Breaking Free from Survival Mode: Mitchell Weisberg on the Mind-Shifting Method

"Your self-doubt isn’t you. It’s your survival brain talking.” - Mitchell Weisburgh

Discover how to break free from survival mode with Mitchell Weisberg, creator of the Mind-Shifting Method. Learn practical tools to quiet self-doubt, reframe stress, and build long-term resilience, creativity, and collaboration.

Have you ever wondered if your self-doubt is really you—or just your survival brain talking?

Key Takeaway Insights and Tools

• Recognize the Survival Trap (00:08:51)
  Stress triggers the limbic system—your brain’s survival mode—which floods your system with cortisol and adrenaline. This shuts down creativity and clear thinking, leaving you stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or herd responses.
• Third-Party Your Thoughts (00:22:02)
  Label negative self-talk as your “limbic brain” or “Part X” instead of identifying with it. This creates distance and makes it easier to choose a constructive response.
• Practical Techniques for Resetting (00:24:03–00:25:57)
  Four core strategies:
  • Self-awareness/metacognition (“Am I in limbic mode?”)
  • Healthy distraction (mindfulness, movement, or sensory resets)
  • Positive self-talk that opens possibilities (“Perhaps I can…”)
  • Trusted sparring partners for perspective and grounding
• The “Perhaps I Can” Technique (00:32:10–00:37:05)
  A powerful reframe that shifts the brain from “I can’t” to possibility. This simple phrase helps unlock self-efficacy and problem-solving capacity.
• Compound Growth of Resilience (00:42:16–00:43:04)
  Practice one or two techniques consistently for months. Small improvements compound over time, shifting emotional patterns and building lasting resilience.

Bio:

Mitchell Weisburgh is on a mission to free high-achieving leaders from the invisible survival-mode traps that sabotage creativity, resilience, and leadership. After eight years of deep research across neuroscience, cognitive psychology, military strategy, and organizational development, he developed the Mind Shifting Method — a practical system for rewiring the brain for calm power, critical thinking, and collaborative success.

Unlike traditional motivation or mindset hacks, Mitchell’s work focuses on upgrading a leader’s internal operating system. His method empowers entrepreneurs, executives, and coaches to lead and create from sustainable strength, not stress. By shifting the way leaders respond under pressure, they gain clarity, authority, and the ability to stay grounded through challenges.

Detailed Resources & Links

Mind Shifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success (Amazon)
Website: https://www.mindshiftingwithmitch.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mweisburgh
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weisburghm/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/

Chapters

• 0:08 Introduction to Mind Shifting
• 1:46 Meet Mitchell Weisberg
• 7:55 Teaching Resilience to Teachers
• 8:54 Understanding the Survival Trap
• 16:53 The Power of Self-Compassion
• 19:16 Techniques for Transformation
• 29:26 Recap of Mind Shifting
• 31:18 Techniques to Combat Self-Sabotage
• 34:49 The "Perhaps I Can" Technique
• 39:35 Measuring Mind Shift Progress
• 40:18 Long-Term Strategies for Change
• 47:31 Final Thoughts and Key Insights

Transcript

0:04

This is It's an Inside Job, and I'm your host, Jason Lim. This is the show where we explore the stories, strategies, and science behind growing resilience, nurturing well-being, and leading with intent. Because when it comes down to it, it's all an inside job. Well, welcome back to the show. what if the real reason stress keeps you stuck has less to do with what's happening around you and everything to do with how your brain is wired to survive? So in today's episode, we're exploring how to step out of survival mode and build resilience from the inside out. Have you ever snapped at someone, blanked in a meeting, or just overthought a simple decision and wondered, why do I do this? Well, today, my guest is Mitchell Weisberg. He's an education technology leader and the creator of the mind-shifting method. After starting his career in publishing, Mitchell developed a framework for teaching resilience, resourcefulness, and collaborations. Skills he now helps teachers and professionals pass on to entire communities. So today's conversation, you'll learn how to recognize when your survival brain is taking control and how to get back to clarity. Also practical techniques for quieting self-doubt and reframing limiting thoughts. We'll also uncover why small, consistent practices can create long-term resilience and creativity. And at the very end of the episode, well, Mitchell shares a perspective on resilience that completely reframes how we think about self-doubt. One I believe can shift the way you see yourself. Well, folks, this is a conversation I've been looking forward to. So without further ado, let's slip into the stream and meet Mitchell Weisberg. I'd like to welcome everyone back to it's an inside job today i am joined by mitchell weisberg or mitch as he likes to be called mitch welcome to the show uh thanks jason thank you so much for having me on and looking forward to our chat today, So could we kick off the conversation by you briefly introducing who you are and what you do? Sure. Well, as you said, my name is Mitch Weisberg. I live just outside of New York in the U.S. And I guess since around 2005, I've been working with education publishers on their technology products. And I guess, you know, around 2016, 2017, it just it kind of hit me that, yes, we were using a lot more technology in schools, but were kids really getting better prepared to be adults? So I had this angst about, you know, I'm not really making a difference in the education system. You know, what are we doing? And around that time, I got an email from a university in Niger asking if I, as an ed-tech entrepreneur, could talk to their undergraduates about education technology in the U.S. And, you know, those two things kind of hit me at the same time as I'm thinking, well, why would education technology in the U.S. Be helpful to university students in Niger, of all places? And so just on a whim, I wrote back and I said, you know, I really don't think that this is going to particularly help your undergraduates. But what I think that kids need today is to understand how people who are successful make sense of situations and stay motivated. And that's going to prepare them for life. And if you'd like, I can talk to them about that. And so they then got back to me and said, could you come out and teach that for a semester? And I'm like, I don't really think so. But we went back and forth and we decided that I would do a two day workshop on what at the time I called sensemaking. And. And like many entrepreneurs, you know, you see a problem, right? And you come up with a solution. And then you, you know, you talk about it with somebody and somebody agrees to it. And then all of a sudden you have to say, oh, my gosh, I'm not going to do this, right? So that was in like June, July of 2017. And I was going to go out to Niger in February. But I had, what, five, six months. So I read like 10 or 11 books on different subjects, on military strategy, on psychology, on cognitive science, on neuroscience, on organization development, on coaching. And it just seemed like everybody had this piece, but nobody really put it all together. So I figured I'm going to put it, you know, I'm going to create something that takes place over two days. And we're going to build this on, first of all, the ability to understand how your brain makes decisions and how and how to switch to a resourceful mode within your brain. And second of all, how we react to situations and how do you how do you prepare for a situation when probably the first thing that you're going to do isn't going to work? And then thirdly, how do we deal with other people? Because there's always going to be people who oppose us or try to stop us or get in our way. And and so to me, you know, what I call sense making before and what I call mind shifting now had those three components. One is resourcefulness, which was in my the way I talk is about the brain. Two is resilience, which is how we react to situations. And three is conflict and collaboration, which is how we interact with other people. So, you know, I pulled together the material. I went out to Niger. There's 60, 70 kids in the first session. I did two two-day sessions. And at the end of the two days, I'm like, and that's sensemaking. And they stood up and cheered. And it's because, you know, and you get this, you know, I'm sure that you see this all the time. It's like nobody really teaches people that just because they have something in their head, that doesn't make it the truth. And when they realize that it's not the truth, that that's just a story and that they can calm, you know, their emotions, they can rewrite their story in order to be more successful. It's just like it's it's this big, you know, revelation. And the same thing happened with the second group. And slowly, since 2018, I've been transitioning from advising education publishers to really thinking about this full time. And my mission is, you know, is to have a critical mass in the world, have the skills to be resourceful, resilient and collaborative. A, so that they can lead better lives, you know, happier, more productive, but B, some critical mass will then move, you know, our whole planet forward. And, you know, I'm just one person. I'm not going to do this on my own. It doesn't have to be called mind shifting. It doesn't have to be called sense making. It doesn't have to be on my books or my courses or whatever, but it's just how do we, you You know, people who have learned these techniques, how do we impart these techniques to more and more people? And, you know, you're doing that with, you know, through your podcast and your publications and your counseling. And I'm trying to do that. And my my first stab at this was really teaching teachers. And so I've developed really at this point, there's three different courses for teachers. Each one is live. Each one is six to eight sessions of two hours over Zoom with the idea that teachers are the ones who reach the kids. So if teachers know how to be resourceful, resilient and collaborative, they're going to be better teachers, period. They're going to be better with their families also. And they're going to have some techniques that they can help co-regulate and then teach the kids themselves how to self-regulate over time. And so, you know, that's basically what I'm doing. Well, it's a noble goal to be able to teach people psychosocial, emotional stability and the resilience that comes with that, especially if you can reach children at such a young age. That gets established from the get-go. And as adults, they'll be able to weather and buffer the storms that will inevitably hit their lives at some point in whatever shape and form. So something you talk about, Mitch, is something called the survival trap, where we can get stuck in it without even realizing it. How do you define this survival trap or this survival mode? And what is the reason it makes it so invisible to us where we just kind of there we are and we don't even realize it sometimes? Mm hmm. Well, you know, this is not just a simplification, but it's an oversimplification of the brain. But it's useful, you know, I think. And so the way I look at it is as if there's, you know, two different parts of the brain. One, the lower order brain, which evolved in order for the organism to survive. And, you know, that part of the brain could be called the limbic system. It could be called the survival brain. It could be called the lizard brain, the caveman brain, that part of the brain, because it's designed for survival, it focuses on what's going to be a threat. And it's really out there looking for threats. And it basically wakes up in like two, three hundredths of a second. And so it's looking at situations, this thing, is this a threat? Is this something that I can, you know, I can deal with without having to think? And you know fight fight fight flight freeze are three of the first reactions of that part of the brain and then the second part of the brain is um is our ability to self-regulate to be critical thinking to be creative uh to empathize with other people um you know again for simplicity's sake i'd say this is part of the prefrontal cortex, you can call it the resourceful brain or the upper level brain or the sage brain. But that part of the brain really wakes up in like two seconds, maybe three seconds. And what happens is that when the limbic parts of the brain detect that this is a threat and the limbic parts of the brain are binary. So it's not like, oh, this is a little bit of a threat. This is a big threat it's like this is a threat those parts of the brain have their stress hormones those in you know cortisol and adrenaline those inhibit the ability of the prefrontal cortex to be critical thinking for their uh creativity and so with that turned off people don't even realize that they're in limbic mode and so they're stuck um and so i describe it as five different types of actions that the limbic brain will come up with. And, you know, there's fight, flight, freeze, but also the things that we're already good at that we can do without thinking or habits. Okay? And then the fifth one is whatever else the group is doing. Because we have this. Herd mentality. Right? Okay? So if our group is acting in a certain way, we will naturally gravitate to doing the same thing this is what everybody else is doing um oh look this is what this is how others are reacting to this this is how this is what i'm going to do and you don't even think about it and then when any of those when it when it comes up with something and any any action it comes up with gets challenged either directly challenged by ourselves or even worse challenged by other people like you're wrong okay then it secretes even more of those hormones And then at that point, it's really going into a fight, flight, freeze. And you just think that that's your reality. Does that make sense? Completely, completely. It's the difference between reactive and reflective. And as you said, the limbic system has a very poor repertoire of things it can go to. And a lot of that is just sort of default, what we've learned, right? Not to use a lot of energy, as I understand you're saying. And it does take a level of self-awareness in order to understand, as you talked at the top of this conversation about the narrative, to understand what's the narrative running in our head so we can become the author of that narrative and not just the character within the narrative, as I understand you're saying. Yep. And I'd say, oh, go ahead. As you bring it, there's two main ways that improve our ability to react or reflect on situations. And one of them was the one that you just brought up, which is the ability to be self-aware or metacognition. Like, am I in limbic mode right now? You know, is that that self-awareness? And the other thing is to increase the number of things that we're fluent in, because when we're when we're in the moment, we may not have time to access our prefrontal cortex. But the more tools that we can draw on from our limbic brain, the better we are at handling different situations. And, you know, you do that by coming up with, oh, so if this happens, here's here's how I want to react. And then kind of rehearsing it so that it becomes part of your skills, your fluencies that you can just draw on without having to think. Yeah, and just to further define metacognition, as I understand, is thinking about your thinking, just for those listeners who may not be familiar with that term. Um, you know, a lot of us, we hear it, we hear podcasts, we've read self-help books, we go to training courses and we hear about that it is important for us to be self-aware and to regulate our emotions and to find resilience and to be able to shift into these more constructive default modes that help us out of the situation. So why do people who, quote, sort of know better, why do we find ourselves, including myself, emotionally trapped in some old patterns and stress or reaction, even though we've had the training? You're still having negative reactions? I'm shocked because, like, I haven't had a negative reaction, I don't think, in 15 years. So um because but basically we all do it because we're human you know that's part of being human and and also part of part of the training is learning how to not beat yourself up for it is that you know you're you're doing the best you can in the situations whatever the situations you are you're going to you know you're going to say things to people that you realize afterwards you shouldn't have said you're going to do things that you realize you shouldn't have done it's like okay um and uh so so just you know like i'm thinking of the specific question which is why do we do that and we do that just because we're human we get better at reflecting on more different types of situations and we also get better at recovering faster but we still make those errors so it sounds like self-compassion is the next major skill to have to understand that okay i overreacted or i didn't do i didn't show up in my best in that reaction and upon reflection what i hear you saying mitch is that show self-compassion to yourself that you know these are things this is part of the human condition and that we can learn from ourselves and maybe we show up in a better way the next time something similar happens We'll see you next time. Yeah. And I'd say, you know, so what as you're talking about self-compassion, one of the thoughts that pops into my mind at one of the terms is radical acceptance is is to not is to learn either to not judge things as bad or good or to recover from from them faster. And I guess from radical acceptance, then where my brain goes is to the terms accept or convert. You know, accepting is to just kind of say, you know something, this happened or I did this, but you know something in the, you know, five years from now, I'm not even going to remember I did it. It's really not that important. You could say, you know, is it part of the 80% of things that really aren't important. It's part of the 20% of things that really are important. If you go by the, you know, the Pareto principle, that 80-20 principle. And so accepting is just to say, you know, something that's a minor thing, I don't really care. Converting is to take whatever happened and say, well, so what does this then instill in me to want to do? You know, did I, is this, was this an opportunity to practice something? And so I'm just strengthening my skills and I just wasn't quite strong enough. But, you know, I continue to practice. I'm going to get better at it. Is this an opportunity to learn? What can I, is there something that I can learn to do differently based on what happened? Or is this an opportunity or is this a gift to decide to do something like, geez, you know, something just happened. Maybe what I need to do is convene some people who know more about this than me or convene other people who are affected about this and talk about it. Or maybe another thing you can do is to just reward yourself. It's like, you know something I... I tried to do this. It didn't work, but I'm going to reward myself for trying to do it by whatever. I'm going for a manicure, pedicure, eating a piece of chocolate, working out, whatever it is that gives you joy. And so going back to the self-compassion that you brought up, it's like being able to either accept something that was so minor that I don't really care about it or finding the gift or the opportunity in it. Yeah. So one thing, as you said, accepting it, sometimes being at peace with it, just accepting it, being at peace with it. And the other one is to make it sort of a learnable, teachable moment in which we either reward ourselves for doing something or reward ourselves for the awareness that we did something that took us off the rails and that compassion is that we can learn. And so it's through that, I think it comes back to what you were saying previously, sort of the lower order mind or the limbic system, the survival part or the animal part of our brain is where when something similar happens, we can create a habitual response that works for us instead of works against us through these convertible or acceptable moments. Yep. Now, and I'm just, you know, as you're talking, I'm thinking, so how does that relate how you talk to your patients or your clients and who are going through this? What, you know, what do you do with them? Are you asking me that? Yes, I'm asking you. Oh, yeah, sorry. I thought it was a rhetorical question. No. A lot of it's for me to ask questions for them. I speak ad nauseum on this podcast, but I ask them to articulate their abstract emotions and thoughts. Yes, they're explaining to me, but sometimes it may be the first time they've heard their thoughts and their emotions out loud in concrete, tangible words. And it's from there the insight pops up. And then I'll ask them some simple questions. You know, is that way of thinking? Is it really helping you? And a lot of the times, no. It served me at one point, some point in my past, but I've moved on. The world's moved on. But this old narrative, it's an old narrative. I need to update this. So it works for me in the here and now. So powerful, right? Yeah, totally, totally. And I see it time and time and time again. That's why I think working with clients as a sparring partner or talking through things is so important. But again, I think what's very important, Mitch, you know, I think it's having that confidentiality and that trust in that sparring partner in which you can reveal this thing. Right. Because if that person is kind of sketchy or they have some sort of hidden agenda, like a leader for sometimes. Right. You know, but yes, let's let's just assume there's a trust there and the respect. Then, yeah, I think we're good to go. But that's kind of what I want to dive into because you wrote a book called Mind Shifting, Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success. And you talk about resilience and creativity and collaborations, not as fixed traits, but something that is trainable, that we learn. How does your method reframe the way people can develop these qualities, if I may ask you that general question? I. So I guess it reframes it, first of all, to understand how we're very much under the influence or under the control very often of our limbic brain. And so when you have that awareness, you're kind of stepping out a little bit and you're not no longer saying I'm not worthy. You're saying you know my my limbic brain is lying to me about but being unworthy and by. Third partying that voice you're making it a lot easier to you know to come out from under it i think that um may i stop you there for a second yeah what do you mean by third partying is that using pronouns like third person pronouns or what's like saying so whether you i in in in the book and none of these are coming directly from me but you know i call them saboteurs or i call this the part x okay it's like uh the part x is kind of the part of the limbic brain that's always trying to make you miserable to keep you okay um from uh from changing because it you know it likes to prolong the status quo. So if you have this feeling that you're not worthy, that you're not capable of doing something, you're no longer saying, I'm not capable of doing something. You're saying, my part X is lying to me. And so it's no longer you, it's no longer the truth about you. It's this voice that is trying to tell you something. And then it becomes, because it's just a voice and it's not you, it becomes easier than to escape from it because it's not you. It's just a voice kind of lying to you. I. First of all, does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. So what I understand is by labeling and saying, oh, there goes my brain again, we tend to, I guess, dissociate. So we create some objective distance and it's our brain, our organ or this part of the organ doing it. Is that what I understand? Exactly, right. And I would say it's my brain doing it. It could be, I really have it, it's my limbic brain doing it. Sorry, my limbic brain. doing it. So, so that you're not, you know, you're not attaching it to your, your, your resourceful brain. I, I, um, so anyhow, is that, um, is that clear or? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. So then there's, um. Really four methods that I go through of then getting out from under, you know, those, those feelings or those beliefs or those, uh, stories that we're telling ourselves. Uh, one is just self-awareness by itself. You know, sometimes you can just say, you know, something that's my limbic brain and you can say, ha, I don't have to follow it. And that's enough. You know, um, sometimes you need some distraction and that distraction, uh, it's, I mean, so I'd never heard of this before, but, uh, but I was watching, you know, you, you talk about this. Sometimes that distraction could be, you know, just rubbing your lips, okay, and being mindful of the fact that you're rubbing your lips and that's, you know, kind of stimulating your, you know, relaxation, you know, parts of your body. And I got, you know, obviously I got that from you, I see, you know, you're smiling, but that distraction, it could be. Meditation or mindfulness. It could be taking a walk. Um, you know, there's so many different ways of doing that and the, and doing something like that can calm it down. And third is positive self-talk. Positive self-talk isn't come on, you just got to work harder. The part of the self-talk is self-talk that opens you up like, Hmm, maybe I can do this. Or what would happen if I, if I, if I was feeling confident? How would I react? If I were focused on empathy, how would I react in this situation? So positive self-talk that opens you up. Those are the three things that basically you can do yourself. And there's going to be times where, as you said, whether it's a sparring partner or a trusted advisor, you need somebody else to help you. And my guess is you do it. You know, you do it for other people, but I'm sure that you have your trusted partners to do it for you. I had something just like a week or two ago where something just really kicked me off. And I went through the, you know, the mindfulness. I did the positive self-talk. I was aware of it. And it's like, I can't, I can't get out of this. So in my case, I called my son. Okay. He's an adult. Um, and it's like, his name is Herb. Um, so I'm like, Herbie, I'm just, I'm, I'm just really wound up. And he knew what was causing it because, um, he was, you know, he was just, he was already aware of what it was. And, um, and he's like, dad, you wrote the book. Let me just go. And he pulls out the book. He says, I'm just going to go through one of your techniques. And he just, you know, kind of walked me through it, but just having somebody else do that, um, you know, maybe, you know in this case you know five minutes was enough you know maybe it would have taken three or four times with somebody sometimes but those are really the four ways you know by sometimes self-aware is enough sometimes you can do some type of distraction that calms you down um uh sometimes the positive self-talk and sometimes you need you need somebody else and basically that's that's the methodology that i use it's not that i can claim to be like oh i didn't invent this you You know, I think this is what most I just I pulled this from what what a lot of other people were doing. Well, I think it's what you were talking about. It's the confluence of your learnings from military strategy to neuroscience to cognitive behavioral therapy from teaching, what have you. And what I hear, Mitch, is that, yes, you didn't invent it, but most of us don't invent things per se. But what you've done is you've curated it in a book. Where people can just go through it, right? And that in itself is what people really appreciate, right? It's taking the different disciplines and putting it together in a very easy manner to help themselves or to help someone they love or lead out of whatever ruminative loop they're in. Yeah. There's a really, I mean, there's been quite a few things that I've heard from people who've read the book. There's one woman who I was talking with, and she suffers from really debilitating anxiety. There are times in her life where she's been hospitalized for weeks at a time because of her anxiety under drugs, under professional care. And I'm not saying she read the book and it cured her. But she told me she read the book three times, and she says, now she understands what her therapists have been telling her. That before they were using, whatever the technology, sorry, whatever the terminology was that they were using, the book made it clear what was going on in her brain that they were describing. So that's number one. And number two, given the things that we talk about in the book, she's now much more aware when she starts to slip into anxiety. And sometimes she can catch it herself and use some type of a meditation or a distraction technique in order to calm herself down. And when she can't do that, she can call one of her therapists before she's at the point where she has to be hospitalized. And so it's like, wow, you know, something that was, you know, I'm, you know, hearing stuff like that, just, you know, I mean, you probably see it in the people that you work with also, but it's just like, oh my gosh, this has made a difference in somebody's life. That's why I do this. In the first part of my conversation with Mitch, he walked me through his sojourn that led to his mind-shifting method. It all began with a workshop he ran in Niger, where he saw the impact of teaching resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration. From there, he's been building a program to help teachers develop these skills so they can pass them on to their students, and eventually create a ripple effect across entire communities. We then turned to something Mitchell calls the survival trapped. He explained how our limbic system, the part of the brain wired for threat detection, well, how it takes over when we feel stressed or unsafe. Once stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood our system, they block the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain we need for clear, rational, creative thinking. Mitch broke down the survival brain's automatic responses as fight, flight, freeze, and something he referred to as herd mentality, and how easily they can keep us stuck in cycles of stress. We also looked at ways to break out of the trap. Mitch emphasized the importance of self-awareness and metacognition, basically recognizing when the survival brain is in charge. He shared strategies like self-compassion, reframing challenges as learning opportunities, and his technique of third-partying. And that is where you step back and say, you know what? That's just my limbic brain talking. It's not me. alongside tools like mindfulness, positive self-talk, and healthy distraction. Well, these practices give us the space to reset and move toward resilience. So now let's slip back into the stream with the second part of my conversation with Mitch Weisberg. In your book, you've curated 50 of these techniques or skills to get us out of, how can I say this, self-sabotaging mindsets. I was wondering, could you share a couple of them that you think that you go to that you find are very effective or you've heard from clients? Sure. So I guess one of the very early ones in the book, which is the technique I call Perhaps I Can't, and this is a technique that tends to work when you're sure that you can't do something. And you can also use it, like teachers can use it with kids or people can use it as coaching for other people. And the way it works is you start off with if you're coaching another person or even if you're coaching yourself. But if I were coaching another person, I would say, well, so just think of something that you know that you can't do, that you really feel that you want to do. Other people may think that you can do it, but something where you're feeling blocked. And then the second part of it is, the second stage is, okay, how do you know that you're blocked? Do you have some type of a voice that says, I can't? Is it a feeling? What is it that happens? And kind of convert that into a voice that says, I can't. Then the third thing is, okay, in a minute, I'm going to ask you to think about this thing that you want to do. You're going to have this voice that says, I can't. And just respond to that voice, perhaps I can, in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice. Perhaps I can. So you're going to think of this thing you can't do. You're going to say, you're going to hear that voice saying, I can't. And then you're going to say, perhaps I can. And just sit with that for a second. And then I'll ask you what happened. And so then I'll say, okay, so now think of that thing. Do you hear the voice? Respond, perhaps I can. Have you done that? Okay. And then next question is, and what happens? And I'd say substantially more than half, probably more than two-thirds of the people at that point. It's like I just, I feel lighter. You know, I started, my brain started coming up with ways that, you know, maybe I have to study, maybe I can study some more. Maybe there's people I can ask. Maybe I can practice a little bit more. Maybe I can do one step at a time. But their brains start coming up with ways that that could happen. Their brain was always capable of doing that. This is just – this is their own brain. But once their limbic brain, once their part X said, you know, I can't do this, it shuts off that resourceful part of the brain. But perhaps I can. The brain, for most of us, can't help but starting to come up with reasons or ways to accomplish it. So that's one. With that technique, that's very different from a person. If you were coaching, you would never do this. But I see this from people who are just starting off and using this technique. A person says i can't and so you as the coach say well yes you can no it's not saying yes you can, it's most powerful when the person themselves says perhaps i can so you want to suggest to them that they say it to themselves it's a little bit less powerful but it still works a good percentage of the time if you say if you as the coach say to the other person okay think of this saying, you hear that voice saying, I can't do it. Well, perhaps you can. What could you do? Or you can kind of slip into it by saying, okay, I hear that you can't do it. Let me just ask you a question. If you could do it, what do you think your first step would be? And that also just so that also just opens up the brain. So so if you're using that technique to coach people, a if you can get them to say, perhaps I can themselves, then then that's probably the most powerful. But if you can't, then how do you slip into getting them to open up their minds to start thinking of ways that they could perhaps do that? Like if you could or let me just ask you, if you if somebody if somebody who could do this, what do you think they would do? And when they start coming up with this and then then you could say, well, of those things that somebody could do, are there any of those things that maybe you could start trying to do? And so they're, you know, they're, they're, they're opening their brains up. So that's the, perhaps I, I, I can technique, which, um, I think that's very interesting because what I hear is that you're asking well-engineered questions. And so instead of going through that ruminative or overthinking loop of the limbic, uh, limbic part of the brain, you're, as you talked about the, the, the top of this conversation, you triggered the prefrontal cortex and that actually gets them start thinking. So their higher thinking or their executive functions come online. And I think what's really good is that if you can get them to admit that, yes, I can do it or perhaps I can do it. And then you asked, well, what can you do or how can you do it? Because then what I hear, Mitch, I think that's a very good technique because what you do is you trigger self-efficacy. All of a sudden, what seemed out of control becomes within their control. There's some sort of action. Maybe they don't know step 10, but you said, well, what would the first step be? And that, that in itself, you know, you see a little, um, confidence in, through that conversation now it's now it's about being constructive it's not about always being positive but it's about being constructive because they may be in a pretty heavy dark situation right but you're helping them find some sort of way through that heavy and dark situation by taking on self-efficacy so i really like those tech that not technique but i think it's a really good skill set or methodology yes you said you don't we're not inventing things we're trying to curate things and communicate them in a way that other people can then use them for themselves and use them to help other people themselves also. Exactly, exactly. I mean, so you've talked about, you've been generous to share a couple of skills that you have in your book and stuff. Let me ask you a little more harder question then. For someone... Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, no hard questions. But for someone who's beginning this sort of sojourn to improve themselves or show up as a better person than they are. And how can they tell whether their mind shift, this new mind shift has taken root and not just sort of a temporary burst of motivation? When we're resourceful, I think we're in a state of being curious or playful or happy. And so I think that if a person can think about it and say, you know something, I'm finding I'm curious more of the time rather than judgmental, or I'm playful more of the time, or I'm happy more of the time, then you know that you're making progress. Because being resourceful stems from, I think, who you are at the time. If you are judgmental at the time, then you're probably in your limbic mode. If you're curious and you're playful and you're making games out of things and you're not tied to results and you're not always judging things as bad. Then you're making progress. Yeah. Yeah, so if you notice these subtle shifts in your brain, it's obviously some evidence that neuroplasticity or a new pattern has kind of taken hold, right? So a lot of these old patterns that we have can be stubborn. Where some habit or pattern we had served us in the past, as we talked earlier in this conversation, may not serve against us. From your experience, Mitch, what strategies or methodologies would you recommend for people to maintain these new mindsets over the long run? Are there things that you've seen that really, really have a true impact? It's hard for me to say that it's this technique or that technique. What I would say is that however you get the techniques, whether you get them from my book or my next book or or get them from somebody else is to is it it just it takes time to internalize these techniques. So maybe try one or two of the techniques and stick with that for a month to two months and just say, you know something, I'm just going to work on the perhaps I can technique or I'm going to work on when I when I start thinking about arguing with another person, I'm going to change to empathy and I'm going to first seek to understand. And I'm going to I'm going to do that for two months. So it might involve, you know, sifting through a bunch of different techniques and say, these are this is the one or at most these are the two things. And I'm going to folk I'm going to remember, you know, every morning I'm going to look at look at this list of one thing or this list of two things. And I'm going to say, OK, I'm going to practice this today. And every night I'm going to look at that list and I'm going to recount how I've tried the list and what I've learned from from trying it. And then after a month or two, as you start becoming more confident in that one or two, then look at another one or two. That would be my advice. I think that sounds like solid advice. You know, it's to go narrow and deep, practice one or two skills to you become adept at it and, you know, see what the results are. Is there a dividends on that investment of time and effort that you put in on those actions, right? Exactly. And over time, you know, because all of this compounds, right? It's like interest, you know, interest in a bank account. You do, you know, you're, you know, you're 5% better after two months. And then after four months, you're another 6% better. And then after another two months, you're another 6% or 7% better or improved or happier or whatever. And, you know, over the course of a year, it's like, oh, my gosh, you know something? Instead of being upset 80% of the time, I'm only upset 30% of the time. Wow. You know, that's a big change, right? It's compound interest, right? 1% is nothing when you look at a whole. But over time, that compound interest becomes what you're talking about, this mind shift. Right, exactly. Yes. I was wondering, looking ahead, where do you see your work evolving? Are there new directions? Is there something curious and some new techniques that a methodology that you think you could curate in perhaps a new book or something that kind of has got your, has lit your fire or floated your boat? Well, there's two things that I'm working on as we're talking. One is I finished writing my second book and been through like 10 different edits of it. The second book is on that third skill, which is the conflict versus collaboration or conflict and collaboration. And it's weird because like that's the third skill. So it should be the third book. But in teaching that course over this year and when I saw the reactions to people, when they started understanding how –, they were conflicting with people, how things that they said that they didn't even think caused conflicts, how those had the effect of causing conflicts in other people. When they look at politics and see all the conflicts and the divisiveness in, maybe not in Norway, but certainly in the US right now, and in a lot of countries, there was like, you know something, this is the time I have to write this book. So I've skipped book two, and I've written book three. And that book should be out in November to be mind-shifting, conflict, and collaboration. And then the second thing is knowing that there's only a limited number of people that I can myself reach. You know, I've well, I already had started in in working with other people who want to use these techniques and reach others. And I'm more than happy to train people and they can go up on their own and use them. But but where I was going is I think, you know, what if I could do a course that people could sign up for whenever they wanted to? And so it didn't really require me. but with most of these courses or you know most online courses it's like you're using the material maybe there's interactive things and it tells you reflect but nobody actually reflects right it's like you know here's a list of things i want to try you know you should try these things these things and you read oh yeah yeah those would be good things to try let me go to the next chapter right um so what i what the course that i'm building is based on basically you know this first book. But in the course, there's going to be 30 interactions with an AI coach. And that AI coach is going to bring people through those techniques, the same questioning that I would do if I were working with somebody. So it's not a generalized, you know, like, um. Uh, I guess, therapist over, you know, Hey, I'm having this problem. It's okay. We're going to work on the, perhaps I can technique. And here's an AI coach. Who's going to walk you through that technique and amplify the things that, that, uh, uh, that are helpful and gut and guide you when you bring up things that aren't helpful using that technique. And so, so it's an experiment, to see whether there's content for people to learn, there's interactive activities for people to confirm that they've learned things, and then there's the AI mentoring where the AI coach says, okay, now we're going to do the visualization technique. And the visualization technique, as you've read about, does so-and-so. And so and so, let me, you know, let me ask you the questions to bring you through that. So so those are the those are the that's the experiment, the real experiment that I'm I'm trying is will this work in a course? And if it does, then I've been up with the other two courses up. It creates almost a bespoke training program for that particular person. We are coming close to the top of the hour. I'm very respectful of your time. If you could leave our listeners today with one mind shift to start experimenting with today, what would that be? The one thing that I would say to people is to find joy. And you can, you know, well, you know, as a therapist that, you know, whether you're, whether something is joyful or whether it's stressful is something that happens in here. And so I would say the one technique is, is whatever you're doing for a day. Stop every half hour or hour and say, where's the, you know, how is this joyful? How am I enjoying this? And what am I going to enjoy over the next, the next period of time? And, um, and I would say if people could do that, that they're just going to take a huge step forward in their own quality of life and it's when you're joyful that's when you're most resourceful so so that would just say find you know be be happy find reasons to be happy in whatever you're doing that would be the wine shift that i would like people to try well thank you very much for sharing that mitch if people wanted to reach out to you what would be the best place they could get in contact with you, Well, my website is mindshiftingwithmitch.com. So from that, that also leads to my newsletter. There's a link to the book. When the course comes out, there'll be a link to that course. There are links to the live courses that I teach out there. And then there's also a page. So if people wanted to actually reach out to me. Schedule some talk or something, there's the ability to do that from the website too. So it's mindshiftingwithmitch.com. I'll definitely leave all those links in the show notes. And I also saw that your book is available on Amazon. I'll leave that link there, too. I'll leave that link there, too. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, Mitch, thank you for such a compelling, interesting conversation today. I really appreciate your time. Jason, it's just, I was a little bit intimidated because you are so knowledgeable and I've listened to you, you know, some of your podcasts and the podcasts that you've been on. And it's like, you know, what can I possibly say that would be interesting to him because he knows so much and he's helping so many people. So thank you so much for having me. Thank you for being gracious with me during this interview. And just thank you for being you. Well, I think you bring a lot to the space, Mitch. So, you know, as I said, I've had, you know, a lot of guests coming through here. And so, yeah, you made it through the vetting process. And I find what you had to say very interesting. And it will add to my repertoire of skills. So thank you for that. Thank you. The key insight I hope you take from this conversation is that your self-doubt isn't you. It's your survival brain talking. When the limbic system takes over, it pushes us into fight, flight, freeze, or herd responses. And that can leave us trapped in stress cycles. As Mitch emphasized, once we see those reactions for what they are, automatic survival responses, Well, we can step back, reclaim our prefrontal cortex, and return to clear creative thinking. And this is where the practices like self-compassion, reframing challenges as learning opportunities, and third-partying your thoughts, where they become very powerful, where they gain traction. By naming a negative reaction as coming from part X of the limbic brain, well, you can take the sting out of it and create a space to choose a better response. And as Mitch emphasized, it doesn't take massive changes, just small, consistent practices like positive self-talk or even finding moments of joy and playfulness. And this can build resilience over time. I want to thank Mitchell Weisberg for sharing his time, his knowledge, and his experience. His sojourn from publishing to developing the mind-shifting methodology shows how resilience, resourcefulness, and collaboration aren't just abstract concepts. They're skills that can be taught, practiced, and passed on to others. And to you, dear listener, thank you for listening. If this episode gave you something to reflect on, share it with a friend or a colleague who might benefit from hearing it. Well, that's it for me this episode, folks. We've crossed the finishing line. I will see you for Bite Size Fridays. And until then, keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak soon.¶¶ Music.