How to Reprogram Your Brain to Stop Overthinking

0:00This is the number one reason why people fail with content. It's not the hooks. It's not the storytelling. It's not the editing. It's overthinking. And this is a massive, massive problem. If you are ambitious and inspired, but you get stuck in your own head, this is going to be the most valuable video you ever watch. Because the truth is, all you have to do to start winning with content is eliminate the overthinking. I call this jailbreaking the mind. Now, I've been studying all the great psychologists and business leaders, and it turns out there are seven mental blockers that prevent people from taking

0:31action. This is what's holding you back. So, in this video, I'm going to break down those seven mental blockers and give you super simple tactics for how to overcome them. By the way, I'm Callaway. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views, and I'm obsessed with using psychology hacks to build bigger

0:46businesses. All right, let's dive in. Now, before we run through the seven blockers, let me just explain what I mean when I say jailbreaking the mind. To win at anything, especially content, all you have to do is take more reps. It's literally a game of action. But as simple as that is, most people still struggle. There's something that gets in the way of them taking that action. Now, there are really only two reasons why you're not taking the action you need in order to win. It's either laziness or you're blocked by one of these seven toxic narratives. Now, if laziness is the issue, this video is not going to

1:16help you. But you probably wouldn't be watching this channel if you were lazy. So, I'm going to assume that's not the problem. The problem for everyone else is these seven blockers. And I call them toxic narratives because really that's what they are. These are stories we tell ourselves in our own heads that prevent us from taking action. Things like imposttor syndrome, fear of failure, etc. Now, the good news is each one of these toxic narratives can easily be overcome if you know how to reason through it. And I call this process of overcoming the toxic narratives jailbreaking the mind. You're literally freeing yourself from the jail of those

1:49blockers so you can think independently and start winning. Now, I'm going to explain these blockers in the context of someone that wants to grow with content. But the truth is, these seven toxic narratives are universally the reasons that are holding you back from accomplishing anything in life. So, no matter who you are, you're going to get

2:04benefit from watching this video. Okay. Now, the first toxic narrative is imposttor syndrome. And this one is super common. So, first let's break down what imposter syndrome really is and where it comes from. In the case of imposter syndrome, you feel like you don't deserve or haven't earned the right to talk about a topic because you haven't spent enough time or put enough reps in before. You see all these people that are more successful doing the thing that you want to be doing. So, when you finally work up the courage to start doing it yourself and you get going, you start to feel inferior because deep down

2:34you know these experts have spent more time doing the thing than you have. And this is where the core feeling of being an imposttor comes from. You don't feel like you're on the same level as the people you look up to, and so you don't belong in that room. Again, this is a super common feeling. Typically, imposttor syndrome is the fear of being exposed as the impostor. It's kind of like that scene in Inception where they architect that dream world, but then they're worried that people will find out they're imposters and start to attack them. So, what happens if you suffer from imposter syndrome is that

3:04you just stop taking action because you're afraid if you do keep going, eventually someone will find out you don't belong. Now, if you struggle with this, here are the logical steps for how to overcome imposttor syndrome in your brain. Again, it's just a toxic narrative that we tell oursel that usually isn't true. So, here's the logic for how to overcome it. The feeling of being an imposttor really comes from either a lack of experience, time spent doing a thing, or skill, competency built in the thing. you know deep down that you're either lacking experience, skills, or both. Now, let's start with how to solve lacking experience. If you

3:38actually have skills at something, but you're lacking the necessary years of experience, this is actually a really easy problem to solve in your own head. Because the truth is, your end viewers don't really care about your experience. The only thing the market cares about is the quality of your information and the proof that you have a case study validating that that information is accurate. Experience or time spent doing something really is just a proxy for how good someone should be at the skill

4:03given the amount of time they've spent. Now, for example, if you show me two doctors, one with 5 years of experience and the other with 20. Society assumes that the one with 20 years of experience will be better because they've spent more time in the role and their skills should be sharper. But this isn't necessarily the case because the way the doctor with only five years of experience can win is if they're actually really good as a doctor and have crazy proof over those five years validating those skills regardless of their lack of the 15 years of experience. So if you have limited experience but you're actually good at

4:34the thing and have proof of how good you are, nobody's going to care about that lack of experience. And so if this is you, that renders your fear as an impostor as just a toxic narrative that really isn't true. Hopefully that solves it. Now, of course, this case is when you're actually good at the thing. You have the skills, you have the proof, you just don't have the experience. The much more common scenario with imposter syndrome is when you neither have the skills nor the experience. So, not only have you never done it, but you're also not good at it. And the truth is, this also isn't really an imposttor syndrome

5:04problem. It's a different problem. When you're starting out at something, you're not supposed to be good. This is completely normal. So, if this is you and deep down you know you're not really that knowledgeable and you haven't built sharp skills in this area, but you're afraid of being called out as an imposttor, here is the logical frame for how you get over this. The first step, and it's going to sound weird, is to accept that you are an impostor. Anyone that hasn't done a thing before they actually do it is an impostor relative to a group of experts. That is the truth. And then to that you should say,

5:33so what? You haven't done all those things that the other experts have done yet. You haven't mastered the skill yet. You are an imposttor today and that is completely fine. Just like learning to walk, the only way to get good at the skill is to actually do it over and over and over. So what you're telling yourself in your head is imposttor syndrome is actually just the friction and pain of taking off the training wheels and being bad at the thing initially. This is not imposter syndrome and you shouldn't be afraid of it. Now here's where real imposttor syndrome comes from. If you are lying to the

6:04market and saying you're an expert, but deep down you know you're not an expert, that's imposter syndrome. And the solve for that is stop saying that you're an expert. Because the truth is you don't actually need to call yourself an expert to win with content. Expertise is just the perception of differentiated knowledge. So if you have differentiated knowledge and you actually know your stuff, you don't need to call yourself an expert. Just share that knowledge and people will think of you as an expert automatically. If you don't have differentiated knowledge and you want to be an expert, then you need to spend your time actually learning the skill

6:35and the craft to be able to have that knowledge. But this isn't an imposttor syndrome problem. This is a you haven't spent enough time actually doing the thing problem. And the beauty is it's easy to solve that. All you have to do is take more action. So the unblock and the reframe for imposttor syndrome is this. If you have skills and proof but just not experience, well, you're not an imposttor and you really have no problem. Just put your head down and

6:59keep going and everything will work out. If you don't have the skills or the proof or the experience, well, you're not an imposter. You're just early. So again, put your head down and keep taking action to get better. If you don't have the skills, proof, or experience, but you're lying to people, pretending to be an expert, well, this is where the imposttor syndrome can come from. And to be honest, in this case, you are an imposter. So stop referring to yourself as an expert, and it will take that pressure away. All you have to do is share differentiated knowledge, and people will associate you with an

7:26expert automatically. All three of those paths lead to taking more action as the solve. And I explain it in this granular way so hopefully it can break down your barrier in your own mind and you can start taking more action. All right. The second toxic narrative is called the missing identity problem. And this is where you tell yourself in your own head that you're not capable of doing a thing because you don't have the skills, talent, or identity to do it. And like I said, in this case, you have lots of negative self-t talk. You look at everyone around you and you're jealous because you feel like they have some

7:57pre-baked talent or ability that you don't have and so you're behind the eightball and you'll just never win. And the truth is this is a loser's mentality. I'm not saying that you are a loser. I'm saying that you're thinking like a loser and putting this negative thought spiral in your head which is a doom loop that's impossible to get out of. So here's the logical reframe to help you get over the missing identity mindset. First, you need to realize that the bar for success is actually much lower than you realize. It feels like the competition out there is fierce, but it really isn't. Most people are

8:26actually pretty soft and not that talented when you wade through the facade that they're putting on. However, what makes them appear like winners to you is the distance they've put between themselves and you by taking consistent action every day. Second, when you're suffering from the missing identity problem, you need to accept the fact that every single skill requires a first day with a first rep. The reason most things are worth doing is because there's just enough friction that most people are not willing to start doing them. And the reason not everyone is willing to do them is because they are also in a negative thought spiral as

8:59well. After watching this video, you are not going to be one of those people. Now, third, to solve the missing identity problem in your head, you need to understand what identity actually means. Identity is a madeup construct. We're all born with 10 fingers and a brain. Well, most of us. If you're born with 10 fingers, you can type. If you're

9:16born with eight fingers, you can type. If you're born with no fingers, you could speak to type. You get my point. We're all born with the same base inputs. So, saying things like, "My identity is not a morning person." That's nonsense. We were all babies that slept 16 hours a day. No one is good at the thing until they start doing the

9:33thing. And that applies to everything. Claiming you are or aren't a certain way because of your identity, that's making something up in your mind that really isn't real. For example, if you're someone that identifies with not working out, but then tomorrow you go to the gym, all of a sudden you just reframed your identity immediately. So identities are not real. You are creating the mental construct in your brain that is holding you back. Don't do that. The only difference between you and someone that has done the thing you want to do is that they started doing it and never stopped. So if you want to be like them,

10:04you need to start doing it as well. Again, the answer here is more reps. All right. And so far, we've broken down two of the biggest toxic narratives. These are the stories that people tell themsel that hold them back and prevent them from taking action. Imposttor syndrome and missing identity. We're going to go through the remaining five in a second, but just to remind you, the reason it's so important to be able to check if you have these problems and overcome these narratives is because this is the thing that's preventing you from taking the action to grow with content. All you have to do to win with content is make

10:34videos. And so if you're not making videos, it's probably because you're telling yourself something that isn't true. That's why I'm going through these in these videos. I'm trying to break down the seven common things that you're telling yourself that are probably holding you back. Now, most of my other videos are about the tactics for how you

10:49actually make better content. Storytelling, editing, hooks, but I wanted to spend one video on the mindset because this is such a big problem impeding people's success. And if you like the way I think about this stuff, I actually built a free community all for content. We have 18,000 other entrepreneurs that are all working in there, helping each other, reviewing people's videos, and really lifting each other up. It's called Wavy World. It's a really awesome community. I've got a free invite link below if you want to join. All right. Now, before we go on to our third toxic narrative, which is a critical one to avoid, I want to take a

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12:28right. Now, the third toxic narrative and blocker that's really preventing you from growing with content is the fear of looking dumb. And in this case, the internal dialogue that's really holding you back and putting you in that pretzel is that you're just afraid that people are going to make fun of you when you start in the early stages of the content journey. People like your family, your high school friends, unsupportive people in the community, you're worried that these people are talking behind your back and making fun of you because

12:53you're trying to learn something new. And this is a classic toxic narrative that so many of us play in our minds and really prevents us from starting new things. We all project that there's this big room of people that are all conspiring to make fun of us all together in this one jumbo hall. And the truth is this almost never happens, but it's this scenario that we really work up in our minds. So here is the line of logic to help you get over this toxic narrative in your head. The first thing is just to realize that if these were your real friends, they would be

13:22supportive nonetheless. And so if anyone is making fun of you, well then they're not really your real friend. So who cares what they think? But I know saying that and then getting yourself to actually believe it, those are two different things. So you can't rely fully on that logic to overcome this one. I've got a much better one for you right here. And that is that it's actually incredibly hard to get somebody to care and notice you when you want them to care. Like insanely hard when you want to. So if you're trying to not have them find out that you're experimenting in these low stages, don't

13:49worry, they won't. Getting someone to care is so hard that marketing, the category of people, the trillion dollar category with tens of millions of employees, is dedicated because it's so hard to get people to care about a given thing. So, when you start making content and you're at your worst and you're small, you're getting little to no views anyway. So, nobody's watching those 64 views, it's only 64 random people that you've never seen. Your friends are not going to be able to find you until you're big enough to actually want them to. And if you're really that concerned with what your high school friends or people you haven't seen in a decade are

14:20thinking, well then just make a fresh account with a fake name and start posting there. I promise you they will not find you until you want them to find you. And here's the other way to get over the fear of sucking in the beginning. Everything in life requires a person to go from zero to bad to good to great. You just can't go from zero to

14:37great. You have to go from zero to bad. So you might as well get started on the bad part as soon as you can so you can get to great sooner. And lastly, when it comes to overcoming the fear of looking dumb, it really boils down to this. You are the hero in your own story. And so, you overvalue every little nitpick and move that you make. But the truth is, for everyone else, they're the hero in their own story. They're not noticing what you're doing. So, even if you feel like you're so bad at the thing and everyone's going to make fun of you, the

15:04truth is they aren't paying attention. Again, this is just a way to try to reason to yourself for how to get over the fear of looking dumb so you can get started looking dumb to then eventually not look dumb. All right, the fourth toxic narrative is the fear of failure. And in this mind spiral, you're worried you're going to make the wrong move. And so instead of taking an action and seeing what happens, you freeze and you overanalyze and you spend more time researching and less time actually moving. And this, of course, is another super common toxic narrative. This happens to almost everybody at the beginning stages. And again, this fear

15:35really comes from the fact that you think you're going to be wrong and then when you're wrong, you're going to make the mistake. You're going to fall on your face and then everybody's going to make fun of you. That's really what the fear is. So, let me make this one really easy for you. If you want to build anything that's worth building, you will 100% make a ton of mistakes. This isn't a maybe, it's a for sure. Every single thing worth building has gone through

15:54many, many, many hundreds of failures. In fact, most of the time it's so hard to guess right that it's actually worth failing a bunch of times to help you figure out what is the right answer. So knowing that you will definitely fail because every single other person has failed a bunch, it actually helps blunt the fear that the failure is going to be so bad. But I'm telling you, the worst

16:13thing you can do is take zero action. The worst thing worse than failing is no action. And as soon as you move forward and you fail for the first time, you'll realize that it really wasn't a big deal. Now, an easy logical frame to solve this fear is to zoom out and go forward 20 years in the future. And ask yourself this. If you fail at this little micro thing that you're worried about and you were looking back on it from 20 years in the future, do you think you'd even remember what the decision was or even care what the implication was? The truth is 99 times

16:42out of 100 the decision and failure point is so small you wouldn't even remember it in 20 years. And because of that, you shouldn't be worried that that failure means anything. Again, the goal of this video is to help give you frameworks to help reason through logically why the fears that are holding you back shouldn't actually be fears. So, this is how you solve the fear of failure. All right. Now, the fifth toxic narrative that you're playing over and over in your head that's really preventing you from taking action is what I call opportunity missed. And in this case, you've accepted that whatever you want to do, in this case, content,

17:11is going to take a long time. But you're worried that you've missed the wave. you've missed the opportunity because so many people have been spending so much time before you and you'll never be able to catch up. Again, it's super common to get in this mind frame. So, I've got four helpful logic frames that will help you get out of this fear. The first one is this. The truth is the market is so much bigger than you realize that any of those people you feel like are ahead of you and you can win as big as possible and you will still never even touch the full market. So, it's not that you're

17:39not late. You might be late, but the truth is early, late, and super late can all win. That's how big the market is. Now, the second thing is that the people ahead of you, they really aren't that far ahead. It feels like they are, but once you get off the starting line, you'll realize they're much closer than it seems. Now, the third thing, if your competition didn't watch this video, they're also probably struggling with these toxic narratives as well. And because of that, there will be times that eb and flow where they're growing fast and then they're stunted. And that's because they're getting in their

18:07own head as well. You can catch them. You'd think because they've done this before that they would be immune to this, but they're not. And so there will be periods where you can catch up. Now, the fourth reason why the opportunity missed fear shouldn't really be a factor is that markets, platforms, and trends change all the time. And so, people that have started 10 years ago, they've built a cruise ship that's really difficult to turn and maneuver. But for you, if you're starting right now, you have a speedboat. That speedboat can really be

18:35agile and take advantage of new trends. This means that all you have to do is get in the game. Just get started and an opportunity will present itself where you can maneuver and start winning rapidly. But regardless of the competitive positioning, if somebody started before you, they're faster than you. They're growing more. They're more nimble. You'll both win because the market's so big. Now, a good example of this is this channel. I only started posting videos on this channel 6 months ago. I went from 0 to 125,000 subs in that time. And I took on the social media and YouTube growth space, which is one of the most competitive niches on

19:06YouTube. So, there are people in this space who have been making videos for 10, 11, 12 years. So, I'm late, and I could have waited and stopped and been worried about me missing the opportunity, but I didn't. So, how have I had success as a late entrant? The best way to succeed when you're late is to chart your own path. I take reps. I focus on the inputs, and I make a video after video after video as best as I possibly can. That's all you have to do because the market is so big that it doesn't matter who's the player before you. People at the top end will graduate

19:33out. There will always be more space for new entrance if you're taking action aggressively. All right. Now, the sixth toxic narrative that really is massive procrastination disguised as productivity is what I call the missing cheat code. In this case, you're telling yourself a story in your head that somebody has a cheat code that you don't have. And so, you have to spend more time researching and strategizing and brainstorming before you can actually take action. This is the measure 20 times cut never problem. So in this case, you're actually just procrastinating by taking more courses, listening to more podcasts, reading more reports, scrolling the brain rod of

20:06social media, and you're doing this because you're telling yourself there's some cheat code, some shortcut that you haven't been privy to. So instead of getting started, you just procrastinate and you call it research. Let me help solve this one for you. There is no cheat code. There is no shortcut. If there was, I would have given it to you already. It doesn't exist. The only way to win with content is to make a bunch of videos and get better every single time. Take a rep, build the skill, iterate the skill, take another rep, and so on. That is the only way to get better. The longer you spend

20:35procrastinating and disguising your research, listening to two randos yap about something doesn't matter. The longer you spend doing that, the longer you're delaying the inevitable, which is you realizing that the only way to make this work is to take reps and make content. I recommend getting one of these brick devices, blocking your social media, putting the blinders on, and going ham. Again, the answer once you break the logic on this one is to just take more reps. And with all these, I'm sorry if I come off harsh or blunt or straightforward. This isn't really a typical video from me. I'm not really talking at you in a scolding tone. I'm

21:07more talking at my 21-year-old self because I wish somebody would have just sat me down and told me straight up these were the traps I was going to run into mentally and helped me overcome them. Because every single one of these I have suffered from for years in the past. That's why I'm so intimately familiar with how to break down the

21:24logic and figure out how to solve it. This is the truth. This is what holds people back. Now, the deeper reason why people don't do the work is because the work is work. It's hard. It's not always fun. And the truth is the brain releases the same dopamine when you talk about doing a thing as when you do the thing. And so there's a lot of professional talkers that aren't actually doers that are getting that same satisfaction. I don't want you to be one of those people. There is no other option than doing the thing. And in this case,

21:51that's making more content. All right. Now, there's one bonus toxic narrative that is really important once you get going. And I want to help you avoid it. In this case, this is less for people that are struggling at the start and more for people that have started to see success but are getting in their own way. This is something that I just started struggling with personally. So, I wanted to share my thoughts on it. I call it the boredom of winning. It is very common for people to get initial escape velocity with a thing, start to see success, but then get bored with the mundane repetitive process of doing it

22:19over and over. So, they stop and then they go chase some other shiny object because they like the feeling of going from zero to one. This is super common. And if you're one of the rare ones who actually gets momentum, you want to avoid making this mistake like the plague. True greatness is falling in love with the boredom of winning the same way repeatedly. Think about MJ, Kobe, Federer, even Mr. Beast with content. These people were masters at repetitive winning over and over and over. The truth is, once you start getting good at something, it will start feeling mundane because you're used to the process. You're going to have that

22:53itch to want to crash the Jenga tower and build it back up. You want to do something new. I'm begging you, resist that itch and find a way to fall in love with the repetition of what's already working. This is a super common trap pattern that I see in so many people that are winning. They make a narrative inside their head that they need to make some change or some tweak, but really it's just their boredom that's creeping

23:13in that they're trying to play with. Once you get the machine working, leave it alone. All right, so those were the seven mental blocks or toxic narrative that you need to overcome to then start taking more action. And again, this was a bit of a different video for me. Typically, I'm focused on the specific tactics, all the intricacies of how to actually make content, but I wanted to try my hand at making a video more theoretical, more psychological, trying to help you break down the mental barriers. So, if you like this video, definitely leave a comment below and let me know and I can make more videos in

23:42the future talking about the mind frame and the mind states. Now, just to quickly summarize those seven blockers, we covered imposttor syndrome, missing identity, the fear of looking dumb, the fear of failure, the fear of missed opportunities, the fear of the missing cheat code, and the boredom of winning. If you can jailbreak your mind to overcome these, you're going to start winning way faster than you can possibly imagine. And hopefully this video was helpful in tactically helping you figure

24:07out how to think and get over them. Okay, so what's next? What's next is that now that you have a logical framework for getting over these, I want you to start taking action immediately. And that first step is making the next rep. Make the next video. Make the next piece of content every single day. Take action, iterate, and improve. And I know it sounds corny, but this is the whole game. If you can just do this and get out of your own way, you're going to win. Put your head down. Rep. Pop your head up. A month later, wow, look at the progress. Head back down. Rep. Month

24:37later. If you just do this, I'm telling you, you will win. Now, everything else I'm building on this channel, everything in my ecosystem is all designed to help you take more reps forward that work for your business. I'm literally giving away all the answers for free on this channel and in Wavy World, my free community. Now, like I said earlier, if you're ready to take action and you want to improve with better video reps, join Wavy World. It's completely free. We have 18,000 entrepreneurs in there. It really is the best resource on the internet when it comes to free content for making better videos. So, I've got a

25:09free invite below if you want to join that. Again, make sure to comment. Let me know if you like this video. If not, we'll be back with another one next week, back in the normal style. Until then, we'll see you guys on the next one. Peace.