reply was, “Oh, good.” Then I started thinking later, “It’s so interesting. Why do we say that?” Why do we say, “Well, I don’t want you to be physically harmed, but if you’re emotionally harmed, that’s okay. Oh, good. What a relief. You’re just emotionally harmed”?

Because emotional harm, quote on quote, harm, which is something we could debate whether it’s harmful or not, but emotional pain is, in some ways, more damaging possibly to us than physical pain. Physical pain, our bodies, many times, can heal from, whereas emotional pain really does change our brain chemistry and change our hearts as a result.

Now, sometimes painful, quote on quote, painful emotions are actually necessary and useful. Fear tells the brain, “Avoid that thing.” Scarcity tells the brain, “Be prepared,” but too much fear is paralyzing. Too much fear causes us to freeze, and hide, and feel hopeless, and stop trying, and too much scarcity does the same thing.

It keeps you stuck and never getting ahead because if you’re going to the store spending all of your money on groceries and toilet paper, then at some point, you’re not going to have money to buy what might be more necessary than extra groceries or toilet paper.

So, we want to keep things in balance. You want to manage that brain of yours, and the truth is in the midst of the COVID-19 scare, whatever you want to call it, it is changing us collectively. My brother and I were talking about this on the phone the other day. It’ll be really interesting, once we get through this, to see in what ways it’s changed us.

I remember hearing individuals from my grandmother’s generation who lived through some world wars that I never lived through and lived through the depression, and they have much more scarcity wired into their brains. I remember it wasn’t my grandmother, I think it was my husband’s grandmother saying, “Oh, don’t throw away that ribbon off that present you just opened. You might want that later. That might come in handy later.”

I thought, “Really? No, it’s garbage. Let’s throw it away.” So, her brain is wired differently than mine because she lived through experiences where she needed things that she couldn’t get ahold of. Now, we’re starting to enter a little bit more closely that experience. Nowhere near the level that our grandparents did in the depression, but more scarcity than certainly I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. Right?

So, maybe we’re going to come out of this with a little bit more scarcity. I’m not saying that’s good or bad. It’s just interesting to notice, but I also think that we’re going to come out of this with some really definitely good things like more compassion. It’s available to us anyway. To be more compassionate, more patient, less judgmental, less worried about the things that really don’t matter, and more gratitude for the things that really do matter.

So, life gives us lots of input. We don’t always get to control it, but there is a lot of it that we get to choose, and that’s the last thing I want to focus on in this episode, and really one of the reasons I felt so passionately about choosing this topic of input and output is because you have, like I said, the uncontrollable bucket, and then you have life happening, but then we have all the other things that we put into our brain, all the things that we consume that help to create thoughts for us.

You have 100% control. Okay, 99% control. Sometimes things end up in front of your face that you didn’t want to see, but you have a lot of control over this bucket, and this bucket makes a huge difference. We are a consumer culture. We have easy access to consume all kinds of things, and I want you to choose carefully what that is that you’re consuming right now.

If you are sitting in front of the news all day, you are consuming a lot of fear-based thoughts about the world, about health concerns, about the economy, about whatever else. There’s lots of stories on the news right now that give your brains fearful thoughts to think. TV, media, news, a big one.

What kind of music are you consuming? What kind of lyrics? What kind of tone does your music have? What kind of podcasts are you listening to? What is in your social media news feed? Who are you following? What messages are they putting out, and therefore, what are you putting into your brain?

We don’t have to get mad at the news. I’m not mad at the news. I’m not mad at anybody posting whatever they’re posting on social media. I just know it’s up to me to choose what I’m going to put in my brain, and I have to monitor it right now even more than normal because there’s already all kinds of other things happening that are giving my brain lots of thoughts to think.

So, I do think watching the news all day is a terrible idea right now. We have enough fear-based input. Now, your brain might want to tell you, “Well, I need to stay educated.” A couple of weeks ago, right before the Coronavirus got really out of hand, I was at Disneyland with my family and some friends.

One of my friends and I, we were sitting on a bench waiting for our kids to get done with a ride, and there was a gentleman and his girlfriend sitting next to us, and we were just chatting, and Coronavirus is starting to become on everyone’s mind. He said to me, “Yeah, I almost didn’t come to Disneyland today.” I was like, “Yeah, I can understand why you might not.” He said, “Yeah, I know people here aren’t really panicked. You don’t seem to be worried,” but it’s different when you’re educated.

So, my friend and I sort of looked at each other and smiled like, “Okay, we’re not educated?” Here’s what he means, and here’s what’s really true, is if you’ve been sitting watching the news all day, your brain is going to be like, “Yeah, you don’t get it. We should be freaked out right now,” but because I don’t sit and watch the news all day, I’m not freaked out right now.

I just want you to ask yourself, “What’s the benefit of being freaked out?” Now, again, I’m also not burying my head in the sand. I’m paying attention to what I think I need to pay attention to, and I’m gathering updates and paying attention especially to the CDC website, and I’m taking all the advice that they’re offering, but I’m not freaked out.

You could say because I’m uneducated, but the truth is you’re going to get a different message depending on which station you’re watching, and which channel you watch, and who’s to say what the real story is, and everybody is trying to predict an unknown future anyway. Or you could say, “I choose not to put all that fear-based input into my head because it doesn’t serve me.”

When I worked in corporate, we had this saying that was garbage in, garbage out, and what we meant was if we don’t keep accurate records, if we don’t put accurate information into our computer systems, then when we go to run a report, the report isn’t going to be accurate. So, garbage in, garbage out.

I think about that with myself as well. If I’m putting a lot of garbage in my head, garbage is going to come out. What do I mean by that? You guys know the model. Our thoughts create our feelings, and our feelings driving all of our action, and our action are creating all of our results. So, if I’m putting a lot of garbage thoughts in my head, an excess of fear-based thoughts, a whole bunch of panic thoughts, that I’m going to have fear out and panic out.

That is the way we work as human beings, you guys. I promise you, like I always say, your T is going to end up in your R. In other words, your thought is going to become your result. So, monitor what thoughts you’re putting in your head because you can manage your way around them, but why make it any harder than necessary?

Do you feel like you need to inform yourself about the stock market so that you can make decisions about your investments? Okay, great. Do that, but then balance that out with at least as many uplifting, peaceful thoughts as possible. Where are you going to find those kinds of thoughts? Where are you going to find something peaceful and uplifting? You’re going to have to go look for it right now because it’s not a lot of it out there.

It is out there, but you’re going to have to look for it. Maybe it’s in a good book. Maybe you want to read a book that is uplifting, or inspiring, or motivating. Maybe you want to listen to conference talks. Those are always great places to get peaceful thoughts. Or your scriptures, of course, as well. Maybe you want to go to a yoga class. Take a yoga class online. There are people posting a lot of positive stuff, but you’re going to have to look for them. I saw a girl who just posted a little meditation where she was just repeating things like, “I am healthy. I am strong. I have lots to be grateful for.”

There are people putting that out there. Go find it. Maybe laugh with friends. I notice like my friends and I are communicating even more than usual even just on our text threads. We’re texting funny memes back and forth, and checking in on each other, and sending loving messages. Humor goes a long way, you guys. There’s a lot of creative people who are creating funny things. I’m all for it.

I don’t think it’s making light of the situation. It doesn’t mean that we don’t recognize that it’s difficult and some people are struggling, but humor goes a long way to counter all the fear, panic thoughts that you have. So, I want you to check yourself if you’re keeping yourself in balance.

A good way to tell is to take a look at your output. What are you putting out into the world. When you post on social media, is it helping create more fear-based thinking, or is it in the other pool, which we need more of right now, which is calm, and peace, and happiness, and gratitude?

Are you posting pictures of empty grocery store aisles? Are you posting stats, and charts, and graphs about what could happen, or are you adding humor? Are you adding positive thoughts, meditation, a break from all the drama? I’m like, “Where are the people selling clothes?” Not that I want to buy clothes necessarily, but I just want to look at something different. I want to look at cute outfits and cute hair. Where’s the makeup tutorial? Where’s all that stuff gone? We need a break from the drama and the fear.

So, if you notice your tendency is to want to put out a lot of fear-based stuff, you probably are taking in too much fear. You just might want to check yourself. Now, another thing I want you to keep in mind is that some of you aren’t actively putting that stuff out there, but you’re just trying to hide it and pretend. Now, again, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with having the experience you’re having with allowing emotions.

Like I said, you’re having life experiences that are generating a lot of it, but I want you to just check yourself to see if you need to get in more balance, to see if you need to start taking in, input-wise, more positivity, more gratitude, more hope. Here’s how I manage my own brain when it wants to get panicked because it does want to, you guys. My brain wants to go there too.

So, it’ll offer me a thought like, “There’s not going to be enough food. The stores are going to run out, and you’re going to be out of food and not able to feed your family.” I’ll ask myself a question like, “What else is true? What else do I know is true?” Because here’s what else I know is true, is that there’s plenty of food in the world to feed everybody. Yes, we have a supply chain problem right now, but I also know there are really smart people working to solve it.

I know that we have lots of food in our house, and I know that everybody does right now because they’ve all bought it up off the grocery store shelves, and I know that we’re in a community of people that all want to take care of each other, and I know that everything I have I created in some way, and if necessary, I’ll create it all over again. This is true for our entire world, you guys.

Yes, the economy is going to struggle, and businesses are going to go under, and times are going to get hard, but guess what? We’re going to recreate it all, all over again, and it’s going to be even better. We created it the first time. We’ll create it again.

When I’m worried about loved ones, I remind myself things like, “This is emotion. It’s okay for them to feel emotions, and me worrying about them doesn’t help them. The best thing I can do is love them and be peaceful and confident myself.”

When I worked in corporate, I used to get to work with people and administered these different types of personality tests. I’m calling them personality tests, but I’ve done different kinds of tests. Some of them you might say were like an EQ test, and some were more of a true personality test.

I have one that I use sometimes with my own clients too, but every one of these tests that have been vetted by professionals say that your personality doesn’t really change usually except when you experience a significant life event, and then it might change the results of this test.

So for example, a marriage, a child, a death in the family, something like that. When I say child, I mean the birth of a baby. These significant life events, they say, can change their outcomes of this test. That’s because, again, our brains get rewired based on the experiences we have because of the different thoughts that we start thinking, and the emotions tied to them, and the way we respond.

I think right now, our personality is changing as a nation. Not just as a nation globally, as a species. So, I just want you to notice that and to know that change is uncomfortable, but it’s also, in many ways, a good thing. Decide intentionally how will this change you? How will you change? Will you get better at allowing feelings and be less scared of them on the other side of it? Will you be more patient, and kind, and compassionate, and grateful, or will you get stuck in skepticism?

I don’t say that with judgment of anybody that ends there. I just want you to know that it’s a choice. Allow yourself to have the feelings and the experiences that you’re having, allow anxiety, but monitor your input. It’s a really simple thing that you can do right now, and it matters tremendously. All right, you guys, I love you. Have a beautiful, amazing rest of your week. I’ll see you next week on another episode. Bye-bye.

Who is your life coach? If you don’t have one, I would be so honored to be your coach. I created a virtual coaching program called Be Bold that I want to invite you to join me in. We can address challenges, we can work on goals, and we can do it in so many different ways.

We have group coaching, individual private coaching, and online chats along with hundreds of hours of courses and content that I’ve created just for you. When you’re ready to really take what you’re learning on the podcast to the 10X level, then come check out Be Bold at JodyMoore.com/membership.