Podcast transcript: Episode 1 Topic: How our mental diet changes & forms our thought patterns. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!! Welcome to this podcast that you can listen to while cooking, cleaning, working from home ... heck, you can even listen to this while making love. You can listen to this while doing anything. This is a space where we are having conversations about ways that we can improve our mental health, and the ways we can do the necessary internal work on our- selves to be higher quality people, living higher quali - ty lives. That’s what we’re doing here and thank you so much for joining us. Let’s start this show! This is the ThinkGym podcast, where we serve a mental diet of wholesome food for the mind. We are what we consume and internalise. I’m your host Thembi Creates, I’ve lived with clinical de - pression for the bulk of my life and I’ve become better at managing and living with it. in this audio blog, we ex - plore a myriad of ways we can enhance our psycholog- ical well - being. This blog is here to help you and me invest in our mental health and work into our wellness with every single day so again, welcome! So with me, changing my mental diet transformed my life and improved the overall quality of my living expe - rience. This is the stuff I want to talk about, this is the kind of thing I think is worth having conversations about because unfortunately there is that stigma around men - tal health. We do not think of it the same way we think of physical health. You eating a balanced diet and going to the gym, we are able to invest energy into thatt without the idea that there must be something wrong for us to be doing so. The same with financial wellness, when you see somebody looking out for their financial health you’re not automatically linking it to any kind of stigma. When somebody is out seein a psychologist and going for therapy there’s a stigma around that, there must be something wrong mentally for that person to need a shrink. That is the reason why this person is doing the work. This is something that needs to change. You cannot expect different results while doing the same damn things daily. The very same concept with wellness, your being able to take care of your health so you do not get sick, that should be the same phi - losophy we put into our mental health as well. Why should I wait to get sick? Why should I wait for anxiety problems and the ex - perience of depression before tending to my mental health? For me to take the necessary steps towards taking care of my mental health? Why is it that I cannot do the exercises that enhance my psychological wellness even without there being an immediate need for it? I should be able to look out for my well - being, just ecause I genuinely just want to be healthier as a per - son, it shouldn’t always mean that there’s something wrong or that there’s reason to panic. I can make the same effort towards my mental health, that I make towards my physical health when I eat better and hit the gym. Wellness should never be this one dimensional linear concept. What a mental diet is : A mental diet is the media, music, content and pro- gramming we consume. This is the content created by others, messages and stories created by other people. These are messages we internalise because we resonate and gravitate with them or the people pushing these narratives. We take it all in and these messages become part of our paradigm. We also have, seld talk, internal belief systems and the mental habits we entertain. These are the mes - sages and stories that we create for and by our - selves. This is the space where mantras & affirmations ex - ist in, these are all the stories that we tell ourselves and the stories that we believe. Those are the two kinds of mental foods. 1. Media (stories & messages) created by other peo - ple. 2. Media (stories & messages) created by ourselves about our world. All the stuff that we feed our brains with daily, these are the messages we consume and internalise. The stuff we send into our brains. Todays topic: How our mental diet changes and forms our thought patterns. The 4 stages of how messages become things: We really need to understand how we go from inter- nalising something in our mental diet and how this then affects and impacts our lives Stage 1 - Story: This is the message we are sending to the brain. Whether created by somebody else - Media Or created by you - Mantras & affirmations. Stage 2 - Conscious mind: Where the message becomes an individual thought that gathers momentum everytime we place focus, awareness and attention on it. Whatever we place awareness on, grows! Momentum is what moves a thought from the con - scious level to the subconscious mind. Stage 3 - Subconscious mind: This is where a thought becomes a habitual pattern. These are thoughts and ideas that we frequent and they become impressed upon the subconscious. Anything successfully impressed upon the subcon - scious mind becomes automatic. The subconscious mind is the seat of habit so anything that is there is at the level of perfection and mastery. There is no con - scious effort that goes into you breathing or keeping your heart beating. Those functions are performed at a When you’ve achieved a level of mastery in anything, you’re able to perform that task with the least amount of conscious effort - such as playing an instrument or playing a particular sport. It has become second na - ture, this means you are now performig that task from the subconscious level of the brain. Stage 4 - Energy reflects your thought patterns. The things that are present in your vibration radiate through your body and into the world. People mirror and respond to this energy, you become aware of things only on a similar frequency to where you are. This is what people are interacting with when they are around you. Stage 5 - Physical reality mirrors your energy: The energy of something, is the blueprint of its form. Physical realuty follows vibrational reality. Atoms, mol - ecules and matter mould themselves around energy nd not the other way around. The physical reality around you, is almost always a re- flection of what you are doing energetically 90% of the time. Your dominant thought patterns, feelings and frequencies - that is the stuff that your physical reality reflects. so in order for you to change the results, you need to change the contents. What auto-pilot is: Our habitual thought patterns are the 90% subcon - scious and automatic functioning of the brain. This is where our default settings and default programmin is. Once you’ve identified all the stories and messages running in your default settings, now you can install and update new software in the brain until it be - comes your new default setting. Repetition and daily practice is what moves some - thing from the conscious mind to the subconscious part of the brain, so repetition is key. It takes about 30 - 60 days to form new neural path - ways in the brain so it is very much possible, you just need to be consistent with the practice. We are able to internalise new stories, new ideas and new messages into the brain. “The illiterate of the 21st century are not people who cannot read and write, it is people who can not learn, unlearn and relearn things.” Alvin Toffler The abillity to do this, is a POWER!