Mastering the Mindset

Mental Masturbation

Darius Dotch

Ever feel like your mind is stuck in a cycle of overthinking and self-doubt?  It can be hard to combat the mental quicksand of "mental masturbation". It makes it hard to take action and you end up stuck going nowhere fast.  Let's talk about how to transform your overthinking mindset with strategies to redirect mental energy into positive and productive action towards your goals. 

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Speaker 1:

What's up everybody and thank you for listening to Mastering the Mindset. My name is Darius Dodge and I'm an actor, hip-hop artist and fitness and life coach, and I'm here to personally help you train and improve your mindset so that you can, one, become the best version of yourself mentally and, two, gain focus and motivation to be able to take action and achieve the success in life that you want and deserve. Before we get started, please like and subscribe to my channel and at the end of this episode, if you liked it, please share it with a friend or a loved one or someone who would benefit from hearing this message. I'm so glad you're here and I'm ready to go on this journey with you. And that journey begins now. All right, and welcome back to another episode. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1:

If you are on YouTube, you know what to do. Go ahead and like and subscribe to my channel, and if you are listening on a podcast platform, please leave a review. And if you want to support me, there are new ways to support me. You can become a monthly supporter and you get to choose how much you want to donate. The options are three, five, eight and $10 a month, and you can cancel at any time and you can continue to pay as long as you want to, but, like I always say, donations are greatly appreciated. It helps me keep this thing going. But let's go ahead and jump in. I got a quick one for you today. Won't be keeping you long and it's a straight to the point episode, but let's go ahead and jump in. I got a quick one for you today. Won't be keeping you long and it's a straight to the point episode, so let's jump right in.

Speaker 1:

So today we're going to be talking about you and that brain of yours, and I found a phrase that I almost made the title of this episode, but it sounds kind of weird, and that phrase is mental masturbation. Mental masturbation there's a joke in there somewhere, but I digress, but it's like quicksand for you, a mental quicksand, and what I mean is you start thinking and then those limiting beliefs, those limiting beliefs, start to pop up and you start to overthink everything instead of actually taking action or better action that can be more impactful and happen faster for you. And a lot of folks get caught in this mental quicksand, and we do it way too much. We get caught up, thinking and thinking, and thinking and thinking, and then you thinking, about, thinking, about thinking, and then you're overthinking and start overthinking, your overthinking and get so caught up in your thoughts and your feelings that you do nothing and you still get exhausted by the end of the day because you're doing all this thinking. You ever been there before where you get so deep in your thoughts and you barely do anything physical throughout the day, but for some reason, by the time four or five o'clock hit, you are exhausted. And the reason why is because your brain is using so much energy and that's energy wasted Right, energy that you can use to move the needle in your life because your brain, even though it's only two percent of your body weight, it uses about 20 percent of your energy every day. Think about that for a second. Your brain uses 20 percent of your energy every day. So imagine what your overthinking is doing to your body. And sometimes we wish we could just stop thinking altogether. Right?

Speaker 1:

You say I just wish I could turn my brain off. Well, do you? I don't think that's what you want. I don't think you realize that's not what you really want. Would you want your heart to stop beating? Would you want your lungs to stop breathing? Would you want your eyes to stop seeing? No, that's what these things are designed to do.

Speaker 1:

Your brain is designed to think, but the problem is not the thinking. It's the thing that you think about about your fear, about your limiting beliefs, your imposter syndrome. What if I get rejected? What if she says this? What if they don't like it? What if I fail? What if they take it the wrong way? That's the reason you think you want to turn your brain off. They take it the wrong way. That's the reason you think you want to turn your brain off. But I guarantee, if you were just thinking about all the good things you love and how good your life is and how amazing your new job is and how much you love your partner and how good those wings are my favorite food and you just thought about how grateful you are, oh my God, I just can't stop thinking about how grateful I am right now. I wish I could just stop thinking about how good I have it right now. I need to just shut my brain off. Never heard nobody ever say that before. So that's not the problem. The problem is not the thinking. The problem is what you're thinking about. You're not controlling your brain, you're not setting it in the right direction and sometimes thinking through a difficult situation is the best thing you can do. You can't just turn your brain off unless you plan on meditating 24 hours a day. So how do we use our brains in the best way possible? And hey, I know I talk about taking action on here all the time, but sometimes it is beneficial to think through it first, to assess.

Speaker 1:

But don't do it all in your brain. Your brain is way too complex, especially if your thoughts get to running and running and running. You have to write things down on paper. Open up a blank word document and just start typing. Pull out a phone, type some things out, use your voice recorder, just like in math class the compound problems, the big math problems. You don't try and solve them all in your head, you write them down.

Speaker 1:

And I was just doing this a few weeks ago. I was in here spinning. I was just feeling like I was stagnant, like I wasn't making progress. So I start writing stuff down and I'm writing. You know, I feel like I'm not resonating with people as much anymore and I'm like I feel like I'm not making progress and I feel like I'm I might not be attacking certain things. Right, I feel like I'm so far behind and you probably already hear where my problem is and where I'm going with this.

Speaker 1:

But the common theme here is the I feel. I feel right, I have to remind myself that feelings and effects. I could feel like I'm not connected with as many folks as I think I'm not connecting with, but that ain't true. The facts show me that I am. People tell me all the time that they appreciate the things I'm doing and they resonate with what I got and what I put out in the world. And I just had a moment that I needed to remind myself, right? But anyway, give yourself that visual, be able to see it. It'll help you think it through and move forward. Now, is this going to solve all the issues in your life? No, not even close.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you've got to look at some of those things on that piece of paper and just recognize your overthinking. You just got to say you know what I'm overthinking. I just need to take action, especially when you find yourself wrestling with those limiting beliefs. You just got to take the action. Trying to sit there and think through all those limiting beliefs and overthinking, that's like trying to dig out a quicksand, right, you're only going to get more stuck. If you try and think through all your limiting beliefs, guess what? You're only going to find more limiting beliefs, and I know you've been there, done that. You think about all the things you fear, all the things you feel like you can't do, and you end up down this dark road. In your brain it's like trying to run fast in quicksand.

Speaker 1:

Let's say you have a fear of failure and you say, well, let me think about that, let me think through that. You know, you know what's going to come up for you all the times you failed, or more things that you're afraid to fail at, all of the future failures that you imagine and in the past. And your brain is going to search for evidence and reinforce that feeling. It's like when you search something on Google right, you notice how, when you search something on Google one time, the next thing you know it's all over your newsfeed, it's in your algorithm. Now it's going to pop up. Same thing in your brain. All those examples in your life around failure are going to pop up. And why do that? Don't give that task to your brain. You have to empower yourself to just say you know what, I'm just going to do it and you probably say, ok, but that's.

Speaker 1:

But you be on here talking about having to think and remind yourself of the, of of the opposite Right, that you are capable, that you can do it, that you will succeed. Yes, I sure do will succeed. Yes, I sure do. At one percent you should. But I'm also not about to sit up here and pretend that that works every time, all the time.

Speaker 1:

Sometimes you just get truly stuck in that mental quicksand and it got you consumed and all your thoughts are just negative and your goals and whatever that thing is you're working on just feels too damn hard right now and you up against a wall mentally. I know that reality. I know that sometimes you doing the work mentally in that moment just won't do it. Sometimes you just got to take the action. Acknowledge this feeling. Tell yourself, hey, I'm human, I have these thoughts, I'm here, but I can't stay here. I have to move and just take the action, even if you don't think it'll work. You don't stay here. I have to move and just take the action, even if you don't think it'll work. You don't have to believe in yourself to take action. Let me say that again, you don't have to believe in yourself to take action. But if you never take the action and you stay there mentally and you don't take the action ever at all, you're going to fail 100 percent of the time.

Speaker 1:

And also, some people might believe in the law of attraction that if you just think it it'll find its way to you. If you just manifest it, then you'll receive it. I'll say this I do believe you need both. You can sit and wish and manifest and meditate the good and the success and the things you want to achieve, but it still takes action. That's a requirement, otherwise you just waiting for luck, a miracle. Wouldn't you rather make your own luck? Well, at the very least, work on yourself in the process. Work on yourself in the process of trying to become that person Right? So, even if you happen to fall just a little short, you'll grow in the process because you can sit and think and think and think and think and think. But if you ain't taking no action, there's no growth. You may improve the way you talk to yourself or your negative thoughts or limits and beliefs, and yes, you know I take it back. That is growth, mental growth, but that's not going to get you closer to those goals you want to achieve, towards finishing whatever that thing is you want to do. That takes the mental side and action. You need both.

Speaker 1:

You have to force yourself to take action sometimes, and the reason why taking action is so important. As long as you are taking action, you're headed in the right direction and you know this already. You will eventually get to where you're trying to go. It might take you more time than you want, but if you just start heading in the right direction and you take the right action, you will eventually get there. Like I always say, if you got in your car and you want to drive to Mexico, if you just follow the GPS, make the turns, keep driving, eventually you will get to Mexico. Even if I hit a detour, even if I have to take a step backwards and get gas, even if I have to pull over and wait for a storm to be over so I can see, eventually I will get there.

Speaker 1:

Everybody wants to be the hare, right, like the tortoise and the hare. They want to get there fast. They start off hard and strong and they go, go, go, go, go, go go and yeah, that's cool, but eventually, what do you think is going to happen. You're going to get tired, you're going to burn out, you won't be as motivated, you're going to have a setback, and that's when you need to become the tortoise. Even if it's slow, it's still steady and it's still forward. As long as you head in the right direction and you take the right action, you'll eventually get there.

Speaker 1:

There are people who are further in life than you and are dumber than you and not as qualified as you, but they take the action, so they make things happen. They don't get caught up in the quicksand. And again, it'd be nice to just turn off the brain when it comes to those negative thoughts and all the quicksand and be able to just turn into a robot and take the action over and over again. But we're not robots. We're human, which means that we feel. We feel love, which means that we need to fall in love with the process, fall in love with the journey. But you can't turn your brain off, so you have to recalibrate it, change the way you think and do it while you're taking action. And the crazy part is, most of the times we know, we know what to do, we know the actions we need to take and the actions that we should be taking, but we just don't. So how do we get past that? Why are we not doing it? Because we procrastinate and we think about it too much. Sometimes we just have to be aware that we think too much, that we're in a quicksand, that we need to just take action.

Speaker 1:

Where are you trying to go? What direction do you need to start heading in? And once you figure that out, ask yourself what actions do I need to start taking today? What's the next best step? Not the next 20 steps, not the fourth step, the next step, and just take it. So that's what I got for you today. Wow, that's not a weird. That's what I got for you today. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1:

Like I said, there is a new way to support me. You can become a monthly supporter and you can donate either three, five, eight or ten dollars. The choice is yours and you can um end that subscription whenever you want to. But thank you so much. We're gonna ride out to some more music today. We're gonna ride out to it. All makes sense. Let's get it in. That all makes sense. Outro Music.

Speaker 1:

I see progress, I see prosper. I can see the treetops, I swear I hear the birds and that's music to my ears and I taste one of my tears, thinking how I persevered. But you ain't got a touch to know I'm real. Close your eyes, you can hear. I tasted too many tears. It got me thinking, if you really feel me, that all makes sense. You ain't got a touch to know I'm real. Close your eyes, you, you can hear. I tasted too many tears. It got me thinking, if you really feel me, uh, that all makes sense. I feel like you. Niggas' feelings never matter to me. I feel like Urkel family matters to me, feel me or not. I feel for George Floyd's family. His life matters to me. I feel like I can feel the damage in me, feel me or not, but I feel like I'm one of the realest rappers I see.

Speaker 1:

I look around and look the same. As far as that I can see. You see it. You see my three fingers. You see me. Let them linger. I made my own lane. Won't ever see a blinker. Once saw myself as a failure. Let me tell you the victory never tastes sweeter. And keep my name out your mouth. I hope it tastes like ether. I wanna taste her deepest thoughts and desires. Do what it requires to keep her coming. I make sure she arrive.

Speaker 1:

I watch the news. What a divide. I got us thinking different. And Donald Trump got white people out here thinking ignorant, thinking like some bigots, and think how that make me feel, but you ain't gotta touch. Yeah, see, I can't speak for nobody else but me. But believe me when I tell you All I want for you to do is feel me. You feel me. You ain't got a touch to know I'm real. Close your eyes. You can hear. I've tasted too many tears. It got me thinking. And I'm not looking for no handouts or no pats on the back or no favors. I just want you to feel me. You ain't got a touch to know I'm real. Close your eyes. You ain't gotta touch Until I'm real. Close your eyes. You can hear I tasted too many tears. It got me thinking. If you really feel me, it all makes sense.