The Hilary Silver Podcast
How to Rewire Your Brain; A Neuroscience Hack To Think Better Thoughts
Fri, 23 May 2025
If you're tired of second-guessing yourself, overthinking everything, and dragging around a perfectionist inner critic, this episode is the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed. Hilary Silver breaks down exactly how to rewire your brain—yes, literally—so you can stop the mental spiral and start thinking thoughts that actually serve you. The truth? That nagging voice in your head? You learned it. And now it’s time to unlearn it. Episode Highlights: Why 95% of your thinking is subconscious (and why it matters) How your inner critic formed, and how to shut it down The 3-step neuroscience-based process to create better thoughts Why flimsy affirmations don’t work, but powerful declarations do The role of repetition in changing your brain (hint: neuroplasticity is your superpower) Episode Breakdown: [00:00] How To Rewire Your Brain To Think Thoughts That Serve You [01:08] How the Subconscious Shapes Your Beliefs [03:15] How to Stop Your Self-Sabotage [04:18] Interrupting Negative Thought Patterns [05:23] Replace Affirmations with Declarations [06:27] Train Your Brain with Neuroplasticity [07:53] Your Daily Journal Practice [08:15] 3 Steps to Rewire Your Brain Whether you’re battling self-doubt, perfectionism, or just sick of feeling like your own worst enemy, this is your permission slip to think better, feel better, and be better. No fluff. Just straight-up science-backed self-worth. ✨ Want the daily tool Hilary used to rewire her own brain? The Daily Journal is the how-to for everything she shares here: https://hilarysilver.com/journal/
Chapter 1: What are the signs of overthinking and self-doubt?
Do you have trouble making decisions? Tend to overthink things or doubt yourself? Maybe you second-guess yourself in conversations, replay things that you said in your mind and hope you didn't say the wrong thing. Maybe you beat yourself up when you've made a mistake and have trouble forgiving yourself or letting things go.
Chapter 2: How can you stop being your own worst enemy?
Or maybe you lean towards perfectionism and feel like nothing you do is ever quite good enough and you just can't give yourself a damn break. If any of that sounds familiar, this episode is for you because that is just no way to live. So today I'm going to show you how to free yourself from all of that so you can stop being your own worst enemy and instead become your own best friend.
Hi, it's Hillary. Welcome to the Hillary Silver Podcast. Thanks for tuning into the conversation today. If you haven't already, it would mean so much to me if you'd take a minute to just click that five star rating on your podcast app, leave a review and subscribe so you never miss one of my episodes.
Chapter 3: What role does the subconscious play in our thinking?
And if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider sharing it with a friend because if you like it, they will probably like it too. Did you know that your conscious mind while powerful only accounts for about 5% of your thinking.
So this includes all that happens in your prefrontal cortex, your executive functioning, things like logical thinking, decision making, problem solving, impulse control. You're actively thinking and choosing and managing something in real time. That means that the other 95% of your brain activity is Thank you so much for watching. without you even realizing it.
So this is where we have to begin to change all that stinkin' thinkin' that is holding you back and actually exhausting you. So the first step is to start really tuning in and hearing what it is that you're saying. Your constant stream of thoughts running through your mind all day long is so familiar you don't even hear it.
But it's always there, narrating your life, shaping your choices, and defining who you believe that you are. It's that voice in your head that tells you what to say, what not to say, what's possible for you, what's wrong with you, what you should be doing better. But here's the thing. You did not choose that voice. You learned it.
Chapter 4: How can you identify your inner critic?
Most of the thoughts that you think today, the way you speak to yourself and judge yourself and doubt yourself are echoes of what you heard growing up from parents and teachers and coaches and religion and culture, even the most well-meaning parents. can be critical, demanding, or even emotionally unavailable at times.
Chapter 5: What is the first step to changing negative thought patterns?
And if you were constantly corrected or criticized or doubted or expected to perform, you learned early on that there is a certain way to be to earn love, acceptance, and approval. So you internalize those voices and now you're doing it to yourself. You learned to speak this way to yourself. That inner critic that says, why did you say that?
Chapter 6: How does verbal abuse manifest in self-talk?
And you should be more like this, or you should be more like that, or you should do more, do better. All of that is not just critical. What you are saying to yourself is actually verbal abuse. And you've been doing this to yourself likely your whole life. Take that in for just a minute. Verbal and emotional abuse. And you're doing it to yourself.
Chapter 7: What is a pattern interrupt and how can it help?
If you were to say some of those things out loud to a friend or even to a stranger, you'd probably be horrified. You would never speak to someone else that way. But because it's happening silently inside your own head, it goes unchecked. So the first step is to start listening. Slow down and actually tune in and hear what it is that you are saying to yourself. Notice the tone. Notice the words.
Ask yourself, would I say this to someone that I love? Because if not, then it has no business being said to you. The way you talk to yourself is not how you speak to someone you actually love, is it? That is a very big first step because once you hear it, it's pretty motivating to wanna change it. So now we're gonna pattern interrupt.
You're literally going to call yourself out on all your own BS. The moment that you start going down that same old path, the self-doubt, the self-criticism, instead of it letting take over like usual, you're going to stop and breathe and you're going to remind yourself, I don't talk to myself that way. That isn't actually true.
That alone is really powerful, because every time that you do that, you're weakening the old neural pathway. You're saying, not this time, I choose differently now, and that leads me to step two. Decide what you want to believe and think instead. You decide what you want to believe and think about yourself. This is your adult self choosing what you want to believe about yourself.
This is a conscious choice, deciding how you wanna talk to yourself and what you wanna believe about yourself. We're turning off the autopilot and reprogramming. what it is that you want to be thinking and believing and saying to yourself on purpose. This is not just a flimsy affirmation that you don't really believe, but a declaration which has a different energy behind it.
It has intention behind it. It has power behind it. It's a statement that you must accept as true, such as, I can make mistakes and still be good enough. I don't have to be perfect to be loved. How about this one? It's okay to relax and do nothing. You're not trying to fake positivity. You're just practicing a new way relating to yourself, one thought at a time.
So here is what I want you to understand before we move on to step three. Your beliefs and thoughts are not fact. We often treat our beliefs as fact, but they aren't. They are nothing more than sentences and and statements that we have heard and then said to ourselves so many times that we believe it now.
And over time, that repetition forms the neural pathway in your brain, which means it's a default fallback pattern and habit. but our brains can change. This is our human superpower. Neuroplasticity means we can learn new things.
And we do this by making new connections in the brain, taking two previously unconnected neurons and connecting them together over and over and over until they fuse together. Maybe you've heard this phrase before, neurons that fire together wire together. That is what we're going to do now. So repeating what you choose to believe over and over and over again. Repeat it until you believe it.
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