Useful Thinking | Mindset, Identity & Brain Training

You've heard "know your why" more times than you can count. The reason you pick for a goal decides whether you're still going six months from now. This week Laura looks at what your why is actually doing in your brain, why so many of them stop working, and what she learned the hard way while chasing a goal of her own.

This episode covers:

• The moment your why has to do the heavy lifting
• The two directions your brain can drive you in, and which one lasts
• Why some of the most popular motivation advice has an expiration date
• What happens to your drive once you get what you were after
• What to tie your why to if you want it to last
• Why the way you go after a goal matters as much as the reason
• Why sticking with long-term goals is harder now than it used to be
• The question to ask about anything you're working toward

Laura would love to hear from you: If this one landed, find her on Instagram @think.laura and tell her what your why is.

MEMO: MEMO is Laura's private audio library, with over 180 mini coaching sessions to shift limiting beliefs and mental patterns at the root. Want to find your real core values? Start with MEMO episodes 67 and 68, How to Choose Your Values, parts one and two.

Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount with code USEFUL.
[Get MEMO here]

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Abundance mindset, lack mindset, scarcity thinking. We hear about it constantly, and most of us have a feel for what it means. But if you try to actually work on it, it gets slippery. How do you practice believing there's enough? Where do you even start? This week Laura makes the case for why this matters far more than just feeling better, and then narrows it all the way down to one thing. If you want an abundance mindset that holds up when things get tight, there's one place to put your attention.

This episode covers:

• Why lack can look like being sensible, not like fear
• The four reasons a scarcity mindset costs you more than you think
• Why the fastest way out of lack is the thing lack makes feel dangerous
• What the word generous actually means, and the surprising word it shares a root with
• The moment right before you give, and what it tells you about what you really believe
• Money, time, and kindness, and how to find your generosity in each one
• Why you shouldn't judge yourself when you notice the hurdle, and what to feel instead
• Why being generous with people who've earned it doesn't expand you, and where the real growth is

Connect with Laura:
Laura would love to hear from you! If this one landed, find her on Instagram @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Looking for 1:1 Coaching? Get more information + application here

This is one of the foundational ones. The kind of episode you might come back to ten times in a year. At any given moment your brain is pulling from an enormous amount of data to construct your reality, and it does that automatically, for speed, without checking with you. This week Laura teaches the tool she uses to change that filter on purpose. It's something you build ahead of time, when you're calm, so it's already in place the moment your emotions hit and your interpretation starts to distort. Because you don't drop anchor in the middle of a storm.

This episode covers:

• Why a shift in your life is really a shift in your perception
• The tool Laura uses with clients and grad students to build a new automatic lens
• Why the bigger the emotion, the bigger the distortion
• A story from Laura's own marriage that shows how a true thought and a false interpretation arrive fused together
• Why useful and true were never the same thing, and what useful actually has to be measured against
• The four hallmarks of an anchor statement that works, and the one that rules out most of the bad ones
• Three wording rules, including why your brain can't process a negative
• Laura's own statements across four different areas of her life
• The thirty second process for running a thought through your anchor
• What Laura and Mike each wrote about the other, years ago, and what they do with the evidence that contradicts it
• Why this is deliberate brainwashing, and why you should make sure you want what you're building

Get MEMO: MEMO is Laura's private audio library with over 180 mini coaching sessions to shift limiting beliefs and mental patterns at the root. Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount.
[Get MEMO]
Use code USEFUL to save 30% off lifetime access.

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

A two hour conversation with a friend kept circling back to one question: how do we ever know when enough is enough? Laura slept on it and woke up with the thing she keeps coming back to. If it doesn't feel like enough when you don't have it, there's no way it's going to feel like enough once you do. This week she gets into why that happens, and why it isn't a discipline problem or a gratitude problem.

This episode covers:

• Why the five pounds and the fifty pounds produce the exact same thought
• What researchers have found about why satisfaction never seems to stick
• What you're actually building every day while you're chasing something
• Why appreciation can't just show up once you hit the the finish line
• Whether any of this means you should change your goals
• The difference between wanting something deeply and operating from lack
• How Laura landed two dream opportunities without applying for a single job
• Who to actually celebrate when you finally hit the goal
• The words Laura repeats to herself until she physically feels powerful

Referenced in this episode: Episode 15 covers how a repeated thought becomes a physical structure in your brain. Episodes 4 and 5 cover how your brain filters the world for whatever you've told it matters.

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Look up your own chart: If you want to follow along as Laura  weaves in elements of human design, you can pull up your free chart and your Gene Keys profile to see your own blueprint. You'll need your birth date, exact birth time, and birth location. (Chart resource links below.)
Human Design Blueprint (Laura originally trained with Eric Claire Jones and loves her practical approach)

Gene Keys (useful for looking up different language for the gates in your chart)

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

We give our deepest, most sustained attention to the same handful of problems we've been circling for years. And then something crosses our path that could actually help, and we skim it. This week Laura gets into why our attention is being compromised, why the people who learn to train it are about to have an enormous advantage, and the three-part framework that turns "set an intention" from something vague and aspirational into an instruction your brain can act on in five seconds. Plus why aiming this at your biggest hurdles is exactly the wrong place to start.

This episode covers:

• How the way we take in information is costing us
• What becomes possible when you can use what you take in instead of just consuming it
• Why most intentions are too soft for your brain to do anything with
• The three components of a training-level intention
• Why you should stop aiming this at the hardest things in your life
• How many reps are actually available to you in a single day
• Real examples from Laura's day, from the shower to the dog walk to a glass of water
• The one thing to do if you want to start tomorrow

Referenced in this episode: Episodes 4 and 5 cover the reticular activating system in depth. If you're new here and wondering what your RAS is and how to program it, start there.

Get MEMO: MEMO is Laura's private audio library with over 180 mini coaching sessions to shift limiting beliefs and mental patterns at the root. Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount. Use code USEFUL to save 30% off lifetime access.
[Get MEMO] 

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Human Design is, at its foundation, an energy management system. And one of the most useful things in the whole system is also one of the simplest. Every type has a signature feeling that shows up when you're using your energy the way you're built to, and a shadow feeling that shows up when you've drifted too far off track. This week Laura walks through all five types: what each signature actually feels like day to day, what the shadow looks like, and the first place to look when it's showing up. Plus why the same exhaustion can mean opposite things for two different people, and why applying the wrong fix will make it worse.

This episode covers:

• The simplest check in Human Design and why we forget to check it
• How to tell the difference between a rough week and a real signal that something is off
• Generators: why frustration usually isn't a sign you picked the wrong thing
• Manifesting Generators: why you get two signals at once, and what your pile of unfinished projects actually means
• Projectors: the one thing to check before you decide bitterness means it's time for a change
• Manifestors: where your anger is really coming from, and the small habit that keeps your flow clear
• Reflectors: why disappointment lands harder on you than on anyone else
• The first place to look when your shadow feeling shows up, for every type
• How two people can say the exact same thing about being exhausted and need completely opposite solutions

Look up your own chart: If you want to follow along as Laura  weaves in elements of human design, you can pull up your free chart and your Gene Keys profile to see your own blueprint. You'll need your birth date, exact birth time, and birth location. (Chart resource links below.)
Human Design Blueprint (Laura originally trained with Eric Claire Jones and loves her practical approach)

Get MEMO: MEMO is Laura's private audio library with over 180 mini coaching sessions to shift limiting beliefs and mental patterns at the root. Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount.
[Get MEMO]
Use code USEFUL to save 30% off lifetime access.

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Almost every bad mood you have traces back to one thing: the feeling that what's happening, or what already happened, shouldn't have. You're probably doing it right now without realizing it. This episode is Laura's Excedrin for the mind — something to keep in the cabinet and come back to whenever you catch yourself in the loop. She breaks down what resistance is actually doing in your brain, why it feels like a perfectly reasonable reaction, and three specific moves for the three different ways it shows up. Save this one. It's built to be replayed.

This episode covers:

• The hidden sentence underneath almost every bad mood
• Why you don't feel like you're resisting anything, and the one test that tells you the truth
• The difference between accepting a thing and accepting that it happened
• What your brain is actually attempting to do when you're frustrated, and why it can never work
• When frustration is a gift, and when it's just burning your energy
• The network in your brain built for replaying the past and rehearsing the future
• A ridiculous game Laura plays in traffic that works every time
• What to do when you can only see 1% of the situation
• The one question that tells you you're really done with it

Get MEMO: MEMO is Laura's private audio library with over 180 mini coaching sessions to shift limiting beliefs and mental patterns at the root. Podcast listeners get an exclusive discount.
[Get MEMO]
Use code USEFUL to save 30% off lifetime access.

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Your body is picking up information all day long that never reaches your conscious mind. This week Laura gets into the science of how your body gathers intelligence beneath your awareness, then into the Human Design layer that reveals which of your six senses is your strongest channel for it. Find your super sense, learn what to actually do with it, and honor the signal your body has been sending you your whole life.

This episode covers:

• What kids at play reveal about how we're each built to take in the world
• The card game experiment where people's bodies knew the answer before their minds did
• Interoception: the constant internal monitoring you're almost entirely unaware of
• What brain scans show about your ability to register someone else's fear
• Why "I have a gut feeling" is more literal than you think
• The six cognitions, and how to identify yours
• Practical tools for each sense, including what to do when you're facing a big decision
• Why you have to get in the room, and what remote decisions are costing you
• How to layer your super sense into manifesting so it actually works for you
• What weakens your intuitive signal, and what strengthens it

Look up your own chart: If you want to follow along as Laura  weaves in elements of human design, you can pull up your free chart and your Gene Keys profile to see your own blueprint. You'll need your birth date, exact birth time, and birth location. (Chart resource links below.)
Human Design Blueprint (Laura originally trained with Eric Claire Jones and loves her practical approach)

Gene Keys (useful for looking up different language for the gates in your chart)

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura

Most of us were raised by someone else's rulebook — told the right way to eat, focus, and take things in. But your body has its own design for how it best absorbs the world, and when you fight against it, everything gets harder. This week Laura opens up the Human Design variables, starting with the top left arrow: how you're built to digest food, information, and everything else coming at you. Learn whether you run active or passive, why that changes how you take in the world, and how to find the specific conditions your body has been asking for all along.

This episode covers:

• Why the rules you were handed might be working against how you're actually built
• What the four arrows at the top of your chart are, and what left vs. right really means
• The difference between an active brain and a passive brain, and how each takes the world in
• Why "digestion" in Human Design is about far more than food
• How to work with your wiring instead of against it when you're stuck or overwhelmed
• The deeper layer beneath the arrow: the specific conditions your body needs to think clearly and take things in
• How working with your digestion variable can free up significant energy in your daily life

Look up your own chart: If you want to follow along as Laura  weaves in elements of human design, you can pull up your free chart and your Gene Keys profile to see your own blueprint. You'll need your birth date, exact birth time, and birth location. (Chart resource links below.)
Human Design Blueprint (Laura originally trained with Eric Claire Jones and loves her practical approach)

Gene Keys (useful for looking up different language for the gates in your chart)

Connect with Laura:
Instagram: @think.laura
Join Laura's Free Thinking Practice on Substack: ThinkLaura