If you know the show and you know me, you know I love Seinfeld. And one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes is when George is in a meeting and a guy makes a snarky comment and George thinks of the perfect response later and goes to great links to set up the opportunity to be able to use his comeback that he thought of later, and then you know, oh yeah,
the jerk stores all out of you was the end result. Well, my next guest knows what it's like to second guess yourself, and she has actually written a book about destroying our self doubt and learning to trust our opinions. Doctor Helen McKinnon, Welcome to the show.
Andy, thank you for having me.
Well, let's talk about second guessing. What exactly are we doing when we second guess ourselves?
Well, let me start with the opposition of second guessing ourselves. We are all inborn with the ability to listen to ourselves and not second guess ourselves, and second guessing ourselves comes from a lack of practice growing up listening to our own feelings or thoughts or ideas of what we
wanted to do. It is simply a lack of practice where the child because of circumstances, not people being around parenting that might dismiss or minimize the feeling, not because we're going to criticize parents, but because they were parented
that way. When the child doesn't get enough reinforcement for how they feel and what they observed, it's tense or what they want to do, the child walks away second guessing themselves and goes into young adulthood or adulthood not with the confidence of how to read themselves and know what to say or do, but they flip into reading first their parents and then other people for what to feel, what to do, and what to say.
So a lot of times that's so subconscious you don't even realize how much you're letting other people's opinions affect how you make decisions. I know that for me in my younger years that was definitely true, where I got a lot of input from a lot of other people who never had to live with the repercussions of my choices, instead of just saying, what do I really want to do?
So let's start there. How can you go from being a person like that to being a person who is able to make and then be satisfied with those choices after you've made a decision, well.
The cues start with thing like you started with the program andy of walking away and going why didn't I think of that at the time.
I want to be able.
To do that, And my methodology is developed to allow the individual tap back into the brain in the way it's already designed to have us make good decisions and literally practice or go back to practicing listening to their own thoughts, feelings, and ideas and reversing the dependency on listening to others or a dialogue in their head that has them second guests themselves. That is my whole purpose, That is my life's work.
Do you give strategies to people on how to make a decision? Do you have tools or is it really a person has to figure out what works for them to make a decision and then kind of roll with it. It's both. You're right on target.
I don't ever tell anyone what to do. I teach them how to listen to themselves for what to do, and that tapping into the brain with a method I teach is important because this is what the brain does.
I love the brain.
If you're triggered by a person or a situation or your thoughts, there is a triggered feeling. If you pause with yourself long enough, the brain automatically uses how you feel in the moment and every time you felt that way before, configures that information in nanoseconds and spits out words or ideas of what you could do for yourself so you don't feel those ways again that didn't work for you.
So it's a protective device, your brain. It's there to protect you from things that are upsetting or things that hurt you in the past, and use the.
Way you are upset or feeling or darn, why didn't I listen to myself to make different decisions to listen to yourself. I just give you a method to go back and practice what didn't get practiced enough growing up now as an adult at any age, and emerge with confidence and reading yourself, not other people or listening to a voice that had you second guess yourself.
How long does it take someone to gain confidence in this way? Because for me it was a slow process. But the more that I made decisions on my own, the easier of the process.
God.
And now, to my husband's great chagrin, occasionally I will make decisions they probably are a group, you know, a project. So you know, now I'm very certain. Even if I'm wrong, I'm still certain. So how do you build that muscle?
Since the method is built in neuroscience and how we all can read our emotional instincts, it takes practice. So if I were a golf coach and you were a golf pro and you would work with someone else for thirty years, I would come in and say, I'm going to teach you a new coach and I would break down the steps of how to perfect that new.
Swing the golf or would go out and practice every day all weeks long, until that swing became automatic and unconscious.
In fact, the definition of self help is doing a new behavior over and over again until becomes yours.
The book, so oh, go ahead week week week. So it's just it's a matter of repetition, and you gain confidence every time you make a choice and go what is your thought on this, doctor mckimnon. I saw this the other day on a video, and I believe the woman who was talking is a professor at Harvard, I think, And she said something, you know, second, guessing your choices
is a waste of time. It's instead of worrying about making the right choice, worry about making the choice right do you address like, once you've made a decision, how to just move forward with that decision.
The brain automatically allows you to move forward if you're listening to yourself and not reading other people or your second guessing yourself. This practice of tapping into the brain the way it's already designed to have you make excellent decisions that those words, those ideas. Once you make a decision of what to say or do and say or do it, you walk away and you don't think about it anymore. The brain doesn't keep bringing it up. You
don't second guess yourself. So included in the method is if you learn to listen to yourself and then secondarily make a decision of what you do then or later on, it completely resolves the trigger for the feeling for the brain, It resolves second guessing, and you walk away back to being in the moment, enjoying what you're doing instead of the alternative. And I'll tell you what the brain does. The brain adapts to what feels better, not what feels worse.
So when you practice this new method for weeks, all week long, until it becomes yours. Your brain is going to go to the new methodology, methodology of pausing, listening to your first thoughts, feeling their ideas, and the way you didn't get enough practice before. It's going to do it all the time because the end result is self reliance and not second guessing yourself anymore.
Doctor Helen mckibbon is my guest. Her book is called Drop. Where why did you call it drop? I'm curious about that? It's Drop? And then what's the subhead? I just had this drop making great decisions? Where did Drop come from?
It came from developing a method based in neuroscience and mind body medicine of how do you even notice your trigger? The body lights up physically if you take the time to pause and go back to neutral instead of immediately reacting to a person or a situation. That's when the brain is configuring every time you've felt that way before with how you feel in the moment, and it spits out these words or ideas are instinct and that's what
we listen to. So Drop is that pause and getting back to neutral and listening to the brain's configurings for what to say or do next.
Our emotional inst doctor Helen mckibbon. I put a link for people to buy the book and a link to your website on my blog. Very very interesting stuff and I appreciate your time today.
Oh I appreciate yours. Thank you for having me, and thank you to your listeners as well.
All right, that's doctor Helen mckibbon.