When I was talking to an Olympic medalist a little while ago, Olivia Smoliga, she was telling me about this time that she learned that writing something down on paper solidifies it in your brain. She said it took her a while to understand that concept or honestly even believe in it. But now it's something that she wishes everyone would start doing if they aren't already doing that. And I'm here to tell you why she says that. So when Olivia was feeling really stuck years ago, she went to YouTube and started watching inspirational videos of Nipsey Hussle, Kobe Bryant, Yannis, just watching videos of all of them talking. To kind of get through inspiration. She was at this point where she was feeling really low in her career and her personal life, and she was sort of looking for inspiration anywhere and was just willing to try literally anything to feel better. But she started taking notes while she was watching those videos and writing down the things that they were saying in her journal because one time she heard in college from a psychology professor that if you write something down, it solidifies it in your brain. She told me this was around the time that she realized she was just talking really badly about herself, almost as if she was someone she disliked, like talking crap about herself. And that's not how she would talk about a friend. We're supposed to be friends with ourselves. So she felt kind of really silly writing down these affirmations like, I am capable, I am strong, I am full of love, I'm a champion. She felt silly jotting them all down, but she just kind of stuck with it just in case it was working and she had nothing to lose and actually did work for her. And she was saying that it really helped her form more of a childlike curiosity, as she calls it, towards her shortcomings or failures because now she recognized that she was worthy and she was strong enough for lots of things. And so failure. Became a lot more interesting to her because it was more of an opportunity to learn and grow rather than her associating a bad result with her worth. And all of this actually does make a lot of sense to me because I had this expert a while ago, Doctor Michael Gervais, who was telling me how positive self talk really does rewire our brains and it physically changes neural pathways in our brain without us even realizing it, which is so cool. So even if you think you're not someone who will be into writing affirmations down or journaling like that, I actually would be more interested to hear how your experience goes. Just because I was someone who didn't think they would really like writing down affirmations in that way. But I actually really love it and it just kind of works without you even realizing it. So it would be super interested in hearing about your experience. If you do try it out, let me know.
