Think Thursday: Reframing the Past with a Gain Mindset
Hey. Welcome to Think Thursday from the Alcohol Minimalist Podcast. Think Thursday is all about your beautiful, brilliant human brain. We're talking neuroscience. We're talking behavior change.
Speaker 1:We are talking about your mindset. Are you ready to get started? Let's go. Well, hello, and welcome to Think Thursday from The Alcohol Minimalist. I'm Molly Watts, your host, and Think Thursday is all about neuroscience and brain health, and most especially mindset.
Speaker 1:Mindset because really the more and more I learn about my beautiful, brilliant human brain, the more I realize how incredibly important my thoughts are. And when we're talking about our mindset, we're really talking about what we think about all the time and how that narrative drives how we feel because how we feel really matters. It depends how I feel makes me want to take actions or not take actions that ultimately get the results that I have in my life. So how I think determines how I feel, determines how I act, determines the results that I have in my life. And that's why I think Thursday is so incredibly important, I think.
Speaker 1:I hope that you are enjoying these episodes. I'm getting lots of positive feedback from you, so I appreciate that. Let's dive in to this week's episode. We are going to be talking about some of the most powerful mindset shifts that terminology and things that I've come across that I really want to share with you and really hope that you will incorporate them as a part of your, you know, just your life and helping you make the positive changes, whether that's around alcohol or anything else that you're doing. Many of the things that I'm gonna be talking about today are coming from the book Personality Isn't Permanent by doctor Benjamin Hardy.
Speaker 1:It's a book that's on my recommended reading list. I go back to it often just as a refresher. I can't I can't emphasize enough how much I really like this book. And the things that we're gonna talk about today are really about helping us reframe our past. They empower what we wanna do here in the present, and they're going to build a future that is aligned with who we truly want to become.
Speaker 1:And this stuff is gonna come I mean, again, this is really lots of stuff comes from, the book Personality Is Impermanent, but there's other people that I want to, give credence to as well. Doctor Dan Sullivan and his work on the gap and the gain. That's another book. There's a book written by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan together called the gap and the gain. Would recommend that book as well.
Speaker 1:And then some of this stuff that I'm gonna be talking about is from a psychologist named doctor Dan McAdams at Northwest University and his his work on the narrative identity. Alright. So let's start with some context. The gap and the gain are terms that Dan Sullivan uses to describe two different ways of measuring progress. When we're in the gap, we focus on what's missing from our lives and how far we still have to go.
Speaker 1:We are constantly comparing ourselves to an ideal that is always, of course, because an ideal is always out of reach. Imagine setting a goal, and instead of celebrating your progress, you focus on what you haven't achieved yet. The gap really feels like a trap of dissatisfaction because there's always another step to go, something better that you haven't reached yet. I talk about this a lot when I talk about having an off plan plan. I wanna you know, I've I laugh about it because sometimes people think that having an off plan plan simply means saying just like, I'm only gonna have two drinks if I decide to have drinks and I didn't have a plan for drinking, then that's my off plan plan is that I will never have more than two when the drinks aren't planned.
Speaker 1:Sure. That is an off plan plan, I guess. But, really, what I want you to think about as part of my off plan plans are how I am going to deal with struggle with when we aren't looking at things and seeing progress, but we're seeing our challenges. And that's really a part of reframing from the gap to the gain. When we when we look at things from a gain perspective, it's about looking back and measuring our progress from where we actually started.
Speaker 1:We are appreciating the journey and recognizing our growth no matter how incremental. It means that even when we struggle, there's actually gain there if we allow ourselves to see it. Living in the gain lets us see how far we've come rather than how far we still have to go. And that small shift makes a huge difference. Instead of feeling like we're behind, we feel proud of what we've achieved.
Speaker 1:We feel momentum and a sense of accomplishment, which gives us confidence to keep moving forward. Again, very important in a lifelong pursuit of sustainable change. Right? I talk about it all the time. We're not here to try to take thirty days of a break.
Speaker 1:We are here to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol for the rest of our lives or anything else that we're trying to change. And, really, that depends on having a mindset that allows us to see ourselves as gaining on who we are becoming. One of the reasons this mindset shift is so impactful is because our sense of happiness doesn't really come from reaching some perfect set of circumstances. It doesn't come from achieving the peaceful relationship with alcohol. It comes from how we view our progress and our experiences.
Speaker 1:It comes from how we interpret our own story, our past, our present, and our future. That determines where we feel fulfilled or when we feel frustrated. So if we're constantly living in the gap where we measure ourselves against a shifting ideal, we will likely feel disconnected no matter how much progress we make. But when we live in the gain, we're able to appreciate each step as it comes. Dan Sullivan and Doctor.
Speaker 1:Benjamin Hardy explained that when we see the gains we've made, it builds what we call psychological momentum. When we feel like we're winning, we're more motivated to keep going. It's why acknowledging small wins can be just as important as celebrating big milestones. You hear me say it all the time, small steps, small wins lead to big changes. Think about this.
Speaker 1:If you're if you set a goal to become healthier and you only focus on how far you are from a perfect fitness level, it is easy to lose momentum, to lose to lose heart. Right? But if you look back and recognize that you're actually eating better, you're moving more, and you're feeling more energetic, then when you started, you actually feel encouraged. You feel that sense of progress. And no matter how small, it's empowering, and it empowers you to take the next step.
Speaker 1:This idea of a narrative identity, which is the concept from doctor Dan McAdams, who, as I mentioned, is a researcher and psychologist at Northwestern University. The narrative identity is about the stories that we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. You hear me use that terminology a lot. The stories. The stories are our thoughts.
Speaker 1:This narrative, our brain is constantly trying to make sense of the world around us. We are the narrator. We are the thinker. Our narrative identity integrates our past, our present, and our future into a coherent story that shapes us our sense of who we are. And this story isn't fixed.
Speaker 1:I want you to hear me say that again. The story isn't fixed. It's constantly evolving based on how we view ourselves and how we interpret our experiences, and that includes our past. In Personality Isn't Permanent, Doctor. Hardy discusses how our narrative identity influences our potential.
Speaker 1:When we see our past as something fixed or something that's defined us in a negative way, it limits our growth. But when we take ownership of that story and we reinterpret our experiences in a more positive light, we empower ourselves. The facts of the past don't change, but the way we remember them absolutely can. I've said it before on the podcast. I wrote it in my book.
Speaker 1:This idea that the past only exists today in what I think about it was mind blowing for me. It really was what helped me shift and change my own difficult past stories and how I started to reframe them so that I could carry them with me in a different way. If you're living in the gap, you're gonna be likely most focused on what you've lost in the past or how it set you back. But if you move this into the gain, you can begin to ask, what did I learn from this? How did this shape me in a positive way?
Speaker 1:By reframing the past, start to see those experiences as a part of your larger growth or, you know, a part of your journey, right? Now, reframing the past doesn't mean pretending that challenges or pain didn't happen. It's about choosing how to remember those events and how they fit into your whole life story. A key part of reframing the past is recognizing that the past, present, and the future aren't separate and linear, but they're all interconnected in your mind. Here's a practical way to apply this.
Speaker 1:Instead of seeing a past experience as something that happened to you, try reframing it as something that happened for you. For example, instead of saying that ruined my chances or this experience you can you can change something to say that actually taught me resilience. It may feel subtle, but that small shift in narrative changes how we feel about our past, and more importantly, it impacts how we approach the future. I want to share with you, my own kind of reframing story, especially, like I said, as it applies to how I started to work on my relationship with alcohol. You in my book, if you've read it, it says, how to create a peaceful relationship with alcohol past, present, and future.
Speaker 1:That's important because the past for me included a lot of painful stories around alcohol, specifically my mother's alcohol dependence. My mother was physically dependent on alcohol and really for the majority of my life. And for a long time, I had a hard time to see that as anything but terrible. I was jealous and envious of other women who had a really close relationship with their mothers. I felt gypped like I got a mom who was selfish.
Speaker 1:I got a mother who was weak, will he had a weak will. I got a mother who was, you know, very surface y level, and she didn't she didn't have much to offer me in terms of motherly advice, or she just never felt like a very close human being. And, of course, she wasn't because she was struggling with her own, you know, with her own physical dependence and with all the reasons that she was dependent on alcohol. When I started to realize that and understand my mother's dependence and her psychological dependence on alcohol and when I started to ask myself why she felt like that, and I wished that she had had the tools that I began to teach and learn, and I wish that she understood how much agency she had in creating her own life story and realizing that, you know, she was just a person trying to do her best in this world, and she loved me in her own very imperfect way. And when I started to shape that story from that perspective, When I started to shape the story that her dependence on alcohol wasn't a genetic flaw that she passed on to me, I started to realize that I could take my past and turn it into a story that created the person I am today.
Speaker 1:If my mother hadn't been who she was, I wouldn't be who I am today. And I know that is absolutely fundamentally true. The resilience that I have, the determination that I have, the desire that I I have to learn about who I am, how my brain works, and why I why I didn't need to turn to alcohol to try to change how I was feeling, but that I had the capacity to do that myself. I and and now being able to share that with other people, teach other people, support other people, and help them change their relationships with alcohol. I don't get to be who I am today if I don't change the story that I had before.
Speaker 1:Because when I felt like I was missing out on a better life, when I felt like I was stuck and it was my it was the fault of my own mother's relationship with alcohol, that I was the way that I was, I didn't have any power. I didn't feel motivated to try to change because everything that I had or everything that I believed about it was felt made me feel powerless. Right? But that mindset shift, changing that narrative, understanding that the past only exists today in what I think about it, that became so pivotally important. Understanding that I am the narrator of my past, my present, and my future meant that I could start making those changes no matter how old I was, no matter how much time had passed, no matter how ingrained I thought my habits were.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about how to practically apply this mindset in everyday life. How are here are some steps that we can take this way, this week to move from the gap to the gain. I want you to choose one story. Just one. Right?
Speaker 1:I know we've got a lot of them. Trust me. I find new stories every day to start reframing in my life. But start by identifying a specific experience in your past that you usually view as a setback or a limitation. This could be anything, a mistake, a relationship, a challenge, or even a personal a personal trait that you struggle with.
Speaker 1:Bring it to mind and think about the story you've been telling yourself. Number two, ask yourself, actually, what did I gain from this? Take a moment to think about any positives that came out of this experience. Maybe you gained insight, resilience, or empathy. Or maybe it taught you what not to do, which helped you make better choices later on.
Speaker 1:Every difficult experience has some lesson or gain we recognize if we look hard enough. Number three, I want you to imagine your future self. Think about the person you want to be in the future. How would you see this how would this future your future self view your past experiences? Your future self wouldn't see these experiences as barriers, but rather as steps that led to your growth.
Speaker 1:This perspective allows you to view your past as part of a journey that brought you to where you are today. Number four, keep a gain journal. If you don't already have one, start a gain journal. Write down one gain each day, a moment of growth, a positive choice, or a small win. Keep tracking your progress, even the tiny steps.
Speaker 1:They help train your brain to focus on what's going well. Over time, this habit builds confidence and a sense of progress that fuels bigger changes. Number five, revisit and rewrite. As you continue with this mindset, periodically revisit the story that you've reframed. With time, you may even find more gains from that experience or realize more ways that it's helped shape your life.
Speaker 1:By intentionally revisiting and rewriting your narrative, you reinforce your growth and reframe your life in a way in a life story in a way that empowers you all the time. You get to keep rewriting. The gain mindset isn't just about feeling better in the moment. It's about creating a sustainable shift in how we view our lives. When we train ourselves to see our gains, we become more resilient.
Speaker 1:Instead of setbacks feeling like roadblocks, they become just a part of the journey. And remember, this doesn't mean we ignore or deny our challenges. It's about acknowledging them, but choosing to see how they can contribute to our growth. This approach applies to every area of life, whether it's a relationship, a personal goal, or something as important as changing your relationship with alcohol. Living in the game gives us permission to celebrate our progress even if it's not perfect.
Speaker 1:It helps us build confidence and a sense of satisfaction that keeps us moving forward no matter where we are on this journey. So my challenge for you this week is to take one story or experience from your past that you'd like to view differently and apply the GAIN mindset. Ask yourself, what did I learn? How did this shape me? What positives came out of it?
Speaker 1:Give yourself some time to sit with this new perspective and see how it changes the way you feel about that experience. I wanna thank you for joining me here on Think Thursday. If you have some ideas specifically about Think Thursday episodes that you'd like to hear, shoot me an email, Molly@MollyWatts.com. I'd love to hear from you. I hope this idea of reframing your narrative, living in the gain instead of the gap, resonates with you as much as it has for me.
Speaker 1:And remember, you are the one writing your story. Every chapter is another chance to grow. Until next time, focus on the gain, celebrate your progress, embrace the person you're becoming, and as always, choose peace, my friends.
