Can your brain actually be rewired from negative to positive?

Today's conversation with Deanna Beckett, author and speaker, tackles the stories we tell ourselves and how they shape everything we do in business.

Deanna spent years dragging bitterness and guilt into her work and relationships. Through Bible study and daily thought-resetting, she learned something critical: What goes in comes out. Garbage in, garbage out.

She talks about neuroplasticity: How our brains can be rewired from dead, gnarly branches into something healthy and growing. But you can't just remove a bad habit and leave a hole. You have to replace it with something good.

The workplace reality? More than half of conversations at work are probably negative. That doesn't just waste time—it attracts more negativity and keeps you stuck.

Deanna's daily practice: She rewrites Bible verses in first person and speaks them out loud. "He gives me the ability to produce wealth." Instead of scrolling social media and feeling anxiety creep up, she shuts it off and tackles what she's been avoiding.

One shift that changes everything: Replace "I have to" with "I get to." Add "yet" to complaints. "I'm not where I want to be... yet."

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

1. Control what you can control—your attitude and your response. You can't control other people's reactions or circumstances, but you can choose grace when someone's having a rough day.
2. Chase peace intentionally. Redirect negative conversations at work or remove yourself from them entirely.

One challenge from today:

1. Shift two words tomorrow morning. Instead of "I have to go to work," say "I get to go to work." Pay attention to how that small change affects your whole day. Everybody's fighting a battle you know nothing about—be gracious.

More About Deanna Becket

www.deannabecket.com

www.shockingyourshtick.com

More About David Schmidt

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So mindset is defined by Webster as a mental attitude or inclination. sometimes, and mindset and the stories we tell ourselves are very powerful, but sometimes they're not true. And so we gotta be aware of that. And so today I brought on Deanna Beckett, who is an author and a speaker to dig deeper into mindset and essentially how that affects business, both good and bad mindsets. So Deanna, welcome. And to start off today.

Let us know what is one way that you have found to honor God in your business that others may not know about.

thought about this for a little bit and ⁓ the first thing that I came up with was I talked to myself all day long because we all do and ⁓ the things we talk about the things we let drift into our mind is really imperative and that's what where where my mindset conversations and ⁓ coaching kind of guides people is where is that little voice inside of our head

But a few other things that fit this is ⁓ honoring God ⁓ in my business, ⁓ which you my business is, and a lot of our businesses are right in our home, just kind of all around us. We are our business. And so in addition to talking to myself all day long is making sure integrity and truth are in all conversations, ⁓ chasing peace with all my might.

because anxiety is rampant in this country. I see it on social media and I feel it kind of creeping up my neck and my back muscles. And it's something that we are told biblically to chase it down, run it down and seek peace with all our might. And then of course, every day in God's word, which I will be.

I'll admit this morning I was going too fast and I haven't done that yet. So that'll be something I'll be kicking off right after this call.

Okay,

very good. know anxiety, it's something we're supposed to give to God and not take it back. ⁓ He doesn't do things fast, so sometimes I like to take it back, but that's not a good thing. So, sorry. ⁓ So give us a little bit of your background, a story of your background and how mindset has been, impacted your life and what started you down this road.

Certainly. ⁓ Going back to not necessarily childhood, childhood, but I was raised in a community in North Dakota and it had a heavy ⁓ German background. And that doesn't mean, you know, like, you know, Third Reich or anything. It just means that ⁓ they're very stoic and ⁓ love and emotion isn't ⁓ communicated or it's not shown ⁓ externally with hugs or anything like that.

So it's very, very rigid and very, ⁓ I don't even know how else to explain it, but it's tough. Tough love maybe is how it is. But in addition to that, I made some poor choices in college, which led me to have a baby when I was 19 and gave it up for adoption. And that guilt and anger and a little bit of bitterness followed me. Well, I don't know if it followed me. I think I drug it into.

my future relationships, my future ⁓ work, my future businesses, but with exposure to ⁓ Bible study, ⁓ at-home businesses, ⁓ this started or got me exposed to ⁓ authors and different ways to read and study the Bible and it got me resetting my thoughts and my actions.

Sure.

plus my response to my thoughts, my reactions to things. And it's been a lifetime of resetting and moving forward. It hasn't been ⁓ just overnight or a few months process. It's been a lifetime. It's been 20, 25 years. So when I look back on how we reacted and how we responded over the past five years, six years now, ⁓ since 2020 and that hoorah that happened then, ⁓

I saw a lot of people backslide and ⁓ just negative thinking and just hopelessness. And I caught myself sliding as well when I would read things, when I would dig more in the news and I'm like, okay, that's enough. If I'm backsliding and I've been doing this for 20 years and trying to get myself out of this rut, I know other people are struggling as well.

Sure. Yep. And it's easy. It's like everything else. It's a slow slide. It's not bang, good attitude, bad attitude. It comes a little at a time. ⁓ So mindset is very important. And a lot of business coaches and all that stuff say mindset is everything. How would you define mindset?

Mm-hmm.

Defining it, ⁓ let's see, let me think. A definition of mindset, I mean, you had it right off the start. I love your definition of it. But defining it would be how we think moment to moment and making sure it is how John Maxwell says, make sure it's high road, high road thinking. ⁓ When we look at ⁓

I know.

you know, some of the old phrases, know, garbage in garbage out, what we're putting in, we're going to, you know, put back out. ⁓ Another one is a stinkin thinking. We start going down that slippery slope of letting that garbage just fester and ⁓ get us to thinking poorly. It ⁓ truly ⁓ guides the way ⁓ you run yourself, you run your business, you communicate with others.

Yep, yep.

Okay. And it should be obvious, but I want you to kind of draw it out a little bit. How does your mindset affect the way you do business? I mean, you think if you're happy, sad, whatever, you just do your business, but how does that affect it?

Right.

affects it. ⁓

Just thinking back of ⁓ different attitudes I had before I started climbing back out of the hole or the crevice that I was in and that anger and bitterness. But now I look at how in tune I am with attitudes of myself, my attitude that I have, but also other people's attitudes and other people's communication personalities as well.

⁓ If I run into ⁓ some conversations at work that are a little negative or they're getting into a gripe session or they're ⁓ pouring on, know, over analyzing, you know, somebody else's performance behind their back, that kind of thing, I'll either try to redirect the conversation or completely dismiss myself from the gathering if it's truly negative.

⁓ So in the work ⁓ business format, it really is ⁓ how you're responding and how you're reacting to other people. And then what you're drawing in too, because if we are in that negative mindset, in that low road thinking, that's what also we attract.

So if I'm thinking I'm not worthy, I can't do this, I'm just, know, da da da da da, and that phrase of I'm just, I'm just, I'm just, and that's where we're gonna stay. We're gonna stay at this medium, low level ⁓ attracting of ⁓ good people around us, of promotion, of if you're wearing sales, we're not going to ⁓ attract the people that have the business that we wanna deal with.

know if you know any statistics, I haven't looked them up, how much, what's the percentage of talk at work is negative. I know at the places I've been at, there's a high percentage of talk that we just complain, we gripe about somebody or a decision or this or that. That affects productivity. I mean, if you're talking in the course of an hour, you're talking a half hour of it, 10 or 15, 20 minutes could be negative if you just.

took the negativity away, people talk a lot and a lot of times it's negative and then it affects, it snowballs. So I'm not sure.

Absolutely.

I wish I knew the statistics, but I just was talking with a volunteer ⁓ team in my region for my actual work, rather than ⁓ my real business or my, I don't even want to call it my side gig, but my speaking business. But in my work, my job, talking with a team and they went to a meeting. It might've been two hours long.

and 90 % of it was negative talk about something that they were annoyed with and 10 % of it was something positive forward moving. I thought I would have hated to have been in that room. I would have had left really quickly. Now in the work, workforce, workplace, I don't think it's that high, but I bet it's more than 50%.

yeah.

Probably, we are more inclined to be negative than positive as a society, ⁓ which is not good. So what makes a good mindset? We talk about having a good mindset, bad mindset. Can you describe that to us in a little detail?

as a human. No.

Absolutely. ⁓ Of course, you know, it's different for every person. I mean, we're all starting at different levels. And ⁓ there's some times where I just, I just want to help people. And I know other people, when I was in that down and blah, people wanted to help me and bring me, you know, lift me up. But it's not until people get to the point of wanting to change that we're going to be able to help them. And ⁓

and it might be next week, might be next year, it might be in 20 years, we don't know. But a good mindset, I think, is looking up and not down, looking forward and not backwards, and supporting and lifting others. There's so much more that can go with that and the habits and whatnot that we can go into a little bit more. But I think it's just making sure we're on the road.

forward. mean, I think of ⁓ singing too. I don't know if you do any ⁓ praise or worship music, but just reviewing. I remember with choir singing, I used to sing with choir and they'd always say, you know, make your voice go this way, you know, wide. You want it to go out and in worship music, you want it to go forward like a word and making sure it's in a forward direction, not, you know, just spread and speckled.

So it's a good analogy as well, but making sure we've got that forward momentum.

Okay. So you've, it might say has really impacted your life a lot, right? Okay. Can you think of a specific story that really influenced and impacted your life concerning ⁓ why, to demonstrate that mindset is important to you?

Absolutely.

something specific, I think. I mean, not a specific story or an incident. I haven't sat and thought about that for a time, but just thinking about what I do on a daily basis. So instead of getting up in the morning and turning on the news, I don't turn on the TV. Instead of getting up in the morning and... ⁓

grumbling about, you know, a you know, cold shower or, you know, something fell on the floor or everything's just going wrong. We'll be waking up, quote, on the wrong side of the bed. ⁓ Instead, waking up and thinking about what possibilities we have and ⁓ what I get to accomplish today. Instead of thinking I have to go to work or I have to exercise, it's I get to go to work.

I get to exercise. Shifting just a few words, even in rising in the morning or going to bed at night. There's so many more things during the day that can shift the mindset, but just those things in the morning of ⁓ shifting two words or even ⁓ one of the things my son will do is he'll say, I'm not... ⁓

where I want to be in my job and my girlfriend, da da da da da, and I said, yet. There's always that word yet to add at the end of a complaint or a negative thought. get da da da da da, yet. And it shifts the meaning of the phrase completely.

Sure, my coach would get on me before, because I would say, if this happens or if that happens, he'd say, quit using the word if. I said, when, when it happens, when it happens. And you don't know when it happens, but are you planning on success or are you planning on failure, and if, if, or when? So that was a, I actually still have the sticky note on my desk where I said, when, not if, and just stuck it up there to remind me that, yeah, it may not happen tomorrow, but.

Mm-hmm.

it's eventually you'll be fine. So we talked earlier about rejecting bad habits or bad thoughts, bad mindsets. Is there any habits we could put in place that are simple, practical habits that we could put in place to help us reject those bad habits?

Exactly.

Absolutely. There are so many, but if you think back just to words, this can be kind of twofold. One is ⁓ what we read, watch, and hear becomes what comes out of our, you what goes in goes out. And so those things

we can control, can turn it off, we can shift channels, we can choose positive music with better words, we can choose motivational speakers over the negative news. ⁓ But one of the things that I like to do is to read, excuse me, speak and write God's word. And so you can write it out and then speak it out loud and you change it to first person. So I've got an example, I use a little book.

⁓ And then I've written out a whole bunch of them as well as ⁓ in my journal this past year. But you take a Bible verse and you shift any he, him, her ⁓ to me, I, or you put your own name in. And ⁓ so this is Deuteronomy 8, 18. And this is written in ⁓ first person. I remember the Lord my God for it is he who gives me the ability to produce wealth and so confirms his covenant which he swore to my forefathers.

And then another short one is 3 John, 3 John 2, God wants me to prosper and be in health even as my soul prospers. So when we shift the words of the Bible verse of God's word into something that I can have for myself, I can declare for myself instead of it's something in the past or something in the future, I can have it right here and right now.

Yep, that helps. Yes, I agree with that. Because God's Word is very powerful and personalizing it and making it yours, ⁓ yes, that will help. So do you do that throughout the day then as a form of a habit? We talked about that a little bit too, about what you see, watch, and hear. Do you ever catch yourself watching negative things and those negative things start giving you a negative attitude or thoughts?

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely,

when I catch myself scrolling, that was my goal, I think back in the fall, I would catch myself ⁓ creatively avoiding the things that I wanted to complete. I wanted to finish my writing that I was working on and I had to ⁓ basically write it down and catch myself and go, okay, no scrolling.

And so I'd catch myself just scrolling through the stuff, just reading the next, and I could just feel it. You can just feel that heaviness, that weight just go, you can feel your anxiety just kind of creep up right here. no, and I would shut it off and I would go find a little task and I would, you know, busy myself for 45 minutes. I'd look at my husband and go, I just finished, dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever it is, you know, whatever editing I needed to do. I just finished that and it didn't take much and I shut off the scrolling.

Hmm.

That's a big thing right there.

yeah, little distractions become big distractions, don't they? ⁓ Sometimes it's what we don't do. So versus what the positive things that we do do. Is there some common misconceptions or mistakes that people make when they think about mindset and trying to have a positive mindset that we need to basically avoid?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

I've heard I think other coaches talk about ⁓ just take the bad habit out. And if you take the bad habit out, you have a hole. It's like removing, you know, something off of your hard drive of your computer and all you have, you still have a hole and it's going to fill in with something. So you've got to have the good stuff ready to put back in.

and replace ⁓ on that. I'm not sure if this relates to the question specifically, but it just reminded me of ⁓ Dr. Caroline Leaf. I don't know if you've read any of her things, but she wrote, Who Switched Off My Brain? And she's got a bunch of other books too. And she was a guest speaker at a women's conference I went to. And she gave this ⁓ image of this black, you see him at Halloween, these black.

trees that are just kind of black and sparkly and gnarly. And that actually represents, and it's got all dead branches, and that represents our brain that has been fed negative thoughts for years and years. That's what your brain looks like. She's a brain ⁓ neuroscientist, I think. And she talks about neuroplasticity and how our brains can be rewired. with...

Okay.

the music that we put into our head, the songs that we listen to, the speaking that we listen to, the truth that feeds ourselves daily. And that black nasty gnarly tree can actually become green and leafy. And she shows the image of the brain before and after ⁓ the ability that we have. We are our own neuroplastician and we can ⁓ change and shift our brain from that bad.

to the good, but it's a matter of doing it daily. Getting out of a bad habit. Maybe the bad habit is smoking. Well, if we take that away, we gotta fill it with something. Otherwise, you've got that constant, need to go have a cigarette. And we fill it with something good, taking a walk, something positive for your life. In my case, it was always about the words. It was always about the mental thing, but it can fit for multiple habits. So it's a matter of taking the bad out, filling with something good.

making sure there's something there.

Okay, yeah, that's, I understand that. You have to, can't just take things away and do nothing. So you get bored. So what did you do with that time? You gotta do something with the time and.

Mm-hmm.

You like music, you can't just stop all the music, you gotta have some good music. So that makes a lot of sense, a lot of sense there. ⁓

Is there any questions I'm not asking you? ⁓ Do you have a story where good or bad, as far as mindset that happened to you or that you could help our audience relate to that, yeah, this is really a powerful thing for business owners to just have a good mindset versus a bad mindset.

Certainly. ⁓ Trying to think here, just kind of browsing my notes. ⁓

One of the things that we work on in our leadership and ⁓ it kind of fits with ⁓ what we read, watch, and hear is there's only a few things that we can control. We can't control other people's responses. We can't control how other people act. We can't control the weather. We can't control the traffic. But there's a few things that we can control, and that is our attitude.

and then our response to everything really. And if I respond to traffic or a coworker being ill-tempered, if I respond in a backlashing negative way, all it's going to do is take me out of peace and bring that anxiety up. And if I flip it,

So let's say traffic, and I use this because my son, you know, deals with this all the time. He's in his twenties and I'm like, all right, rethink it. Think about traffic and you can relate this to business as well, but let's say you're driving to work and you're just thinking this, ar ar, about this, know, negativity about this driver. You're probably cussing. You're hopefully not flipping something out of the window, but you're just irritated about this driver and you flip it and go.

All right, I'm gonna give them grace. I'm gonna let them have space because what if, and we don't know, what if the person at work, what if the driver just came from a medical appointment where they were diagnosed or their family was diagnosed with something horrible? What if they just came ⁓ from the hospital from somebody passing away? What if they're just like flooding in tears that they just had something happen?

⁓ What if they just lost their job or their spouse just lost their job and they're dealing with it in the car, they're dealing with it at work and we just have to look at it and have grace and flip that in our mind and go, okay, I'm okay with that and I'm just going to be peaceful about it and maybe love on them, I mean if it's at work and have a soft, quiet conversation and just completely flip it rather than.

just be instant reaction and instant ⁓ defense mode.

It's absolutely true and you can have two different reactions to pretty much everything. And I know one coach said it I've been using it ever since is everybody's fighting a battle that you know nothing about. So be gracious. Plain and simple, you don't know what's going on in their life. Just be gracious always. Because yeah, you're going to experience the same thing sometime too. So that's the go-to. Just be gracious to the people. You don't know what's going on in their life.

So do you have any final thoughts? Any last word of challenge to my audience today?

⁓ let's see. ⁓ Just remember to, know, going back to beginning of our talk was, you know, speaking truth every day. And, ⁓ you know, what we think about, we bring about. And I know personally, I have brought about a lot of stagnation and a lot of unworthiness. ⁓ And when you shift it and shift your mindset,

so that you draw in more, you're gonna be on top rather than feeling like you're swimming in a little swamp. And it's worth it. And when you're able to lift yourself up, you're gonna be able to lift others up. And that's what God wants us of us. He wants us to be ⁓ this light, this shining bright light on a hill and to have people draw us to two,

draw people to us so that we could draw people to him and reflect his glory.

Very good, that's a great point. Yes, we are like a city on a hill or a candle on a candlestick, not under a bush. Deanna, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. And friends, if you're looking to go deeper or want to learn more about Deanna and her work and her books and her coaching and things like that, check show notes and there'll be sites and links there to get into contact with her. And remember, your business represents the great God you serve. So build a business that's worthy of God's name and in a way that honors Him. Bye for now.

Bye bye.