It's time to brain floss!
This analogy is gross, but I always tell it anyways because it's that good. You can tell when someone hasn't flossed their teeth. You just can. And it's the same thing when someone hasn't flossed their brain.
It shows up in conversation as doubt running just underneath everything and a smallness in how they talk about what's possible. Some of the most intellectually brilliant people are walking around with years of unexamined beliefs quietly running their life, and they have no idea.
There is an art to clearing that, and it's my self-coaching practice I call brain flossing.
I do this every single day in my 90 Days to Done workbook. Last week I showed a reel where I held up four workbooks: one for every quarter of the most difficult year of my life. A year where I had no control over what was happening around me. What those workbooks represent is that even in the middle of that, I was able to choose HOW I experienced it.
I had none of the answers, but because I stayed intimate with my own mind, kept asking the questions AND kept answering them honestly, that practice is what gave me the ability to navigate something I never would have asked for and come through it clearer than I went in.
I want to be specific here because I think people assume this kind of work is only for hard seasons. I use brain flossing when everything is working too. When I am in a growth season, when things are moving, when life feels good, I use it to sharpen my decision making, to expand my capacity, and to get the kind of clarity that most people spend years searching for in all the wrong places.
Speaking of clarity, it's the number one thing people ask for but it's also what so many have backwards. They want it, but they are not willing to start with what they are thinking first. Instead they ask everyone around them, they dump their uncertainty on other people, they look outward for an answer that was always going to have to come from inside. And the reason they skip the internal step is that it requires them to ask the question and answer it. Those are two different things and both are required.
Here's my practice. SAVE this letter and do it. I'll be your accountability partner on this.
Step 1. Set a timer for eleven minutes and write down every thought you have about the area of your life that feels stuck or unclear right now. Write exactly as the thoughts sound in your head, including the ones that seem too small or too dramatic to say out loud.
Eleven minutes is the perfect starting point because it gives your brain just enough time to get out what's sitting right at the edge. Sometimes I do this for much longer depending on what's coming up, but always commit to at least eleven minutes. If you're having trouble getting the thoughts out, a great practice is to write down what you are feeling. My paper would look like: F: frustrated… and then I would have to ask myself, ok what's going on that I'm frustrated? Also, note that you can start with writing down a thought OR a feeling, whichever is easiest for you to start to get things out on paper. Do not overcomplicate it, just write.
Step 2. When the timer goes off, take a different color pen (this part is mandatory) and talk back to everything you wrote. The different color matters because your brain can see the two conversations on the page, the old narrative and the new one, and that visual difference is part of how you create distance between the thought and the truth.
For example, if you are working on money mindset and you wrote something like "there's not enough coming in," you ask yourself, is that actually true? Did I have enough to pay my bills last month? You start to break up the thoughts that way. And even when a thought is actually true right now, you ask yourself, is it possible that it doesn't have to always be? Yes, it's possible because… and then you keep going.
Step 3. For the thoughts that feel most stuck, write the words "wouldn't it be so fun if.." or "it's possible that…" and then answer it.
Those are great bridge thoughts to allow yourself go somewhere genuinely new.
Step 4. Stay with it until you feel a shift in your body from how you felt when you first sat down. That feeling is the signal that something has actually moved, and your body will know it before your mind does.
You'll know you did it right because you get up a different person than the part of you that sat down.
One thing I want to add that changes the whole experience: I talk to myself in third person when I am in it. 'Esperanza, you do know this. You can do this, look what you've already done. It's okay that it didn't work before, but this time it will if you decide.' Doing that creates just enough space to respond to my own thoughts from my higher self rather than the part of me that is IN them.
Here's why the repetition piece matters so much. My thoughts once sounded like 'I don't know how to write a book or if anyone would even read it.' Now they sound like 'I am a bestselling author. I have so much value to impart on the world. People are waiting for this book because it will impact them deeply.' See how different those are? That shift did not happen overnight, but I kept showing up to the page, kept talking back to the old thoughts, kept feeding the new ones, until the new ones became the louder voice.
Your brain doesn't know the difference between a truth and a lie, and it needs repetition to build a new belief into something automatic. This practice is a lifetime skill, and when you do it consistently, what feels normal to think about yourself starts to shift, and that shift is what changes everything in your business, your leadership, your relationships, your health, your parenting, every area, because your thinking is the thing underneath all of it.
If you implement what I just gave you and you use it, the ROI you will get back over the course of your lifetime is something I can't even begin to put a number on, but it will be one of the greatest assets of your life. I know because it is the thing that has changed mine. Take it for you, too.
That is brain flossing. And you can start today with a timer, two pens, and eleven minutes.
It's all possible.
If you believe it is.
I do.
ps. I love that photo so much bc I. it's recent and II. it's been a while since we've been out of the house like this. My mom was there too, she's now becoming a regular in these Brain Waves! Hi, Mom!!
FOR THE LEADERS IN THE ROOM
Every person needs this skill and if you lead people, if a team depends on you, if your decisions shape the culture around you, the need becomes even more urgent.
Here's why: how you do one thing is how you do everything, and if you are showing up to lead your team carrying unexamined residue from every other area of your life, that residue is in the room with you.
It's in how you respond under pressure, how safe your people feel to take risks and tell the truth. It's the difference between whether your team can access the kind of psychological safety that makes real innovation possible or whether they are quietly managing around the version of you that has not done the internal work yet (yes, really!).
I genuinely cannot imagine leading a team without brain flossing. If you lead people, this practice belongs in your life.