How do you overcome Brain Spin and Piñata Mind‪?‬ Student Of Life Podcast

Are you allowing ‘defensive thinking’ to negatively impact your life? Today, we examine two kinds of defensive thinking, Brain Spin and Piñata Mind.   Brain Spin Brain Spin is when you are fixated on just one thought and your brain spins in circles over and over again. What makes Brain Spin defensive thinking is your thoughts are just spinning around and your brain is not working out solutions. Your brain is going too fast, creating anxiety and stress, as well as the inability to think clearly. It’s defensive because you are allowing your brain to happen to you. You are allowing outside influences and problems to have an impact on your ability to function because you are allowing that spin to happen.   Overcoming Brain Spin How do you stop yourself from falling into the Brain Spin trap?   S-P-I-N   When you have Brain Spin, go on offense. It’s a simple process: just remember the word “spin.” There’s a little exercise you can do to stop the spin and get yourself back on even footing, where you can take control of your thoughts, go on offense, and come up with solutions instead of staying on defense with stress, anxiety and worry.   The “S” stands for “Stop.” “Stop” means you stop, acknowledge the Brain Spin is happening. Actively engage your brain in something, instead of allowing it to passively spin.   The “P” stands for “Process”. “Process” means you’re going to think about whatever  it is your brain is spinning about, and you’re going to dissect a little bit and ask yourself the question, “Is this something I have any control over? Is this something where I might be able to step in and make some changes or take some action to alleviate whatever is causing this stress?” You process it and figure out what the problem is.   Then you have “I”, which stands for “Intervene.” If it is a legitimate problem and you have legitimate options to go on offense and solve it, then you can intervene. Take steps to put on paper what you’re solutions are going to be. How are you going to attack this problem? Decide what you are going to do instead of just letting that thought spin in your head. Start working on a productive solution.   On the other side of the same coin, if you determine that either, you have no control over it, or it’s not a legitimate problem, then you can say, “This is not something I have any power or control over and I just need to understand that so I don’t allow my mind to keep spinning in search of solutions that aren’t there.”   Finally, the “N” stands for “Next.” The next time this happens, you need to know what you will do. Either you will start implementing your solution or do the steps to intervene and go on offense. Alternatively, if it’s a problem or a worry you have no control over—for example something that happened already and you can’t go back and adjust—the "Next" there is to let it go. And if you can’t let it go, come up with something you will switch your thoughts to instead. Maybe you think about something to do with your business or a sports team or how you could show some love to your spouse. Come up with something else productive with which you can replace the other thought.   So the S-P-I-N steps are how you end brain spin.   Piñata Mind Piñata Mind is the opposite of the Brain Spin. Brain Spin is when you’re fixated on one thought. Piñata mind is when your brain is so distracted there are hundreds of thoughts going on and you can’t think of anything. There is a reason Joe calls it “piñata mind”. It came from a day he spent the whole day working really hard, and was really busy, but when he looked back he was interrupted and distracted a lot and didn’t accomplish anything. You are probably familiar with that feeling of working hard, doing lots of stuff but getting nothing done. At the end of the day you’re exhausted but you have nothing to show for it. You didn’t move any big rocks f