Your Brain is Like a Hallmark Movie

This time of year, it’s hard to miss the onslaught of cheesy, formulaic Christmas movies, where (inevitably) a big city businessman/advertising exec/marketing bro finds true love and happiness with a small-town baker/chef/café owner. It’s a story that’s been so overtold that you can guess the characters, the setting, the plot, and the happy ending before it even starts.

In many ways, our brain follows the same predictable pattern as these movies. No matter how boring, and no matter how tired we are of the same thoughts and stories it creates, our brain keeps recycling the same old negative beliefs that keep us stuck and unhappy.

Today on the podcast, we’re having some fun as we compare our brains to these predictable, holiday movies. I’ll show you how our brain keeps running the same excuses, the same drama, the same negativity, the same doubts over and over again—and how this just keeps creating the same plot lines and the same results in our lives.

Come learn three ways your brain is doing its job just like a Hallmark movie producer so that you can identify its patterns, change things up, and create a life you really love.

Transcripts

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price. You might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome.

Hello podcast universe! Welcome to episode 241 of the 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price and I want to welcome all of you to the podcast. I want to welcome you and thank you for being here and for listening. I just got the Spotify wrapped for podcasters. When you have a podcast on Spotify, Spotify will send you, as the podcaster, kind of like a summary of your listeners, like where they're all listening to you and who's listening to and, and how many people started following you and what were your most popular episodes? And it was really fun to get that this last week and just see, I know, I know, a lot of you listen to me on Apple Podcasts, and a bunch of you have started listening to me on Spotify.

So, it was really fun to get that summary. And it turns out that for 102 of you that listen on Spotify, I am one of your top podcasts. And that is just like it made me feel so incredibly good. I'm so grateful that you are out there listening and enjoying and sharing the podcast, and I just, I really it means so much to me. It also kind of summarized on there that I had made over 1400 minutes of content, and I was like, that's a lot of minutes, right? That that is a lot of talking.

And a lot of you have listened to almost all of those 1400 minutes and like that, just like is incredible to me. It just like it just blows my mind that you are out there listening to all those many minutes of me talking at this mic. So, I don't know. It means a lot to me. Thank you. Thank you for being here. And you know, I'm just always amazed by accumulation, by the compounding effect of small efforts. And 1400 minutes sounds like a lot. And it just added up one week at a time. And like, I think that's kind of, you know, a little like metaphor for all of you. A little shot in the arm that like the little things you're doing, they do matter. They do add up. They are creating something in the world. They're making a difference. And so don't let your brain talk you out of them. And while we're talking about listening to the podcast, I just want to remind you that I have this goal by the end of the year to get 255 star reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So, if you haven't done that, I want to invite you to do that.

It's super easy to leave a review. You don't have to leave a review. You don't have to type anything. You just scroll down to the bottom. If you're on Apple Podcasts, scroll down to the bottom of the episode page and you can just like click five stars and like submit it. It's super easy. It'll take you like 2.5 seconds and same on Spotify. There's like if you click the little three little dots that are there on the podcast page. If you would do that, that would mean so much to me. I really appreciate it. I'm, I'm hoping to to reach that goal by the end of the year.

Other than that update, we are smack dab in the middle of December. By the time you were listening to this. We are mid December and you know the holidays are rolling on at the Price Home. We also had a roof leak which is like super awesome. We had a rain storm like of the five days it rains in Phoenix during the year. We had a rainstorm the other day and our roof leaked and so we're in the middle of getting the roof repaired, which is really, when you think about it, fantastic timing. Like during the holidays, right? I was like, oh my gosh, okay, perfect everybody. Did you want a new roof for Christmas? That's what you're getting, right. So we're in the middle of getting a new roof. Eventually we're also going to have to do a bit of demolition and restoration, repair some drywall. And for those of you who've been listening for a long time, this is going to sound like, you know, a broken record. You're gonna be like April. Like, I thought we already did a big restoration project, and then we already replaced all the drywall in your house.

And there was a another flood, another innovation. And didn't we already do this? And the answer is yes, yes, yes, we already did. And we are doing it again. Apparently, this is what it means to live in a fallen world. There's just no end to the amount of drywall that you can replace. Apparently, if you think it is annoying and boring to be back here again talking about demolition and renovation, like I agree with you, it is boring, it is annoying and I find it highly aggravating myself. So, there you go. And speaking of repeating plotlines, that kind of brings us to today's podcast episode. We're gonna have a good time today. We're just gonna have some fun together.

Today. It's the holidays, and I thought it would be really fun to kind of, like, compare your brain to the plethora of really bad, cheesy hallmark movies out there. So, like, it is the holiday season, and it seems like there is really an overabundance of really bad Christmas movies out there. And like every night we're like scrolling through the channels, right? We go through Netflix and we look at all those. We go through Amazon Prime and look at all those. We go to HBO, we look at all those like, I'm just like, surely there has to be a decent Christmas movie out there. But the ones that are good, you've seen 1400 times and the new ones not so good, right? So, but I've been thinking about these kind of hallmark movies. Now, I know from the outset that even like disparaging or making fun of these hallmark movies is like highly controversial.

And I know some of you are already like, super offended, right? I just I can't get over the fact that, like, they just are so much all the same, right? And I'm like, I'm sure along with you, I've seen all the memes, right? Like I saw one the other day that was like. Scientists are close to finding a second plotline for our quiz, right? It shows this picture of, like, scientists in a lab, or like I saw this meme that was like comparing the hallmark movie posters and like, pick the difference. It was like spot the difference, kind of like game. And like they were literally all the same. There was like, the guy was in a green sweater. The woman was in a in a red sweater, but it was basically like just two interchangeable white people in green and red sweaters on every single one of them. Right? And so, even if you love a hallmark movie, you have to agree that they are a bit formulaic and a bit predictable. And I was talking to my daughter about this, and we were laughing about it on the phone, and I was like, okay, what is the number one profession? If you had to just like pick the number one profession that is in every hallmark movie, right? Like, can you name that profession? And of course it's got to be Baker, right? It has to be Baker.

Like in every movie there is the baker, right? And it's either the man or the woman in the small town being the baker. And that person is very often a single parent, right? That they are taking care of some child, that they are either the uncle or the sister or the brother or the single father, the single dad to this child. And also there is some imminent financial doom somewhere in the town, right? Caused by the greed of someone else. There is some financial doom for this bakery or this cafe. Maybe it was a cafe and we were just like laughing together because we were like, at some point we have to have a scene where we throw flour on each other, like, this is why there has to be baking in the profession, because like, at some point, this is like a major plot twist that we are going to be in a kitchen throwing flour at each other. And this is like essential to falling in love during the holidays. So anyway, the movies follow a formula, right? Because the makers of them have found a formula that works, makes everybody feel cozy. We all know the ending.

There are no big surprises, and there's just really no reason to change it. Right? There is some comfort in the certainty and in the familiarity and in the predictability of it. And the other day, my husband came in and he was just like, I was watching one of these movies, and he's just like, oh, what's happening in this one? You know, it's like explaining it to him. And he's like, eyebrows kind of went up and I started teasing him. I was like, don't worry, don't worry. It all works out in the end. They get together in the end, right. And really, like that's why our brain likes it, I guess, because there isn't any doubt about how it's going to go. And in a world of uncertainty and distress, it's just kind of nice, right, to have this space in our life where like everything's going to work out no matter how dire the circumstances seem. And I was just thinking about that, and I was just thinking about how our brain in some ways is so similar to a hallmark movie in that your brain has a formula that works.

Your brain has one way of seeing the world, and it creates the same story day in and day out, year after year. And it's just creating the same story in every circumstance of our life, right? And our brain sees no reason to change that up. It has no reason to make that different, because the story that has been giving you has kept you alive for all this time. And your brain's like, why are we going to mess with that? It is keeping you alive, and that's your brain's job. And so it's working and so even if that story is boring and like, even if you're just so tired of hearing the same old things from your brain, even if you're just so sick of hearing the same thoughts about yourself or your life, right? And you're just so tired of these recycled old stories that are coming from your brain. You're so tired of the same excuses. You're so tired of the same drama. You're so tired of the same negativity that that crops up every single day. Your brain keeps producing it even though you're like, please brain today, right? Like, give me something new.

Tell me something new about myself. Your brain just is like, nope. Here's the old story, and I'm gonna prove to you once again why this story is true about you, right? That's how our brains work. It's the same old story. And so today, for fun on this holiday episode of the podcast, I just want to compare your brain to a hallmark movie and show you the way that it just keeps recycling the same old stories and plotlines and characters in the hopes that this will shine a light on these stories, that it will give you permission to rewrite some things and permission to change things up. We're about to head into a whole new year, and this is a time traditionally when we sort of evaluate where we've been and what we've done, and we think about possible things that we want to change. And so I just think it's really good to know that it doesn't matter what you change in your life if the basic script is the same, if the basic script and the basic plot structure is the same, and you kind of have the same characters always running in your brain, you're gonna keep getting the same movie, right? Like no matter how you try to change.

And so, a lot of us, we want things to be different, but our brain keeps offering the same thoughts. We keep believing the same thoughts, and those thoughts are writing the script of our lives. Then we're just like acting out those scripts, right? And so today, I really just want to go behind the scenes and in a fun way, just show you how your brain thinks a lot like a hallmark movie, and so that we can just have some fun together and kind of laugh collectively at our brains. And also just notice, like, if I want things to be different, if I want next year to look different than this year, if I want my story to change, then I got to be bold enough and brave enough and willing to think differently and to change the stories that I am telling myself.

Okay, so I think your brain is like a hallmark movie in three ways. So first, your brain thinks that happiness is dependent on things outside of you. Two, your brain thinks in black and white binary terms, and three, your brain is always predictable and it's always predicting. Okay, so let's take these one at a time. The first one, your brain thinks your happiness is dependent on things outside of you. Okay, so always in hallmark movies, right? I want you to think about the setting, right. You can probably like describe it to me as I'm describing it to you. Right. These movies always take place in a small town. They're usually like in the mountains where it's snowy, right? And it's always these, like, quaint little towns and that, like, the unhappy people live in the city and the unhappy people, you know, lead these lives in marketing or advertising or some sort of corporate structure, right? And then they come to the small town and everything gets better. The really like selling the idea that your happiness, your peace, your joy are all created by things outside of you that the place you are in has the power to make you happy.

That the people that you're around, the people that you surround yourself with, have the power to make you happy. That your job has the power to make you happy, that the season has the power to make you happy, right? Like Christmas season, like inherently is just supposed to make you happy, right? And so like, what they're selling is like, listen, if you aren't happy, it's because you're in the wrong place and you're dating the wrong person and you're doing the wrong job. Your life is not enjoyable and fulfilling, right? Unless you have these outside things exactly right. And like every single law is the same. That if once you are in the right place in the relationship with the right person and doing the right and like most purposeful things you were always meant to do, then and only then can you be happy, right? Okay, the film kept rolling. The truth is that in two weeks after they stopped filming the movie, right, the main character's brain would still be in their head and it would come back online and it would still be there doing the job of pointing out all the things that have gone wrong, right? And suddenly the small town, they'd be able to start to see the flaws in the small town, and they start to see the flaws in their partner and in this house, and they'd start to see the flaws in throwing flour around the kitchen when you're making cookies and all of these things, like, maybe they would feel bored in the small town and maybe they would think like, oh, maybe this really isn't my purpose.

Maybe there's another purpose, right? Like problems would continue to happen and this is the most important part. Their brain would start to find things wrong even there. Now we can kind of laugh about that, right? But it happens to us every day in our own life. We think that if we could change the circumstances in our life, then we could be happy. We think once we get in this relationship or our spouse changes in a certain way, or we have a different job, or our kids get older, or we have more money, or if we lose weight, or if our business gets successful, or if we really find our purpose, or if we reach our goals, like whatever it is, we think these like outside things. Like, once I get to there, then I'm gonna be happy, right? It doesn't just happen in hallmark movies. It happens to us all the time. And listen, I'm all for setting and reaching goals and creating circumstances that you love. But listen, no matter what you decide to do or change in your life, when you get to the finish line of any one of those goals, it's like the finish line in a hallmark movie. Your brain is gonna get to that finish line, and then it will find a way to be unhappy.

It will look for what has gone wrong, even there at that finish line. So just no, of course you are allowed to make any change you want in your life. I love that, I love changing my life. I love creating a life intentionally putting all the things in it that I want, but changing those things and designing that. Life doesn't change your brain. It doesn't change your brain for long, right? Your work at being happy within those changes and within your circumstances is still there to be done.

It is the way we think about our life. It is the way we think about all of these things that makes us content, makes us feel joy, makes us feel happy. So, the way that we think about our spouse or our kids, whether we think about our money or a job, the way that we think about our way in our body and our health, the way we think about it is what matters. How you think about any of them will determine whether or not you feel joy in your life. And again, we're totally allowed to change any of them. But because they won't inherently make you happy or unhappy, you don't have to wait to be happy until they are different in any life. It is work to choose happiness. Only in the movies. Is happiness simply the result of changing locations or seasons or marital status? Okay, that is not real life. And the biggest lie that we get sold is that happiness should be easy. And if I'm not happy then my circumstances are wrong.

I just gotta like, fix one of those things. Something's gone wrong. I need to make a change. But the truth is, if you are unhappy, the answer is never outside of you. The only thing that we need to change is to change our mind. Okay, the second way that your brain is like a hallmark movie is that it thinks in very binary terms, very black and white, like one thing or the other. Right? So like in computer programming, there's binary code, right? Where they programmed the computers either with a zero or a one, and the computer knows what to do depending on the zero or the one. That's what that means. Binary code. It's either the zero or the one. There's only two options, right? And your brain likes to think in this very same way. It's always just like it's one thing or the other. It's black or it's white and there aren't any other possibilities. All right. So I want you to think about this in a hallmark movie. Right. The characters are very binary. They are either bad or good. They are either greedy or generous. Right? Their priorities are either right or wrong. They either hate Christmas or they love it.

Right? Like you're either happy or you're sad. They're you're right or you're wrong. You're depressed or joyful, right? And it's just there is no nuance. It's just like that character is this one thing, right? There's just no nuance to it. Right? There are good guys and they're bad guys and that's it. Right? So like in the first five minutes, like you introduced to the characters, you know, exactly who's the bad guy and who's the good guy and who the girl is going to end up with. Like it's very obvious right from the beginning and believe it or not, your brain is doing the exact same thing in your life as well, right? It is constantly assessing people and deciding what they are. It's looking around you and deciding who's the villains, who's the heroes, who's the victims, right? Your brain's like you're the victim for sure, right? But it's always like assessing and trying to, like, categorize people and decide who they are. And there's no allowance for the fact that we are each one of us, all the things at once, right? And we are each one of us, always constantly changing and growing from moment to moment. And it's really good to be aware of this, that your brain thinks it knows what other people are and thinks it knows who they are.

It thinks it knows how they're going to show up, how they're going to act, who they are in every situation. And when we think in that way, we don't allow other people to change or to be new. We never let them be more than one thing, right? Many of us have been given labels either by other people. Or by ourselves. We've had these labels for years, and we've used those as like the definitive descriptor of ourselves, right. I want you to think about some of these words like introvert or lazy or undisciplined.

Sometimes we tell ourselves that we're awkward or ugly or fat. We use labels like I'm critical, I'm difficult, I'm prickly, I'm naggy, I'm negative, right. These are labels that I heard from people just this week. And I've heard them from myself as well. And I think it's so harmful when we think we are just this one thing, that we are just difficult, right? Or that we are just undisciplined. It's just not true. When we think about ourselves as this one thing, we show up as that character in our own lives.

So, I really want to introduce you to the subtlety of the human experience, and also just the complexity of it. And I want to introduce you to the word. And we are not one thing we contain multitudes. We are good and bad. We are creative and boring. We are energetic and depressed. We are angry and gentle. We are all the things and moment to moment we are something different. And when we tell ourselves we are one thing, we don't allow ourselves to change and shift for our feelings or our moods or our actions to shift and change with us. And I think when we think in binary terms, we have to be perfect and we require perfection in others, right? Because when you think it's one or the other, then I have to be perfectly good or I am the opposite, or I am bad, right? I have to be completely patient, always patient, or I am the opposite, I am irritable, I am aggravated, right. And so there is so much grace and compassion and understanding when we meet ourselves with the word. And we are never just one thing.

And allowing yourself to be and something else allows for so many more possibilities in your life. I talked to my clients a lot about loving what is sometimes termed our shadow self. And the shadow self is just the parts of us that are like, hard to accept or love that the parts of us we've typically identified as negative. And we often don't want to acknowledge these parts or make friends with them because we think that we can only be one thing, right. And we want to distance ourselves from these shadow parts of ourselves, and we resist those and reject these.

And when they show up in our lives, it creates a lot of shame because our brain is like, well, then you must be this one thing. When you allow yourself the freedom and the compassion to be all things, then you have so much less shame, and you can more easily allow yourself to make different choices without feeling like you have to be perfect. If I'm going to be totally honest with you, I think the sentence that my brain says most often on default, like if I'm just letting my brain run and it's just being critical and it's just like running its program and like playing its story, right? And like playing the old, predictable hallmark movie in my brain, I would say the sentence that it says to me more often than any other is you are bad, right? You're a bad wife, you're a bad mother, you're bad coach, you're bad businesswoman, you're a bad athlete.

You're a bad fill in the blank. My brain loves to tell me you are bad. And one of the most powerful shifts that I've been able to make over these years and through coaching is to be able to say like, yes, I am bad and I am good. I am a bad mother and I am a good one, I am both, I am a bad wife and I am a good one. I am both, I am learning, so I'm bad at some things, but I've learned a lot, so I'm good at other things. And just allowing yourself the and in there can soften your brain's criticism. And it also gives you so many more choices, so many more possibilities to take action. If I just think I'm bad, then I do not show up as my best self. But when I know that that's not totally true, I am also and good. Then I have more possibilities for how I want to show up and act and treat the people that I love. Okay, so finally, your brain is also like a hallmark movie because it is always predictable and always predicting.

So, like if I ask you to describe the plot of any hallmark movie, like, I bet you could do it right, because like, they are nothing if not predictable. Like, I give you two characters and you could just like, write the movie, right? But your brain is all so, so predictable, right? It's always going to look for what's wrong, it's always going to be defensive, and it's always going to be worried about your survival. It's always going to fight you on your goals and the plans that you set up for yourself. It first is going to criticize you for what you're doing wrong.

And then when you go to change that, it's going to give you a million excuses and tell you why you shouldn't even try. Like it's going to remember everything you've ever done wrong and it's going to forget or not notice all the things that you've done right. It's going to worry about everything that can go wrong in the future, and it's going to make you feel really bad about everything that's happened in your past. Right? Like, it's so boring. It's so predictable. Like you can just take any situation and your brain is going to make it negative and make you wrong and make you bad.

And at the same time, it is also always predicting. It's trying to like determine how your life is going to go and what your life is going to look like. It's always trying to predict what's going to come next and what you're capable of and it is always giving you the worst case scenario. So I want you to think about just here we are at December at the end of this year, as you have looked back on your year, I want you to think about the story your brain has told you about this last year.

Has it told you that you didn't make as much progress as you wanted, or that you failed in some way? Or is it noticed all the things you didn't get done right? Notice that it didn't make a list of like, here's all your great accomplishments. I was just talking to my coach about this the other day, and I was just like, this is the exact thought. It was like, my year has been a failure, right? She asked me. She's like, have you seen any places of growth? Right? And she was asking me to look back and find the places of growth from this year. And I was like, no, I can't think of a single one. I had like, laugh together. Right? Because that is your brain's assessment. It's like so predictable, right? It's predictable as a hallmark movie. Right? And as you think about next year, go and think about, okay, what am I going to do next year and make plans? Has your brain said, well, you probably won't be able to do that. You should lower your expectations. You've never done it before. I don't know why next year is going to be any different. We're really tired. I don't even know why you're trying to, like, plan ahead. It never works. We never fulfill our goals.

We always give up. Like, why even try, right? Like, I just want you to. Notice the stories your brain gives you. Your brain thinks it knows what you're capable of. Your brain thinks it knows the future. It thinks it knows what you're going to do. It thinks it knows the ending. And it's like minimizing all the things you've done and minimizing your past. And it is predicting your future based on that poor evaluation. And sometimes it's like, not even based on your past. It's just like being a jerk, right? Like, I was thinking about this because Caleb and I signed up to do another 2929 event next year.

And like in the days and weeks since I signed up to do that again, like, my brain is like, oh, what if you can't do it again, right? Like it's not even looking at the past and going, okay, you did it once. I bet you can do it again. No, my brain is saying you did it once, but I don't think you can do it again. Like, I've even had nightmares where I haven't finished the second time. And it was like. I guess the first one was a fluke, right? Like, it's crazy to me that sometimes, even when we have done a thing, your brain is like, well, I don't think you can do it again, right? And your brain is just always doubting you and predicting your failure, predicting like why you can't.

And I just want you to take a moment and recognize your brain is like almost 100% sure you're gonna fail, but it's at least 5050, right? Like mathematically, it's at least 5050 right now. Before I do the event next year, it's 5050. I have a 50% chance of finishing at this point, right? Like mathematically. But my brain won't even give me 5050. It's just like, right? What happens is, as we think about our future and the things that we want to do, our brain won't even give us 50%.

It won't even say like, well, it's 50% likely that you're going to succeed, right? It's saying it's more likely that you're not. And then we don't start. We don't try, we don't make any effort at all. And then it's 100% sure that we will fail, that we won't do it right. Your chances are better if you try than if you don't. Your chances if you try our 5050. If you don't try, they're 100% no, you're not going to get it. You're not going to achieve it right. When it comes to your goals, you might make it, you might not. But if you don't try, you for sure won't. And your brain really likes to predict your failure. It thinks that will be super useful for you to not try and not feel bad about it. And I just really want to allow you some unpredictability. I want to tell you that you don't know the ending. This one phrase has been so helpful to me in talking back to my brain, to just tell my brain, you might be wrong about that. I could be wrong about that. We might be wrong about that.

Like, this is one of the most powerful things that we can tell ourselves that we might be wrong, right? Just be a little bit subversive. It reminds me of Leah Goldstein. When doctors told her that she would never walk again. She was like, they don't know. They can't know, right? They don't know. Right? And like, I just love that. And I think like so many times, like, we really ought to say that to our own brain. You don't know. You can't know. You don't know what I'm going to do. You can't predict it. Right. You might be wrong about that. And the truth is, the script is still being written right now, in this moment, we don't know what's going to happen one moment from now, when our.

From now, one day from now, one year from now, one decade from now, the script is still being written. We only have up to this present moment. So don't let your brain tell you that it already knows the ending. It can't possibly know. It can't possibly know what you're capable of. It can't possibly know what is ahead of you. Everything is being written right now, in this moment, and your brain can't predict what you're capable of because you just haven't tried it yet. You haven't tried it yet. So stop believing your brain's boring story and start allowing for the possibility that we don't know the ending.

Okay, my friends, that's what I have for you today. Your brain is an awful lot like a hallmark movie. It thinks your happiness is gonna happen outside of you. It really likes to think in binary terms, and it is always predictable and always predicting. And I just want to give you permission to rewrite the script, to direct your life the way you want to, and not settle for the same old story. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome. I love you for listening and I'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you're serious about changing your life, you first have to change your mind. And the best way to do that is through coaching. I work with my clients one on one to help them change their thoughts and their feelings about themselves, their lives, and their challenges so that they can live a life they love. If you'd like to work with me one on one, you can learn more and schedule a free call to try coaching for yourself at Aprilpricecoaching.com.