Imagine being able to choose the way you react to circumstances; how much would this positively impact your life?   In the article, Create an Emotional Fitness Program and Change Your Life, I talked about the power of focusing on our emotions to shift your mindset towards happiness and fulfillment.  Today, I want to start to uncover some ways to gain awareness of what’s really driving our emotions and how to become empowered in this area by getting a handle on our thought patterns to regroove the brain and shift your outlook on life.

I am a work in progress as you will find if you read my blog articles.  Looking back on my past, and I think about all the wasted energy I used up on stewing and worrying hours or days after a conversation I had with someone at work, in my social circle, or a family member because I reacted defensively or with another negative emotion that I couldn’t control.  It got to be easier to just shut myself in and avoid interactions with others all together.  I spent a lot of time alone and treated people unkind who have moved on as I didn’t understand how all this worked.  I hope in sharing some of my insights, you are enlightened to want to start paying attention to your thoughts if you aren’t doing this already.  Self- discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts.  If you don’t control what you think, you can’t control what you do.

By consciously directing our thoughts, we can rewire the toxic thinking patterns running in the background and replace them with healthy ones, by building new networks.  Being mindful of our thoughts takes practice like building a muscle does.  You need to be committed to this work or your results won’t be what you want.  I reference this in the steps laid out in the road map of that article on how to identify what you want and why you want it.  I know from experience that without doing these steps, the consistency will not last.  Believe me, I have been working on myself through courses, coaching, therapy etc., on and off for 30 years.  It was only when I became consistent, did I gain momentum for lasting change. 

Our subconscious mind gets programmed through repetition and first- hand experiences.  For example, if you think there isn’t enough money every month to buy what you want, and you live pay cheque to pay cheque, then this is a repeated message to your brain there isn’t enough money.  It then looks for ways to prove that you don’t have enough money and this cycle continues.  We have an interesting network of neurons in our brain stem called the reticular activating system (RAS).  This filters out unnecessary information so the important stuff can get through.  An easy example of this is you learn a new word then suddenly you hear and see it everywhere.  Or you saw in a magazine a certain type of vehicle that you think is cool and then suddenly you start seeing that type of vehicle everywhere.  Since the RAS works naturally without us having to focus on it, if we are not putting our attention on positive outcomes and goals, the RAS focuses on our limiting beliefs to reinforce these instead.  However, if you focus on your goals, and intentionally set your subconscious thoughts to align with your conscious goals, will you then utilize the RAS in your favour by revealing the people, information and opportunities to help you achieve your goals. I really started to believe in new possibilities of what I could create in my life when I figured this out.  I love it when I can say “that’s my RAS at work”, it is beautiful and fun to see this aspect of myself grow.  It’s also a great way to measure my progress too!  I’m finding it’s very important to celebrate these milestones.  It builds my confidence that is needed to reinforce the necessary changes I’m looking to make.

The main thing to keep in mind here is that we have no neutral or idle thoughts.  We are always hardwiring the existing programming or removing the ones we no longer need and making room for the new.  The cool part is we get to decide this, and I know for me, the idea of stuff going on that I am not controlling scares the pants off me!  I like to be in the driver’s seat, so this awareness helps motivate me on days when I’m procrastinating to check-in with myself and do the necessary work.

When I first set out to uncover and be aware of my thoughts, I was very overwhelmed.  I mean, I was the kid that daydreamed to escape and avoid my reality.  I was off in my own head so much in school when I was bored, on the bus ride to and from home or while riding in the car with my parents.  It became second nature for me to get lost in my thoughts and as an adult, I would pull in to the driveway after coming home from work or the store to only realize, I didn’t remember my drive home at all.  I was on autopilot and had no control over what I was thinking.  Knowing this, how was I going to get a handle on the approximately 70,000 thoughts the average person has in a day?  I struggled with this at first and put it off for a while.  As a side note here, we don’t need to be mindful of all thoughts as that would be impossible, we just need to be aware of the ones creating our limiting beliefs for what we want in our lives and shift those however, this can be overwhelming as well.

At some point a book was recommended to me by one of my mentors, Switch on Your Brain by Dr. Caroline Leaf.  She also has a daily podcast, YouTube videos and workbooks to follow along with.  This ticked a lot of boxes for me with regards to how I learn.  She says it takes 21 days to create a new network and replacement habits for any one of our limiting beliefs.  Uncovering a belief will have a direct line to the thoughts and stories we tell ourselves to reinforce our behavior.  Our conscious mind needs to be aware of beliefs in the subconscious to be able to use that part of our brain to start reprogramming new habits and new experiences.  Uncover the thoughts to uncover the beliefs and start reprogramming.

It felt reassuring to read that there was hope for anyone if you just commit to following through with a daily practice.  Dr. Leaf has a series of exercises you would do each morning to get the brain going and to bring awareness through journaling out thoughts in the morning and evening each day.  

Although this concept is great for looking back and reflecting on what was happening daily, I was getting hung up on her approach with incorporating bible scriptures and prayer within the exercises.  Even though I was somewhat raised a Christian, baptized and attended Sunday school (mostly out of convenience as it was a break for my mom to drop us 6 kids off at church) but that was as far as religion went in our house. I don’t practice in the traditional sense and sort of felt out of my realm here with this part of her work.  It is important to believe in what you are doing and after a few months, I stopped applying her methods and therefore only had short term results.  I am mentioning her here as I did learn a tremendous amount of how the brain works and the impacts of our thoughts in shaping our life from Dr. Leaf.  She helped me along on my journey to a certain extend and I am forever grateful to her for that.  I know others learn well with faith- based practices and programs and I have been in contact with several folks that have had tremendous results with her teachings. I don’t want to deter anyone if this is your preferred way to learn, and if it is, then please check out her work you may find it a great place to start as well.

What I love about the personal development world, is that there isn’t only one way to teach or only one person to learn from.  For me, it has been many teachers and multiple programs and courses that have contributed to the emotional fitness program I am on.  The important thing is that I take what makes sense or resonates and apply it.  Everything I learn stacks on top of each other and I have plenty of tools and methods I have been exposed to and can choose to pick the one best suited for the situation I find myself in. 

I feel the most important message I can relay in this article, is that we have thoughts every day that are determining our beliefs and we react emotionally to what these beliefs are.  Our actions match our beliefs and the cycle goes around and around.  These thoughts/beliefs and stories shape our lives good bad or ugly and we can either determine the outcome of who we are by controlling them or we can go through life reacting to triggered wounds and complaining that life sucks because it isn’t what we want.  This was me for a very, very long time. 

Now I was armed with the knowledge of all the above, I started trying different tactics to become aware of my thoughts.  I read that being mindful of our thoughts can be as simple as meditating daily and noticing what comes up for you.  This has not been a method that worked for me as I struggle with quieting my mind long enough to be still and calm and never got the full benefits of meditation that most do.  Although, I do get a lot done with regards to creating lists for groceries and chores around the house, but this doesn’t help me to shift my beliefs!  Maybe once I get a better handle on my subconscious thoughts and beliefs, I will sync up with meditating but for now, it’s not the tool that I use.  What does work for me I discovered, is journaling and reflecting on situations that come up when interacting with others.  Now that I understood the reprogramming piece, reflecting on my daily interactions has been a method that serves me well for exposing areas where patterns come up and highlighting what needs the most attention.  With all of this in mind, I wanted to find something that aligned with this in a step- by- step method of tracking, learning and growing.   

I found Thais Gibson co-owner of the Personal Development School through online research and took one of her courses called Emotional Mastery and Belief Reprogramming.  A lot of the exercises in this program are about noticing the emotions that come up from triggered interactions in our everyday lives and working backwards to the thoughts creating the beliefs.   What I really liked about this course is she teaches another way to uncover our beliefs by taking Inventory of the gaps from where we are to where we want to be in each area of our life.  From there, we can pay attention to what the thoughts (stories) that come up around that gap.  For example: If we want to be going to the gym more often to get into shape but don’t ever seem to have enough time to do that, then there’s a limiting belief or story that’s holding us back with regards to that area of our life.  Another way to think of this is to ask why am I not already doing the thing I say I want to do?  By finding the “but” or place of personal resistance/fear in each area such as career, financial, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and relationships, you can uncover the limiting beliefs behind it.  Then through repetition of this exercise, drastically change and finally reach goals you have been giving up on for years! Behind every failed New Year’s Resolution is a limiting belief.

Once you have uncovered these stories or limiting beliefs in each area of your life, you want to ask what has this story cost me.  This can be where the pull to change will come from in order to reinforce the new story you will replace the old one with.  As Tony Robbins says, change your story, change your life.  Uncovering these are the key to be able to change them, as I’ve said, bringing them from the subconscious to the conscious is how we can change the story.

In short, here are the two ways I have found easiest in the discovery work for belief repatterning:

Working backwards, recognize how these subconscious belief patterns impact your thoughts, emotions and behaviours.  List out how you tend to behave (how you “are”) around each of the stories.  What emotions do you experience when you feel these stories?  What do these stories cost you?

Secondly, utilizing triggering events to uncover these beliefs.  When reflecting on the triggering event, what was the belief that came up, the thoughts, emotions and actions (behaviour) that you displayed.

It’s great to uncover these but then what do you do with it?  How do we change and put those limiting beliefs into what my coach Karen Strang Allen, author of Free to Be Me, calls limitless beliefs?  Where can you do more than you have been doing with your life.  How do we transform those beliefs? 

Thais Gibson has a simple tool for this.  By reflecting each evening on the day and thinking about moments where you may have felt a negative emotion that wasn’t necessarily from an emotionally triggered event but still involved a person or conversation you may have had.  Write out the stressful thoughts or beliefs and isolate the problem. Then ask yourself what you believed about the person or about what happened.  Ask if you know for certain that this is true.  List at least 3 pieces of proof that oppose this original interpretation and update your thoughts to the new story.

Simply by changing the interpretation and backing it up with supporting proof you can debunk the old story and prove it’s just that, a story that doesn’t serve you anymore.  When I was doing this work, the one belief that came up for me was “I am unloved”.   I needed to change it to the opposite of that and started working with the truth that I am loved.  I listed all the reasons I know I am loved instead of listening to the old story, I created a new one.  I have children who show me how much they love me all the time and I would list all those reasons out and look at them often.  I also put on my list, the friends who reach out and ask to facetime me especially during the pandemic as they know I’m alone a lot of the time.  One of my best friends and his wife called me on Valentine’s day and serenated me with a love song of my choice!  It meant so much to me as I have not been in a relationship for many Valentine’s days and I felt the love in this.  With repetition being a great tool to reinforce the truth story, I put my list up where I could read it every day, multiple times a day.  Eventually this story became grooved in my brain as my truth and I can easily recall the story and emotions whenever I need confidence or courage to show up in my life. 

I hope there is something that resonates in this article and you see a glimpse into the importance our thoughts have in contributing to who we are and that these tools can give you the ability to create the life you desire and deserve.

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