00:00 

Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 123, "Your Thoughts About You." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:19 

Alright, hello there, how are you today? I hope things are going great. My name is Tanya. For those of you who are new, welcome to the podcast. So glad to have you here, and I hope that the things that you find here are helpful for you and they help you to live a better, healthier, more grounded life. That's my goal here is to help all of us to move into a place that's healthier a place, where we can create the relationships we want, the kind of life that we want in a healthy and an engaging way. And I love the work that I get to do here. I love the work I get to do with clients and I love providing this podcast for you. I think there's just so much goodness for us to engage in here together. So if you are not new and you've been with me for a while, thanks for coming back. Thank you for sharing. Seeing some good movement on the podcast and that's exciting for me to be able to put content out there that is connecting with people. Many of you will never contact me about anything that you hear that might be helpful and that's okay. I just love the idea that I'm putting content out and that it's changing lives and making a difference. And you know what? I may never know. I think that's kind of a cool idea. Although, if you want to contact me and let me know and give me a review, I would love that as well. 

01:44 

So let's go ahead and jump in today today. Well, last week we talked about your story about you and that was focusing a lot on our past, looking at what we think and tell ourselves about our past. And today we're going to be looking at our present thoughts and how they take us into our future, which is kind of a different angle of the importance of our thoughts. So your thoughts about you, why do we even care? What is so important about our thoughts that we would want to take a whole podcast and discuss it? Well, because pretty much everything hinges on our thoughts about ourselves. How we think about ourselves actually determines our lives. When we use the phrase "I am," we are actually creating something. If we use the phrase "I am lazy," our brain starts to create lazy. If we use the phrase "I am a hard worker," our brain starts to create hard worker. So ultimately our lives are determined by our thoughts about ourselves and never somebody else's thoughts or opinion. Now if we choose to believe someone else's opinion about us, then it has become our own thought. But what other people think or say about us can have no bearing on what we actually create. It all comes from our own thoughts. 

03:09 

And here's the really exciting thing. We get to think and believe whatever we want to about ourselves. Okay, isn't that amazing? And it doesn't matter what I've thought about myself in the past. I can choose to change or adjust my thoughts about myself at any time to create something different than I've created in the past. In fact, if I want to create a different future than what my past was, it is imperative that I learn to think different thoughts, or I will just create the same thing. It's like that quote that says, "if I always do what I've always done, I'll always get what I've always gotten." Creating something different requires starting with different thoughts. When I look at the thought patterns that I had in my marriage, back when I was married, I realize that if I go into another relationship thinking the same things, I will create the same kind of relationship that I had before. And my goal in this area is that when I'm in another relationship that I will create something completely different, something healthy and nurturing and kind and abundant. And that will require some very different thinking than what I previously had. 

04:26 

So let's chat for a minute about thoughts and beliefs. Because sometimes I get people saying, "well, what's the difference?" Actually, they're kind of the same thing. Beliefs are just thoughts that we have repeated so many times that we really start to believe them as true. The first time I tell myself that I am capable of creating a healthy relationship, a healthy marriage relationship, I probably won't believe it. In fact, for the first, oh, I don't know, probably three years after my divorce, when I would think or say that I was capable of a healthy relationship, I really kind of struggled to believe it. But now, especially in the last few years, I've done so much emotional and mental work and I completely believe at this point that I am capable of having a healthy relationship. I've thought the thought so many times that now it's a belief. And I've also backed it up with patterns of behaviors that I've started to create that are different. So beliefs about ourselves are just thoughts that we have  so many times that our primitive brain has taken a hold of them and finally says, "girl, I got you. I'll think this thought for you and you don't even have to engage your prefrontal cortex to think it anymore." And this, my friends, is where we want to be with these kinds of positive thoughts, having our primitive brain feeding us beliefs in our subconscious brain that serves us. 

05:52 

So much of what many of us think actually doesn't service. We can think some pretty terrible thoughts about ourselves sometimes. We may think that we aren't smart enough to figure things out. We're not good enough to have the kind of relationship we want or be the kind of parent we want to be. We can actually be really cruel to ourselves. And if we've thought cruel thoughts for too long...you see where I'm going? Then our primitive brain has taken those thoughts, turned them into beliefs and made them habitual thoughts that we think without conscious awareness. But those thoughts are still happening. Those thoughts are still creating feelings. Those feelings are still creating actions. But if we can create negative thoughts that dictate the direction of our lives, guess what? We can also create positive thoughts that serve us much better. 

06:48 

So let me ask you this question: what would you love to believe about yourself? If you could believe anything at all, regardless, what would it be? I'm going to try this exercise, sit down, and write a list of all the things you would love to believe about yourself. They're not necessarily things that you currently believe about yourself, but what would you love to believe about yourself. These would be things that will create the kind of life that you want to create, right? These thoughts. So this list becomes your new thoughts. This is what we're aiming for. We're aiming at making this new list of thoughts become our primitive brain's go-to thoughts. 

07:36 

So some people may think that this is not the truth if we're just making things up. But really, what is truth when it comes to ourself? Who gets to decide what the truth is? Do our parents? What about our friends? What about our teachers? Our spouses? Our bosses? Our children? Who gets to decide what the truth is? I love the story that as a younger child, Thomas Edison overheard his teacher telling a school inspector that he was addled and it would not be worthwhile to keep him in school any longer. Did that teacher get to decide the truth about Thomas Edison? Nope. The only person who got to decide the truth about Thomas was Thomas. Just as the only person who gets to decide the truth about you is you. And the truth becomes whatever you want it to be because your thoughts become things. Your beliefs become behaviors. What you think, you create. Always. Your thoughts are the starting point for everything in your life. 

08:43 

So really people can't say that we're delusional if we believe we are smart enough to figure things out or that we're emotionally healthy enough to have a healthy relationship or that we're patient enough to raise a challenging child. They could say we're delusional. But we're just as delusional if we believe that we are not smart enough to figure things out or not emotionally healthy enough to have a healthy relationship or not patient enough to raise a challenging child. Either end of the spectrum, guess what, is just a thought. So why not choose to think thoughts that will empower us and serve us in helping us to become a better version of ourselves? Because this is where all of our power lies. In what we choose to believe about ourselves. We get to rewrite our story however we want. And not just the past story as we talked about last week, but we get to write our future story however we want. And people don't even have to agree. In fact, what they think about our thoughts is none of our business. What we are choosing to do here is our business and ours alone. We are creating the life that we want one thought at a time. 

10:01 

Remember that what we think becomes what we feel, what we do, and then what we ultimately are. And isn't it crazy when we realize that this is all a choice? And it's even more bewildering, when we realize that many of us have lived for years with thoughts that have not helped us or served us at all, and that in fact have held us back and been to our detriment. And we've always thought that we had no control over those thoughts. We just thought that that's what they were, that that's what we are. And now we realize that we can just decide to think something different if we want to. 

10:41 

And another great thing, we don't even have to have any evidence to choose our new thoughts. Our past has no bearing on what our future can be. There's no proof there from our past. We see this played out in so many lives where we witnessed children from amazingly difficult life circumstances grow up and become incredibly successful. Things that nobody would  believe from what they were as children. They chose not to believe the abusive thoughts that were planted in their heads when they were young, and they have moved into a space where they believe the best about themselves, and then they ultimately create the best version of themselves. We see it all the time, all around us. 

11:27 

Let me ask you another question about your negative thoughts about yourself. What is the upside to believing things like, "I'm not good enough," or "I'm not smart enough," or "I'm not capable enough?" How are these thoughts improving your life? How are they serving you? I can promise you that they are not. They are not moving you forward into a healthier version of yourself. They are not bringing you satisfaction and happiness in your life. They are not helping you be resilient in difficult times. What they are doing is creating a space of victimization where you can shrink from responsibilities, where you can back away from challenges, and where you can refuse to grow. When we realize that those thoughts are not the truth, then we can start to move into something that will create a much more fulfilling life for us. 

12:24 

When you have these negative thoughts come, especially if they've been around for many years, it may be a little difficult, a little much for you to go straight to "I am strong enough and I'm smart enough to figure out how to manage this." So here's a thought I want you to start trying on instead. If that previous thought feels a little bit heavy, like, "oh, I can't even say that out loud, that feels so uncomfortable," try this one on: "I could be wrong about me." That's simple. "I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong about me." Because what if you are wrong about you? What if when you thought that you weren't enough in any way, you thought, "I could be wrong about me"? And then what if over time, that became, "I am wrong about me"? "I know I'm enough." And then if what if that became, "I was wrong about me? I am enough,: right? We need to get to a point where we stop believing some of the stuff our primitive brain is putting out there and start talking to ourselves more and with greater intention. 

13:31 

Because if we're going to replace those negative thoughts, here's a trick: we can't just ignore them. We can't pretend they don't exist. Because ignoring them does not make them go away. They stay under the surface and they keep replaying over and over. We need to start becoming aware of them and questioning them every single time. Question every one of those negative thoughts that comes into your head. Then when we start to tell ourselves "I think I'm wrong about that one," or we could say "that's not okay" when we hear one of those thoughts go off in our head, because guess what? It is not okay to talk to ourselves like that. When we let those thoughts run rampant in our brains, our brain thinks that it's okay to continue to use them. That primitive brain has no right, wrong, good, bad, positive, negative filter. It just puts everything out there. But if we don't stop those thoughts, our primitive brain just keeps putting them out and keeps putting them out, right? When we let our brain know that it's not okay to keep using those phrases, when we stand up for ourselves against our primitive brain, then it will start to replace those with whatever we tell it to start replacing them with. Our primitive brain doesn't think for itself, but it does create patterns and habits that it will insert into our lives whenever it thinks it's appropriate. And ultimately the primitive brain only does what the prefrontal cortex has told it to do in the past or currently tells it to do. And if our prefrontal cortex tells it to stop using certain thoughts, it will eventually replace those thoughts. But we have to be intentional and purposeful about it. 

15:19 

Here's the thing, believing that you're dumb serves no purpose. Believing that you're not capable or not smart enough or pretty enough or skinny enough or motivated enough serves no purpose in your life. Most of us would never let anybody else speak to us that way. We would find a way to separate ourselves from a person who told us that we were worthless or stupid or incapable. So why do we allow ourselves to speak to us that way? I think it's often because we've gotten so used to it that most of the time we don't even notice it anymore. It's like that annoying ticking clock that used to keep you awake at night and now you don't even notice it until you decide to pay attention, until you think, "huh, I haven't heard the clock for a while," and then you hear it, right? But you've learned to tune it out. Our brain has done that. Well, it is time, my friends, to start paying attention to all the negative crap that you're putting out there and decide that it's not okay for you to think, that we need to set some serious boundaries with ourselves and don't allow ourselves to entertain those thoughts anymore. So find some amazing thoughts to replace them. Be diligent about calling yourself out and set yourself up for a huge change of trajectory in your life. 

16:48 

So here are kind of in summary some practical things you can do to move into better thoughts about you.

16:55 

Number one, pay attention to what is going on in your head. Don't just ignore the degrading thoughts, but call them out and tell your brain that is no longer acceptable. Say it out loud if you need to. And I'll tell you what, you probably need to. There's something about saying it out loud that is empowering and that makes our brain pay a little bit closer attention. So when you see something going on, just say, "hey, that is not okay. I am not talking to myself like that ever again. I'm done with that. Let's move on." Okay? Talk to yourself. Be stern with yourself. Set that boundary of what's okay and what is not okay. 

17:35 

Two, pay attention to behaviors you are engaging in that you don't like. Alright. It's fascinating how this works. If you find that you're engaging in a behavior, stop and say, "what feeling is behind that behavior? What feeling was I having right before I engaged in that behavior?" Then figure out the thought behind that feeling, right? You're working the thought model backwards.. You will almost always find a thought that is not serving you and that you will need to replace. If you find yourself gossiping sometimes, stop in the middle of that gossip, if maybe you don't notice it until later. But do a thought download on it. Say I was gossiping. How was I feeling right before I gossiped? Was I feeling insecure? Was I feeling inadequate? Was I feeling "less than?" And then we can figure out the thought that was creating that. That, my friend, is so powerful. 

18:35 

So number three, remember the list of what you would love to believe about yourself that we talked about. Make that list, pull it out, and practice those new thoughts all the time, all the time. When you notice yourself using an old negative thought you can tell yourself "actually, that's not true. The truth is that I'm actually really smart and I know I can figure this out." Also remind yourself that it is not okay to speak to yourself that way. Right? We have to sometimes get a little bit stern with our primitive brain. Like I said, no right, wrong, good, bad filter at all. It just puts stuff out there that is seen or heard and it keeps putting it out there. And things become beliefs and it turns them into habits. So what we get to do is we get to Identify those habits and create new ones. Okay, this is how we do that. 

19:13 

Remember in past podcasts when we've talked about the path in the forest our old thoughts are like a well-worn path in the forest? It's been trodden down to a hard packed dirt path. It is easy to walk, and we could probably do it with our eyes closed. That's like the thought that we have had for many years. And we actually do use that thought with our eyes closed, without any conscious awareness, right? We don't even have to pay attention, and those thoughts will do their things. When we want to create a new thought or a new path in the forest, we have to first recognize that we're on the old path, that awareness, right? Awareness is the first key for any change. We have to become aware that we're on the old path. And then we have to intentionally make the move to get over to the new path. We have to intentionally insert the new thought instead. We have to say, "Oh, I'm choosing not to think that anymore. That thought is not okay. Actually, that's not true. This is the truth," right? So we have to consciously continue to move ourselves over to the new path. 

20:42 

Okay. And here's the thing about the new path. It is hard to walk at first. We are knee-deep in weeds and shrubs. There are rocks and branches and logs that trip us up. And our primitive brain is screaming at us to "just get back on the old path. It's so much easier to walk. I don't like this new thought. This new thought takes effort. It takes work," right? Those old thoughts are just comfortable and familiar. But remember, they're not serving us and that's why we're choosing a new path. So we just continue over and over and over to redirect our thoughts to the path we want to create. And the more consistent and persistent we are, the more that new path will start to get worn down. 

21:30 

At first, the big weeds will get trodden down and then they'll die and break off at the root. And then the roots will die and we'll be kicking off rocks and branches and we'll move the logs. And over time, this path will become as well worn as the old path and our brains will move to it and navigate it much more easily. And when we stop walking the old path so much, what happens to it? It starts to go away, right? Slowly the weeds start to encroach from the outside of the path and then the rains come and start to break up the soil. And eventually there are weeds and grasses that are growing up through the path and there are rocks and branches and logs that fall on the path. And then this path becomes more difficult for our brains to walk. 

22:20 

And at this stage in my own progress, for me to think that I am dumb or incapable feels so awkward and untrue to me. In fact, even just saying it out loud right here, I can hardly bring myself to say it because I know that those are thoughts that are not true. I know that that's not true about myself. I've trained my brain to believe instead that I can figure it out, that I am smart enough and I am brave enough and I am. am capable enough. And these thoughts serve me. They are helping me to move forward in my own personal growth and in my understanding of myself. They allow me to question myself and get curious instead of feeling threatened by ideas that are new to me. And this opens up a whole new future that is completely different than my past, which is what I want, right? Which I think is what most of us want. We want to step away from the past. The past path. We want to step away from the past and we want to move into something better and more fulfilling in the future. And that's what I'm going for. I don't want to repeat where I've been. I don't want another dysfunctional relationship where I find myself being unkind and manipulative and where I question myself all the time. I don't want to emotionally stifle my children and have stained relationship strained relationships with them. I want to create a life and relationships that are healthy and successful and capable and strong. 

24:00 

And I know that the way I do this is by starting with my thoughts because my thoughts ultimately determine my life. It's the thought model at work, right? My thoughts create my feelings. My feelings create my behaviors. My behaviors create my life results. It all starts with the thoughts, with the thought. So we better get pretty darn good at checking our thoughts and monitoring our thoughts and choosing our thoughts on purpose. 

24:35 

I love growing up this middle-aged thing. Don't you love it? Don't you love it? If you don't, I can help you learn to love it. I can help you move into this space of awareness about your thoughts and monitoring your thoughts and creating new thoughts. This is what I do. This is what I'm a professional at: helping you to see your thoughts. And then you get to decide whether you like those thoughts or not. I'll never tell you whether your thoughts are good or bad. You get to make that choice. But my job is to help you see it. My job is to make it very clear to you what's going on in your brain so that you can choose for yourself what you want. That's what coaching is. It is so amazing. 

25:13 

If you'd like to give it a try, I do a free 30 minute coaching session. You can go on my Facebook page, Tanya Hale LDS Life Coaching. You can go to my website, tanyahale.com. Both of those have a button where you can book a free 30 minute coaching session to get you started, or if you just have questions about coaching and how does it work. I can promise you, I love to coach. I would love for you to hire me as your life coach because I think that I have amazing things to offer, and I think coaching is such an amazing thing. But I promise you I'm not a hard sell, because I don't like hard sells, right? But I will tell you all the deets, give you everything that you need to know about it, and I know that I can help you move into a better place if that's what you're after, okay? So there you go. 

26:07 

If this podcast is helpful to you, please leave me a review. That would be so great. And please subscribe if you haven't, and go ahead and share this with your friends, your family, people that you feel could use a better understanding of how to grow and how to move forward. Okay, my friends, that is gonna do it for us today. I hope that this week for you is fabulous. Make that list of things that you would love to believe about yourself, what thoughts that you wish came easy for you. Make that list and get started there. Okay, have an awesome week, and I'll talk to you next week, bye. 

26:47 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyhale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya!