I'm your brain coach Jim mcquick and in this session we are going to talk about overthinking and making mistakes you know I believe that thinking is good but overthinking could end things before they even start a lot of people struggle with analysis paralysis they want things to be perfect so they never take the step so it ends before it even starts it's because why we're fearful of making a mistake we don't want to look bad we don't want to be criticized for our actions and remember modeling children who are wonderful Learners children aren't scared of making mistakes right they understand that mistakes are Stepping Stones to something bigger or something better if you've ever watched a child learn how to walk or learn how to talk they fail most of the time they fall they fumble how many times does a child fall in order to learn how to walk hundreds and hundreds of times but never after the 75th time do they say okay that's it I'm just not going to walk children don't do that they keep on going until they get the result but adults when it comes to learning and trying new things thinking in different ways they'll try it once and they're just like oh because they didn't get it perfect then they just stop and they they shrink and in this world you don't want to shrink right you don't want to dim your light just because it's shining into somebody else's eyes you want to inspire them with your grit with your grace but you have to overcome this fear of looking bad you know I get to work with a lot of Hollywood actors many of you know if we follow each other on social media I get to work with individual tools like Jim Carrey and when I was training with him at his home we were taking a brain break and we were in his kitchen making his favorite brain foods and while we're doing that I asked him a very simple question I was like why do you do what you do why are you so like extreme on camera and he was like Jim I'm glad you asked the reason why I do that is because I want to give people permission for watching I want to give them permission just to be themselves he calls it freeing people from concern that's really his religion he wants to free people from the concerns of others because when you're always trying to mold yourself to fit into a box and you're living your life that way then you are limited by other people's Expectations by their opinions and that's one of the fastest ways to slow down your progress slow down your growth slow down your thinking and so here's the reality and it's not fun to think about but I want you just to imagine if you're fearful of other people's expectations or their opinions or how you're going to look I spent a lot of time with seniors I lost my grandmother to Alzheimer's and going through that process I spend time at senior centers I speak to caregivers and part of it is I love hearing stories because you know people have an incredible amount of History through generations I love learning from that wisdom and I love helping people to polish off their own memories but the other thing I hear in those situations is I hear a lot of regret things that they wish they would have or could have done and life and living towards your dreams it could be scary but you know what's scarier regret and at that point you hear the biggest regrets people have is somehow they shrunk their life to fit into the expectations or opinions of somebody else but here's the reality if you feel rule your life by the expectations and opinions of other people you're gonna run out of gas that's not what you want to do because in our final days when we're when we're in that box that coffin right there's not a lot of room in there for possessions and you could have all the toys and that that's good for you but in that box there's also not a lot of space for regret right and that's the challenge you do not want to live your life that way and I would say from a thinking perspective another mental model to think about is begin with the end in mind one of my favorite books another book they're all my favorite books is by Dr Stephen Covey he wrote the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and the seventh habit by the way is sharp in the saw that if you have all this wood to cut and you have a dull blade you want to sharpen that saw first you don't want to struggle and suffer and use up a lot of time and focus and energy and have all that angst and pain when you could sharpen your saw that's smart doing that first that's what you're doing right now you're investing yourself to sharpen your mind sharpen your saw sharpen your thinking right and so that's what we're doing right now but another habit of Highly Effective People is begin with the end in mind what do you want people to say about you when you pass I mean it's not a comfortable conversation but I'm your coach here I don't want to tell you what you want to hear maybe put yourself in a situation where you're doing this thought experiment where you're thinking how do I want to be remembered you know and then live your life that way and part of it is if you know you're going to have regret at the end of your life then why not do that now you got one life one life why aren't we running towards our dreams like we're on fire right this is the time to do it all right and so one of the things that keeps us from doing that other people's opinions other people's expectations because at the end of our life other people's expectations their opinions are fear of that none of that's going to matter what's going to matter is how we lived of how we loved how we laughed how we learned those are the things that are going to matter so why not do that now forget about other people's opinions because everybody's going to have an opinion about your life so you might as well live your life I want you to have this thinking belief that there's no such thing as failure there's only feedback you don't fail there's only failure to learn something and feedback is the breakfast of superheroes right you want to get that feedback so you can adjust and so when you're making mistakes the attitude I would have is this I would try something at least three times try it once to get over the fear of it try it again to get decently good at it and try it a third time to see if you enjoy it and when it comes to making mistakes you make mistakes but mistakes do not make you a lot of people are fearful because that becomes who they are it defines them and your mistakes do not define you how you respond to your mistakes Define you so I would recommend three things you do when you make a mistake all right mistakes obviously are opportunities for growth opportunities to step up to another level so you don't have to be proud of your mistakes you could be proud how you handle your own mistakes so when you make a mistake and this is part of my thinking and you can adopt this if this serves you I think about three things I want to make this mistake old o l d and of course it's an acronym so you can remember it the first thing when you make mistake and invariably you do because if you're a human being doing anything you make mistakes right it means you're trying so first of all congratulate yourself for making mistakes it means you're trying something new but when you do make mistake make it an old mistake old what does the o stand for the O stands for own it you want to own that mistake you make a mistake own it do not blame somebody else for that mistake you take responsibility for it the L and old stands for learn you want to learn from your mistakes that's why you make mistakes to get feedback so you can make better decisions moving forward and so why do you make mistakes you go back and you analyze and you reason and you put on your different hats and you look at it so you can learn from it so you get that lesson and finally the D in Old the O is on the mistake L is learn from it the D is don't repeat it don't repeat the mistake because if you're doing something let's say you are in a relationship and you start dating this person you make the same mistake and then you do it again and again that means you didn't learn from it or if you learned from it you didn't really get it because you're repeating it some people tend to make the same mistakes in their business and there's this quote that we're all familiar with about insanity right what's Insanity it's doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result I don't think that's Insanity I think it's just bad learning a bad memory because you're not learning from mistake and you're repeating that mistake so I would say the D is don't repeat it because if you do it once it's a mistake but if you do it constantly then it's a decision so don't repeat the mistake because that is insanity so I'm giving you this tool as a power a superpower to free yourself from the expectations of others remember this don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from this is the thing when it comes to Performance you can learn from people right you could get feedback you could get advice from mentors but remember your life is your own and it's your response ability now this was a heavy lesson but I wanted to introduce you this concept because I feel like a lot of our thinking is is shrunk or we shrink in our Behavior because we don't want to fully express ourselves because of fear of making mistakes the fear of looking bad to other people but remember that child in order to learn to walk or to talk they fall and it's the strength of getting up that makes you strong to accomplish your next goal it's not the point of falling the people who fall the most and get up are stronger than people who never fell you have to take those steps I'm your brain coach Jim quick