Stop Living by Someone Else’s Script with Albert Bramante

Ever feel like you’re living a life that doesn’t quite feel like yours? Maybe you’re stuck in a job you don’t love, caught in routines you never really chose, or just feeling like something’s holding you back, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. A lot of that might be coming from beliefs buried deep in your subconscious, beliefs you didn’t even realize were running the show. In this episode of Actions Antidotes, I chat with Albert Bramante, psychology professor, talent agent, and author of Rise Above the Script. We dig into what it really means to live “by the script,” how to spot the limiting beliefs that keep us stuck, and why small, consistent actions (not huge leaps) are the real game changers. Albert shares insights from his own journey and the work he’s done helping people shift their mindset and build a life they actually want to live. So if you’ve been saying “someday” a little too often…maybe today’s the day to start taking that first step. --- Listen to the podcast here: Stop Living by Someone Else’s Script with Albert Bramante Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you all about kind of achieving your potential and achieving your potential through various different mechanisms. There’s no one set way, despite what they may have told you in school or some other traditional childhood component of your life, that there is no one set way in which you can achieve your potential. There are plenty of ways that we could all, as my guest today would say, Rise Above the Script. That’s the name of his book. My guest today, Albert Bramante, not only is an author but also a psychology professor and talent agent. --- Albert, welcome to the program. Thank you, Stephen, so much for inviting me. I’m really happy to be here and really happy to be part of the community here and happy to have a conversation, answer any questions and offer any insights that can be helpful. Yeah, that is wonderful. And so the core message behind this podcast is always about different ways that we can kind of achieve the life that we want, and it’s interesting that your book is titled Rise Above the Script because one of the common expressions I use is “living by the script.” When we talk about the script, I’m curious about if your understanding of the script is similar to the way mine is. Yeah, I’m not talking about the literal sense of a script, like for a play or for a movie. What I’m talking about, the script that we use as our internal mind and our internal guiding system, in a sense, so it’s what navigates our life, what navigates our purpose, and particularly our conscious and subconscious mind. And I use the metaphor of a script because the book was written for performing artists who use scripts all the time, so I used that as a metaphor to kind of help understand exactly what the message is and that is really working, rewiring our mindset, and changing our mindset and changing the approach that we live our life on a day-to-day basis. And is this rewiring of the mindset something that spans kind of almost any kind of pursuit? Because you talk about working with performing artists, we’ll encounter people who say, “I wanna level up at my job.” Maybe we’ll encounter some other people that’ll say, “I wanna leave the nine to five and I wanna build my own business,” or even someone that just wants to create a different community or some other aspect of their lives or they’re like, “I want my relationship to better. I wanna have a relationship.” All those different pursuits that we’re all having in order to level up our lives, is it similar subconscious pursuit? A hundred percent, yes, because all of that requires you to optimize your mindset and your subconscious beliefs and your conscious beliefs. And what can hold you back from any of these endeavors that you had indicated is limiting beliefs, and these limiting beliefs cannot just be conscious but they can also be subconscious, which means that they really guide the behavior on a really broad level. And so that’s why I kind of talk about the idea of rising above that so that you can transcend and change your life and create the life that you desire, create the action that you desire. Now, how would someone go about determining whether their limiting belief is conscious or subconscious? Well, I would say most likely it’s subconscious if you’re trying all the time, you feel that you can’t do anything right or you’re always struggling to get through your day or you’re starting and stopping and starting and stopping and you really don’t know exactly what is going on here. And that’s where it might be subconscious. Because I’m a psychologist, Sigmund Freud, for example, one of the iconic psychologists of our time, came up with the idea of the iceberg metaphor, which is if you ever look at the actual idea of an iceberg, the iceberg only is a tip on top of the ocean, really tiny, but what you don’t see underwater is 95 percent of the iceberg, which is a huge mass. And, of course, that’s what sunk the Titanic. So if you think about our mind like the iceberg metaphor, the conscious is just the tip of the iceberg, which is only 5 percent of our thoughts and actions. The other 95 percent and the bulk of the weight of our actions is subconscious. And so that’s why it’s important to examine these. And this takes a lot of work, and it can be done. It certainly is very possible and that could sometimes come through coaching, either meditation or deep thoughts or just really gain some insights. But even working with a coach I think sometimes can really help with that to address whatever is limiting or holding you back. So if 95 percent of our beliefs are subconscious, then would you say it’s safe to think of that as like the place where it’s most likely housed? Like if you’re trying, trying and just not seem to be getting there. Sometimes it’s like you don’t know what you don’t know, in a sense, that’s where the subconscious comes in, because there may be things that are holding you back that you don’t even realize that are holding you back until you address those and say, okay, now, once you know and this maybe it’s subconsciously, now it’s like, okay, you know what you don’t know and that’s where you can work with a coach and say, “Okay, how do I deal with this limiting belief?” And then it’s through that insight and a lot of things that we do things subtly and that might be taking action. And that’s the biggest thing about if you want to rise above the script, you have to take action.Share on X So maybe something small, I’m not talking about doing anything drastic right away, but something tiny, a little tiny change here and there, and after that, that can eventually head up. So if someone were to make a tiny change, just even a small change in something you do in your day-to-day life, does that then map down into the subconscious and change those subconscious beliefs? Absolutely. Over time, it will, because you’re making some changes. And I see a lot of people who are always like, “I wanna change my life, I want things to change,” but they’re not doing anything. And, case in point, especially when it comes around the end of the year, you see all these posts on social media, like, “I hope the new year is gonna be my year,” or, “New year, new me,” and if there’s no change, it can’t happen. It’s impossible. If you look at the definition of insanity, it’s like doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. So, you got to change. You want to see different results, you have to start making changes in your life.Share on X And then you’ll start to see the results and you’ll start to see changes and you’ll start to change and rewire some of the subconscious beliefs. So would you be willing to walk through kind of just maybe a really, really base level example where someone comes in and they’re like, “Okay, my life is not what I want it to be,” and let’s just say, “I don’t like my job and I don’t even like what I do on weekends.” What does that starting point look like and what does that realization point look like? The starting point would be like, okay, you don’t like your weekends, what would be the ideal weekend for you? And start planning that. You would think about that. Map that out entirely, and don’t hold it in the back. What would your ideal weekend look like? And if you don’t like your job, focus on, a, what don’t you like about it? Is there anything you could change? Maybe there’s something you could talk to, have a talk with your boss, have a talk with your coworkers, or anything minor that you can change. And then, what is your dream job? What is your ideal thing that you want? What is your ideal vision of employment? If it’s working on your own, what are the steps that you can start to take? Now, I’m not talking about, I don’t mean like tomorrow quitting your job, that would probably not be realistic for 90 percent of the people right off the bat. So what would be things that you can do? Start doing some research. Look at your downtime. Maybe instead of doing an hour of social media, scrolling, doom scrolling, take that hour and do some research. Even if it’s just an hour a week to start, do something, and start to change that. If you don’t like your weekends, is it because you’re not doing anything? Is it because you’re too wrapped up in your work? It really would depend on what you don’t like about that weekend. So specifically, it would map down, okay, when you say you don’t like your weekend, what is it about that weekend you don’t like? That’s great, but I wouldn’t know how to help you until I know what your weekend looks like and what it is you don’t like. So even start thinking, just even go beyond that,...