Mastering the Mindset
Mastering the Mindset
You're Suffering From Brain Rot
Your brain might be rotting — and scrolling could be the reason.
Let's talk about how constant dopamine hits, endless scrolling, and passive consumption are slowly killing focus, motivation, and clarity — without most people even noticing it.
Your brain is either growing or decaying. There is no in-between.
This episode breaks down what brain rot really is, why it’s affecting so many of us, and how self-education and intentional learning can reverse the damage and sharpen your mind for the year ahead.
If you want more focus, more motivation, and a stronger mindset in 2026 — this one’s for you.
Losing myself and finding my strength came to the conclusion that I want it all. Feeling that pressure of tryna do better. I wanna reach heights, but too scared to fall. Too scared of failure, way more scared of feeling regret. I'm not even trying, that's terrifying. I understand that chasing my goals, I bury my clocks because it takes time. I gotta go. I already know if I wanna grow, you reap what you sow. That be the case. Planting my seeds and water my base. Yeah, I make mistakes. Yeah, I know you grow in your garden, but watch for the snakes. The people that act like you're crazy, but trying this, they far away. They don't think it's possible, I think it's possible. That is just hate. If they hate themselves, cause they on the shelf. While you create a life that you love.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:A life that you love. Loving the fact to improving yourself. Decided that you would not settle. Decided that you got the drive to do it. The road got bumping your foot on the pedal. You go up a level, you turn up whenever. It's time for you to go put in that work. I know my work, huh? I know it ain't gonna be easy, yeah. I know it hurt, but thing is for sure. Yeah. Until it put me in this earth. Before I ride in that hearse, I'm chasing my goals.
SPEAKER_00:I'm chasing my goals. Love enough that you're improving yourself. You'll put on the cutter. I'm fixing my goals.
SPEAKER_01:Alright, and welcome back to another episode. Thank y'all so much for being here. If you are on YouTube, go ahead and like and subscribe to the channel. Like right now, go ahead, just hit the like button, subscribe to the channel. If you're watching on, if you are listening on a podcast episode, a podcast platform, excuse me, go ahead and uh leave me a review to my channel. It helps me a lot. Also, become a monthly supporter of the show. You can choose the monthly amount, it can either be three, five, eight, or ten dollars. You can cancel at any time. Why would you ever do that? I left links in the description um of this podcast for you to be able to become a supporter. Let's go ahead and dive in. This is a really important one today, and I feel like everybody can relate to this one. What if I told you that your brain is riding? Because there's a really good chance it is. And this is an important one to start your January with because I know you got goals, you got the new year's resolutions, I know you want to end this year better than you ended 2025. And it's also a good chance that your brain did some riding away in 2025. It might sound a little grim, but it's true for a lot of people, including me. Because the fact is, you either green and growing, or you brown and dying. Your brain is either growing or it's dying. There really ain't no in between. And in 2025, probably, probably even in this new year already, you've probably helped your brain rot. And my purpose of this episode is to give you the best defense when it comes to preventing this. Again, your brain is either growing or decaying. And if you don't make a conscious effort to learn things, to challenge yourself, to give your brain some kind of stimulation, you could be passively letting that brain of yours ride away. Every time you scroll, every TikTok video, every mind-numbing death scroll, you know that one, when you scroll and scroll and scroll, and you just feel like you damn near can't stop, and you keep going, knowing that you need to get your butt up, it's that endless dopamine hit. All the BS videos that be having you hooked, all this is actually training your brain to get weaker. And I heard a life coach talk about this topic, and they were uh commenting on how it ain't something that you notice right away that it happens over time. One day you're gonna notice how it's harder to focus, how you can't think as clear as you want to, or how as clear as you used to. How you sit down to be productive, and no matter how hard you try, you end up with that damn phone in your hand, right there in your hand, again and again. And you don't remember things as good as you used to. And the only defense against this is to self-educate. Because right now, a lot of the times we can kind of sleepwalk through life if we let ourselves, right? And the reality is nobody gonna come and save you, come and save your life except for you. Nobody's gonna come save your brain rot, except for you. So let's talk about it. This this mental decay, this brain rot. And it is real. And the National Institute of Health is doing a research on it, uh, the NIH for short, and it's probably affecting you right now, affecting a lot of people in your life right now. If you ever felt like, damn, I I can't focus like I used to, or you start forgetting your words mid sentence, or you walk in the room and be like, damn, why did I just come in here? Or you scroll and scroll and scroll for an hour and you barely even remember what you saw, or if you feel more bored or just disconnected from life and just numb, like blah, right? You you just don't know what it is. This might be signs that you are experiencing brain rot. And sure, it could be that you're just getting older, or that you just forgot what you came in the room for, or that you just feel blah because the weather outside, or or like studies show, like actual science shows, it could be your brain is just malnourished. First time using that word, malnourished. Mental atrophy. Mental atrophy is a crazy combination of words to me, but mental mental atrophy. And there was a study at the University of Texas that found that when uh there was a uh disuse of the brain, it literally shrinks your brain, aka use it or lose it. Remember that phrase growing up? Well, in this study, the people who didn't engage in challenging and mental activities compared to folks who did, they saw a reduce in what's called the gray matter in their brain. And you want to know what gray matter in the brain is responsible for? Well, I'm gonna tell you, it's responsible for memory, decision making, and focus. Things like memory, decision making, and focus. Another study. This one was done at Harvard Medical School, and they found that the hippocampus, which is your brain's memory center, it shrinks if it's underused. It shrinks. Now, I don't know about you, but I've definitely been seeing these symptoms, at least mildly, at least the numbness from scrolling. And at the very least, I can feel myself being addicted, addicted to my phone. Because that's literally what it is. It's an addiction. These apps are designed to keep you addicted and to keep you on them as long as they can. That's why they keep giving you all the things you love to see right after another one. And it gives you that dopamine hit to keep you scrolling. And this will make your brain weaker, make your brain rot, make certain parts of your brain shrink. And neuroplasticity, and I talked about this on here before a bunch of times actually, but it's basically your brain's ability to learn things and get better at them. Like piano, for example, and being able to read music. The more your brain does it, the stronger or the more neuroplasticity you build. Those neurons fire more and more, and that chemical bond in your brain that learns how to read music gets stronger and stronger. And when it comes to brain rot, we literally got to look at our brains like it's a muscle. And just like in your body, if you don't use your muscles, if you stop working out, or if you, God forbid, are bed bound, your muscles get weaker. And it happens over time. If your brain is feeling more sluggish lately, this might be you. And look, I ain't judging. We done all been there, done that. Life gets busy, it gets hard. Sometimes you don't even realize it, but you look up and you six episodes into some new show that you won't even like. And you snacking on some snack you ain't even mean to grab, and you've been scrolling online and you watch 60 versions of the same TikTok video, and then it's like your spirit starts talking to you, right? Like, hey, like what what is we doing? The hell you got going on right now? Is this really life right now? Brain rot. Hashtag brain rot. Been there, done that. And the good news is it's reversible. You can undo it. Just like if you stop using your muscles and they get weak. Well, if you decide to work on the muscles, if you work, if you decide to work them out, they're gonna get stronger. Your memory and focus can get stronger. And this is where self-education does beautiful work for you. Damn near like medicine for the brain. So you deciding to educate yourself, self-education, it's your best it's your best mental defense. Because the thing is, whether you realize it or not, your brain is being educated every day. Your brain is being educated every day. The question is, by what? Is it TikTok? Is it the news? Like for me, it's football. Hands down, anybody that knows me, they know I'm a huge New Orleans Saints fan. Like I'm borderline obsessed. I know all the player names, I know uh how good they are, I know the scheme of the offense and the defense. I can be watching the game and tell you what the next play is gonna be because I watch so much football that I know what's most likely to happen given uh any given situation of the game. I even know the backup names. I watch practice. Y'all, I be watching them practice. Do you know how deep you gotta be to be on your phone watching clips of a football team practice? Anyway, my point is your brain is being educated, and the question is by what? And the things that are they're shaping your neural pathways about the things you think about, about how you feel, about how you view other people and the world. And by doing this, this is passive learning. You're letting all the info just come to you as you consume it, and over time you learn it, and it shapes those neural con those neural connections. Or you can do the active learning and the kind of active learning that's gonna help your brain, where you decide to focus and you tell yourself, I'm gonna learn what I want to learn, and actively try to grow your brain so it can get stronger. Another study, 2014, uh a Stanford study showed that active learning increased comprehension significantly. Your memory and your long-term retention of the information that you're consuming by actively learning it. Taking in random information online is like fast food for your brain, it doesn't grow your brain. Yeah, you might have more football knowledge, yeah. You might be caught up with all the latest scandals about whatever celebrity and who dating who and who pregnant by who, but that's empty calories. When you self-educate intentionally and you make a conscious effort to learn and grow, and you tell yourself that you want to get better about this certain topic, and you do it every day or as often as you can, even if it's just 10 minutes a day. If you actually try to grow yourself, that effect on your brain and on your life is gonna happen. You'll start to get a better attention span, you'll get more curiosity around this topic, and your sense of self and your confidence is gonna grow because a lot of times we ain't confident in something. If we're not confident in something, it's because we haven't done it enough. We don't have enough reps at it. The more you do it, the more reps you put into that thing, the more you're gonna learn, the more you're gonna grow, and the more confident you're gonna be at it. Passively absorbing that brain fast food, it don't make you feel confident in the growth that you're looking for in 2026. It just ain't. The growth you're looking for in this year, it ain't gonna come from consuming all the things you've been consuming, it just won't. You just learned a bunch of random things that don't got nothing to do with the life you actually trying to build. But when you study and you get intentional about where you want your life to be, you understand how you need to gain knowledge and skill sets and how you need to grow your mind. You're gonna start stacking up those small wins and you'll start to see some growth, and eventually it'll lead to a better life. And look, this stuff is just important, not just for growth, but for health, your mental health. Check out this study. It was done by the Journal of American Medical Association in 2002. They found that people who engage in frequent active learning, the type of cognitive activities that grew their brains, like reading and writing and learning, they had a 46% lower risk of developing dementia. A 40 cent% chance, a 40 cent lower risk of developing dementia. And I don't know about you, but dementia ain't something I want. My grandma had dementia, and I saw what I did to her, and I don't want that for myself, for anybody. But these studies show your brain stays stronger for a longer period of time in your life when you use it regularly. Learning protects against cognitive decline. Think about this. If you just ate greasy, unhealthy, fatty, junk, just bad food three times a day for six months, would you be surprised if your body saw a decline? No, you would expect that, right? But why don't we do the same thing with our mind? Why don't we expect the decline? If all we do is just doom scroll and overstimulate our brains with dopamine and we watch all the videos all day that don't require us to actually think or really use our brains, and we keep passively consuming all this content that don't challenge our brains and keep us sharp, that will be the mental equivalent of eating all the bad food, but just to our brains. So it ain't a coincidence why it might be harder for you to focus, or you feel anxious, or it's hard to get motivated, or it's hard to stay on task, or you can't put the phone down, or you don't have any inspiration to do anything, there's a good chance it has something to do with your brain rot. We feed our brains trash, our brains get malnourished. Don't train your brain to tolerate this lower quality of what you feed it. Self-education rewires your brain towards better functioning, deeper thinking, right? And toward a better decision making and better focus. And the good news is you can't fix it. You can literally teach yourself anything. Everything you need these days, for one, is online, or we just got easy access to it. You want to learn about the stock market? It's online. You want to learn about how to be a dog trainer? It's online. You want to learn how to build a house. You wanna learn how to um how to you wanna learn about astrology, you want to learn how to be a football coach. It's all online at your fingertips, some way or another. So if you feel like you're stuck, it ain't because you ain't smart. It's just that you stop challenging yourself. And I ain't talking about like book smarts, because look, we all know the structure of our education system, it can't be flawed, right? A lot of times students get taught how to pass tests rather than how to truly obtain knowledge. Because I know I ain't the only one who forgot the majority of all the stuff I learned in school. It damn near felt like as soon as I graduated that knowledge was gone. So I ain't talking about book smarts and courses and college and all that. What I'm talking about is way less time consuming. It could look like you simply reading 10 pages of a book that teaches you something every night. A 10-minute YouTube tutorial or taking notes on a podcast like this one and trying to apply it to your life. Because let's be real, you can listen to me all the time. You can listen to all the 312 episodes I have, but if you don't apply anything to your life, then I ain't making a difference in your life. But yeah, it could look like you doing a journaling or writing prompt that challenges you to write things out that challenge you to think differently than you do right now. There is a real cost of being passive with your brain and not being in charge of what goes in it. What goes into that education of yourself. And we gotta understand that we are risking, we gotta understand what we're risking by not checking this and correcting this. We could be missing out on the person we could become, a future that really makes us happy. Goals being achieved, gaining confidence, being somebody who ain't afraid of going out there and accomplishing anything you set your mind to. And we risk this when we just sit around and let life just come to us, when we just be and just exist, and not actually take control of what goes in our minds and point it at something that can make you grow. And again, you either green and growing or you brown and dying. I've been saying that a lot lately, but science shows it's true. And in 2026, we gotta be growing. And again, this ain't me telling you that you need to study for hours at a time or that you need to be taking some courses or trying to be an expert at something, but just put in some effort to learn something, to do something other than social media with your free time. It can be as simple as a game on your phone, like some kind of brain game or something. And not just that, not just a game on your phone, but just in general. Keep your mind engaged. It can look like so many things. Like I said, this kind of podcast and actually applying the things we talk about on here is a good start. Start learning about a topic that interests you. For me, I'm a big nerd when it comes to the universe, specifically how big it is and all the random knowledge around that. Like, for example, and I love telling folks this um this facts. So the sun is about a million times bigger. So I'm sorry, the earth, nope, I said it right. The sun is about a million times bigger than the earth. A million times. You can fit a million earths in the sun. And if you shrink the sun down to the size of a single grain of sand, then the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of the United States. Which is crazy to me. The sun is over a million times larger than Earth, and if you shrink that down to the size of a grain of sand, then the Milky Way will be the size of the United States. It's hard to grasp how big that is. I can't even grasp the thought of the galaxy being the size of my block with a grain of sand, let alone the whole United States. Like, imagine that grain of sand in the Grand Canyon. Right? Just crazy. Anyway, my point is it could be something like that. Taking an interest in something. Keep your brain sharp and do more than one thing. More than just a game on your phone, more than just knowing and learning random things about the universe. Keep that brain sharp in 2026 because really this is definitely a big delayed gratification type of goal. This is something that you won't even really notice for a while, but you'll notice it when you realize that you are more motivated, that it's easier to focus, when it's easier to just put that phone down and get work done. And all this is important for those goals you got for this new year. So let's get it in. Keep them brains sharp. So that's all I got for you today. Man, again, thank y'all for being here. Please share this episode on your social media if you think this is something that people would um benefit from seeing, or family members share with them or a friend. Uh please become a supporter of the show. You can choose the monthly amount, it can either be three, five, eight, or ten dollars, and you can cancel at any time. Why would you ever do that? Let's go ahead and get to this music. The song I got for y'all today is It All Makes Sense. Let's ride out. 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. I feel like the song really touching me. I can feel the rush in me. Oh, what a feeling. It feels like I'm on the high, like I can touch the ceiling. I felt it in my heart right from the beginning. You can tell I'm a cancer out here talking about my feelings. Not to be too touchy, but your words are never killed me. Hope you felt that. And I've been tryna touch a million. I wanna touch the finer things, wanna touch all kinda things. Take me to the cemetery, let me touch my mama grave. Think about my past, I done seen all kinda things. 20-20 hindsight, probably shouldn't try some things. Okay, I see now. Yeah, I see none. Look me in my eye, nigga. Tell me what you see, huh? 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 persevere. 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 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. 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 never see a blinker. Once on myself as a failure, let me tell you, the victory never tasted sweeter. And keep my name out your mouth. I hope it tastes like ether. I wanna taste her deepest thoughts and designs. Do what it requires to keep her coming. I make sure she arrive. I watch the news, what a divide, I got us thinking different. At Donald Trump, got white people out here thinking ignorant, thinking like some bigots. And think how to make me feel. But you ain't got a touch. Yeah. You 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 gotta touch to know I'm real. Close your eyes. You can hear, I tasted too many tears. It got me thinking. I'm not looking for no real handouts or no pats on the back or no favors. I just want you to feel me. You ain't gotta touch it to know I'm real, close your eyes. You can hear if I tasted too many tears, it got me thinking. If you really feel me. It all makes sense.