You Can't Change What You Can't See
In this episode of Just Call Jenna, Jenna explores a deceptively simple idea:
you can’t change what you can’t see. She breaks down how the brain relies on autopilot and familiar neural pathways, creating automatic habits and emotional reactions that can quietly shape our lives. From expecting rejection and becoming defensive to overthinking, people-pleasing, or shutting down, Jenna explains how many of these behaviors may be learned protective responses rather than fixed parts of who we are—and why noticing them is the first step toward changing them.
Watch the episode here
Listen to the episode here
Jenna also dives into the connection between the nervous system, survival mode, and our ability to respond rather than simply react. Drawing from her own experience after her stroke, she shares how learning to recognize tension, overwhelm, anxiety, and recurring patterns created space to make different choices. Instead of trying to immediately “fix” yourself, this episode encourages you to observe your thoughts, breathing, body, triggers, and emotions with greater awareness—because sometimes the most powerful change begins with simply noticing what has been there all along.
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Welcome back. Today I'm going to be talking about you can't change what you can't see. So the idea of this week is really just about noticing. We're going to talk about some Skills, some neuroscience, and how that works in the brain, and also some real life things you can do to just notice. We're gonna focus on noticing and not doing for this next week. So I think this is really important to participate in and listen to and just notice all we're gonna do is focus on our awareness. It doesn't mean we're gonna take any action this week. If you want to, please do, but just shifting what you notice this.
So I'm gonna talk today really about one skill that quietly changes everything in your life. It builds up over time. It's not positive thinking, it's not motivation, it's not discipline. While these are all ingredients in the recipe, it's truly your ability to notice.
“The ability to notice is what's going to change everything.”
Most of us spend our lives on autopilot. We wake up, we react Back to emails, texts, traffic, conversations, stress, unexpected problems, and before we know it, the day happened to us Instead of being created by us, because we were so busy not noticing what happened and just reacting to it. That is the world we live in. But what if the key to changing your life isn't trying harder? What if it's simply noticing what has been running the show all day long? And it's not you. It's usually your reactions to everything.
Your brain loves autopilot. It is incredible. Efficient and lazy at the same time. It wants to conserve energy by creating habit loops and automating things. It's not designed to make you happy, it's designed to keep you alive. So let's talk about that in a way that's understandable. Your brain wants habit loops. Like for example, have you ever driven home and you don't remember half the drive? Maybe you were on the phone, maybe you were rocking out to some music. But you get to your destination and you think for a second and it's almost like a blackout. How did I get here? That's your brain remembering familiar programs.
So something will happen when you start noticing. The same thing will happen with your emotional habits that does with your physical habits. Maybe you automatically Expect rejection or assume that people are upset with you. Or maybe you're automatically on the defensive at feedback. Those reactions are not necessarily who you are, but they are practice neural pathways in your brain.
“So what you repeat is what will expand.”
Think of it that way. So I think about the neural pathways and what you notice. How you show up is How you're going to sort of predict things. Remember, your brain is designed to keep you safe by predicting things, and it's going to predict based on past experiences to keep you safe for the future. Your brain's job is to keep you alive, and it does that by conserving energy and creating habit loops. So start with noticing, and that's how you're gonna start changing things.
The good news for you is that the neural pathways can actually change. Step one is you have to recognize that the pathways are there. So the experiment I like is for just one week between now and my next episode, just practice noticing things. And notice what you're noticing.
“Just being aware of it is 50% of the change.”
And then you can start creating new loops and moving in the right direction. So just Think about it as notice what you're noticing. Notice how you feel. Notice if certain colors stand out. Notice if there's certain ways you're speaking. or ways other people are speaking. Maybe try if you can't figure out what to focus on. Just notice how you're breathing for a day. Are you taking deep breaths, shallow breaths. Are you pausing? If you can't figure out how to notice, and that's too difficult with you, just start noticing your breath as step one.
But the goal would be for the next week to just Notice what you are aware of. Notice what you're noticing. I think that's a really important factor because if you're not aware of it, you can't change it. Your nervous system is listening. I find it fascinating that the nervous system is constantly asking, am I safe? From a neurological perspective, your nervous system is always looking for safety. It's not just physical safety, but emotional safety, social safety, psychological safety. The brain is designed to keep you alive or keep you safe. And so your nervous system is always looking for what's safe.
By starting to notice what feels safe and what doesn't, you can help your nervous system out. When your nervous system senses danger, real or even perceived, it doesn't know the difference. Is this happening or do I just Think it's happening. It's going to shift into protection mode. You're going to go into survival mode. A lot of biological things are gonna start happening. You're going to start putting up your defenses. You might fight, you might withdraw or overthink. People please procrastinate, become emotionally withdrawn, emotionally numb. You might avoid.
These are not personality flaws. They're not. They're protective strategies that your nervous system has learned over time. The problem happens when these strategies continue after your danger has passed. So if you become someone who avoids things that are hard, that habit being repeated over time, you will start just doing even when you're not in any danger. If you avoid and freeze or flight, if you will, if you constantly avoid what's So if it's hard and you prefer to walk away and procrastinate or avoid. You will become that kind of person even when there is no danger. You will start avoiding procrastinating and doing more things.
Scientifically, your brain has just learned to repeat that. It says, oh, this is what we do, I'm someone who. So whether that be conscious or subconscious. Those personality things become your habits, not necessarily personality flaws. It's not who you are as a person, but it is what you do. And so By noticing and being aware of how you do those things, you can start correcting them and make changes.
Don't expect it to change overnight. If your body believes you're in survival, it's difficult to start thriving. So don't try to make it from here to here, right? Don't try to go from A to Z. Maybe figure out the little baby steps along the way. That is going to calm your nerves. nervous system allow you to be aware and move in that direction. So if A is here and Z is here, you can just start moving in that direction. Little baby steps. Like my example of walking one driveway at a time until you're all the way around the block. It's what I had to learn after the stroke.
One of the biggest lessons I had was that stress poisoning is being stuck in survival mode. I was stuck in survival mode. I wasn't calm and peaceful. I was great at surviving. In fact, I think I was an expert at it. I wasn't Happy, peaceful, my nervous system was a mess. I'm actually someone who's thriving now in peace. I didn't think it was possible then to be this person that I am now. I didn't even have a reference point. My nervous system didn't know what to do. I had no concept that I could live in peace more often than not.
I thought that everything meant survival, hustle. If there was a open sp Space in my day, I needed to fill it with something more to achieve. Overthinking, overdoing, overachieving. That's who I was. There are still some of those things that are in me because some of my personality traits are to that, but I noticed over time how much I was doing to put myself in survival mode. And I realized thanks to my stroke that it was life or death if I continued that path. Now I won't do it. Under any cost, my job is to do what's best for me, regardless of everything else. Now that doesn't mean skipping my adult responsibility. It doesn't mean telling the world to F off, although some people need to be told that. I think it's really just about making choices that are in the right direction every time.
“And I'm out of survival mode. I live in peace. I choose myself always.”
I'll set the proper boundaries. I'll make the right decisions. I will focus on the direction I'm going and just worry about how I'm responding in the moment. I have calmed my nervous system to a place that I did not even believe was possible. It's not a massage. It's not a meditation thing. Well, all those things help. And yes, I do them. Oh, I do love a good massage. Have one coming this week. I'm looking forward to it. But I think that it's understanding that that peace exists in me, not just in the moment, but as a whole.
Now that took a lot of work to get out of survival and into thriving. Right? It was definitely life or death, but it's about the decisions I make every day and how I'm gonna live the rest of my life. I'm someone who has peace as my currency. I'm someone who? I'm someone who shows up and does a podcast every week because I want to help people. Transformation happens not just by changing your behavior, but you interrupt it. And how do you interrupt it? and start doing something different, you have to be aware of what you're doing that's not working for you. You have to sort of allow that to be.
But peace and boundaries is a little bit about that. Being aware that this situation makes me feel a certain way and there Therefore I'm going to choose my boundary. I used to be someone who would tell them something irritated me. I used to react instantly, but now I pause and take a breath before responding. I sort of think about myself and I'm not bracing for impact. I'm not bracing for their reaction.
I used to tell people off and have this sort of nasty mouth. And so I would say what would make me feel better in the moment, and then I would usually regret what I would say. But when I learn to just take a breath before saying something, my nasty mouth stopped happening. Now I still have a little bit of a nasty mouth. Oh, I can tell you off with the best of them. But the more breaths I took, the more space. The more often I could let go.
“I've learned that my body speaks before my mind.”
That's a big one to notice. My body will tell me what's happening before my brain does. I notice tension before I feel burnout. I recognize overwhelm before the snapping off at the mouth. That was probably my hardest lesson, right? Again, my nasty mouth. I don't have it anymore, but Jenna 1.0 certainly does. I can sense my anxiety before it becomes panic. Your body is always communicating to you. But are you listening to it?
It's just Just become aware. Again, I'm asking you this week to just notice things. If being around makes you feel a repeated pattern, if it makes you angry, if it makes you sad, if you makes you feel rejected, just notice those feelings. Again, if you can create a boundary and do something about it, highly recommend doing that. You sort of have to keep moving in the right direction.
“Remember, your nervous system is always listening and your body is always speaking, but are you noticing what they're saying?”
We are not trained from the time we are kids to pay attention to our nervous systems and our bodies. So start noticing what's happening. Your nervous system is listening and your body is speaking. Start paying Paying attention to those before you start paying attention to everything else. To notice that again, if you can only notice your breath, take a breath and count to five before you respond. In that five seconds, you will start noticing things. That is your job this week.
I implore you to do that because Taking a week to notice in the scheme of your life is but a blip on the radar. But if you don't notice it, you can't change anything. If you're unhappy with things in your life and you'd like to change them Start by noticing. And if you have to start, notice your breath as the beginning, but your body is listening. I want you to start listening to it. It will tell you all the information you need to know.
One of the biggest things that comes from noticing is what's referred to as the mirror effect. Life has an interesting way of reflecting what you're carrying inside. They call that the mirror effect. Psychologically, spiritually, it's the same thing. If you constantly encounter the same conflict in relationships with everyone, like it's just the same problem in a different person, might be you. Because it's the same things that we're reflecting as within, so without. So the same frustration at different jobs, different relationships. It might not be a coincidence.
It's not repeating because you're failing at it. It's probably not you.
“The mere effect is that life will keep giving you that same lesson until you learn it.”
It will keep reflecting what you're Unaware of until you become aware of what needs to be fixed. That's part of the game of life. So you have to notice it. You have to take your blinders off and start paying attention. Start by noticing what you're noticing. Notice your breath, notice your nervous system, notice your body.
If you don't know how to work with the inner you because you haven't done all that shadow work or psychologically therapy healing that I've done. I mean I'm not a therapist but I've done a lot of healing. I've studied a lot of things about the brain. I've had to work through a lot of things. And if you haven't done that yet, that's okay. I do not want you to necessarily walk my path. But I want you to just start noticing what you're noticing.
Notice your nervous system. Your body is speaking to you. If you notice your body, your breath, and your nervous system, you will start to become aware of these patterns. And that mirror effect will start reflecting different things. That's part of it. But you can't change it if you're unaware of it. So start looking for things that will happen over time. And it's not a daily thing, but if you make these daily choices. You will start to notice things.
“You will start regulating before you're responding. You will start responding instead of reacting.”
I wish we were taught this. In school or work or it was culturally taught to us. You just can't think clearly in survival mode. When you're dysregulated, and I think most of the population is totally dysregulated, your brain shifts resources from Thoughtful decision making to survival. You start reacting, everything is danger, danger, danger, and you're going in the moment. You sort of don't have time for your logical mind or your spiritual higher self, whatever you want to call it, to actually come into play and make the good decisions.
So you're gonna learn to return to safety quickly. And if all you can do is notice your breath and how your body's responding, that's probably the first one. Your nervous system will follow along and these habits that your brain is going to do to conserve energy will start moving in that direction. No, unfortunately, it's not going to happen overnight. Some things will be quicker than others. There's a time buffer that needs to happen.
But you can't plant a seed that you're unaware of. Part of nurturing and growing your garden, if you will, or Getting ready for the harvest of you is taking inspired action steps and nurturing what's growing. So becoming aware of it is planting a seed, taking that inspired action or doing the right thing or moving in the right direction is all part of nurturing and getting ready for your harvest.
“But you can't plant the seeds to grow the garden you want. If you're unaware of them.”
One of my favorite little ad libs, if you will, is, you know, somebody had a beautiful garden and he says, Oh, your garden is beautiful. And he says, What did you do? And he goes, I just removed everything that kept my garden from growing. Think about that. He didn't do anything special other than remove everything out of the garden that wasn't helping it grow.
I have a garden in my backyard, and so I think about that. My job is to just Remove the weeds, give it the right ingredients, and you know what I always get to enjoy the harvest. Now that is a physical gardening thing, but gardening will teach you a lot. It's The patience to let things to grow.
I have these beautiful flowers that I absolutely love, but when you see the flower stalk, from the time you see the stalk and sort of the bud before it opens To the time it opens, it's like a whole week. That week is painful for me because I love the flowers and just watching for them to open up is every day I look at it and every day it looks like Maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow, but that's part of gardening in the time buffer.
But just being aware, huh? There's a flower that's getting ready to bloom. And as I'm patient, it's going to be beautiful and fragrant. I'm gonna go cut it and stick it in my bud vase on my countercause I absolutely love it. It's one of my favorite flowers, but it is once the bud is there, it takes about a week for it to open. So I sit and watch it. Kind of like that old thing of like a watch pot never boils, but just being aware. That's how your garden grows. There's a time buff.
So being aware is going to help you plant the seeds for the garden you want to grow. What do you want your garden to look like? You have full control of that. So the small change of just being aware and noticing, it will create distance between you and the emotion that's causing the dysregulation in your nervous system. You are literally disrupting the loop and creating change.
So one of the most powerful shifts you can actually make is realizing that you're not your thoughts. You are not what you think about, but you are the one who observes them.
“You're not your thoughts. You're the one noticing them.”
So start noticing. Instead of I'm anxious. I'm noticing anxiety. Instead of angry, I'm noticing I feel angry. Instead of sad, I notice I'm sad. Instead of happy, I notice I'm feeling joy. Noticing is one of the most powerful shifts you can make, is observing how you feel.
So once you recognize the patterns in yourself, you stop asking, why does this keep happening? Instead you ask, what is this trying to teach me? It's those little shifts are how you're gonna nurture that garden. So just make the shifts. For the next week, please don't try to fix yourself. I mean, if you can, go ahead. Just simply notice. You have to recognize the pattern. You have to notice your thoughts. Notice your breath. Notice your body.
Notice what feels expansive and notice what drains you. Notice when you're spending time around people, places, or things that make you feel worse than what you got there. Notice people, places, and things that make you feel like the best version of yourself. Just notice. And if you can make the shift to spend more time around what helps you grow and expand, and less around what drains you. That might be a lot to take on this week, but just Simply notice.
“That small change of noticing creates distance. And you need that distance between you and the emotion to disrupt the loop.”
Just notice. Your nervous system has maybe learned to be in survival patterns. I know mine did. And you've never chose that consciously. I know I didn't. But it doesn't have to be your future. It can be Up until now, you can start noticing what's not working for you and start shifting in the right direction, getting away from going in the wrong direction.
Your brain, your nervous system has created these loops. It is just doing what it knows how to do. It's designed to keep you safe. You can restart, reset, redo. As many times as you need to. There is nobody that says, okay, you failed. Now you're over. It's the end. No. You can restart. Okay, this isn't working for me. I'm gonna restart. I'm gonna reset myself. And redo this.
“You can do that as many times in life as you want. There is no rule that says you can't.”
So just choose to pause and respond different. Choose to take a breath and notice. Just notice what you're noticing. Start with that for the week. And if you can't, just tell yourself, I'm going to take a breath and notice. If that's all you can do, congratulations. I'm proud of you. It's hard to do things differently than we've been doing them. But just notice it.
If you don't notice it, you can't change it. If you can't change it, you can't create the life you want. It's really that simple. So just notice. Take a breath and notice if all you can do is count your breath, count to five, just do that. Notice your breath. And if you can get to the next stage of I'm noticing my breath and I notice my body is feeling a certain way. And if you can name The emotion, great, those are three things that you have not been doing, but just notice what you're noticing, become aware, and then you can start figuring out what you want to change.
Thanks for joining me today. Remember, karma's real, energy is contagious, check your vibes.
I now have my workbook available for purchase on my website, justcalljenna.online There's a shop button. You can purchase the workbook that shows you seven days of how to start resetting your stress level. It's downloadable. You're not getting some book. You can just download it and print it on your printer or use it on your phone.
For many of my listeners, I've been getting emails and comments about people asking how to get started without choosing to have coaching or lifelong sessions, if you will, purchase it. It will give you the momentum to get started. And then if you need more support, please reach out to me. All my contact information is on my website.
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