Dr. Shadé Zahrai

Something that we do share though with people is if you feel like you're constantly comparing to other people and you're feeling like you're worse off, you're feeling like you're not as good as they are, something that's really valuable is to move from comparison to what we call emulation.

Comparison is pitting two things against each other and looking for differences.

So emulation is cool.

Look at what that person is doing.

How did they do it?

And how can I emulate that so I can do it too?

So you take learnings from their journey, apply it to your own.

And suddenly, rather than feeling, oh gosh, I'm so far behind, you suddenly realize, hey, if they can do it, I can do it.

What's that first step I'm going to take?

So that's one step you can take.

It's to really focus on, okay, how do I stay in my lane?

All of these things that we're talking about are actually just habits.

And in fact, I would argue that a belief is simply a habitual way of thinking.

So when we understand that they're habits, it also empowers us to realize, hey, we can create better habits over the old ones.

And what happens in those moments when you start to notice that self-doubt, that inner criticism, that I don't feel good enough, what's happening is you're often tending to, and this links to the third pillar, which we'll get to, you tend to start focusing on things outside of your control.

This is why all of these four, they really do, they rise and fall with each other.

You start focusing on things outside of your control.

When you do that, what we notice when we look at brain scans is that there's less activity in your ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for rationality and solution finding and logical thinking, which means that your thinking is largely driven by the emotion centers, which is why it feels so self-consuming when we're in that state.

All the emotions come with it and all the negative thoughts come with it.

I'm so far behind.