Welcome to the nourishing. Amy podcast.
I'm Amy Rankin. I am an emotional intelligence
and life coach as Speaker, a Creator, and a wellness.
Chaser, I have created this podcast for you to learn how
'but mindset changes and get really actionable.
Takeaways to find out who you are, what lights you up, how you
can love yourself again and how to live your best life.
Give yourself the space to welcome in more self-care and
confidence. Reduce feelings like overwhelm
and stress and let find your sparkle again.
Are you ready? Let's do it.
Hello and welcome to episode 105 of the nourishing.
Amy podcast, welcome back. Thank you so much for being here
with me today. Today, I'm going to be talking
with you about confirmation bias.
Now it is a topic that I have spoken about before a little
while ago in the mindset series when we were talking about
cognitive distortions and thinking patterns, but it feels
like a super relevant. One that has been coming up for
me personally myself. Certainly, but also quite a few
other people when we've been like having conversations and
noticing noticing things coming up for us.
And it's kind of that feeling of like, you know, what, it's like
when it rains, it, pours, and you just feel like, could there
be anything else to go wrong? So I want to talk about that
today but of course, before I jump into that topic, I'm going
to give you my recommendation, so if you follow me over on
Instagram, you would have seen that.
I've recently. Over the last few weeks really
gotten back into reading again, it's a habit that I've started
to bring in as a bit of a habit swap.
So, again, habit swaps is something that I have spoken a
lot about on the podcast. There's a whole episode on
ditching bad habits and the benefits of bringing in habit
swaps and stuff like that, that you can go and listen to.
But a bad habit that I was getting into, was scrolling more
specifically scrolling either early in the morning and also
later at night as well. So, after I finished work, I
feel like You know, having a baby and then having work and
all of that kind of stuff, it just can feel really
overwhelming some days and I just want to switch my brain off
and so my go-to will either be like a TV show or scrolling on
my phone, which you guys will always know that I don't
encourage anyone to fully cut these things out of their lives
all together, but the key is kind of recognizing how is this
becoming limiting for me and, or is it actually becoming
limiting? And I know for me, when I,
Myself that question. I was like well yeah it is
because it's keeping me up later at night.
That ideally I would like to be which means I'm then also not
getting up as early as what I would like to be and I'm not
getting that time for me in the mornings and prioritizing that
time for me in the mornings because I'm pressing snooze
because I'm tired, which I know a lot of you guys can relate to
as well. So I started to read my books
again. So, I kicked my little butt into
gear and I just saw this, is it, like, you've got to stop the
scroll and it's just so Ritual, especially when you're feeling
tired, when you're feeling exhausted, if you're feeling
mentally physically emotionally drained, it's just really easy
to switch, back to a flip back, to those distraction techniques
again. That's also another episode that
I have as well on distraction techniques.
I think it's called, I used track distracting yourself from
reality. So anyway, a book that I just
finished, which I did post about, on my Instagram is called
you need to know by Nicola. Moriarty guys, it is the best
book I have read in a very, very long time.
And I think the reason why I kind of fell off the wagon a
little bit from reading, is because the recent ones that
I've read whilst I did like them, I wasn't like fully fully
hooked in and so I was reading them because I was like enjoying
the storyline and it was good but I wasn't like, oh my gosh I
can't put this book down. Honestly, I read this whole book
in, like, two days. I woke up at 5 a.m. so that I
could read and try and get the book finished before I wanted to
be out of bed and doing my normal morning routine and
that's not something that I normally do.
So yeah I really really recommend that book.
If you're looking for a new book to read and I also have a books
highlight over on my Instagram now, too, because there's been
quite a few different like shares and message.
That have been coming through with different books that other
people are reading as well. I popped a question box up on my
Instagram and just asked, like, what are you guys reading now?
And yeah, so, shared all of that.
And also, just some of my like, very brief reviews or
perspectives and opinions on a whole heap of books that I've
read. And there's also a whole list.
So I am in to book club, Facebook groups, one is I think
the Shameless book club Bob actually don't even know what
the other Facebook group is called, but I kind of just
scroll through and have a little bit of a look and I click
through and read the comments on comments of, like, people that
have read either books that I have just finished reading or
similar type of books to what I like.
And then I read through all the comments and get recommendations
and create a little bit of a list there so I also popped that
up in the books highlight as well.
Actually another little recommendation off the back of
that would also be Goodreads if you Use Goodreads.
It's an app and also a website, and you can create your own
account, and you can put in different, you can create
different shelves. So, like bookshelves of like
books that I've read books, I want to read you can create all
different shelves, I just have books.
I've read in books, I want to read and then it will
automatically put books. I'm reading as well.
It creates your own for you. When you mark books as reading
or red, you can give Our ratings, you can write comments,
you can read through this. Literally like thousands of
comments on all like, you could find any book that you could
ever think of on there. And it's just so good at such a
good tool and also it will recommend books for you.
So say, for example, if when I clicked read on you need to know
and marked it from Reading to read it.
Then pops up at the bottom and is like because you read this
book, you might also like and gives you all these other
different recommendations to. So It's so good.
It links with my Kindle up somehow, I don't know how I'm
not very tech savvy with that but it links with my Kindle app
gives me suggestions over on my Kindle and I love it.
So there you go. You need to know is the book
Goodreads is the app that I'm really loving, and I have also
just started reading last night after you need to know, I
started reading. It Happened One Summer by Tessa
Bailey, and I'm loving it so far.
I've got to admit. I did stay up for about an hour
reading it last night. Which is pretty rare for me as
well. So there you go.
Some fun recommendations for you.
A few little different ones. I haven't recommended books for
ages. So go and check out my books,
highlight, if you're into reading, and you can get a few
recommendations for yourself from me, and from you guys as
well. All right.
Now, let's talk about what we actually came here to talk about
today, cognitive biases. And again, like I said, it's
sometimes that feeling of like, when it rains it, pours And for
me, I noticed this coming up for me more.
So, like last week and the week before, when I was already
noticing that I was feeling a little overwhelmed and just
busy, like I had a lot of things that I was trying to get done
and a lot of things on my to-do list and I realized that, okay,
like I've probably scheduled in a few too many things and
committed, that's the word I'm looking for.
I've committed to a few too many things.
And what I've done is, then also left my Myself feeling a little
overwhelmed couple that with Ali being in that leap 9 and just
being an absolute psycho some days.
It was a lot the last few weeks and I kind of started to notice
my mindset shift, when I was noticing, my feelings starting
to shift as well. So, rather than just feeling a
little overwhelmed or burnt out towards the end of the day, it
was more. So, like, starting to become an
all day feeling once I was getting towards the end of the
week, Because I was starting to feel like, oh, gosh, like I
don't have enough time. I've still got so many things
left on my list that I want to get done.
And you know, like it's Thursday, it's Friday.
I've got so many things to be doing anyway, so what then
started to happen once, I noticed that mindset shift and
me feeling different started to happen when I was more
regularly. Feeling overwhelmed was that the
mindset flow-on effect from That Was Then me really starting to
pick up a notice the things that were going badly or wrong or
just things that weren't like ideal situations.
So, you know, it can be the things that we feel like we are
like wanting to, like roll out eyes about and like, oh God,
okay, like here we go again or you know, it's just like, oh, of
course I'm stuck in traffic. Like, you know, I'm already
running late. And now I'm stuck in traffic or
I'm running late and now I need to go and get petrol and my
petrol lights, come on, and I've put on an outfit to get dressed
for the day and it's got baby food all over it or whatever.
The case might be, it's noticing that when we have a cognitive
distortion and in this example that I'm using the cognitive
distortion is like I'm having a bad day or like this week is not
going as according to plan things like that.
What your brain is actively doing is looking for evidence to
support that thinking. A pattern or that thought and
there's a reason that this happens basically your brain
always wants to be proving yourself, right?
It's evolutionary. If you were being proved right
or if you were, you know, the leader of your pack back in the
caveman days, then that would be a really good thing.
It meant that your tribe continued to grow and to
flourish, and to stay alive and all of these types of things.
So there's definite benefits in Eight of our brain being this
way and creating these this want to always be right?
But as we look at how we have grown and evolved and how our
thinking patterns have now changed from there, of course,
we don't always need to be right.
But it's a way that we filter information, because guys, it's
physically impossible for you to take in information from every
single thing. Every single second that is
happening around you. Every single day.
I know I've told you this statistic before but we have
something like 3 million things to be aware of through all five
of our senses, every single second.
And that's obviously way too many.
I'm trying to remember if it's 3 million or 3 billion, I'm going
to say million just to be safe. But obviously I mean regardless
a three million things to be aware of every single second is
just way way way too many, it's so overwhelming.
It's just physically and mentally impossible and so to do
That with filtering our information and in a way that we
in a way when we do that, we are looking for evidence to support
the thoughts that we already have.
Because as well, that also feels easy like it's not hard.
It's not an energy intensive tasks that we need to be doing.
And so what the key here is to really start to be noticing and
recognizing what are the thoughts that I have?
What are the stories I'm telling myself?
So whether it's things like, you know, we can look at limiting
beliefs here as well. And how our limiting beliefs, or
negative self-talk can come into play here.
When we are having some negative self-talk, or a limiting belief
coming up, I'm not good enough. I'm not fit enough, I'm not
healthy enough. I need to, you know, all of the
need two things I need to lose weight, I need to eat healthier,
I need to be doing this, all the shoulds, I should be at this
stage in my life. I should be doing this.
I should be doing that and comparing what that means is,
you know, mind we're creating a gap of like, where we are at the
moment and where we feel like we need to be, always should be all
we have to be in our life and when that happens that can feel
really disempowering. And so then what were also doing
is when we look at then creating that cognitive bias is that
we're buying into that thought and we're finding evidence to
agree with that thought. And to Support that thought.
And so what that means is any time that something happens for
you during that day that supports, that thought of like,
oh like let's say for example, you decide to go for a go for a
run or do a workout. If you're thinking pattern is
something like, I'm not fit enough and then you're going for
your run and you start to get puffed and you start to buy into
that cognitive bias of like, see I told you I'm not fit enough.
I'm so puffed I Finish this round this is really hard.
We start to get that thinking pattern and that Snowball Effect
is sorry. What I was trying to say that
snowball effect of like one thought then jumps to another to
another to another. And all of a sudden we've
created this big story in our head, just from the original
thought of, I'm not fit enough. So this is obviously related to
so many different thinking thinking, patterns thoughts that
we can have, it can be things like I'm not smart enough.
If I'm not good at public speaking, if we're thinking
about like work things, or this presentation is really bad that
I've got created. It could be.
Also if we look at how it relates to relationships that we
have in our lives, whether that's a romantic relationship
or, you know, a friendship relationship that you have and
we want to be looking at generalizations that we can be
making about people. So, like this person's so rude,
or this person's really mean to me.
You things like that? Or this person always does this,
or does that how we then buy into that and we create a
cognitive bias then and we are looking for evidence to support
that and your brain will then grab on to them and be like, see
I told you this person's rude or see, I told you this person
doesn't like you. I told you this person's mean
because this just happened, or they just said this and look, it
can be related to so many different cognitive distortions.
So, again, with that mindset, These that I've done, I run
through, I think 15 or 16 different cognitive distortions
or thinking patterns that we have and it can be related to
then things like mind-reading or things like personalization,
which there's definitely separate episodes on that.
So I won't run specifically through that again for you but
it's funny like I think with this specific episode today, I
want to look at calling yourself out because I know I really
needed to do it for me last week, calling yourself out and
just Rising like hang on a second.
Am I feeding myself some bullshit here?
Like, is there something coming up for me?
That I am creating this thought, like I'm having a bad day or I
don't have time and how am I then buying into that?
How am I looking for evidence to support that?
Which is then also making me feel worse, right?
It's not making me feel any better.
And then what we want to do is look at 0.
Okay. Well, what's the opposite of
this for me? Like, yes, I'm recognizing that
I'm feeling overwhelmed, or I'm feeling stressed or, I feel
like, I don't have time or if we look at some of the other
examples, okay. Yes, I've got a presentation or
a meeting that I have at work that I'm feeling nervous about,
or yes, I recognize that I'm not at the level of Fitness, I would
like to be at, we don't want to take away from the reality of
the situation because that's, that's the words not coming to
me. I'll come back to it in a
minute, distracting yourself. Sorry from reality and It's just
repressing how you're actually feeling.
So we want to bring acknowledgement to the situation
itself but what we also want to do is bring acknowledgement
that, okay? This is how I'm feeling.
These are the thoughts that are happening around this situation,
for me. So what is the reality that I'm
actually creating for myself? Because at the end of the day,
you create your own reality with your thoughts.
And so when you keep that in mind and this was kind of the
turning point for me last week when I reminded myself of that
and I was like Hang on a second. Yes, you're feeling overwhelmed
and stressed. Yes.
You feel like there's not enough time and you still got a lot of
things on your to-do list. This is like me just, you know,
giving myself a little pep talk, but that doesn't mean that this
whole week is a write-off that this whole day needs to be bad.
That it doesn't mean that you need to keep buying into this
and finding evidence to support that and just agreeing agreeing
agreeing with today's bad today sucks.
This week's terrible? This week's really hard.
I'm feeling so Burnt out. So I do encourage you.
If you would like to get a pen and paper and just write out
like what's that first original thought that you can recognize
or pinpoint that has started off that whole like I'm having a bad
day or I'm feeling overwhelmed. I feel quite anxious.
I'm feeling worried, I feel stressed, like, whatever the
thoughts are recognize them first, because this is your very
first turning point. And then what you might also be
able to do and maybe, It might be based off some of the
examples I've just given is recognizing.
All right. Well, what's the flow-on effect
effect from there? Oh my goodness.
I cannot get my words out today. What's the flow-on effect from
there? Or what's the snowballing that's
happening after that? That it's like this thought
jumps to this one, to this one to this one.
What's the evidence that my brain is then creating and then
our third question that we can ask is how is all of this
actually making me feel? Because when we can recognize
the feeling that's Not. That's also a really big
awareness point that we can notice.
Okay well is this a feeling I want to be feeling because we
can also look at it in the opposite way that we can create
more empowering and liberating cognitive biases and we can
create cognitive biases and thoughts that feel really good
for us. Like I am fit enough, I am
healthy, I am living a healthy lifestyle and feeling really
good and by having those type of things.
Thinking, of course, again, there's like a whole array of
examples. That's just some very quick
examples of the top of my head, that, that could be related to
that. They feel so much more
empowering. They feel more positively
stated, well, because they are more positively stated, which
means that, then what your brain is also, doing is looking for
evidence to support those more positively stated cognitive
biases of like, yes, I am doing all of these things to help to
support the lifestyle that I want to be living.
Habits are feeling really good for me.
I'm feeling really empowered within myself because I am
taking responsibility for my own life and I'm taking
responsibility and taking action on the habits.
That the that I know make me feel good that I really helped
me to be moving towards the person that I want to be and
towards feeling the way that I want to be feeling because at
the end of the day that is what we really want to be focusing
on. How do you feel?
What are you doing to take responsibility?
E2, Move Yourself towards feeling the way that you want to
be feeling and creating the lifestyle and living the life
that you want to be living because at the end of the day,
there is always going to be things that are happening that
are outside of your control. There is always going to be
other people and other situations and circumstances
that come into play for how you are navigating through, whatever
it is, that's happening for you in your life.
Whether that is situations that feel really great and empowering
and self and you're bringing in, Zach self confidence and self
esteem for you or whether it's things that don't feel so
empowering and that you are noticing.
There's some negative self-talk, there's some self-doubt, you
know, all those types of things that can start to come up.
There's some questioning, there's maybe relationship
breakdowns or non ideal situations in the workplace and
things like that, that we can look at.
So we want to look at okay. How can I make these cognitive
biases, feel empowering for me and If that feels a little bit
too far out of Reach For You. Alrighty.
Well, how about I just take that one step backwards for a minute
and think about instead of creating those biases, that feel
really positive and empowering, how can I actually just call out
the ones that are happening for me at the moment and have a look
at a really hard. Look at, what is the reality
that I am creating for myself right now?
Does that feel good for me? And if it doesn't, what are some
small steps that I can start to put into place to start to
create some change? Onto that.
Because when we start to put in the little steps, they start to
create a flow on effect that they get more and more.
And we start to focus on those things that we're doing that.
Do help us feel good. And then we notice that it might
take a few days. It might take a few weeks, maybe
it takes a few months, but we start to notice that it really
has been in all of the little little steps that we've taken
when we've broken down. What is going to help me to feel
good today? How can I take action on that?
What's one thing I could do? To help me today and we then
have a look back in another few weeks or a few months and
realize it's actually been in all of those tiny little moments
that have made, the biggest difference to me and this is how
I've started to take responsibility and take control
back of my life and how I want to be feeling by focusing on
those things. So, yes, there's a little bit of
calling ourselves out on a bullshit here and just
recognizing what's actually happening and really just
starting to be aware of how your brain is creating the reality
that your Being everyday, how your brain is creating these
thoughts and calling out those thoughts.
But then, the cool thing is that we, if we are aware that that's
happening, we can make it work for us instead of making it work
against us, and that is the cool part.
So I will leave you there for the end of the episode.
I hope there's been some cool things that have come up for
you. Of course, as you always do,
send me a few messages over on Instagram, say hi, let me know
if you've enjoyed the podcast and common join the glow up,
Facebook group, if You haven't already the glow.
Up is still happening. We are on day ten, I think it
might be today of the refresh. So there is an action step every
single day of the refresh. Today's action step is about
setting a goal for yourself over the next two weeks.
So there's really nice action steps that we've been focusing
on. I know like I said, last
episode, there's been things like having 30 minutes of no
screen time in the mornings, there's been things like
prepping some healthy meals for you prepping, some help.
Snacks getting outside and going for a walk, getting some fresh
air. I think that tomorrow.
Or the next day the action step is taking yourself on a solo
date and doing something for yourself.
So there's a really nice mix of giving back to yourself.
Getting outside, getting some fresh air focusing on creating
some really beautiful healthy habits and routines for you.
And the Facebook group over there in the glow up, refresh is
just absolutely going off and I'm loving all of the shares in
there. So thank you so much to
everybody. Of course, every share that you
do. Do-over on your Instagram and
social media Pages as long as you tag me.
So I can see it goes into the running to win the prize pack.
I actually think I forgot to mention on the podcast because I
hadn't been delivered last week when I was recording, was that
Eco Modern Essentials have been so generous and they have sent
through their brand new Blend or Blends, sorry of oils.
Which I'm so excited about because you guys get exclusive
access to that, they are fully Not even on presale yet.
They haven't even been released to the public.
No one even knows about them yet.
So I'm so excited. I've got that bundle of Blends
which is amazing, but they also just included and sent out their
brand new diffuser as well. Their Coastal diffuser, which is
amazing. And I have personally been
looking at it on their website, just after Christmas.
So I'm very jealous. I can't win this prize, pack
myself, but for you to go into the running, for the prize pack,
all you need to do is get get involved in the refresh Cummins,
share some things that you're doing and taking action on for
yourself, and tag me in them, so I can see them and you will go
in the running. Alrighty, that's it for me,
guys. Thank you so much and I'll see
you next episode. If you liked this episode, I
would love for you to screenshot and tag me on Instagram.
You guys have no idea how much that absolutely makes my day.
I get such a big smile on my face.
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today and I hope
that you have got them something from this episode.
If you want to hang out more you can search the nourishing, Amy
podcast community in Facebook and come and join our group.
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Sparkle back. Thank you again so much for
being with me and have a fantastic day.