410A: Your Perception IS Your Reality: a Science-Based Approach to Manifestation

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Why not more money? Why not more enjoyment? Why not more fun? I do believe that's possible, and that's why I think this conversation is important.

I think there's more of all the good stuff available to us, and I think that knowing how to manage our brains will help us get there. Welcome. You're on Air with Ella, where we share simple strategies and tips for living a little better every day.

If you're interested in mindset and wellness or healthy habits and relationships or hormone health, aging well and eating well, honestly, if you're into just living better and with more energy, then you're in the right place. We're not here for perfect. We're here for a little better every day. Let's go. Hey. Welcome to On Air with Ella. It's Ella.

Before we dive into today's topic, I want to take a moment to acknowledge where I am right now because I try really hard never to get on the mic when my energy is not, you know, above a 90%, because I want to bring you my A game at all times. And to be honest, I haven't recorded this episode because my energy has been a bit low.

And today I'm talking about how our perception shapes our reality and not not only sharing the science behind that, but also what we can do to use that to our advantage. So it's helping us, not hurting us. And being honest with you before we jump in just feels particularly relevant.

Sometimes life gives us opportunities to practice what we preach, Right? And today is just one of those moments.

And by the way, nothing is specifically wrong or bad or there's not like some diagnosis or some terr terrible event that's happened to me personally. That's not it at all. Okay. It's just like, things get to me. And you may have noticed that over the past, gosh, more than 400 episodes.

I don't talk about current events or politics or other major events, no matter how much they impact me or how much they're on my mind and that sort of thing. And that is an extremely conscious decision. And that will not be changing today. Okay, Spoiler alert.

Just so you know, I have a really strong interest in keeping these episodes evergreen so that whether you're listening in real time or a year from now, you get what you came for. Personal growth, wellness, you know, motivation and the like.

By the way, like, today, it's really popular for critics to then say, well, hold on, you have a platform. Why aren't you using it the way that I want you to? Right?

And the best way that I can sort of address that, I suppose, if anyone's interested, is to compare it to something else. And I thought about this. I was shopping the other day and I thought about this. This might make sense to literally only me, okay, disclosure.

But let's say you want some hummus, you need some hummus and you're, you're feeling lazy, you don't want to make it, so you go to Whole Foods or some store like that. You're there for a specific purpose. You know that this store, in this case Whole Foods, offers options, it offers decent quality, et cetera.

Now imagine if while you're browsing the hummus aisle, a well meaning clerk comes up to you and asks if you need help. And then while helping, you start sharing his take on like really complex global issues. Okay.

He's like, let's talk about human trafficking, an endangered species. These are really important topics, right? Like they're crucial and we need to be across them. But that's not why you're there in the homicile, right?

That's not why you're there. And two, he's not who you're asking. Does that make those issues less important? Not in the slightest. In this case, I'm the clerk, you're the shopper.

You're here because you want actionable strategies, expert advice, content to help you create your best life, and you want to have some fun doing it, right? Like that's what we do. Mean that I don't have opinions or that specific issues aren't important to me?

No, it just means that I choose to reserve those discussions for my off air life so that they can be two way dialogues, not one way monologues where I can have meaningful exchanges or maybe take action or participate in conversations that that matter, not get on the mic and riff about how I feel. If I want to do that, that's absolutely fine. But that's a different show.

But that does not mean that I'm immune from feeling impacted by the world around me. And it doesn't mean, it sure as hell doesn't mean that I don't struggle sometimes myself.

record a podcast in the year: 2020

My goal, no matter what's going on in the world, is to show up in this space and to create something good together and elevate each other. And that, by the, is one of the reasons why I think today's topic is so important.

But I think I needed to tell you that I struggle sometimes with Letting my own thoughts get the best of me. I struggle with choosing my energy and being really intentional about the frame of mind that I'm approaching my day with.

And while I always, like I said, want to bring my A game to you, I also think it's important and honest and more useful to also share when I need a dose of my own medicine. So with that in mind, just know that we are circling back.

This is the final installment of our New Year Energy series that started weeks and weeks ago.

This is part three of my short series on identity based habits, on creating intrinsic motivation and today on how our beliefs shape our actions so we can create, even manifest. Yep, I'm going to say it even manifest a new reality. Reality for ourselves. So let's go. Okay. Do you recall that we have been talking about.

I will tag the previous two episodes, but we were talking about how I'm not super into resolutions, but I'm very into being intentional about the energy that we want to take into a new year or a new season for that matter. The point is, at any moment in time we can embrace identity shifts for personal transformation. We can choose who we want to be be.

We can create intrinsic motivation instead of waiting for external motivation to land on us. And today I want to wrap up that series with a conversation about how our beliefs actually shape our actions.

Therefore, our perceptions actually shape, determine, dictate our reality. We talked about already how lasting change happens when your beliefs and your identity shift together.

Like if you believe your someone who can achieve great things, you're much more likely to take the steps necessary to make that happen. And that is not just about goal setting. It's about internalizing the idea that you are capable of achieving them.

It is about believing in the person that you're becoming. Well, today. Today is meaty. Today we're talking about how we focus our attention and how we perceive ourselves and our environment.

How that significantly influences our beliefs and identity. So it creates a loop, right? We're going to talk how to manage our focus and our perception to create a better reality.

Like I think this is absolutely wild. And frankly, when people talk about manifestation. Woo Woo. It feels like a wishing game to me.

Like, oh, I see a million dollars appearing in my checking account and. And I'm manifesting a million dollars appearing that way.

And I'm like, you know when that works, you say the word like you let me know and I'll have what you're having. But is it woo woo. Or is it science that if we can manage our thoughts, we can then manage how we live.

Well, it turns out there's a hell of a lot of science that says you can manage how you live by changing your thoughts. So I think there's room for both here. I think there's space for some woo.

And I think there's a hell of a lot more room for science than I thought before I really started diving into this topic. Here's what we already know. We know.

I mean, this just makes intuitive sense that our brains process input through filters of our past experiences, right? Like, of our expectations and beliefs that we already hold.

So we create our interpretation of the world around us based on the filters that we have already created.

These filters, these lenses through which we view the world and experience the world, they are shaped throughout our childhood, our adolescence, our teenage years, our early adulthood. They are framed every time we have an experience or a belief that is reinforced.

But this interpretation directly impacts our decision making, our emotional responses in a moment, and our behavior overall. So it's not a leap to then understand that our perception and what we focus on profoundly influences our thoughts and our actions going forward.

Therefore, they shape our reality and our responses to every single thing that happens to us. Incidentally, it also means that every single one of us is out here experiencing a different version of reality.

Like, just think about that for a minute because your experiences, your expectations, your beliefs, they were created differently than your neighbors, right? We're all out here creating and experiencing our own different versions of reality. Not so hard to believe, really.

Well, today I'm going to break down just the power of perception. How our brains work. The so what? Like, okay, great, this is how our brains work.

What are we going to do about it to create a different result for ourselves.

And then I'm going to share some very specific things that we can do that you can add to your toolkit today to start creating a different reality for yourself in the spaces that you want to. Right? So if you're doing my life wheel exercise, which is always available to you for free on my website and does not put you into an email series.

But if you complete the life wheel exercise and you indicate how you're doing in any area area of your life on that one piece of paper, it will be very obvious to you where you might need to or want to create a different reality for yourself. Okay, with that in mind, let's start with the science. Let's talk about how our brains work. This way.

It's not a huge leap for you, I'm sure, to understand that emotion and mood Literally alter your perception of physical reality. You can appreciate that, right? Like anyone who's ever experienced a menstrual cycle that was. Sorry, but you know what I mean.

You're a different person on day two than you are on day 26. Your emotion and mood literally alter your perception of physical reality.

Anyone who's ever been terrified or elated or in love knows this to be true. There's a study that shows that emotion routinely and significantly alters perception. And I thought this was so interesting. Picture a hill. Okay.

Most of us assume, reasonably that when we look at the hill, the steepness of the incline in our visual image is more or less the steepness of the hill in the world. Like the way we perceive it. We assume that that's what it is. Any cyclist has been here, any runner, any cyclist, any hiker.

You're looking at this steep, steep, steep incline, and you, you pretty much take that for the reality of that hill. Guess what? Our perception of the steepness will literally change from one occasion to the next depending on our mood.

So if we are feeling sad, we perceive the hill to be steeper than when we are feeling happy. They did a study on this. I would have loved to have been a part of that study.

But the findings of that study indicate that the perception of the spatial layout itself is influenced by non optical factors, including your emotion. I'll tag the study if you care, but this metaphor writes itself, does it not? I mean, you get it. We are wired this way.

In fact, we have a number of cognitive biases related to perception and attention that profoundly influence our thoughts and behaviors. There are quite a few, actually, in psychology. I'm going to share two with you.

One I'm pretty sure most of us are familiar with, but I want to share it with you in a different way. But the first one is one you may not have heard of. This is called the focusing illusion. This is actually a cognitive bias in the study of psychology.

The focusing illusion is a bias that causes us to overestimate the importance of a single factor in determining our overall happiness or well being. What does that mean? Have you ever been single?

If you've ever been single, then you might attribute any feelings of loneliness or isolation to the fact that you are single. You might think that you're old, therefore you can't start something new.

Or maybe you hold the belief that because you're a working mom, you cannot be the best parent. So every time something goes goes wrong in your parenting arena, then you pin it back to that single factor. Well, this Is because I work.

We assign meaning to a single factor over our whole lives. We do this a lot in big and small ways. That is the focusing illusion, confirmation bias. That's the other one I wanted to share with you.

You've likely heard that before. This bias leads us to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.

So we only see what we want to see. So if you think that you will be shortchanged in life because you're over 50 years old, right.

Or because you're too young, or maybe because you're the wrong gender or the wrong color, like, you will seek out evidence unconsciously, subconsciously, you will seek out evidence to prove that your bias is true. You will see the world through that lens. Oh, I can't start that. I'm too old to start something new. Okay.

Every experience I have will confirm that experience for me. It will confirm that belief for me. We are constantly drawing our own thought bubbles over other people's heads and then holding that thing as truth.

We made it up. We assigned it to that person. We put that thought bubble over their head, and then we experience that thing as our truth. Truth.

Think about how powerful that is. You realize that we can create any story we want. We can create the story that the world is for us rather than against us.

And I do not mean to imply that that is easy. Okay? It's a simple concept. We can create the story that the world is for us rather than against us. Simple concept, not easy.

It takes practice, but it's important because it affects literally every space that we operate in. When I speak to women's groups, which I do a lot, by the way.

If you have women's group groups in your organization, I speak to them both virtually and in person. And I would love to. But when I speak to women's groups, I caution them about assuming that their road will be harder because they're female.

Like, if you say so, it will be so, like, for sure, you can have that. But I always thought my gender was actually an asset, and it has been.

I operated in extremely male dominated industries, and I always treated my gender like it was an asset. Have I had experiences that counter that belief? Uh, yeah, of course I have. I'm not living in a dream world.

But the difference is this, and this is the important part. I did not take on those negative experiences as confirmation of anything about me. I did not take it on.

I allowed it to be confirmation of something about them. In other words, it's within our power to decide wonderful things about ourselves and then spend our energy proving them true.

Now why isn't this toxic positivity? Like I'm not, I'm not here for that. I'm not wired that way. I'm not wired to see everything coming up roses. That's not me personally.

But also like that would be irresponsible if I was just out here peddling toxic positivity. That's not what I mean at all. The idea of cognitive reframing is a really powerful psychological technique not invented by me. Okay?

This is well documented as helpful for managing our tendencies. By consciously choosing how to interpret events, you're taking control of your narrative and your emotional respons responses.

Whereas toxic positivity is suppressing your feelings, it is suppressing anger, it is suppressing sadness, it is suppressing negative feelings. Cognitive reframing is allowing those things to occur, but then challenging any pre programmed thoughts or beliefs that do not suit us.

So we allow it, but we challenge it. We intentionally generate alternative perspectives and then we manage our emotional responses accordingly.

We don't have to make make everything mean something. We sometimes can just let things not mean anything at all.

That is particularly helpful for people who are trying to manage their perception, really wanting to be liked in every space that they operate in. What if. What if being liked was none of your business? What if we stopped drawing thought bubbles over other people's heads? So what do we do about it?

Right? Like, but what are we going to do about it?

What do we do to manage our focus and our perception in order to create better outcomes and to create like the best life that we can right now? And. And why not? Why not more money? Why not more enjoyment? Why not more fun? Right?

I do believe that's possible and that's why I think this conversation is important. I think there's more of all the good stuff available to us and I think that knowing how to manage our brains will help us get there.

I have three big fat strategies I want to share with you. And I can tell you already that I'll probably do this in two parts given where we are timing wise already. The three strategies are 1.

Trading expectation for appreciation. 2. Accountability, owning our stuff and 3. Manifestation and what that really can mean. With a little more science and a little less wound.

I'm going to break all of them down for you with ways you can start to practice right now. Plus, I've created a worksheet for you to accompany this episode, just like the other two episodes in this series that is linked in the show notes.

So you can download this and do some of the work on your own. So, three big strategies. Let me share the first one with you here and we'll break off the other two.

But right now, I'm going to start with the first one. Replacing expectation for appreciation. And I'm just going to say off the bat because I feel comfortable that I can share this with you.

I don't think my family listens to this. If so, hey, fast forward. But this is a really good tip for managing family dynamics outside of your immediate home.

That's a big difference, and I'll tell you more about that nuance later. Replacing expectation for appreciation is a pro level tip for managing family dynamics.

In short, instead of having expectations of how an interaction or a whole event, even a conversation, anything big or small, instead of having expectations about how that will go and how it will feel for you, you ditch your expectations and you seek out only opportunities for appreciation. At worst, you seek neutrality. But pro class, again, we're trading expectation for appreciation.

So if you have a holiday or a wedding or a reunion or, hell, a family dinner coming up, try this. Okay? Have you ever been in those dynamics?

And it can be friendship circles too, where you share something that you're happy or excited about and you get kind of a flat non respons back, like sort of not interested. Like they make the right noises or the right facial expressions, but like you're at an enthusiasm level of 10 and you get a three back, right?

Or you look absolutely lovely and nobody comments on your new fabulous hair. Or you want the family dinner to go perfectly, right? Maybe you're hosting and you want it to go perfectly, perfectly, and it doesn't.

In each of these spaces, I would encourage you to stop seeking, stop seeking, stop wanting and start seeing. Look for elements to appreciate, to be grateful for, moments to laugh or connect, and seek nothing, absolutely nothing, in return.

No validation, nothing. For people in certain areas of your friend and family and work life, this will give you far more peace. But I need to be really clear.

I am not advocating for this. In your intimate relationships and friendships. Okay? Okay.

In your intimate, intimate, intimate relationships, your closest circle, including your friendships, we have expectations of each other and we are mutually responsible for that relationship. I'm talking about right outside of your inner circle and beyond. You get to decide who that is. Who that is is entirely up to you.

But let's talk about why this works and why this isn't just like, oh, just be grateful. Like, that's not what this is. Okay? This is not the take A bubble bath version of managing your emotions.

Okay, so let's get into the science because I'm sure you've probably hear heard by now that appreciation, another word you have likely heard is gratitude. Gratitude is a really powerful antidote to negative moods that is well, well documented in neuroscience.

There are neurochemical effects inspired by or generated by gratitude and appreciation. Gratitude stimulates the release of dopamine and serotonin, and those are two crucial factors responsible for positive emotions.

And those that that neurochemical boost can enhance your mood immediately on the spot, help you create feelings of happiness and contentment on the spot. Now I want to pause for just a second and say that's freaking powerful.

If you can change your channel from annoyed to gratitude, you've just dosed yourself up right there in that moment with mood enhancement for free, no pill required. But gratitude also, it reduces cortisol level, the stress hormone, and it can significantly alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Johnny, on the spot. Gratitude. But it also works for that cognitive reframing process that I mentioned to you. Gratitude, of course, helps you redirect your attention.

It changes your focus. But this changes the neural structures in your brain. That blew my mind.

This shift in focus, this redirect, can break the cycle of negative rumination and promote a more positive reality, a more positive view, a more positive experience. And there was this one fascinating study. And again, I told you it's science, not just rainbows and sunshine.

And I'm going to share a blurb of that with you. Okay? For decades, research has shown that our perception of the world is influenced by our expectations. This makes sense, of course.

Prior beliefs and experiences help us make sense of what we are perceiving in the present. But the expectations themselves influence brain activity and bias our perceptions. That's how you end up in a self fulfilling prophecy, a cycle.

Have you ever experienced traffic in a really bad mood, just me, or under really terrible duress, like under stress and suddenly out of nowhere, coincidentally, you're surrounded by terrible drivers? Right? That is a self fulfilling prophecy.

What you're bringing into the situation influences your brain activity and biases your perception and becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

If you're walking into your large family or friend dinner or a stressful meeting at work and you expect it to be tricky or tense, you will actually perceive it differently in your brain and your brain will function differently and you will respond differently. So not woo science.

By consciously practicing gratitude, we can actually rewire our brains to deal with present circumstances better so that you're not just Developing a coping mechanism in the moment. You're telling your brain, you're showing your brain how to operate differently next time time too. You're creating new patterns.

So yeah, I'm definitely breaking this into two episodes. But before we wrap this one up, I'm going to share with you how we can practice gratitude.

How we can change expectation to appreciation and really make it real for ourselves. Okay. And I've already confessed to you, I am not a naturally positive person.

Most days I have to be really intentional about building that muscle and not let moods or emotions or even my natural tendencies determine how I lead my life. Life. That's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about self help. I don't care if that sounds cheesy to other people.

To me, it's like, no, I will be helping my self. I am going to master my emotions. They will not be mastering me.

So here are several ways to practice gratitude and build that muscle for yourself over time. Okay. To get your reps in, so to speak. The first thing is something that a lot of people do and I do it intermittently.

And I like this because it's really short and easy. And that is keep a gratitude journal. At the beginning or the end of your day, write down three things that you're grateful for. Just three.

Either in the morning, like I said, or before bed. Short, easy, effective. Okay. Or you can practice a gratitude meditation. And I think you know how famously bad I am at meditation.

But this can be, if you're good at it, incorporating gratitude into a meditation practice. But if you're the world's worst meditator like me, this can be really, really simple.

You can practice what's called heart centered breathing where you close your eyes. Eyes. You place your hands over your heart. You take a long, slow, deep breath in and then out while focusing on gratitude. That changes your state.

Try me. Another thing that you can do is write gratitude letters.

This one's a little more time consumptive, but something that you can do, say at the change of seasons or when you're feeling introspective. And we talked about this on the show with Andrea Owen.

She, she talked about writing thank you letters to people who honestly she's not at peace with but she thanke them for what they taught her. Right? This can be writing thank you letters that you never send but you put yourself in the place of experiencing gratitude for what they taught you.

That's masterclass. I'll share two more that I do regularly. One is express small acts of gratitude and Appreciation as a habit. Make a habit.

This can be as simple as saying thank you to as many people as you can in one day, non sarcastically and including your life partner.

Like, I don't know, sometimes you can get into a stretch where you might not say thank you for the littlest things that happen in your house, to your life partner or even to your children. And I know a lot of our brains immediately go, well, they don't thank me or they should be doing that anyway. Nope, not the point.

We are in fact building a muscle to counter that response.

So making a habit of saying thank you for the tiniest things you can think of in your own home, much less throughout your day, to every customer service person you encounter, etc. Just expressing appreciation to others throughout the day.

This can even be random texts to friends and loved ones and then finally asking self reflection questions. And this is why I created a worksheet for you so that you can do this on your own. This is a great thing to do before a big family meal.

Maybe you can whip this out at holidays or a challenging day at work. Work. But here, here's a sampling of these questions and I put, I put more in the worksheet for you. Ponder this.

What do I stress about now that would have been an absolute blessing five years ago. What do. What do I worry about now? What am I anxious about now? What do I stress out about that would have been an absolute blessing five years ago.

Who would trade places with me? Who would swap lives with me right now, no questions asked? And why would that. What do I have that I take for granted and really sit with this?

Like, what do I have that I take for granted? This question always makes me think of my friend who used to get so mad because her husband would never pick up his socks and it drove her crazy.

Like, respect. I get it. And then she lost her husband, he died. And she, she said I would kill to be able to be annoyed at his socks on the floor.

Okay, what are your socks on the floor? My version of this is the spoon left in the sink. Like just put the thing away. Right?

And if my, my husband was in the habit of leaving socks on the floor, I would probably actually kill him. So she and I would be in the same place for different reasons. But being grateful does not mean you put up with other people's lousiness.

That's not what I'm talking about. It's useful though, when you're really, really focused on something that makes you lose sight of what's important.

It's not about not having boundaries and letting people walk all over you like, hello, have we met? That's not what it's about. Let me paint this picture with a little more detail. My husband will clean the entire kitchen after breakfast.

He will clean out the espresso maker and refill it so it's ready for me the next morning because I get up first. He will then make himself a tea and head into his office after cleaning the entire kitchen.

I walk into a clean kitchen and I'm like, why is there a teaspoon in the sink? You get it. Do you see the difference here? What do you take for granted? What do you not see?

What problem or annoyance do you have right now that you will miss in your future? Okay, this is a lot. We've talked about how emotion and mood literally alter our perception of physical reality.

We've talked about how cognitive biases profoundly influence our thoughts and behaviors, such as the focusing illusion, which is when we overestimate the importance of a single factor.

And we've talked about how confirmation bias leads us to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs while we ignore contradictory evidence.

We might as well make that work for us because we talked about the psychological technique of cognitive reframing, choosing how to interpret events events, and taking control of our narrative and emotional responses. Finally, we talked about the so what of it all? Like, what can we actually do differently?

And that's what brought us to replacing expectation for neutrality or for appreciation.

Those are some really big ideas, and there are two more ideas here, but I don't want to rush it, so I'm going to stop and come back with part two about accountability. It's not what you think it is and manifestation or abundance Thinking grounded in science. Okay, I'll see you in part two. Okay.

If you enjoyed today's show, please share it with someone you care about and be sure to check out our new YouTube channel and head to onairella.com for today's show notes. You can also learn about how to work with me there on airela.com and I would love to hear from you.

So if you DM me on Instagram, I promise I will reply. P.S. all the links you need for us to connect are right here in your podcast app in the description Description for today's episode. Check them out.

Thanks for listening and thanks for inspiring me. You are quite simply awesome.