Childhood conditioning and cognitive oil changes

Sarah Vermunt : [00:00:00] So much of what guides our decisions are actually assumptions and beliefs and blind spots. That were given to us by somebody else. Usually pretty early in life. So today we'll take a look at our conditioning. Our early internalized influences. And we'll talk about how our conditioning. Can act as static when we're trying to connect with our intuition. How it can mess with our radio waves and make intuition harder to hear. And I want to introduce you to the idea of cognitive oil changes. Clearing out some of the gunk that has been accumulating over the years. So that your engine, your mind can run a little more smoothly as you navigate the road ahead. We're taking a road trip this week, my friends Fasten your seatbelt. Let's [00:01:00] go. 

Welcome to Careergasm. This is a place to help you find your way to feel good work. I'm Sarah Vermunt and I help people navigate their careers. I'm a career coach, a best-selling author. And my work has been featured at places like Forbes, fortune Inc entrepreneur and fast company. On this show, we talk about career navigation and career change, and specifically the human side of work, where the professional is personal. We have heartfelt nuanced conversations about navigating your career. Including all of the squishy feelings that come along with being a human at work. Thanks for listening. I'm glad you're here. So we're taking a road trip this week and we are headed [00:02:00] to. Your past. Dun dun dun. I'm just kidding. It's going to be fun. I promise. Years away. I want us to take a look. At our past. Because it comes up anyway in our decision-making whether or not we actually know it's happening. Sometimes when I'm helping people find tune their intuition, they'll say something like. Is, I can't tell if this is intuition or like, if this is my old anxiety coming up or like, I can't tell if this is like what my intuition is telling me, or if it's like, Literally just my old habitual thinking in like in sheep's clothing. And like valid questions, right? 

It's not always easy to tease that stuff out. 

And so it's time we take a look at our habitual thinking. It's time we take a look at our conditioning and here's what I mean by conditioning. I mean our. Usually early [00:03:00] influences in life that have. Informed the way we think. The way we perceive things. That stuff that was given to us by someone else, whether it was an individual person or society at large, that we have either intentionally or mostly non intentionally. I internalized and it's influenced how we're behaving now, even without us even really consciously knowing it. So things that cause conditioning, for example, Broadly. Societal rules. Norms in society. Also institutional rules. The, the rules and things you were taught at school. Uh, in religion. Uh, you know, things that the capitalist system we're in teach us. Work culture at large. All there's all of these unspoken rules, right? Also things you've internalized from your early experiences [00:04:00] with your parents or caregivers or teachers. And a lot of this includes subtle messaging. So not necessarily something that was overtly said to you. But, you know, just things that you got the memo about as you went through life, based on how people behaved and what they taught you. 

Again, these are individuals and society at large. All of us have a very unique cocktail of conditioning that we picked up as kids. You know, and this has turned into habitual thought patterning all of us have our favorite neural pathways that we use when we think about things. We tend to think about things the same way every time because of that. And so. A lot of the stuff. That influences our thinking and our decision-making. They're conditioned thoughts and beliefs that were given to us by someone else. And internalized before, [00:05:00] before we were fully cooked before we were fully baked, when we were just young people. And this was a good adaptation at the time. We were not bad for doing this. 

We were just kids, all children do this. We pick up on things in our environment. That's how we learn. 

But if you ever heard the quote, gosh, and I forget who said this, but there's this famous quote and it says. The tools that helped you in the first half of your life, won't help you in the second half of your life. And I love that quote and here's what I think it means. I think. Some of the things that were adaptive in a good way for us as young people. Are less adaptive for us when we're older and perhaps a little wiser and get a stronger sense of what's right and wrong for us. But most of us. We're told in overt or subtle ways. That there's something outside of us that will keep us safe. 

And so that's what all these rules, [00:06:00] all of this external conditioning is about. We were told to, you know, scramble after things like security, uh, finished lines were really important to strive. After accomplishments. Accolades were really important. Relationships and maintain them at all costs is really important. Having things, accumulating things, growing wealth is important. So it's funny, we've each sort of had this conditioning. That tells us there's something outside of you. That can save you. 

And this is what it is. But unfortunately, You've probably already come to the realization like I have. That there is no holy grail. Uh, including the one thing that you think is the holy grill, by the way. Right? Like, like a lot of us who are still working on this and, you know, myself included. It's like we figured out a lot of stuff. But there's probably still one or two things [00:07:00] that we think are the thing. And I'm raising my hand here. 

There's another really cool quote by Elizabeth Gilbert. And she said. You're afraid of surrender because you don't want to lose control. But you never had control. All you ever had was anxiety. 

And I think that's really interesting because so much of what we think about around decision-making is about control and anxiety. Even though that's not consciously. On our radar. So. Back to conditioning. And connecting with our intuition through the layers of conditioning that we've had. As I've been talking about in the past couple of episodes. My sense of intuition. Is that intuition is kind of like a full body knowing. But without a detailed roadmap. And [00:08:00] most of us, as young people were told. That there is a map and we need a map. And the map is drawn by someone else. 

And here's what it looks like. And you certainly shouldn't create your own map. And my God, like you definitely can't navigate without a map. So there's all this conditioning telling us what's right and wrong and what's safe and good ways to make decisions. It's a lot to take on. That's a lot of internalized stuff that we're all working with. So this idea. Of. Using your intuition. Bringing intuition into your decisions, especially if it's in your career. My goodness. This feels genuinely threatening to some people. And here's why for some people. You know, probably not you because you're listening to this, but I'm sure, you know, someone like this. You've got someone in your life who says we'll intuition, isn't a path to Bulletproof [00:09:00] decisions. 

That's crazy. 

But like it's, it's, it's the wrong thing because Bulletproof decisions don't exist. Anywhere, like they just don't exist. But a lot of our conditioning says that they do. And, you know, people will tell you the answer is this thing over here. But the truth is we live in a very dynamic. Ever changing world. And the sooner we start. 

Tuning into our intuition and the sooner we stop trying to lock down, quote security. The better off we are. 

Specifically around big life decisions. Here's why I'm always advocating to pull in intuition using your intuition. Makes us. More adaptable. Less fear-driven. [00:10:00] So there's like less rigidity, less of that sort of desperate panicked, clinging sort of feeling. 

And. That is important to be agile and adaptable in an ever-changing world. It's one of the reasons why. I probably talked about this before, but I'm going to go there again. It's one of the reasons why. Like it drives me crazy when I see the word future-proof like, sometimes people talk about quote, future proofing your career. 

 It's a false concept. Of of something being a future-proof because. All it's doing is it's preying on people's mostly unconscious fears. That are based on grasping after control and certainty and safety. And it's not a good way to prepare people for an ever-changing world. 

And so that's just my [00:11:00] personal beef as a career coach who happens to help people with changes. This clinging, this, um, any sort of fear-mongering around future stuff. It's not good. It just preys on people's fears and you can understand why. People would be pulled into that. Right. So. As we're thinking about making career decisions, big ones. Like a career change. Uh, even even small ones, day to day. Other ones around like how to navigate work relationships, really just any career decision. Uh, most of us without knowing it. Have. Some old conditioning. Gunking up the works. Some old stuff that we were taught as young people, that unconsciously influences how we navigate decisions and how we make decisions. 

And here's, what's really [00:12:00] scary about it. We don't even know it's happening a lot of the time, it's just running in the background. Controlling. How we make decisions. And so, you know, for those of you who've listened to this, I know you're interested in introspection. You wouldn't be here if you weren't. So it's really important that we look inward. Particularly when we're making decisions that feel a little bit scary. Because we do tend to go on cognitive autopilot. When we feel scared. It's not a great place to work. From, it's not a great place to make decisions from. Because as I was saying, a lot of us have, well, Let's be real. 

All of us have to do to varying degrees. Old conditioning. That sort of internalized habitual thinking that is gunking up the works. It's kind of like. 

For those of you that wear glasses, you know how you have to, to [00:13:00] wipe or wash your glasses every once in a while so that you can see more clearly, you got to remove some of that gunk. We have to do that in terms of the way we think as well. And I want to introduce you to the idea of what I call the cognitive oil change. And all, I mean by that is, it's just an acknowledgement that over time. We just accumulate a lot of gunk, a lot of. You know, not particularly. Adaptive thought patterns. You know, a couple of blind spots that gunk up the works when we're just trying to run our life. 

When we're trying to make decisions, when we're trying to do stuff. And it's not unlike. Running your car. You know, the oil you'll put in at one point was fine. It ran fine for a while, but the more stuff you pick up, it just Gunks up the works and. You know, By the [00:14:00] time it gets gunky, you got to get rid of that stuff. 

Get rid of some of that gunk, get rid of some of those old habitual ways of thinking. Because they're not helping your system run optimally. And of course we're talking. You know, we're using the metaphor of an engine here, but we're talking about your mind. We want your mind to be able to run more optimally. 

We don't want all of these gunky blind spots and assumptions to be impacting your decision-making in a negative way. 

So. 

Hence the need. For the occasional. Cognitive oil change. Hence the need to start to notice. And address. And gently release. Some of our less adaptive conditioning that we've just picked up along the way through life. [00:15:00] When you do this, when you follow that thread back to where you picked up certain thoughts, behaviors, assumptions, and belief. Perhaps in your childhood years or your teenage years or early adulthood. When you follow that thread back, it is so deeply empowering. Even if you haven't changed the behaviors at even just the process of following that. Path backward. And noticing where the seed was planted, noticing where it originated that way that you think about things. That block that you trip over all the time. You know, like noticing the thread that goes back to like Jesus Christ. 

When I was eight years old, I was constantly told X. That is deeply empowering. It's kind of like, it's kind of like [00:16:00] time traveling. With magic goggles that you didn't have the first time around. When you follow that thread back to notice where you got your conditioning. Because you can bring those insights back with you. 

You can be like, Oh shit. Now I see, I see why I'm constantly. Thinking about this in this way. This is the way my mom talked about X, or this is the way my dad did Y or this is what society was constantly telling me as a woman, or this is what I was told as a person of color growing up before I was able. To understand the way the world works. 

Holy shit. Has that ever had an impact on me? 

That's why. 

It's like, it's almost like. When you're able to do that, even before you bank the changes, [00:17:00] you're able to see how all of your emotional. And cognitive roadblocks make sense. Because they were planted there. And you internalized it without really knowing what was going on as a young person. And it's the same kind of thing where like, You ever noticed how people who go to therapy for the first time? 

They're so evangelical about it. They're like, oh my God, everything makes sense. Now it's like, I can see the matrix. It's kind of the same thing when we go back and we notice what kind of conditioning we've had, things just make more sense. You can see how the roads led to where you are now, because you can see your influences a little more clearly. You can see the bias that you picked up from the education system. Or you can see how you've internalized [00:18:00] something that's kind of shitty from society, or you can see you've got the same blind spot that a parent had around a particular thing. 

And it's important to address that stuff. 

We're not going to get into how to address that stuff today because boy, that takes a long time. And I'm not a therapist. But just noticing that stuff is a hell of a starting point. It really gives you an edge. It's kind of like, um, It's kind of like. It's kind of like, if you imagine life is an airport and you're like trying to move around the airport and you've got a ton of baggage. It's a real pain in the ass to try to move when you've got a ton of baggage. So we need to deal with the baggage. 

We need to soften some of the conditioning. We got to get ourselves a cognitive oil change and release some of that stuff so that it's easier to navigate around. Not only is it easier. [00:19:00] It's actually more efficient and faster to make decisions and take action. When you've got less baggage to carry with you, we can just be way more efficient because we're not juggling a hundred different childhood experience with us that we haven't addressed. 

So. 

We got to get ourselves a cognitive oil change. And so you might be listening to this and you think, oh my God, that's going to take years. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it does for most of us and most of us go through it in cycles. Right. And we revisit the same things again and again. And we just move up level by level gently. So, yeah, it's going to take a while to work through some of the stuff that has unconsciously. Impacted your thinking and decision-making for decades, you're darn right. 

It'll take awhile, but here's a really great. Place to start. 

In any given moment. You [00:20:00] do have the power to choose which part of yourself you want to identify with? So when you're in a moment of spiral, when you're freaking out about something, when you're panicking about something, when you keep stumbling over that same thing, you keep tripping over all the time, mentally or emotionally. At any moment you have the option to zoom out. And decide. 

Okay. Which part of me do I want to identify with here? Do I want to identify with the part of myself? That's spinning out. Or do I maybe want to identify with the part of myself that is. A little calmer. 

Do I want to identify with the part of myself that is noticing. What's playing out versus being in what's playing out. Like, maybe you want to identify with the observer that can get you to calm a lot quicker. 

The simple act of putting that into practice. [00:21:00] We'll almost always pull you out of whatever spiral you're currently in and it'll be temporary. Because all of us are likely to slip back into those neural pathways unless we work on them. Right. But you can always come back to the zoom out. And ask yourself. 

Okay. What part of myself do I want to identify with here? And. Is it possible that how I'm thinking. 

Uh, 

ease really. Influenced by some of the conditioning that I had as a young person. If you take just that question forward with you. Where is how I'm thinking influenced by my conditioning boy, that'll change your life in a pretty short amount of time because you'll start to see things so much clearer. As you're getting ready to make decisions. . 

So. This is an invitation. To gently. [00:22:00] Because gentle is good. To gently take a look at some of your conditioning. 

And see if you can follow some of those breadcrumbs. Backwards. To see how they're influencing. How you're making some of your career decisions now. And. Which pieces you'd like to change, which pieces you'd like to release, which pieces you'd like to soften. So that you can make better decisions. Moving ahead. 

Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time. 

Hey, Hey, I'm still here. 

I don't want to brag. But. I give good. Email. [00:23:00] A lot of people have told me this. Um, I have people who are happy in their careers who have still stayed on my email list for a decade because they love the emails I send out. So it's great that you're here every week, listening to the podcast. But if you would like to have me slip into your inbox, I promise it's going to be good stuff, helpful stuff, real stuff, things that are going to help you with your work. And your life. I will put a link for. My subscribe page in the show notes so that you can join my little community of email subscribers. If you wish. 

Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time. And maybe I'll see you in your inbox next week.