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Hey there, this is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 159, "When Your Brain Lies to 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. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends, how are you today? So glad to have you. I just love having you here to share this with. I love the information I prepare for you every week. So excited to share this and I'm just so grateful you're here. And I'm grateful for you sharing and I wanted to share with you today a review that I received on iTunes. This is from Evelyn. Hey Evelyn. I know you. So good to hear from you. I just adore you. Alright, so here's what Evelyn has to say: "It's taken me almost a year to write this review, but like they say 'better late than never.' I came across Tanya's podcast in May 2020 when the world, and especially my city, New York City, was a scary and sad place. Her voice and subject matter spoke to me and brought me hope and comfort. I loved her so much. I decided to try life coaching with her to see if she could help me get out of that funk. She was amazing. She helped me shut out those negative voices thoughts and let positive energy in. I miss our weekly calls so much that I might go back for refresher coaching sessions. Evelyn." I would love that. I just had so much fun working with you last fall. And you know what? This is so great. I appreciate the reviews because that helps other people find information that can hopefully help them move into a better space as well. 

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And then when you decide that you're ready to move forward in the next phase of pushing yourself and growing into the next best version of yourself, coaching is such a brilliant, beautiful space. I know that with Evelyn, the growth that I saw was was just mind-boggling to me sometimes and I was so impressed with her discipline and desire to grow and how she implemented the things we talked about. Loved, loved working with you, Evelyn, and thank you for your review. 

02:08 

Okay, we're going to start off today. We are talking about when your brain lies to you. Alright, some of you may thinking "my brain doesn't lie to me." There's the first lie right there. Okay? I want to start off by talking to you about this concept: you are not your thoughts. Now when I first heard that thought, I was like "what? I don't get it. What does that mean?" I didn't really understand it. What it means is that our thoughts do not necessarily represent our true self or even they don't even represent true thoughts. Think how often your brain tells you crap like this: I'm not smart enough. I'm not capable enough or pretty enough or thin enough. I can't do something. I don't know how to something. I'm not worthy. I'm not lovable. I'm not capable of loving. No one could ever love me. Okay, every one of these thoughts is untrue, but they have become beliefs because oftentimes we have thought them so much that these thoughts become beliefs. Beliefs are just thoughts that we have thought over and over and over until our brain really believes that they're true. But just because we think them doesn't make them true. 

03:29 

This is the deal: our primitive brain is always in protective mode, always trying to protect us from the pain of failure or the pain of trying, because trying is hard, right? It pushes us out of our comfort zone. It is seeking to protect us from the rejection that we will feel from other people or even from ourselves. Our primitive brain likes what's easy and what's easy is a thought that's already been thought a million times before in our brain, whether it's true or not. Our primitive brain has no right/wrong, good/bad filter. Okay, and sometimes this can be confusing, and we can find our brain confusing, because it will have two conflicting thoughts. Our brain could be thinking "I'm perfectly happy and capable of being alone," which is what my brain tells me and my brain will also say "I would love to be in a loving, committed relationship." My brain tells me both of those, and guess what? Both of those are true and they're opposites. Right? Wouldn't you think that one of those has to be true and not true? No, our brain does not have any issues with two opposite thoughts going on because our primitive brain doesn't think that way. Our primitive brain is looking for efficiency. It's looking for comfort. It's looking for safety and It will put forth whatever thoughts it thinks are going to bring us those things. We don't have to be thinking true thoughts for our brain to think that it's going to help us. 

05:01 

Now this doesn't mean we have a personality disorder when we think opposite thoughts, it just means that we have a human primitive brain that just thinks thoughts that it thinks are going to be helpful. But here is one of the biggest secrets to life: we get to choose what we think. Even when the thoughts seem 100% true, we still get to choose whether to believe them or not. Everything in your head, guess what, is a made-up thought. It's all made up. I could think that I like playing pickleball, I like sushi, I like my kids, I like serving others. I don't like football, cold weather, liver and onions, other people's kids, right? I can think all these things, guess what, they're all just thoughts. I used to think I didn't like sushi. Because I had only had grocery store sushi, and then a friend took me to a real sushi place, and I cannot get enough sushi. I love that every time I get a chance to go out, I love sushi, right? And I used to think that I hated cold weather and I generally I think I do, right? But this last year my daughter took me skiing, snow skiing. I live in Utah, so the mountains and the skiing is plentiful here. I went skiing a couple of times and guess what? I loved everything about it including the cold, because the cold was very different when you're involved in something like skiing. I had convinced myself that I would never really enjoy skiing because it was cold. Now, I had skied before a few times and a running joke for me is that because we lived in Germany for five years when my kids were young, that I've skied the Alps three times. But I've never really skied, right? I'd skied a few times growing up as a teenager. But I didn't really connect with it then. But also I just don't like being cold, so I thought I would hate it. Guess what? I didn't; I loved it. I loved skiing. 

07:07 

This is the thing our brain will tell us, all kinds of things. How many times have you thought you didn't like a food when you've never tried it just because it looks kind of weird or sounds kind of weird? Right, and then we try it and we're like "oh wow I actually really like that." Okay, our brain doesn't know things. Our brain is just trying to protect us from things that are new, things that are uncomfortable, things we don't know. Right? Because those things are uncomfortable and our brain doesn't like to feel discomfort. But we get to engage our prefrontal cortex and we get to choose to think whatever we want to think. So I want you to start standing back a little bit and saying "what thoughts do I have that are serving me?" And here's another thought: "what thoughts are you having that are not serving you? How is your brain lying to you?" And once you start recognizing lies, like "I can't do this, I don't know how to love my spouse or my children," how do you get rid of thoughts that you don't want to have anymore? If you can accept the belief that your brain is lying to you, but those thoughts keep coming back and keep coming back and keep coming back, how do you get rid of them? The same way that you got them. Practice. Very consistent, regular practice. 

08:43 

Alright, in a lot of my earlier podcasts, if you've gone back and listened to the first 50 or 60 podcasts, I talk several times about a path in the forest. Right? If you think about a path in the forest, that people have walked daily, for years. You see this worn down, hard, dirt path where there's no rocks or weeds or logs or branches. It's cleaned off. People are always walking it. And it's a very easy path to walk. But when you want to start thinking a new thought, it's like creating a brand new path in the forest. You've got weeds up to your thighs. You've got rocks and logs and branches and twigs on the ground. You've got all this stuff. And it's hard to walk that path. And your brain will be going, "oh, come on, girlfriend. Get over here on this path that we've already walked hundreds of times. It's so much easier to walk this path. And the new path takes longer and it's harder. And you lose your balance sometimes because you step on things and you can't see things. And there might be spiders and bugs in there and snakes and little other animals that you don't want to run across." Right? And it's uncomfortable to walk that new path. 

09:58 

But the more you walk it, the more you move yourself into that new thought, what happens to that path? It starts getting more and more worn down, and pretty soon it becomes easier to walk because pretty soon it becomes the hard dirt packed path where no weeds grow. And when you stop walking the old thought, the old path, what happens to it? Eventually the weeds start encroaching on the edges. The rain comes and softens the soil and then the weeds start poking up more and more and pretty soon that old path is grown over. And that's kind of a metaphor for what happens to our thoughts. When we stop thinking thoughts, eventually they start to grow over and then pretty soon our brain says, "oh, this new path is way easier to walk than the old one. Let's just keep thinking this one." So then we start incorporating these new thoughts. Okay? 

10:53 

So what we get to start doing in our life is finding thoughts that serve us better, and start replacing the thoughts that don't serve us as well. So this is the premise behind affirmations, and I know affirmations are kind of all the rage. Like we come up with these new thoughts that we want to think, things we want in our lives, and we start saying these thoughts. And this is the thing with affirmations, sometimes they don't work really well because there is too big of a gap between where we are  and where we want to go. And our brain struggles with that gap. Going from the thought," I'm not lovable," to the thought, "I'm completely lovable," is too big of a gap. Our brain takes that new thought, "I'm completely lovable," and goes, "oh yeah, right, come on. Like that's not true." And it's going to resist it, it's going to fight against it, and ultimately it's going to reject it. It will become too hard to think, and every time you try and think it, you're going to get so much pushback from your brain that eventually you're just gonna go, "oh, this is exhausting." It's going to be like white knuckling. And that's always emotionally exhausting. 

12:02 

So this is where I walk you through a process called "ladder work." And ladder work thoughts work amazingly well here. What they are is smaller steps between "I'm not lovable" and "I'm completely lovable." For example, we might think, first of all, "I'm not lovable." And then we would say, well, what's a thought that pushes me out of that thought, but something that I can still believe. And we might move to the thought that says, "I have some lovable qualities." And then once we've practiced that and that becomes comfortable, and we're just like, I can totally 100% believe that. Then we may move to the next thought that says, "I love these qualities about myself." And then we practice that thought until we 100% believe that. And then we might move on to "other people love these qualities about me as well." And then we might move on to, "I love myself for having these qualities." And then we might move on to "other people love me for having these qualities." And then we might move into the space that "I am lovable." So we do small incremental steps that allow our brain to comfortably move into these new thoughts. So it's creating a new thought and it doesn't have such a gap that our brain rejects it. Each one of those moves us a little bit to where we might need to push our thoughts a little bit, but our brain can go, okay, I can buy into that thought. I can believe that one until it becomes so natural for us to say, "hey, listen, other people love these qualities about me as well." And then I love myself for having these qualities, right? We can start moving into these spaces. 

13:53 

These smaller steps allow our brain to adjust and move into a healthier, bigger thought. It's kind of like lifting weights. We have to work up to benching 150 pounds. But if we keep working at it consistently two or three times a week, we start working on benching and a little bit heavier and a little bit heavier, eventually it comes. But changing our circumstance does not change our lives. We have to change our thoughts. But so much of the conditioning in our world is that we just have to change our circumstance. But think about this, changing the gym that we go to will not enable us to go from benching 50 pounds to 150 pounds. It's not gonna happen, right? Because it's not the gym that affects how much we can bench press, okay? What affects it is the muscle work that we do, the training that we do. It's the same thing with our circumstances. Okay? Changing our circumstances does not change our lives. It's the thinking, the training that we do, that changes our lives. If we think we're not lovable, we may think that getting married will change that. And guess what? It might for a short time before we again start to feel unlovable because that thought that we're unlovable is still a running belief in the background of our brain. And so eventually that marriage is going to be affected by the fact that we consistently think that we're unlovable. We have to do the work on our belief that we're not lovable and get to the point that we really believe that we are lovable. Just changing the circumstance will not make us feel lovable. We can kind of kind of short-term override that and we can live in that little honeymoon period for a little bit when we change our circumstances, but it will never last long term. 

15:52 

So let's look on on the other end of some marriages, like getting divorced as I did. Okay, if we despise our spouse and think that he's an idiot and everything he does is wrong, getting divorced does not fix the problem. Changing the circumstance does not change the problem because the same brain that got us to the place that we can't stand him is the same brain that will soon have us not being able to stand the next person that comes into our lives. Our brain has this pattern of looking for the negatives, looking for what's wrong. We have to learn to change the way we think if we don't love what we're creating right now in our lives. Then once we learn to manage our thoughts around our current circumstances, we can change the circumstance if we want. Now if you want to look into that concept a little bit more, check out podcast number 125 called "Love It Before You Leave It," if you want to see more detail on that topic, like how to change your brain before you change your circumstance, okay? That's a great one. 

16:58 

Alright, but we have to learn to liberate ourselves first from our thoughts about the circumstance and then we can start to make the changes that we really want to make in our lives. And learning to recognize when our brain is lying to us is so liberating and empowering because we begin to realize that we are not our thoughts. My brain says "I'm not worthy." Guess what? That has nothing to do with my worthiness. I'm entirely worthy. God created me worthy, okay? Our primitive brain  thoughts do not have to control our lives. It's just important that we learn to pay attention and become aware of what's going on up there in our brain, and then start to think on purpose. We have to choose what to think, practice what to think over and over and over. Create what we want by what we intentionally think. Just like lifting weights, we have to be at the gym consistently, over and over, practicing lifting weights, constantly moving forward. And then we can get to the point where we can bench press 150 pounds, right? 

18:17 

So how do we start to become more aware of what we're thinking, what's going on, so that we know what we need to start replacing? The biggest way that I can share with you of how to do this is to do two things. One: thought models, okay? And we've talked about this. This is a process where you write down everything that you think. And if you do this on a regular basis, every day or most days, you just sit down and write a paragraph. What's going on in my brain today? What are my thinking about first thing in the morning? Write it down, see what thoughts are in there. And oftentimes we don't even know what's in our brain. We're completely unaware of the thoughts that are running our day-to-day lives. And so when we can sit down, just write out our thoughts and then go back and look at those thoughts and go, "huh, okay, what here is actually a fact? And what here is a thought? Like what's going on in my brain? And what's happening here?" And start to pick apart our thoughts. Start to look for ways that your brain is lying to you. What are thoughts? Did you know that it's estimated that 90% of our thoughts are recycled from day-to-day? So 90% of the thoughts I have today are the same thoughts I had the day before that. 90% of those were the same thoughts that I had the day before that, okay? 

19:38 

So what are those thoughts? 90% of your thoughts, they're running your life, girlfriend. They are in charge of what's happening for you. And so what are those thoughts? Do you even know what those thoughts are? And what are those thoughts creating? And how can you tell? This is how you can tell. Look at the results in your life. What your life is a result of what you have been thinking. Always. Okay? Look at the results. This is how you can tell what you've been thinking. Are you playing small? What thoughts are creating that? Are you holding back? Are you choosing not to speak up? What are the thoughts that are causing you to choose to live that way? Are you asking for what you want? Are you setting clear boundaries? What thoughts are creating that? Are you feeling like you're getting walked all over? What thoughts allow that to happen? 

20:37 

Here's the thing: all of it is a result of your thoughts. Thoughts that either you're strong or you're weak or you're smart or you're dumb or you're capable or you're not capable. It all starts with our thoughts. If you don't feel people are treating you the way you want to be treated, guess where that starts? In your thoughts. Not only what you think about how they're treating you, but what you allow. How you allow yourself to be treated all starts in your thoughts. If you don't feel you're growing the way that you want, you feel like you're stagnant or stuck, guess where it starts? You're onto me. It starts in your thoughts. If you don't love your spouse or you struggle to love and accept your children, it starts in your thoughts, right? Okay, learning to think on purpose is going to create more of what you want to create in your life. I love the John Maxwell quote that says "most people don't lead their lives. They accept their lives." Ouch, right? What am I accepting? What am I just allowing to happen in my life? Okay. I get to create what I want. I don't just have to accept what comes. I get to create what I want. 

22:00 

And this is the thing, that doesn't mean just creating happiness and fulfillment and joy, but it also means creating sadness when I want to feel sad or anger when I want to be angry. Working with my coach, here's a couple of thoughts, lies, that my brain has been telling me my whole life. I've spent most of my life with my brain telling me that I don't want to feel the more difficult emotions. I don't want to feel sadness. I don't want to feel anger. I don't want to feel frustrated or sadness or grief. You know, I don't want to feel these, okay? Another lie that my brain has been telling me that I've really been moving on to the last few weeks is it's been telling me that if I create this perfect persona, that that is helping me. It's helping me be a better person, that I'm becoming more what I want to be when I create this perfect persona. And I'll tell you what, through the coaching and the work that I've been doing, both of these thoughts are lies. Because guess what? I do want to feel the more difficult emotions. And I'm learning how to move into those more, right? I've been crying more than I've cried for a long time. And crying because I want to. I'm crying over things that touch my heart, that I'm grateful to be crying for, right? And I'm also learning that creating this perfect persona is not helping me. It's actually holding me back from being the person I really want to be, from having the kinds of relationships that I really want to have. 

23:47 

So recognizing these lies that my brain has been telling me for decades is incredibly empowering. I thought somewhere, because this is what our brain does, I thought that seeing those lies and admitting to them would be super scary, and would be overwhelming, and that I might shut down, right? Because a lot of our brains tend to go into this like "all or nothing," like "worst case scenario" thing. My brain does the same thing, right? And I thought it would be scary. But as soon as I acknowledged that these thoughts are what I've been thinking in my head, and I could see them for being lies, all of a sudden there was a sense of hope, a sense of empowerment that I can take care of this. I don't have to think this. I don't have to be this way. Because guess what? Now I know what I'm facing. Because I had the courage to look at those thoughts. Now I know what's been holding me back. Now I know how to move forward. And I no longer feel stuck in the land of, "I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I don't know why I'm not feeling. I don't know why I can't grow and become the person that I want to become," right? Recognizing the lies that our brain tells us is the key element to growth and progress. 

25:15 

And two things that have helped me: thought downloads, as I've discovered and explored this on my own, and my life coach, has been indispensable in helping me through this process. Because she helps me see thoughts that I don't see or thoughts that I'm avoiding. And she helps me to recognize that they're lies. My primitive brain doesn't want to see them. And it's going to resist and push back when they come into my peripheral vision. And I think I want to look at them. The primitive brain's going to try and get me to not look. Because remember, the primitive brain is trying to protect us. It's trying to keep us out of discomfort. So is seeing these things in my life and working to create new thoughts uncomfortable? Abso-freaking lutely, right? It's absolutely uncomfortable. And I have talked with coaches and friends and myself ad nauseam about this process and trying to figure it out. But it's part of my process of learning how to create new thoughts. 

26:28 

First of all, recognizing that the old thoughts are lies. Okay, so I've been working through this with my own coach who she's been walking me how to be more efficient with my own thought models. And I will tell you as I was working with her on this this last week, she was saying, "okay, let's do your thought model." And I told her what I had worked out on my own. And she's like, "okay, now I want you to pretend like you're an outside coach looking at this thought model and tell me what's going on." And my brain was not wanting to go there. It was just like, "whoa, whoa, whoa, no, I don't see anything. I can't see anything. I can't figure it out." And it was just fascinating to me to see how my primitive brain was just like, "no, I don't want to figure this out. I don't want to see it. I don't want to push myself into an uncomfortable space." And my coach really worked with me on helping me to work within that framework of what my brain was trying to create. And it was hard work and it was uncomfortable work. But now I feel like I'm in a better space where I can do deeper thought models and create more of what I want to. 

27:38 

This is the thing, my friends, if you are serious about growing, serious about moving forward, about getting unstuck, about living your life in a way that feels more true to you, working with a coach is such a valuable tool. I can help you see the lies that your brain tells you because I'm not in your brain. I'm not hogwashed by all the lies that your brain tells you. I don't believe it. Your brain's going to want to believe it all. I don't believe it. I can help you see it. And then I can help you process those lies. And I can help you develop ladder thoughts to create new intentional thoughts. I can help you live the life you want to, not just accepting the default life that your primitive brain has created because that is never going to be a place of satisfaction for you. It's always going to keep you living a small life. And we were not meant to live small lives. We were meant to let our true selves come forth and grow and do great things. Great things doesn't mean you're necessarily, you know, working on a global basis. Great things can be doing great things for your family. Great things in your life, great things in your community, in your church. But we were created to do great things and we are perfectly positioned in middle age to start recognizing this kind of stuff and to start moving forward. We're perfectly positioned. This is the brilliance and the beauty of middle age. It's the perfect time. This growing up into middle age is beautiful and amazing and exciting and I hope that you will join me on this process. 

29:40 

If you want to talk about coaching and how to really start moving into this growth process for yourself. You can go to my website, tanyahale.com, and you can book a free coaching session, more of a consult, to get you started. We can talk about how coaching can help you. I would love to help you start seeing the lies that your brain is telling you and helping you know how to counteract those with other thoughts. It's a beautiful, amazing process, and I can help you do it. My friend, that's going to do it for me today. I wish you all the best this week, and I will see you next time. Ciao. 

30:22 

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 tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.