Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Feeling stuck? Break free from anxiety, depression, and the patterns that hold you back. Join me as I share my recovery journey, along with practical coaching tools to help you grow stronger, feel capable, and create a life you love.
You're listening to Break Free with Becky, your go to podcast for real talk, real tools, and real freedom. Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here today. I'm really excited about what we're gonna be talking about today because it is a concept that absolutely changed my life.
Becky:And it's something that we hear about a lot. And I used to think it was just a fluffy self help concept. But once I understood it and I understood how to work with it, everything started to shift for me. Okay. So we're gonna talk about our thoughts today.
Becky:And often when I speak to people about thought work, they'll just brush off this idea that our thoughts are so important. They'll say, oh, that's really nice. I do feel better when I think positively. I do feel better when I try and have a good attitude. And then you just brush it off.
Becky:Don't do that to yourself today. Don't brush it off because you will miss all of the value of what I'm going talk about. You will miss all the value. And this concept alone will change your life if you implement it, if you try it out. Okay.
Becky:So today we're going to talk about what our thoughts actually are and we're going to talk about how they determine everything that you feel, like all of your emotions. And we're going to talk about how they determine everything you do or don't do in your life and how they determine everything that you have. So if you heard what I just said there, they determine what you feel, what you do or you don't do in life, and everything you have, you can see that your thoughts are incredibly important to pay attention to. But before we dive into our thoughts, we have to back up for a second and we have to talk about the difference between circumstances and thoughts because they're not the same thing and our brains love to mix these up. Our brain loves to make every thought that passes through our head a fact.
Becky:It loves to be like, this is the fact of the world and believe it. We've really got to separate that out. So let's talk about circumstances. A circumstance, we're going to define it as a fact. A circumstance is a fact.
Becky:Okay. It's something that everybody would agree on. If I took it to a court of law, everybody would agree on it. Circumstances are also neutral, meaning they don't cause emotion. Thoughts cause emotions.
Becky:Circumstances don't. They're just neutral. They're boring. They don't have a lot of drama. They're actually not that interesting.
Becky:So let me give you some examples. A circumstance is something that someone said, the actual words that came out of your mouth. So if someone said, let's go have a picnic on Friday. That sentence right there, that's the circumstance. So and so said, let's go have a picnic on Friday.
Becky:A circumstance could also be the amount of money that you have in your bank account. Okay? If I have $72 in my bank account, then that is the circumstance. If I think my bank account is high or my bank account is low, that's a thought. The circumstance is factual.
Becky:It's the actual number. A circumstance may also be like the date or the day of the week. It could be a historical event like World War II. That's a fact. I went on a vacation last week.
Becky:I went to Lava Hot Springs. It's a fact, a circumstance that I went to Lava Hot Springs. A circumstance is your living situation. Do you live in a rental? Do you live in a home?
Becky:Do you live with your parents? Do you live with a spouse? How many kids do you have? Did you go to college? Those are all circumstances.
Becky:They're facts. How old you are. Notice that they're very neutral. They're boring. They don't create a great amount of emotion.
Becky:Okay? Now a thought. A thought is what we make the circumstance mean. We experience a circumstance and then we're gonna make it mean something. So if somebody says a sentence to you, your brain's gonna hear that sentence and then it's going to interpret it and make it mean something.
Becky:So let me give an example. Let's say a friend or your sister or someone says to you, let's say they call you selfish. Okay. They're like, you're selfish. That's the circumstance, the words that they said.
Becky:You're selfish. It's just a fact that they said them. But what happens next in your brain is the thought. Maybe it's she's so rude. Maybe it's she's selfish.
Becky:Like, how would you call me that? You're the one that's selfish. That's the thought. How dare she say that to me? Somebody else might think, man, she must be having a bad day.
Becky:It's not like her. She must be having a bad day. Or somebody else might think, she must be going through something really hard right now to talk to me like that. Those are all thoughts. Notice how they're all different.
Becky:They're the interpretation of what was said, what we made the words mean. So let's do one that's maybe a little bit easier to understand. Let's go to the bank account. Okay. So if I have $72 in my bank account, that's the circumstance, the fact.
Becky:My thought might be that my bank account is low. Oh, that's scary. What are we going to do? We've only had $72 in the bank account. That's really low.
Becky:Right? But there might be somebody else out there who's only ever had $10 in their bank account. And they're like, oh my gosh, I have $72 in my bank account. That's amazing. This is the best day ever.
Becky:I have $50 I can spend on anything I want. And they think that their bank account is high. The fact is there's $72 but one person thinks it's low and another person thinks it's high. Okay. It's just based on their experience in life.
Becky:So it's important that we separate that out. There's the facts of the world and then there's what we make them mean. And if you can separate out those two things, really pay attention to what is a fact, what is the circumstance and what am I making that mean? And do I want to make it mean that? Is that helping me?
Becky:You're going to get a lot of leverage over your brain if you can do that. Okay, so often when I go and teach youth groups, I love to do an exercise. I'll pass out little pieces of paper that have different facts or different thoughts on them. And I'll have the youth read one and then they get to determine if it's a fact or a thought. So they do this fact versus thought game.
Becky:Okay? And it's a really fun one. We'll spend like fifteen minutes on it. And often I'll hear back from the leaders later on that the rest of the time they were together, the kids were like, oh, that's a fact. That's a thought.
Becky:It's really interesting and fun to separate that out. So it's a fun game to play at home. It's a fun game to play with your own brain and I highly recommend you give it a try. Just start noticing what's a fact and what's a thought. So let's talk about now why this matters.
Becky:Like, why is it important that we separate out the facts from the thoughts? And why are our thoughts so powerful? Okay. The first thing I want you to understand is that the way that you think, the thoughts in your brain determine the way that you feel. All our feelings are a chemical reaction to a thought.
Becky:I love what doctor Joe Dispenza says in his book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. He says, a thought produces a chemical. If you think angry thoughts, you're gonna feel angry. If you think happy thoughts, you're gonna feel happy. So what he's talking about is if you think angry thoughts, you're going to release adrenaline and cortisol and stress hormones in your body and you will feel angry in your body.
Becky:If you think happy thoughts, you're going to release dopamine, serotonin, good feeling chemicals in your body, and your body will feel happy. Okay? I love also what Byron Katie says about this. She says, it's not the problem that causes our suffering. It's our thinking about the problem.
Becky:Okay? The problem is the circumstances. It's the fact. It's our thinking about the problem, the way that we think about it that can cause so much pain and anguish in our life and in our body with our emotions. I want to do a little demonstration so you can understand how powerful your thoughts are.
Becky:So if you are standing or sitting down, please participate. If you're driving, do this exercise. And another time, I highly recommend you do it. What I want you to do is close your eyes and I want you to remember a time when you were really angry, like rageful angry? Visualize that time in your body.
Becky:And then just notice what's happening in your body right now. Did your heart rate speed up? Did you feel any muscles tense up? Did you feel a flush in your body? Just notice what's happening in your body as you think about it.
Becky:Wipe that clean out of your mind, and I want you to think now about a time when you were very sad. Maybe you felt depressed and notice what happens in your body. Does it feel heavier? Was there a shift in the way your muscles felt? Notice what's going on in there.
Becky:Now let's wipe that again. Just imagine a little windshield wiper wiping that sadness out of your brain. And now this time, I want you to think about a time when you felt really happy. Maybe you're on vacation, maybe you're with your family, maybe it's the first time you got a puppy, maybe a brand new kitty, like a day when you felt ecstatic and happy. As you visualize that in your mind and think about it, notice what happens in your body.
Becky:Do you feel like a little smile? Maybe a little giggle coming on? Does your chest lift up? Does it feel a little bit lighter? Just notice what's happening in there as you think about it.
Becky:Go ahead and open your eyes and just take notice of that experience. You just created in your body the feelings of angry, sad, and happy all within about a minute, And you did it with your thinking. Isn't that crazy? It's the coolest thing to recognize that what we have going on in our brain creates the feelings in our body. And this is so important to pay attention to because our feelings determine the quality of our life.
Becky:They're everything. If we feel terrible and sad and anxious and yucky all the time, our quality of life is incredibly low. And what a powerful thing to recognize that if I work with my brain, if I work with what I'm thinking about and visualizing in my brain, I can generate amazing feelings that increase the quality of my life. Other thing I want you to know is that your feelings are the fuel for your life. They are like the gasoline that determines what you do or you don't do in life.
Becky:Okay. So our feelings drive our behavior, our choices, our actions. So, for example, if I'm feeling shy, I might hold back, not talk. I might shut down. If I'm feeling angry, I might explode.
Becky:I might yell at people. I might punch something. I might have a tantrum. Right? An adult tantrum.
Becky:We have those too. If I am feeling joyful, I might hug people. I might do more service for them. I might go out and do more things in my life. So our feelings are the fuel for what we do or we don't do in life.
Becky:They determine the quality of our life, and they are the fuel for everything that we do or don't do. Okay, how we behave. It all starts with our thoughts. I don't want you to lose that part. Our thoughts determine our feelings and then our feelings determine what we do or don't do in our life or our actions.
Becky:Okay. Now, I was recently watching a documentary. It was a documentary on inflammation. I love to watch anything about the body and the brain. And it was a big docu series on inflammation, and they had the top neuroscientists and the top doctors who were trying to understand inflammation in the body, gut inflammation, the bacteria in the body, everything that's going on in there.
Becky:And I don't remember who it was, but one of the neuroscientists, he was talking about our minds and our thoughts. And he said, a negative thought causes as much inflammation in the body as a toxin. Think about that. A negative thought causes as much inflammation in the body as a toxin, as much inflammation as mold or a pesticide or all the plastics that are out there in the world. And this is something that I've experienced in my life, and I knew, like, in my body, but it was really cool to hear a neuroscientist talk about this.
Becky:And that's because when we have negative thinking in our brain, once again, we're gonna create that stress response in our body. We're gonna release chemicals in our body that are toxic for our body. When we release adrenaline, our heart rate starts pounding. We start sweating. It is hard on the body.
Becky:Cortisol can be hard on the body in high levels. Our whole body can start to give up if we have a lot of negative thinking because it puts us under so much stress. In fact, when I used to work at the psych unit with little children and I had one little child that was in a very difficult home situation and he wasn't growing. And that's because his whole brain had diverted all of the energy to surviving and he stopped growing because he was in so much stress all the time in his home environment. So our thinking has incredible effects not only on the way we feel, but also just on our body and how it works.
Becky:Another thing I want to help you understand is that our brain has a natural negativity bias. Our brain is naturally geared towards looking for negative things. This is a survival mechanism that has kept us alive for thousands and thousands of years. So the brain is just always scanning the environment, looking for what could be dangerous, what could harm us, what we've had experienced in the past and how that might harm us, and not only physical dangers but also social dangers. It's very important for our brain to be accepted in society to be connected because that means survival.
Becky:So we have this negativity bias that goes on in our brain and it's looking out for us. It's trying to protect us. Okay? And I heard in many different places a long time ago. I don't know where the statistic came from, but it's one that has always just made a lot of sense to me.
Becky:So I'm going to share it with you. And it's the eighty five percent of an unmanaged brain is negative. Eighty five percent of an unmanaged brain is negative. I think that's amazing. An unmanaged brain, meaning we're just letting it run automatically.
Becky:We're not checking on it. We're not intentionally thinking. It's just negative because, once again, it's trying to protect us. It's trying to keep us safe. But if we think about that, if we have 6,000 thoughts a day, that means that 5,100 of those thoughts are negative.
Becky:If we have 60,000 thoughts a day, that means 51,000 thoughts are negative. So we might want to take a look at what's going on in our brain. We might want to pay attention to our thoughts because that's a whole lot of just automatic negativity that happens in there. The other interesting thing is that 95% of our beliefs are formed before the age of eight. When we're growing up and we're learning about life, that's when our beliefs really take shape and form in our mind.
Becky:And then they get delegated to the back of our brain, and they primarily become subconscious. Like, they're just running our life automatically back there. We're not even really aware that there are beliefs. They just feel like facts to us at this point because it's just something that happened in our formative early years. So for example, if you grew up in an environment where there was a lot of scarcity, there wasn't a lot of money, maybe there was a lot of negativity around people who had money, you might have a belief like rich people are greedy.
Becky:Rich people are greedy, which might prevent you from actually trying to earn money and gain money in your life. Okay? And you may not even know that belief is in there or that it's a belief and not a fact. So it's really important that we pay attention to our thoughts because if you don't look at your thoughts, they will run your life on autopilot. They will just run your life on autopilot, and you will have no idea how you got where you are, why you have what you have, and why you feel the way you do.
Becky:And it's really important that we understand that while we can't control all of our circumstances, some of them we can. We control who we marry, what school we go to. We can control many things about our life and our circumstances. But a lot of them we can't. But what we can choose is what we want to think about, how we want to think about it, and how intentional we want to be about our life.
Becky:That's where all our power is. That's where we get all of our power back, and it is truly our most powerful stance. So let me give you an example. In the previous podcast, I talked about how I went through a lot of anxiety and depression for most of my life, right? And I attributed it to circumstances that were outside of me.
Becky:I attributed it to genetic depression. I attributed it to hormone imbalance, PMS. I was told I had PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, vitamin deficiency, toxin overload, pesticides, gluten intolerance, inflammation in my brain. I also have fibromyalgia. So I thought all of those things are what's causing my anxiety and my depression, all the struggles I was having.
Becky:So I tried to manage those circumstances with acupuncture, hypnotism, EMDR, massage therapy, regular therapy like psychotherapy. I got rid of all the plastics in my house. I started eating organic, clean food to try and reduce pesticides, get the inflammation out of my brain. I started taking probiotics and supplements. I went and saw a myofascial therapist to help release physical pain out of my body, emotional pain out of my body.
Becky:I tried sound baths, meditations. All of these things are very good things. They're all good things, and I still do almost all of them. But the reality was I wasn't any happier. I'd go get a massage, I'd still come home unhappy.
Becky:I would change my food and I wouldn't feel much better. I'd go to therapy. Sometimes I'd feel worse. Sometimes I'd feel okay. After thirty years of searching, what I discovered was that the problem was I was believing all of my thoughts.
Becky:Every thought that came across my brain, I thought it was just a fact. I thought it was just the way it was. And when I learned that, I realized that the solution was in me the whole time. I just needed to start paying attention to my thoughts and working with them and questioning them. So let me give you a real life example of this.
Becky:Okay? So when I first started into coaching and I was trying to understand how this works, a common situation for me was I would start feeling frustrated. I would feel frustrated because I wasn't happy. I felt miserable. My brain was racing and looping on thoughts.
Becky:I would curl up in my bed and I would want to give up and I would attribute this to my hormones or something being wrong with my body or my brain. Often, would tell my husband, don't know if it's hormones. I don't know if it's what I ate. Is it the food? Like, I'm not sure what it is.
Becky:And then I would go and do what I like to call a thought detox. All of my thoughts, detox them out of my brain, could come on a piece of paper. Okay. Some people like to call it a brain dump or a thought download. I love the idea of it being a thought detox because I am detoxing my body of all the thoughts that are in my brain.
Becky:So I put all of the thoughts that were going through my head on a piece of paper and I would take a look at them. And more often than not, this is what my thoughts sounded like. Something is wrong with me. I'm good enough. I can't do anything right.
Becky:I'll never change. And what's the point of life if I'm always gonna feel this way? What's the point of life if I'm always gonna feel this way? When I say those sentences to you, think about it. How does it feel in your body?
Becky:I'm gonna say them again and just pay attention to your body if these are the thoughts that were going through your head and how you feel. Something is wrong with me. I'm not good enough. I can't do anything right. I'll never change.
Becky:What's the point of life if I'm always gonna feel this way? I don't know about you, but it makes me feel terrible. Those aren't even my current thoughts anymore. But when I just say them, I feel terrible. And in the moment when I had them, it felt like terrible, terrible crushing depression.
Becky:And notice that none of those thoughts or circumstances, there's no facts there. Right? There's not a fact that something was wrong with me or that I wasn't good enough. It was not a fact that I couldn't do anything right. It was not a fact that I couldn't change.
Becky:None of those are facts. They're all thoughts and they made me feel crushing depression. And in that crushing depression, I would go to bed and I would cry and I would not wanna get up. So what I started doing was questioning my thoughts, breaking them down, looking at where did they come from? Why was I believing them?
Becky:And when I did this in the moment, 90% of the time, I would get my power back. I would start feeling better and better. 90 of the time, I was like, oh my gosh. All right. I'm gonna get up.
Becky:I'm gonna turn some music on. I'm gonna go play with my kids. I'm gonna go get some dishes done. I'm gonna clean a bathroom. Like, I would start generating my own energy and I would start feeling better and better.
Becky:Not because I fixed my hormones, not because I detox my body and not because I took the right supplement stack or got the right medicine. It was because I questioned the thoughts that were creating my reality. I questioned the thoughts that I thought were just facts. And I proved to myself over and over again that the biggest factor in my mental health wasn't genetic depression, hormones, or nutrition. It was becoming conscious of what I was thinking in my head and questioning it, breaking it down and deciding on purpose what I wanted to believe, what I wanted to think.
Becky:No, I don't want anyone to think that I'm discounting genetics or hormones or brain inflammation, nutrition, like those are all going to affect your mood. PMS 100% affects my mood. My hormones affect my mood. Bad nutrition, like I eat a lot of sugar, I will actually start to feel very angry. Definitely affects my mood.
Becky:Okay, I'm not discounting that. It's a big piece. But even with all of that going on, I get so much leverage over my brain by taking a look at my thoughts and questioning them and choosing on purpose what I wanna think and what I wanna believe. So here's your invitation today. I wanna invite you to start observing your thoughts from a very compassionate, loving, and neutral place.
Becky:If we observe our thoughts and we start to notice that they're really terrible and then we get angry at them and we try and fight them and we try and stop them, that's just going to increase our suffering and our pain. So we want to do it from a very curious, neutral, compassionate place. It's like in the movies when you see somebody laying in bed and they're in a hospital bed, but their spirit is like floating above their bed. Maybe they're dying and their heart is stopped and the family's gathered around them, but their spirit is up in the corner. And their spirit is always very calm and just neutral and not upset and just watching.
Becky:That's the neutral place I'm talking about. It's just curious. It's just interested. It's neutral. I don't wanna judge my thoughts or get mad at them.
Becky:I just wanna observe them. Like, what's in there? What's going on in their brain? I just wanna check this out. Okay?
Becky:So do a thought detox or brain dump, whatever you wanna call it, and put all of your thoughts on a piece of paper. There is something about putting pen to paper and writing your thoughts out on a piece of paper that almost instantly neutralizes what's going on in your brain. When they're stuck up in our brain, they just go so fast. It's really easy to believe, and we can't even stop them. We can't even look at them.
Becky:Put them on a piece of paper so you can see what's in there. And when you can see what's in there, what the sentences are in your brain, you will see what you feel the way you do. Promise you that. You will see why you feel the way you do once you start taking a look at the thoughts in your brain. Okay?
Becky:And listen up. If you wanna get a lot out of this podcast, don't just listen. Don't just consume. Consuming is fun. Right?
Becky:Listening is fun. But implementing, trying out the exercises, it's life changing. That's where the change is. Okay? So go implement.
Becky:Go try it out. Alright. That's what I have for you today. And I will be back next week with more goodness for you. Take care, my friend.
Becky:Thanks so much for listening to the podcast. If you're stuck and ready for change, grab my free course, get unstuck at Becky garner coaching dot com forward slash stuck. It goes straight to the heart of what's keeping you stuck and gives you real tools to shift you out of it. Once again, that's beckygarnercoaching.com/stock. If this episode helped you today, don't keep it to yourself.
Becky:Follow the show, leave a review, or share it with someone else. And remember, you're stronger than you think, and you're more powerful than you know. And I truly believe that. I'll see you next time.