This week, I had a moment.
I was journaling about how amazing I feel. My mind feels clear. My body feels great. With excitement, I go to bed thinking about what I’ve planned for the next day. Suddenly, I felt a shift. It was familiar. I went from joy to worry to guilt.
Our brain is our most important tool. It’s very efficient. It wants to help us memorize so that we require less energy to get through the day.
Our brain memorizes our morning routines, how to drive to work, or how to get sleepy around 2pm. We do thousands of things on auto pilot – these are called habits. This is our brains job. We show it how to do something over and over and eventually it takes the wheel.
How we think becomes our habit too. When we have thoughts, we think we’re simply reporting the news to our brain. Thoughts are like the news ticker (sometimes called the crawler) running across the bottom of the TV screen. Some thoughts are incomplete, some have typos, some are inaccurate, and some are factual circumstances outside of our control. It is estimated that we have about 60,000 thoughts a day!
When we have the same thoughts over and over, our brain steps in to do its job. If you worry about money, it will become a habit to worry about money. If you think life is hard, it will become a habit to view life as hard. If you think you don’t deserve a better job, it will become a habit to think you aren’t deserving. For me, the thought was – I’m not supposed to feel this good. Something bad is going to happen and I won’t be prepared.
PULL THE THREAD OF THIS THOUGHT…
Our thoughts are always the problem.
I’m going to say this over and over – thoughts are 100% optional. We can make the decision to broadcast a different set of thoughts across our brain ticker.
Our brain will fight us. Have tried to brush your teeth with your non-dominate hand? It feels odd. The brain says no. Your hand doesn’t work. Toothpastes falls from your mouth. Water sprays over the mirror. It won’t feel good the first five or even ten times you try it. Your brain wants to help you. If you keep trying, it will adjust and realize you want this new habit.
If you want a different result in your life, start giving your brain new thoughts. First become aware of your thoughts, then become curious about them. Question everything. Your brain won’t like it at first. I was thankful I’ve done the work – to have the awareness. It was uncomfortable even shocking. It made no sense. I can deal with anything that comes my way. I’ll cross that bridge if I get there. Worry has never changed an outcome. If I made the decision to continue to keep the worrying thought, the result would be me playing small possibly even self-sabotaging my goals. It would take away my excitement and joy which fuels my everything. It’s all optional.
This is what I do. I help my clients see what their brains are doing then we get to work to flip the script so that they can make big changes in their lives. It’s difficult to read the label if you’re inside the bottle – when implemented correctly, the tools will help you become aware and flip the script.
