Ep 5: Change your life by changing your thoughts

Heidi: 00:00:00

Hello, my beautiful introvert friend. Welcome to episode number five of the empowered introvert podcast. I am back at work today after a fabulous staycation last week, where I gave myself permission to just do as little as I felt like doing . I had no real schedule. I did a lot of reading and relaxing.

Heidi: 00:00:30

I was also doing an Ayurvedic cleanse. So I really ate very simply, very healthfully, did a lot of yoga and meditation and journaling. And wow. I feel brand new. My digestion feels reset. My emotions feel reset. I just like, I feel so much more grounded and empowered, so I am thrilled to be here now in my cleansed version. In fact,

Heidi: 00:01:07

The day that you listened to, this will be my last day, which is amazing. And then I will be back into the world of normally eating.

Heidi: 00:01:14

Today's topic is such an important one. Changing your thoughts to change your life. And it really, really matters because the way that you think has such a profound influence on your wellbeing, on your confidence, on your success, more than probably anything else. And also most of us are at the whim of our thoughts of our minds, but there's the term, the monkey mind, the idea that we're just easily distracted and our minds go from one thing to the other.

Heidi: 00:01:56

All of that. Or we get really fixated on certain ideas of how the world works of what we are capable of, of who we are. And which lead to suffering in the various forums that we as individual introverts suffer. So that might be self doubt, loneliness, anxiety, overwhelm. Feeling isolated, you know, all of those.

Heidi: 00:02:27

Amazing things. So that's why it's so important to give your thinking attention, because when you build the muscles of awareness, being aware of your thoughts as separate from you, Detaching your identity from them. And. Able to redirect the way that you think your thoughts to. Thoughts that are going to change your experience, change your results in your life.

Heidi: 00:03:01

You can, when you do this, you can make change in your life right now as your life is without changing anything outside of you. The change comes from your thinking. So we're going to unpack this today.

Heidi: 00:03:16

So in today's episode, we are going to define the thoughts, what they are and where they come from. Then we're going to look at how they create your current problems and how you can use your thoughts to create what you want.

Heidi: 00:03:36

The content in this episode can truly change your life. It has changed mine. It's changed my career trajectory, how I show up in relationships. And it's been a lifesaver in helping me to manage self-doubt anxiety and burnout, all of the human things. Now I apply this work on a daily basis in my own self coaching practice.

Heidi: 00:04:06

I've also worked with a lot of coaches along the way, which have helped me to create profound shifts. Like deciding to sell off my former business or most of it. And jump into the great abyss of. An unknown career path. Where I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. But by doing so. And work with coaches. I found my life's work. I found coaching.

Heidi: 00:04:38

Which is my life purpose, helping people like you. And I love it. So, if you are looking for support on that level, you can schedule a complimentary call with me. To do so you can visit my heidijandel.com/call . And choose a time and date on the calendar. Fill out. The form with just a few questions that help me know what is important to you. And then you're good. You are in.

Heidi: 00:05:10

So this complimentary call is a deep conversation where we identify what you most desire.

Heidi: 00:05:21

What's getting in the way of you having that and the path to creating what you want? And then if we're a good fit for working together, we'll talk about that at the end. So people tell me that this conversation has rocked their world, so don't be shy. All right, so let's get to it. Let us look at what the heck a thought is.

Heidi: 00:05:47

But first we've been talking a lot about the nervous system these past couple episodes, and so part of thinking it happens where, yes, in the brain. So the brain is the controller, the master, the filter. The computer program that takes data, interprets it, and then spits more data out. And our nervous systems are the pathways that bring data into the brain.

Heidi: 00:06:25

And then out of the brain,

Heidi: 00:06:31

And within the brain there are neurons. And I'm not gonna go too much into the science here, there's lots of information out there on this now. But there's neurons that are little pathways inside the brain, little storage centers for memories and for the movement of thought quotes around thought.

Heidi: 00:06:54

We don't have a firm idea of what exactly a thought is. On a mechanical level, you know, we can say that it's an electrical. And that right there is helpful. So thoughts are electric impulses happening in your brain. There's no like real value to them. They're, there's one's not like gold versus silver versus copper, right?

Heidi: 00:07:20

They're all just the same things firing off. Is super important though, is that the the neurons are grouped according to relationship. So when we have experiences that are repeated, we learn and our brain gives meaning to those experiences and it stores them. They're almost like books in a library.

Heidi: 00:07:51

And so when we have. Similar experiences in the future, in the present, in the future. Our brain turns to the library that it's already collected and chooses a book and decides that, Hey, this book is relevant to this experience that you're having right now. This doesn't mean. There's only one book or one story for the experience you're having now, but it's the one that's the most familiar and most accessible to your brain, so it's more likely to pull that out for you.

Heidi: 00:08:30

In life coaching, we say that thoughts are sentences in your. That they're, they're words in your mind, just like they're just electrical impulses. It's just words. They actually have no real value in and of themselves, yet we give tremendous value to our thoughts, to our stories. We take them as our. We have a thought that I am a shy introvert and so I can't have a podcast, and we take that as our truth and so we don't create a podcast.

Heidi: 00:09:18

But really that thought, it's just electrical impulses. It's just words in your brain. In yoga, I, I love. I, I love yoga philosophy because it really, it fits all of the life coaching and personal growth stuff into like that is a small chapter in the larger library of yoga philosophy. There's so much there for us to help us have healthy, vibrant lives.

Heidi: 00:09:50

But in terms of thoughts, yoga sees thoughts of Richie's. Fluctuations that in the mind that just arise. And there are u useful thoughts that are the thoughts that are clear, that clearly observe something that bring in information and and on various levels. But there are also thoughts that create suffering.

Heidi 00:10:21 Which almost always come from a misinterpretation of the way that things are of, of you choosing a certain sentence or a certain book that creates suffering, that creates self-doubt, that creates a lack of safety thoughts, create many of our problems. On a personal level and, and really on all levels, because we believe them so deeply, we connect with them as our truth.

Heidi 00:10:57 And it often feels like, or it seems like we're just describing the world the way it is, but. Actually, we are having a certain thought about it that comes from one of our, our stories that we've had before. For example, if you're feeling stuck at work, you might find yourself placing blame. On all kinds of things, on the quality of your relationships with your colleagues or your boss.

Heidi 00:11:31 With the amount of time you have in the day, the amount of work you have with how you feel. You might feel exhausted, you might feel unseen. You might feel like you're not living up to your full potential, and that just feels like the truth of the world. And so the obvious solution is for you to change your.

Heidi: 00:11:58

However, yes, maybe changing your \njob might help with some things. The problem, the real problem is not at the level of your job, because if you look at your thinking at your old job, the one that you're feeling stuck in, you're, what are you thinking? You are thinking, I am stuck. I have to be here. I don't want to be here.

Heidi: 00:12:25

This is just the way my work is. There's nothing I can do about it. Those kinds of thoughts. Your brain will ha if it has them, that's your brain will see them as negative, right? Which will create a stress response. It will create overwhelm, exhaustion. Defensiveness and then you show up to work from that place, from feeling defensive or from feeling exhausted.

Heidi: 00:13:00

And then what you do, the actions that you take, how you work. Then create results that are not great. And say you do so you change your job and initially like you like it, things are going well. Look at your thoughts. What are the thoughts that you're having? I like it. This is going well. I made a good choice.

Heidi: 00:13:22

Right?

Heidi: 00:23:04

When instead you think I got this for now I can handle this and I'm gonna figure out something even better that that my next step is going to be amazing. If those are the thoughts that you're thinking at your crappy job, you are going to feel better at your crappy job. Your crappy job is going to seem to be less crappy, and that's just better for you.

Heidi: 00:23:35

Plus then when you are getting a new job, You are moving towards what you desire, what you want, versus trying to get away from a crappy job. Cause that just puts you in a disempowering position where you are running, trying to get away from crappy feelings by getting a new job versus going towards a new job to create more of what you want.

Heidi: 00:24:11

All right, so in order to do this in your own life, really what you need to start with is noticing your own thoughts, because this is how you are going to begin to create new results. First, you have to notice what you're thinking, and then you choose something that if you want to choose something that will serve you better, that will create a different experience for you and lead to different results.

Heidi: 00:24:46

So when you're looking at your thoughts, and I recommend that you do this at home, you do this at least as a daily practice, a check-in. I like to recommend people do it. You know, maybe just as you're out and about in the car, you can, you can check in with your thinking or have a journal, which is the way that I love to do it, cuz I like to see and write things down so I can see all my crappy thoughts.

Heidi: 00:25:16

So do some detective work. Take a look at the thoughts that you're having right now. What are they? So they're, it's pretty much everything that's going through your brain, separate out the thoughts from the story, rather from the facts. So a fact might be like, oh, it's cloudy today. A thought is, it's a crappy day.

Heidi: 00:25:43

A fact is my car has a flat tire. A thought is, this is so annoying. My car is a stupid flat tire. Can you see the difference? Can you see some of the judgment and emotion that is put into the thoughts? So as much as possible, identify, make bullet points of the thoughts of the observations note, which are facts.

Heidi: 00:26:12

Very few will be. And then ask yourself like, where did this come from? Where did this kind of thinking come from? Is there anyone in my life that I might have absorbed this from? Is like, what is this kind of thinking, making me feel when I think this thought? What is it creating for me? And above all, have compassion?

Heidi: 00:26:44

Whatever you because sometimes we can beat ourselves up at this point that is not helpful at all. We don't wanna have more thoughts about our thoughts. We're just trying to get clear and create awareness. So awareness is the beginning of transportation, trans transportation, transformation. Awareness is where you create that detachment from your thoughts, from identifying so closely with them.

Heidi: 00:27:16

So spend loving amounts of time here. Really think about this as a process of love, of, of unfurling, of getting to know your amazing brain and what it's doing so that you can help it to serve you better. Right?

Heidi: 00:27:43

And then notice the thoughts also that give you pleasure, that you love, that that light you up and perhaps begin to more consciously choose and cultivate them. And we're gonna talk more about that practice. But just giving you a, a glimpse into what is possible, what is to come. Because when you wanna have new results in your life, having new thoughts is going to create new results.

Heidi: 00:28:25

So a big takeaway. One of the big takeaways for today is that your thoughts create your results, and you are in charge of your thoughts. All right, friends, that's what I have for you today. Thank you so much for joining me. Take care, and I'll see you next time.