March 18, 2026 • 14 mins
In this week’s episode of The Mid Week Tease, Adelle shares the three simple statements she says every morning that have transformed how she experiences her days. Inspired by a neurosurgeon’s insight into how the brain works, this episode explores how your thoughts influence what your brain pays attention to, and how you can gently rewire your mind to notice more joy, progress, and possibility. In this episode, we explore:
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- How the brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS) shapes your daily experience
- Why your thoughts influence what you notice in your environment
- The power of self-compassion in building resilience and confidence
- Simple, practical ways to shift your mindset without toxic positivity
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Midwick Te's with me adele Jngle, where
I share some random and not two random thoughts on things.
And in this episode, let's talk about the one thing
I do every single morning that has completely changed how
(00:20):
I see life and how I meet the day. So
every morning, there are three sentences, three things I say
to myself. And I had them from a new resurgeon
who's a brain doctor in an interview and he was
talking about how our thoughts quite literally shape what our
brain pays attention to. And he listed I want to
(00:42):
say about seven to ten things that he says in
the morning, and I thought that's too long, That is
way too long. So I took three that I resonated
with and I was like, these are the three that
I'm going to be telling myself every single morning. And
when I tell you this has changed the feel the
(01:06):
air and the texture of my days, I feel like
I've been doing this for just about one year now.
So here are the three things that I say every morning.
The first one is today is going to be a
great day. The second thing I say is something cool
is gonna happen. And then the third thing I say
(01:27):
is I really should give myself more credit for how
far I've come. Sometimes I say the first thing when
I wake up, so like at between six and six thirty,
when my many alums have gone off before I jump
out of bed, I will say them. And sometimes I'm
just like saying it into the ceiling and like waving
(01:49):
my hands. Sometimes I'm too groggy at that point of
the day, so I say the three things when I'm
on my morning walk and I remember to say them,
and I'm like, oh, okay, I gotta say now. Sometimes
it's after I've come back from my morning walk and
I'm in my bathroom looking at the mirror, and I'll
say these three things. There have been days that I
(02:10):
forget to say them until I'm driving into Nairubi for
work and I'm like, oh my god, oh my god,
today is going to be a great day. Something cool
is going to happen. But it doesn't matter when in
the morning I say it. I have said these three
things for about a year now. I say it when
(02:31):
I'm tired. I say it when I'm having a shit
show of a day. I say it when I'm not
too sure I believe them, like maybe something terrible or
heartbreaking is going on in my life, and I'm just like,
today's going to be a great day, you know what
I mean. But I say them every morning because I
(02:55):
know one thing. My brain is always listening and so
is yours. So this brain doctor, neurosurgeon, what he talked
about is the reticular activating system. He called it the RAS.
You can think of this as like a filter. I'm
not going to get too technical, but I just want
(03:15):
you to understand why you need to figure out what
these three, two, one, or even ten things you're going
to say to yourself in the morning are and why
they're important. All right, So the RAS. Think of it
like a filter. So at any one given moment, there
are millions of things happening around you, but your brain
(03:39):
can't process all of them. So the RAS decides what
gets your attention, right, So it's filtering, and what does
it base that on, Like when it's picking you come
to the line of top priority, you just chill where
you are. We we don't really care about you. What
does it base that on? It bases it on what
(04:01):
you repeatedly tell yourself. So if your internal dialogue is
nothing ever works out for me, or ah, fuck, today
is just going to be another stressful day, or I'm
so behind in life. So and so bought a car,
so and so moved out, so and so has gotten
(04:21):
a mortgage, so and so got this promotion. I'm so
far behind. And you tell yourself this not only in
the morning, but like throughout your day. You're repeating this.
You're repeating this day after day. Then, because this is
what you're repeatedly telling yourself, your brain goes like, got it.
Since you've repeated it, I have heard you. Let me
(04:44):
find evidence to support that thing that you have repeatedly said. Right, So,
if you're saying nothing ever works out for me, you're
going to be presented with evidence to support that. If
you say it's just a stressful day, nothing is going
my way, you're going to be provided with evidence to
support that, and not one of like nothing is going
(05:05):
my way or today is just a shit show. And
sometimes we say that after one bad thing has happened
at the beginning of the day, we've decided the whole
day is a shit show. And sometimes what I've seen
in my experience is when I do that, my brain
will pick out any minor inconveniences that come after that
(05:27):
major one during the day, so I could get stuck
in traffic. It doesn't matter that that road always has traffic.
My brain is going to be like, you see, today's
just shit because now what is this, you know? Or
maybe a random bill? You know, Like how even like
Apple Music doesn't care what time or how much is
(05:48):
in your account, The SMUs just comes this number of
dollars is deducted. Maybe that day. I get that, And
I'm like, you see, just have builds all the time,
yet like it happens every month, you know what I mean.
But because of what you've repeatedly told yourself, your brain
(06:09):
has picked up on it, and it's like, we're gonna
find evidence to support this thing that you clearly believe in.
But when you start your day with today's going to
be a great day, something cool is gonna happen. Now,
your brain starts scanning your environment for proof of that,
you know. So what I found happening is that the small,
(06:33):
even the smallest cool things, I'm like, ah, there's a
cool thing, you know. Or somebody a stranger says something
nice to me, somebody holds the door for me, or
my friend tells me something so kind hearted, or you know,
I see a cute guy, or you know, a client
(06:57):
says how happy they are with our work, or I
just I whatever it is, right, you start to notice it,
that small good thing, You notice it, that kind message,
You start feeling it, You really sit in it, and
you acknowledge it, that opportunity. You don't dismiss it, that
when you don't shelve it or reduce it, because your
(07:18):
brain is like YO, repeatedly, we've been told today's going
to be great day. Something is going to happen. You know,
I really should give myself more credit for how far
I've come. We need to look for evidence to support this,
and your perspective on how you meet life completely changes, right,
So you haven't changed your life overnight. What you've changed
(07:43):
is what your brain is looking for now. I really
like the third statement, which is I really should give
myself more credit for how far I've come. This one
was so important to me because, and I'm pretty sure
sure you might relate to this. We're often so focused
(08:04):
on where we're going that we never pause to sit
in where we are and how how far we've come.
And this really matters. I know I've talked about on
previous mid week teas episodes. The work that doctor Kristin
Neff has done around self compassion, right, and this is
a psychologist in case you missed that episode, But this
(08:27):
work shows us that like when we acknowledge ourselves with
kindness instead of with criticism or with shame, we actually
become more resilient, we become more motivated, and we're like
less anxious, right, and actually more ambitious, you know, So
(08:47):
being less cruel to yourself actually changes everything. Who would
have thunk it? Right? And I really like this one
because I changed from being someone who was shitting on
myself and being like, you still haven't done this, You're
not good enough, and I was achieving like incredible stuff,
(09:08):
and I'll still be like, this is not good enough.
You're not where we want to be. You're not working
hard enough. Why are you lazy? Why are you drumming
in the middle of the day. Why are you taking
it slow when employed people are hard at work and
you're running a business and you're just chilling. I just
used to like shame and criticize myself, and it just
(09:31):
would paralyze me, so I wouldn't end up getting much
work done anyway. But when I tell myself, I really
should give myself more credit for how farve come. You
know what I've noticed my brain does. It starts to
scan and it's not only work, so like it'll scan
and be like, Wow, we really did move to the
(09:52):
city we always wanted to live in. We really did
create a life where we get to be one with nature. Look,
it took us four years to do that and we
did it. How wonderful is that? What more can we do?
You see that shift now all of a sudden, I'm
not paralyzed with shame. I'm motivated. I'm fueled, and I'm like,
(10:13):
if I did that, if I've come all this way, ooh,
I can even go further, I can build bigger, you
know what I mean. And so that's why that third
statement is so important. And so this is not about
toxic positivity, right, Like we're not pretending when we're saying
(10:33):
these things to ourselves in the morning that everything is perfect.
M M. It's about training your brain to hold space
for possibility, you know, training your brain to expect good
things even in small ways. Training your brain to notice
progress even if it's not where you thought you'd be.
(10:55):
Because like what you practice noticing is what ruse. So
if you want to start rewiring your mind gently, I
have a few tips. The first one is start small
and start with something believable. Right. If maybe saying today
will be amazing, it feels like I that's rather large.
(11:20):
What you can say is there will be at least
one good moment today. That's pretty believable. That's pretty believable.
It could be as simple as you come across a
good TikTok that gives you those lufs from your belly,
you know what I mean. Or it could be discovering
(11:42):
a sale on this thing that you were going to buy,
or it could be a colleague of friend noticing how
well you do a certain thing. There will be at
least one good moment today. The other tip is to
pair what you're going to be saying to yourself with
a habit, right, so you can say these things while
brushing your teeth, while making your tea, or like me
(12:04):
on some mornings, on your morning walk. This helps you
be a bit more consistent, right, and you stop forgetting
to do it. And then the other tip is to
catch your brain in the act of noticing, Oh, it
feels so good when you do this right, So if
(12:27):
you go with the sentence, there will be at least
one good moment today and then you catch your brain
noticing it. What you need to do in that moment
is be like, see, there is a good moment. I
do it all the time, especially with like the sentence
that is something cool is gonna happen. I reinforce it.
(12:47):
I'm like, ah, there's a cool thing. There's a cool thing.
And that really helps reinforce the loop. Right. And then
what you can do at night is you can add evidence,
so like before bed, you can ask yourself what went
right today, and then you're doing kind of like an
(13:08):
audit of the day and you're like, oh, lunch with
so and so was really cool. That was a great moment,
you know. Or I rediscovered this song I had completely
forgotten about and it took me back to this wonderful
moment in my life. And what you're doing here is
you're teaching your brain that this is what we look for,
so tomorrow, get with the program, you know. And I
(13:32):
just doing this realized you don't need a completely different
life to feel different. Sometimes what you need is just
like a different lens. Three sentences, just three that's it,
and like over time you'll start to see how they
begin to shift how you see your life and how
and how your life begins to feel that part. You
(13:57):
know what I mean. So if you already know your
three sentences or your one sentence, or your seven sentences
or your ten sentences, and you feel like you want
to share them with me, you can drop them in
the comments section wherever you're listening to this on But
if you connected with this episode, make sure you share
(14:17):
it with at least one person that you love. Thanks
for listening to the midwik TI's a Legally Clueless Africa production.
Episodes go out every Wednesday, and you can learn more
about us by going to legally Clueless Africa dot com
Welcome to the Midwick Te's with me adele Jngle, where
I share some random and not two random thoughts on things.
And in this episode, let's talk about the one thing
I do every single morning that has completely changed how
(00:20):
I see life and how I meet the day. So
every morning, there are three sentences, three things I say
to myself. And I had them from a new resurgeon
who's a brain doctor in an interview and he was
talking about how our thoughts quite literally shape what our
brain pays attention to. And he listed I want to
(00:42):
say about seven to ten things that he says in
the morning, and I thought that's too long, That is
way too long. So I took three that I resonated
with and I was like, these are the three that
I'm going to be telling myself every single morning. And
when I tell you this has changed the feel the
(01:06):
air and the texture of my days, I feel like
I've been doing this for just about one year now.
So here are the three things that I say every morning.
The first one is today is going to be a
great day. The second thing I say is something cool
is gonna happen. And then the third thing I say
(01:27):
is I really should give myself more credit for how
far I've come. Sometimes I say the first thing when
I wake up, so like at between six and six thirty,
when my many alums have gone off before I jump
out of bed, I will say them. And sometimes I'm
just like saying it into the ceiling and like waving
(01:49):
my hands. Sometimes I'm too groggy at that point of
the day, so I say the three things when I'm
on my morning walk and I remember to say them,
and I'm like, oh, okay, I gotta say now. Sometimes
it's after I've come back from my morning walk and
I'm in my bathroom looking at the mirror, and I'll
say these three things. There have been days that I
(02:10):
forget to say them until I'm driving into Nairubi for
work and I'm like, oh my god, oh my god,
today is going to be a great day. Something cool
is going to happen. But it doesn't matter when in
the morning I say it. I have said these three
things for about a year now. I say it when
(02:31):
I'm tired. I say it when I'm having a shit
show of a day. I say it when I'm not
too sure I believe them, like maybe something terrible or
heartbreaking is going on in my life, and I'm just like,
today's going to be a great day, you know what
I mean. But I say them every morning because I
(02:55):
know one thing. My brain is always listening and so
is yours. So this brain doctor, neurosurgeon, what he talked
about is the reticular activating system. He called it the RAS.
You can think of this as like a filter. I'm
not going to get too technical, but I just want
(03:15):
you to understand why you need to figure out what
these three, two, one, or even ten things you're going
to say to yourself in the morning are and why
they're important. All right, So the RAS. Think of it
like a filter. So at any one given moment, there
are millions of things happening around you, but your brain
(03:39):
can't process all of them. So the RAS decides what
gets your attention, right, So it's filtering, and what does
it base that on, Like when it's picking you come
to the line of top priority, you just chill where
you are. We we don't really care about you. What
does it base that on? It bases it on what
(04:01):
you repeatedly tell yourself. So if your internal dialogue is
nothing ever works out for me, or ah, fuck, today
is just going to be another stressful day, or I'm
so behind in life. So and so bought a car,
so and so moved out, so and so has gotten
(04:21):
a mortgage, so and so got this promotion. I'm so
far behind. And you tell yourself this not only in
the morning, but like throughout your day. You're repeating this.
You're repeating this day after day. Then, because this is
what you're repeatedly telling yourself, your brain goes like, got it.
Since you've repeated it, I have heard you. Let me
(04:44):
find evidence to support that thing that you have repeatedly said. Right, So,
if you're saying nothing ever works out for me, you're
going to be presented with evidence to support that. If
you say it's just a stressful day, nothing is going
my way, you're going to be provided with evidence to
support that, and not one of like nothing is going
(05:05):
my way or today is just a shit show. And
sometimes we say that after one bad thing has happened
at the beginning of the day, we've decided the whole
day is a shit show. And sometimes what I've seen
in my experience is when I do that, my brain
will pick out any minor inconveniences that come after that
(05:27):
major one during the day, so I could get stuck
in traffic. It doesn't matter that that road always has traffic.
My brain is going to be like, you see, today's
just shit because now what is this, you know? Or
maybe a random bill? You know, Like how even like
Apple Music doesn't care what time or how much is
(05:48):
in your account, The SMUs just comes this number of
dollars is deducted. Maybe that day. I get that, And
I'm like, you see, just have builds all the time,
yet like it happens every month, you know what I mean.
But because of what you've repeatedly told yourself, your brain
(06:09):
has picked up on it, and it's like, we're gonna
find evidence to support this thing that you clearly believe in.
But when you start your day with today's going to
be a great day, something cool is gonna happen. Now,
your brain starts scanning your environment for proof of that,
you know. So what I found happening is that the small,
(06:33):
even the smallest cool things, I'm like, ah, there's a
cool thing, you know. Or somebody a stranger says something
nice to me, somebody holds the door for me, or
my friend tells me something so kind hearted, or you know,
I see a cute guy, or you know, a client
(06:57):
says how happy they are with our work, or I
just I whatever it is, right, you start to notice it,
that small good thing, You notice it, that kind message,
You start feeling it, You really sit in it, and
you acknowledge it, that opportunity. You don't dismiss it, that
when you don't shelve it or reduce it, because your
(07:18):
brain is like YO, repeatedly, we've been told today's going
to be great day. Something is going to happen. You know,
I really should give myself more credit for how far
I've come. We need to look for evidence to support this,
and your perspective on how you meet life completely changes, right,
So you haven't changed your life overnight. What you've changed
(07:43):
is what your brain is looking for now. I really
like the third statement, which is I really should give
myself more credit for how far I've come. This one
was so important to me because, and I'm pretty sure
sure you might relate to this. We're often so focused
(08:04):
on where we're going that we never pause to sit
in where we are and how how far we've come.
And this really matters. I know I've talked about on
previous mid week teas episodes. The work that doctor Kristin
Neff has done around self compassion, right, and this is
a psychologist in case you missed that episode, But this
(08:27):
work shows us that like when we acknowledge ourselves with
kindness instead of with criticism or with shame, we actually
become more resilient, we become more motivated, and we're like
less anxious, right, and actually more ambitious, you know, So
(08:47):
being less cruel to yourself actually changes everything. Who would
have thunk it? Right? And I really like this one
because I changed from being someone who was shitting on
myself and being like, you still haven't done this, You're
not good enough, and I was achieving like incredible stuff,
(09:08):
and I'll still be like, this is not good enough.
You're not where we want to be. You're not working
hard enough. Why are you lazy? Why are you drumming
in the middle of the day. Why are you taking
it slow when employed people are hard at work and
you're running a business and you're just chilling. I just
used to like shame and criticize myself, and it just
(09:31):
would paralyze me, so I wouldn't end up getting much
work done anyway. But when I tell myself, I really
should give myself more credit for how farve come. You
know what I've noticed my brain does. It starts to
scan and it's not only work, so like it'll scan
and be like, Wow, we really did move to the
(09:52):
city we always wanted to live in. We really did
create a life where we get to be one with nature. Look,
it took us four years to do that and we
did it. How wonderful is that? What more can we do?
You see that shift now all of a sudden, I'm
not paralyzed with shame. I'm motivated. I'm fueled, and I'm like,
(10:13):
if I did that, if I've come all this way, ooh,
I can even go further, I can build bigger, you
know what I mean. And so that's why that third
statement is so important. And so this is not about
toxic positivity, right, Like we're not pretending when we're saying
(10:33):
these things to ourselves in the morning that everything is perfect.
M M. It's about training your brain to hold space
for possibility, you know, training your brain to expect good
things even in small ways. Training your brain to notice
progress even if it's not where you thought you'd be.
(10:55):
Because like what you practice noticing is what ruse. So
if you want to start rewiring your mind gently, I
have a few tips. The first one is start small
and start with something believable. Right. If maybe saying today
will be amazing, it feels like I that's rather large.
(11:20):
What you can say is there will be at least
one good moment today. That's pretty believable. That's pretty believable.
It could be as simple as you come across a
good TikTok that gives you those lufs from your belly,
you know what I mean. Or it could be discovering
(11:42):
a sale on this thing that you were going to buy,
or it could be a colleague of friend noticing how
well you do a certain thing. There will be at
least one good moment today. The other tip is to
pair what you're going to be saying to yourself with
a habit, right, so you can say these things while
brushing your teeth, while making your tea, or like me
(12:04):
on some mornings, on your morning walk. This helps you
be a bit more consistent, right, and you stop forgetting
to do it. And then the other tip is to
catch your brain in the act of noticing, Oh, it
feels so good when you do this right, So if
(12:27):
you go with the sentence, there will be at least
one good moment today and then you catch your brain
noticing it. What you need to do in that moment
is be like, see, there is a good moment. I
do it all the time, especially with like the sentence
that is something cool is gonna happen. I reinforce it.
(12:47):
I'm like, ah, there's a cool thing. There's a cool thing.
And that really helps reinforce the loop. Right. And then
what you can do at night is you can add evidence,
so like before bed, you can ask yourself what went
right today, and then you're doing kind of like an
(13:08):
audit of the day and you're like, oh, lunch with
so and so was really cool. That was a great moment,
you know. Or I rediscovered this song I had completely
forgotten about and it took me back to this wonderful
moment in my life. And what you're doing here is
you're teaching your brain that this is what we look for,
so tomorrow, get with the program, you know. And I
(13:32):
just doing this realized you don't need a completely different
life to feel different. Sometimes what you need is just
like a different lens. Three sentences, just three that's it,
and like over time you'll start to see how they
begin to shift how you see your life and how
and how your life begins to feel that part. You
(13:57):
know what I mean. So if you already know your
three sentences or your one sentence, or your seven sentences
or your ten sentences, and you feel like you want
to share them with me, you can drop them in
the comments section wherever you're listening to this on But
if you connected with this episode, make sure you share
(14:17):
it with at least one person that you love. Thanks
for listening to the midwik TI's a Legally Clueless Africa production.
Episodes go out every Wednesday, and you can learn more
about us by going to legally Clueless Africa dot com
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