How to Shift Your Mindset

In this episode of The Impostor Syndrome Files, we dig into what’s happening under the hood when we feel triggered, anxious or stuck. My guest this week is Mitch Weisburgh, educator, author and founder of MindShifting with Mitch. After years in edtech and instructional design, Mitch turned his attention to a deeper question: How do we teach people to manage their brains so they can be more resourceful, resilient and collaborative in the face of challenge?

Mitch shares powerful insights on why your brain’s first reaction is rarely the most helpful, how to recognize your “saboteurs” in action and why self-awareness is the first step to real growth. We explore how meditation, mindfulness and even simple positive self-talk can begin to interrupt unconscious patterns, and how teachers, parents and leaders can model better thinking for the next generation.

We also talk about the work Mitch is doing with educators across the country and his mission to empower 5 million people to lead with greater emotional intelligence and effectiveness.

About My Guest

Mitch’s goal is to grow a critical mass of people who live happy, productive lives—resilient, resourceful, and collaborative in the face of obstacles, adversaries, and unintended outcomes.

From 1981 through 2000, Mitch founded and ran Personal Computer Learning Centers of America, training adults in the use of computers and growing the company to over 130 employees.

In 2005, he cofounded Academic Business Advisors, which helped organizations make a difference and reach more students in U.S. schools. He also launched nonprofit organizations in education such as Games4Ed and Edchat Interactive.

Mitch’s book, MindShifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success (December 2024), focuses on techniques to shift from mindsets that hold us back to ones that propel us forward. Since 2018, he has been creating content, teaching MindShifting and Sensemaking, and building a MindShifting Community for educators. He also writes the MindShifting Educators newsletter, which shares ways to inspire the mind to learn.

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Connect with Mitch:

MindShifting with Mitch newsletter: https://mindshiftingwithmitch.blog/

MindShifting with Mitch website: https://www.mindshiftingwithmitch.com/

Book: MindShifting, Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success: https://a.co/d/242NDWd

MindShifting Courses: https://events.humanitix.com/host/mitchell-weisburgh

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mweisburgh/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weisburghm/

X: https://x.com/weisburghm

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Websites: https://kimmeninger.com

Transcript

Kim Meninger

Welcome. Mitch, it's so wonderful to have you here today. I'd love to start by inviting you to tell us a little bit about yourself.

Mitch Weisburgh

Well, Kim, first of all, thank, thank you so much for having me. I've listened to a few episodes of your podcast and, and they're always interesting. You know, you ask interesting questions, and with the exception of me, you've always have very interesting guests. So I have had, you know, a varied career. I I started off after college, working for my dad. He had a time sharing computer time, time sharing service, and then gravitated towards running my own business. We trained, I guess, corporate managers how to use computers back, starting with the Apple two plus, for about 20 years, and then I decided I really wanted to go into education, because I felt that with the introduction of technology, that education really had an opportunity to, to be an equalizer for all kids that you know, no matter where they were from, no matter what their backgrounds, using technology education could give them the opportunity to live a happy, successful life as members of society. So I was, I was actually advising education publishers on how to use technology and how to scale into schools, how schools actually use software for learning. And after doing that about 15 years, I'm like, you know something? Yeah, technologies in schools much more than it was in 2001, 2002 but are kids better able when they turn 18 to be adults? You know, they are they ready for life? Are they? Can they make decisions? It's like we really haven't used education to equalize the situation. So I was, you know, trying to figure out, well, what is it that that kids should know? And came to the conclusion that that really, we should teach kids how to use their brains, because we, you know, we teach this knowledge and we test the knowledge and stuff, but we're not teaching kids to understand. Gee, I'm in an emotional state. I, you know, I'm probably going to snap at somebody right now, maybe I should calm down. Or I know I can't do this. But that doesn't mean I can't, or I know exactly why this person is wrong, so I just have to tell them, and you know, and that never works. So I put together materials that had really three different streams. The first stream was how to recognize when your own brain is holding you back and what to do about it. And then the second stream was, how do you approach situations when we all know that the first thing that you do probably isn't going to work, and so what do you do then? And how do you approach it from the very beginning, if you really did know that the first thing you were going to do probably wasn't going to work. And then the third strand was, how do you work with other people in a way that all parties can move forward most of the time? And so originally, I developed one class. I first taught it to university students as two day workshop, but I've been teaching it much more to educators over the past five years, because my, my goal is, you know, now that now I've done all this research and I pulled stuff from, you know, neuroscience and psychology and economics and military strategy and all these different areas, you know, how do we get a critical mass of people to know how to do these things, so that not only could they lead better and happier lives, but we could start solving all these issues that we face that we're just battling over, and they're just getting worse and worse. So I've kind of arbitrarily picked the number of 5 million, but my life mission at this point is, how do we get 5 million people to be resourceful, to be able to tap into their the best parts of the brain, resilient, to be able to prepare for failure or not success, and to use the information that comes back in order to continue to move forward and collaborative. So despite the fact that people are going to disagree with us or don't like us or get in our way to be able to work together, to, to meet the problems that we face. So how do we get a critical mass of, say, 5 million people to do that? That's what I'm trying to do.

Kim Meninger

Wow, I love that you're doing that, and I, I wish there were more of you.

Mitch Weisburgh

I wish there were well, I don't wish there were more of me. I'm already too heavy, but I wish you know I can't do this alone. So, so it's just like the more people who know these tools, who can teach other people or call. Coach other people, like, you know, I'm sure probably 80% of what I'm talking about are things that you coach your individual clients on. Anyhow, it's like, how do you recover? How do you know that you can do something? How do you develop the self-confidence? How do you work with others? Those are the things that you're coaching people.

Kim Meninger

Yeah, and you know, what I love about what you're saying too, is that it acknowledges that you can have all the technical skills in the world, but if you don't know how to manage yourself, or you manage yourself in relationship to others, you're not going to be as effective as you could be. You're not going to be as confident as you could be. It will hold you back. And I've always, you know, kind of disliked the term soft skills, right? Oh, I hate that term. I feel like, you know what we're talking about. Others might consider soft skills, but I feel like, especially in this age where things are changing so quickly, and people are under tremendous stress in so many areas of their lives that having technical skills just isn't enough.

Mitch Weisburgh

No, in in Finland, they call these transversal skills. They're the skills that underlie all the other things that we do. I've also heard them talking people talking about them as foundational skills, because they're the foundation that all the other skills that we have built upon. I like that.

Kim Meninger

Those are much better terms. And so today, are you primarily, you said, working with educators. Are you primarily targeting college students before college like, where are the where are the people that you're trying to connect with?

Mitch Weisburgh

So, so when I started, the first group of people that I taught were college kids, okay, but what I figured is that I could leverage my own time if I taught teachers. So I teach professional development courses over zoom, there's three different courses, one based on resourcefulness, one based on resilience, one based on conflict and collaboration. So I teach them over zoom, either six sessions or eight sessions to, you know, two hour sessions in New York State and in the state of Washington, I the courses are listed on the state portals for the teachers. So teachers can go to PD enroller if they're in if they're in Washington, or they can go on whatever it is that begins with an F in in New York State. And I, and I'd like to offer it in other states as all as well. I'm not in Massachusetts yet, which is where you are, but teachers sign up for these basically for free, and, and, and they take the, you know, they take the courses. So that's the teaching part of it. Then people been pushing me to write books, and so I wrote the first book, which is, stop your brain from sabotaging your happiness and success. So I wrote that book. That book came out last December, and I fought against writing a book because I don't know that you can learn this just by reading a book. And I still don't think I still know, like just reading the book once, is you're not going to pick most of the you may become aware of some of these techniques, but I've heard from people who've read the book like three or four times, and this one woman was saying she gets she has such high anxiety that she gets hospitalized for weeks at a time, and now that She's read the book three times, and worked out some of the exercises. First of all, she reckoned she understands what her therapists were saying to her, so she can understand them much better. Second, she can recognize in herself when she's starting to get anxious, and she can use some of the techniques to calm it down. And if that doesn't calm it down. She can talk to her therapist early, before she gets to the point she was hospitalized, and it's like, wow, you know something, you, you can, if you put the work in, learn this from a book, but you're going to learn it, but you're going to learn it faster and easier. If, let's say, oh, I can call Kim Meninger, and I can get one on one coaching from her, and so you know somebody calling you up, they're going to get that a lot faster than they are trying to learn it just from a book. So anyhow, so that's the first book, and then the second book, the one on conflict and collaboration, is coming out in just a couple weeks, and that's actually volume three. And everybody has said, Mitch, you can't call it volume three. It's the second book, okay? But it's like, no, because the first course is the resourceful one, the second course is the resilient one, the third course is the conflict one. This would this corresponds to the third course. And so I have volume one. Volume three will be out. Out in a week or two. That's, that's the way it goes. And Volume Two will be out next, you know, in a year.

Kim Meninger

I love that. So can you talk a little bit about what you see as kind of the core experience or brain function, right? That sort of gets in the way. I know you and I talked a little right, hitting record about the fight, flight, freeze response. I think everyone thinks they understand that, but I not sure that everyone fully appreciates what's happening,

Mitch Weisburgh

Right? So, so that explanation takes, it takes a while. And, you know, whatever explanation I give, whether it's in the course, or it's in the book, or even, you know, hear it and we're talking understand this is an oversimplification, because the brain is probably the most complex organism in the universe. So the way, the way I explain it, is the brain really, the human brain really has two different parts. You could call it lower order and higher order. You call it limbic system versus prefrontal cortex. You could call it your survival brain versus your resourceful brain. So you know, those are all different terms, but your, your limbic brain, or your survival brain, your lizard brain, that was the among the first parts of the brain to develop, and that part of the brain was developed so that the organism could survive. And if you think about it, when something occurs, the organism has to really quickly before it gets all the information that could theoretically be available, make decisions or anything else. It really quickly. It has to do something to protect itself, otherwise it's going to die. And so that part of the organism comes to something in like hundredths of a second, it wakes up. There's a stimulus. You see something, you feel something, you hear something, that stimulus comes in, and within two one hundredths of a second, your limbic parts of the brain is thinking, is this a danger? And it's primed to look for danger. If it is, what can I do? And it locks into what you do once it that process is going to take less than a second. Now, your higher order parts of the brain, say your prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that does critical thinking, creative thinking, empathy, executive function, you know, all the things that we want to think of, you know, hey, you know, I'm human, so therefore I'm, you know, I think, therefore I am right. So that part of the brain wakes up in two to three seconds after a stimulus. So if your limbic or survival parts of your brain have come up with something that you need to do, and then your prefrontal cortex wakes up and says, Hey, what's going on here the limbic parts of the brain? I've already got this. We've already decided what to do. Just give me a rationalization on why this is correct, and that's, that's the main thing that your, your resourceful parts of the brain do under most circumstances. If you try to fight it, like grit or persistence, that limbic parts of the part of the brain fights back and says, no, no, no, I told you what to do. Just say, why this? Wait? Like, why we have to do this? And so by default, that's the way our brains work. Now, the, the that limbic part of the brain locks into one of five different types of actions that it can do quickly. So, you know, we you mentioned it before that. You know, you fight, you flee, you freeze. And those are the three that everybody, most people, know about. You do something that you already know how to do because you've done it before, your habits, the things that you're fluent in, because you don't have to think about them. Okay, if you're thirsty, you know, you drink, you drink, you reach for your glass of water and you drink it. You're not I can be I can talk to you, and I can reach for my for my glass of water, and continue talking to you without, without having to think so your habits and the and the fifth type of action that the limbic parts of the brain and humans do is, is basically mimicking or copying the things that other people in our group are doing. It could do any one of those five things without having to think so hard, and within a second, it's come up with one of them. And then when we challenge it with our, you know, resourceful parts of the brain, it comes back and it fights with Fight, fight, or flees, and it frees and it just, it just locks into that. So if we're thinking, you know, we can't do something, and our resourceful part of the brain comes back and says, Yes, we can. It's like I just said, you can't do it, don't, you know, don't even and so, so it takes a lot of energy to overcome it, and you probably can overcome it sometimes in the very short term, but you're going to exhaust yourself. Okay, you're, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna burn out trying to fight it that way. You thinking, Oh, this is going to blow up. Say, Well, I can think of some. No, no, I this is going to blow up like you better not do anything. And so the way those two sometimes work together is they kind of create these, what, you know, different people call saboteurs, or these part x, which is, which is protecting us by making us miserable. So whatever you do, it's going to come up with a reason why you you're not good enough, or you're not able to do that, and eventually you're, you're going to accept it. So, so then the question is, well, how do you how do you combat that? And I'll just pause here to give you a chance, because I've been rambling on.

Kim Meninger

No, no, that's great, and I really appreciate the way that you're framing it, because I don't think that we typically understand it at that level. I don't honestly remember when I was first taught about the fight, flight or freeze response, but I think we tend to associate it with, you know, facing a physical predator, right? You know. But the reality is that this response is coming up in lots of different ways throughout our day, because we are so easily triggered by things that we don't even recognize as triggers.

Mitch Weisburgh

Right. Our limbic system, our amygdala, okay, it can't distinguish between something that's going to make us a little bit uncomfortable and something that's going to kill us. Whatever it is, it's basically binary. It's either good or it's bad. It's painful, or it's not painful. It's horrible, or it's great, you know, it it's, it's just binary, and if it's bad, we fight, flight, freeze, do something from habit, or just copy what everybody else is doing.

Kim Meninger

Well, I mean, obviously this is, like you said, an oversimplification, but is there a first step, or, you know, sort of a 101, for how to combat that?

Mitch Weisburgh

No, basically, once that happens, you're screwed, you know, like for the rest of your life, you're never going to be happy, right? So, yeah, you know, we're all human, so we all do this, okay? And you know, whether you're male, whether you're female, whether you're whether you're old, whether you're young, it doesn't make any difference. This is part of being human, okay? The first step to overcoming it is to become aware of what's happening in your brain like, Oh my gosh. This is, these are my saboteurs. This is my part x. Now, when you understand what's going on in the brain and you label it as, oh, this is my part x, or this is my saboteur, or this is, this is my pleaser, trying to, you know, raising it said, just that awareness takes you out of just feeling it to thinking about it. And once you're thinking about it, you're, you know, that may be enough to take you out of this, like, oh my gosh, I'm in limbic again. Okay, I got it. I don't have I don't have to be that way. Let me, let me be more resourceful, or let me think of some other ways that I can handle this. Sometimes that's enough. Sometimes it takes some distraction, like there goes my phone. Sometimes it takes some address distraction, like a phone call. But, but you know, meditation, mindfulness, taking a walk, for some people, exercise, listening to music, talking to a friend. You know, anything that that gets that can take your mind off of whatever it is that you're feeling fearing, feeling anxious about, or afraid of, or feel that you have to do allows your brain to kind of flush out those cortisol and adrenaline, those fear hormones. And once they're flushed out, you can then maybe tap into your resourceful parts of the brain. So the second A second method is meditation or mindfulness, or, you know, more generically, distraction. And then the third method is positive self-talk. Now, positive self-talk isn't You idiot? You just screwed up again, you know, like, that's, that's not an example. Positive self-talk is talk that opens up your brain like you're, you know, a limbic reaction to something is, you know, I know exactly what to do here. Well, opening up your brain would be, well, gee, I wonder if there are a couple other ways of doing this to so you can consider some alternatives. Or limbic would be like, I've got to do this. And I. I can't do this positive self-talk might be Gee, perhaps I can. And then, you know, you say to yourself, perhaps I can. With curiosity, your brain almost can't help but start coming up with ways that you that you could maybe not at this moment, maybe you have to look something up, maybe you have to learn something, maybe you have to practice something. Maybe you have to let something rest. Maybe you can do it, just not the way you were thinking of it, but that a positive self-talk is talk that allows you to open up, open up your brain. So those are really the three things that you can do for yourself. First, being, you know, self-aware. Second, being distraction. Third, being positive self-talk that opens up your brain. And then the fourth way is to find somebody that you trust to help you through that. And so that that person is basically being your co-regulator. And so that person may be the one that says, you know, Kim, I can see you look a little bit upset right now. You think this might be your limbic brain and you want to just take a walk with me, okay? Or it could be the person that says, you know, I see, I see what you're going through. Just step back for a second. If this really worked out, what would you really want to happen? And just by having a person who you trust you know you did you do this with your clients? Okay, that a person you trust talking you through some of these steps where you couldn't do it on your own, gives you the strength to then start doing this on your own, and also overcome whatever those obstacles. So to me, those are the four most likely ways of quickly overcoming, you know, all the impediments that our brain throws in our way.

Kim Meninger

Yes, yeah. And, you know, it just strikes me how important the first one is to be able to get to the next three, [right, right, right]. If you don't know what's happening, if you're not tuning in, then you're just going to be on autopilot, and it's going to end up showing up in ways that don't serve you in the long run, right?

Mitch Weisburgh

And we see, we see that in others really well, okay? And, and we see that especially in others that we disagree with. You know, whatever your, your political views are, when you look at the other side, it's like, how could they possibly be thinking that? Well, the reason that they're thinking that is because they're in their limbic brain and they're and they're not able to access their prefrontal cortex. But the fact of the matter is, you're probably doing it too, you know. And you have to be you know. You have to have the self-awareness say, you know something, I'm maybe some of the things that I'm thinking are in my limbic brain also, how, what else? What am I missing in this situation?

Kim Meninger

That's really important too. I think we're very quick to judge others without looking in the mirror, right? Is there a way, like a practice or something that you think about for strengthening that awareness? Because it happens really fast, and I think so much of our brain is cluttered with noise, and like you said, the phone's going off and we've got pop ups of reminders of things everywhere, and so our brains obviously can't handle all of that at once. Like, are there simple things people can do to try to slow down long enough to catch this stuff?

Mitch Weisburgh

Well, what I've noticed with, with myself is that I meditate every morning for 10 to 20 minutes, and that gives me just enough of an edge so that when things are happening, I can catch myself a lot quicker before, most of the time, before they go out of control before they blow up. And then, you know, I may have to do something for two minutes anyhow, or a minute or, or five minutes. But the, you know, the process of, for me, it's meditation 10 to 20 minutes. Some people, it's working out to just feel yourself so that you're much better able to do it during, during the day. And I would say, if you're saying to yourself, that sounds nice, but I have too much to do to do it. That's a sign that you're in your limbic brain right now. Okay? Because that's, that's exactly what I would expect your limbic brain, your Saboteurs to tell you, because they don't want to give up their power. You know, they're right now controlling your life, and so they don't want you to do that, you know, 10 or 15 minutes of meditation, and then to think, Well, what do I really want to accomplish? In this situation, what, what is, did I really should? Should I have responded in this way? Or are there other ways that I could respond better, and how do I make up for the fact that that this wasn't my best response? They don't want you to do that.

Kim Meninger

Yes, that makes perfect sense. It's really hard, because it takes a certain level of emotional maturity, beyond just recognizing what you're doing, to then take it to the next level and actually maybe apologize to somebody or have a different conversation going forward. And I think sometimes, like you said, we get really stubbornly attached to wanting to be right.

Mitch Weisburgh

And this well, and I'm going to just stop you a second, because when you say we get stubbornly attached, and I'm going to say it's not we, it's a part of our brains. It's our saboteurs. And if we can disassociate ourselves from that if we could, if we say we're stubbornly attached, that that's like, bring it on myself if I, if I can say, you know, my saboteurs are stubbornly attached to this, but I don't have to listen to them, I can separate myself. So I think that's a big part of it, is the way we label things. We very often think this is what has to be. This is the truth. This is who I am. No, it's not what has to be. It's the story that we're telling ourselves right now. It's not what has to be, it's the it's the script that we're following. It's not me. It's just a piece of me that I that exists. You know? It's trying to help me, okay? And it's, it's a warning symbol. So I should, I should pay attention to the extent that it's warning me that there may be some danger, there may be some risk here, but that's its job. Its job isn't to control me.

Kim Meninger

Yes, good point. I think that's a very good point. We sometimes fall into those fixed mindset.

Mitch Weisburgh

Yep, yep. [Yeah, yeah.] Harold Dweck is one of my heroes.

Kim Meninger

Oh, absolutely. You know, when you talk about reaching students, I think it's so important to get to them before, kind of…

Mitch Weisburgh

Wouldn't that be great, right?

Kim Meninger

I know I was really grateful to see my kids are 10 and 15, that they do have a lot of conversations about growth mindset, so that's great to see that work in there. But I don't think they go as far as you and I are going right now in terms of talking about managing the limbic system and, and that that would be amazing to bring that to a younger audience.

Mitch Weisburgh

No, it's so it's so rewarding to be working with teachers, and for the teachers to come in and say, you know, you know, I have this kid in my classroom, and they trigger me all the time. And I just remembered what you said, you know, say in the conflict and collaboration book with the one, the one that's coming out in December 1. You know, I remember what you said about conflict and collaboration, that rather than try to control them, the first thing that I should try to do is connect with them. And so I went up to this student and with nothing, no ulterior motive, just to have a conversation, to find out what they were interested in. And within five minutes, we were talking about what they could do differently, because I wasn't going in trying to change them, and they sensed that.

Kim Meninger

That's really powerful. Wow. Yeah, well, I'm gonna come back to where I started and just say, I wish there were more people doing the work. [Thank you.] And you know, I I'm sure that people listening would love more of your work as well. And where can people find you if they want to stay connected to you?

Mitch Weisburgh

Well, one thing is, my website is mind shifting with mitch dot com Okay, so that website it lists the courses. It lists the books I'm on, you know, podcasts also in in addition to that, on, on Mondays at four o'clock Eastern, I do a half an hour live. So it's that's on LinkedIn, and that's on sub stack. And so people find, you know, my name is Mitch Weisburgh. People find me on LinkedIn or on Substack. They can tune in at four o'clock Eastern on Mondays, and they could get me there as well.

Kim Meninger

Excellent. I'll make sure that all of those links are in the show notes as well. And thank you so much for being here, Mitch, and thank you for the work you're doing.

Mitch Weisburgh

No, Kim, thank you. And you know, thank you for doing this podcast, because I know this is not what's making you a multi-millionaire, right? This is, this is, you know, just as, as what I'm doing, I'm doing, because I think it makes a difference in the world. This podcast is how you're making a difference in one of the ways that you're making a difference in the world

Kim Meninger

Thank you. I really appreciate that.