35. Thoughts: Best Friend, Or Worst Enemy?

Today we’re talking about your thoughts. How they influence, and even control, your emotions, actions and results - and how to use them to your advantage.  

Intentional Optimism - Your Vehicle for Personal Growth:

1. Optimistic = The hull, the vehicle that gets you from island A to island B.
2. Present = The centerboard - keeps you upright, focused, centered.
3. Energetic = The sail - captures & harnesses the wind, propelling you forward.
4. Courageous = The rigging - holds everything together in proper tension, resilience. 
5. Wise = The rudder - keeps you on track, heading in the right direction.
6. Intentional = Setting everything up to properly capture the wind.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• The nature of your mind.
• What your thoughts are and are not.
• How to make them your best friend.
  • Identify them
  • Decide what to do with them
  • Gather your tools
  • Make a plan

 Now what? Gather your tools:
Free Resource: "The Model" Worksheet
Noom: A Mindful Way To Eat

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to Intentional Optimist, the podcast for unconventional leaders, where you'll find inspiration, learn to discover and develop your own strengths, and hear from inspiring women just like you who are making a difference in their community. Who knows? You just might find yourself stepping up as the next unconventional leader right where you are. I'm your host, Andrea Johnson, the original intentional optimist. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 35. Today I'm doing things a little bit differently. I am not teaching from one of my six tenets of intentional optimism. I am gonna actually talk to you about something that keeps popping up everywhere and has actually been requested. Today we're gonna talk about our thoughts. We're gonna talk about whether or not your thoughts are your best friend or your worst enemy. Now, thoughts actually touch every single one of the tenets of intentional optimism, and I will go into that later. I'll show you how that works. But the reason I want to talk about this today is because it is so important. It is one of the foundational aspects of being able to personally grow. Because if you can't change your thoughts, and I'll show you this in a minute, you can't change anything. It's the first domino, as they would say. It is, it's the very beginning piece in the chain. And literally, like I said a second ago, they're popping up everywhere with my son, with my clients, with my staff, with my own mind. So are your thoughts your best friend or your worst enemy? I mean, we all want to say our thoughts are our best friends, but the reality is, nine times out of ten, our own thoughts are our worst enemy. If you said friends, if you're one of those really amazing people who has literally learned how to do this for themselves, leave us some hot tips. Because I've got some here and I'm gonna share some good stuff with you. But if you've already done this, I want to hear from you. All right, so here's what we're gonna talk about today. I'm also working from an outline, which is a little different, but I'm trying to make sure that I cover everything. So we're gonna talk about the what, the why, the who, the how, et cetera, and the where, all of that stuff. So we're gonna talk about what are thoughts, what they are and what they're not, why they matter, who actually controls them, and how do you make them your best bud? First, I want to tell you where I'm getting my information. Since this has been coming up in so many areas and especially in my own life, I have actually been, I don't know, for the past two or three weeks, specifically seeking out other coaches, listening to them talk about thought models and mindset and all that kind of stuff. Um, but I also use a specific exercise that I am going to provide for you as a free resource called the model, or some people call it the C T F A R, put together by a coach named Brooke Castillo, and I'll explain that in a minute. I'm also getting information from books. I read a lot. You guys hear this from me a lot, and you know that I am a big proponent of personal growth reading. So I'm gonna give you general information and then you can go do more research on your own, or you can come back and we can talk. But either way, I want to make sure that you have some of this basic stuff because I think a lot of people don't. And as a coach, I do, right? I have access to it all the time. So I want to make sure that I do not overlook the fact that a lot of you out there are not coaches. You actually need somebody like me to share this information with you. So I'm going to do that today. Okay, before we talk about what our thoughts are and are not, first let's take a quick look at your brain. It's this amazing thing. It's comprised of both the conscious and the subconscious. And if you think of an iceberg where the little bit above the water is the conscious part and the big, gigantic iceberg below the water is your subconscious, that's where the data is all stored. And whenever something comes into your conscious mind, then it goes back and retrieves data out of your subconscious mind, right? This is where your memories are stored, this is where your beliefs are, this is where your core values come into play. And every skill that you've ever developed, all of it, you know, when you have like muscle memory, it's all in your subconscious. Your habits are in there, and when you work a habit longer and harder, it's like deeper and deeper stored in your subconscious. So the nice thing about it is that it's all there. The bad thing about it though, is neurological and psychological research has shown us it doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's perceived. Literally, your brain can't take a joke. I mean, it's good in the sense that it's all there. But here's the thing about the data storage: it it kind of falls on this spectrum of, I don't know, we'll call it intent. On the really bad side, this is how you can get brainwashed. This is how somebody tells you something long enough and you believe it, or gaslight that kind of stuff, right? But then there's this whole middle section of our self-talk where the things we say out loud to others, the things that we think, the things that we say to ourselves that can be good or bad. But on the good side of the spectrum, so that's that's the bad side is what other people do to us or we allow to be done to us, or some kind of malicious intent. And then the good, the middle ground is the wishy-washy can be good or bad. But then the really good side of that spectrum is the fact that we can build new habits and we can actually put in there the things that we want and teach our brain to pull the data we want it to pull by creating a completely new habit. Okay, so that's your brain, really simple. What are your thoughts? A thought is literally a mental process in response to some kind of a stimulus, like a circumstance. For instance, I came downstairs to record my podcast. When I opened the basement door, I was hit with a wave of heat. Now, immediately the thought went through my mind, oh, I left the heat on too high and now it's hot downstairs. Actually, I should just say, I left the heat on too high, right? That's the thought. Thoughts are also habits. For instance, people talk about the tapes or the stories that play in their mind or the conversations that they have in their mind. The simple fact that as soon as that heat wave hit me, I automatically thought I left the heat on. That shows you that I'm conditioned to believe that I'm the one who left the heat on, right? But it's also a perception. You see things through your own lens. It's real easy to think that I did that myself, but it could have been anybody else. But my habit was that I know I turned the heat up, so I thought that I left the heat on. But here's the interesting thing: the thoughts that we have are influenced constantly by at least four major factors. One is the environment you're in. I was by myself, I knew these things about myself, I had the habit of leaving the heat on. So this my thought was automatically I did that. But it's also influenced by your history. Oh, back to your environment. When you're in a public place, when you're in a crowd, when you're in school, when you're in church, when you're with your family, those environments all impact and influence the types of thoughts that you have. Okay. If you don't believe me, look at groupthink. If you don't believe me, look at how you behave differently when you're with your family at Christmas and the crazy aunt or uncle brings the jello with the cat food in it. Sorry, I'm referencing Christmas vacation. Okay, so um it the environment that we're in, and it could even be the fact that it was hot when I came to the basement and I was like getting a little anxious, right? So those were the thoughts that were going through my head. Your history affects it, how you've been raised, your experiences that you've had in the past, all those kinds of things affect the thoughts that come through your brain. The third piece is your values. I talk about values all the time. But if community is important to me, well, then anything that breaks down community, I have specific thoughts about that. If freedom is important to me or authenticity is important to me, those are my values. When things affect those or come up against those or bump up against them, I automatically have thoughts that are affected by and influenced by my values. But the fourth piece, and the really good news, is that your thoughts are influenced by the strategies you employ to influence your thoughts. And we're gonna talk about making a plan in a few minutes, okay? So there your thoughts are influenced by your environment, your history, your values, and whatever strategies you choose to put in place. Your thoughts are not your feelings. They're just not. If you think that somebody doesn't like you, that's not a feeling, it's a thought. The feeling that comes with that is maybe sadness or disappointment, right? Feelings are an emotional response to the thought. They're not thoughts are not feelings. Thoughts are also not random, right? I just talked about data retrieval. If your thoughts are totally random, there's something wrong with a data retrieval. There's something that's stimulating a thought. Even when your mind wanders, I started reading an article this morning. I should probably go back and finish reading it, but it was interesting. There's some kind of neurological, like 1.2 second thing that happens when your mind starts to wander. It's not random. It actually happens. You have things buried in your subconscious that you have no awareness of. And when you experience something like a circumstance or a trigger or something, those things come up. So your thoughts are not random. Your thoughts are also not imposed upon you. Just like nobody can make you feel anything. Nobody else can truly make you think anything. Now, I will say it feels that way, especially when you're told something over and over and over until you believe it. But here's the deal: at some point, you take over that thought process. I had to come to terms with this in my own life. So nobody else can make you think anything. They're not imposed upon you. They're also, and this is the one that I keep arguing with people about thoughts are not facts. Ever. They are literally a mental process in response to a stimulus. They are not reality. It may be that the fact that the heat was left on was true, and my thought happened to align with that fact that I left the heat on, because I probably did, but it doesn't mean that my thought automatically is a fact. A stopped clock is right twice a day, right? If it's stopped at at 12 o'clock, it's right twice a day. That doesn't mean that a stopped clock is always right. So the thought might correspond with the fact, but it is not, by definition, a fact, okay? So your thoughts are mental processes, habits, perceptions, they're influenced by things and they are not feelings, they're not random, they're not imposed on you, and they're not facts. But they do matter. And they matter because of where they fall and what we're going to look at in a second, call them the behavior chain or the thought model. It's because they influence everything that happens after you have the thought. They are the first domino. They influence, even control your emotions, your actions, and your results. Therefore, being able to take control of what feels like unwieldy thoughts is really important. But here's some good news for you. Guess who controls them? You do, my friend. I control my thoughts, you control yours. Just like I said, nobody can tell you what to think, nobody influences your thoughts, nobody imposes upon you a thought. You control every single thought that is in your head. Tony Robbins said, you are in control of your own state of mind. And it's really hard. Don't get me wrong. Just because we can say little pithy thoughts like that or little pithy statements like that, doesn't mean it's easy. But we have to be in control of our mind and not let our mind be in control of us. That's called psychosis. Okay? We have to know the difference between a thought and a fact and what to do with it. And here's the really nice thing: even if your thoughts are not currently your best friends, you can make them your best friend. We want self-talk or our thoughts to be directed toward what we want to happen. Colby Kelly has a lovely little song and was calling that because it's got this great little upbeat bouncy tune. It's called Think Good Thoughts. And the line in there that I love says, I don't let my negativity turn me into my enemy. Because nine times out of ten, the worst enemy thought is something about us that we don't like, or it tells us that we're not good enough. So here's four steps. Number them out. I've got a lot of numbers today. Four steps to figure out what they are and how to start making them your best buds, okay? Number one, you need to identify them. They're probably a habit or they're a recurring thing or there's some kind of pattern. So if it's a habit or conditioning, it's something that you do constantly. Let me say this. What you say out loud to others and to yourself always reflects what's going on in your brain. It always reflects what's happening in that thought process. And remember, I mentioned earlier that spectrum of like the brainwashing to, actually, I should have said this, confidence building, like brainwashing on one end where other people are, or you're letting other people tell you what to think, or or people are telling you things enough that that they're getting into your subconscious mind and you're believing them, all the way to the other end of the spectrum where that self-talk is all in the middle, that wishy-washy, brackish water with the salt and the fresh water combine, all the way down to the other end of the spectrum that I'm going to call confidence building. This is the the end of the spectrum that you want to be on, is where you actually decide how you want your habits to reflect and build the things, the outcomes that you want. Sorry, that sounded a little clunky. But when you recognize what your habits or conditioning are, you can actually change them. Okay, so that's your first one. You're identifying maybe your habits or conditioning. Number two, you're going to identify whatever thoughts are recurring. What keeps coming up? Probably out of your mouth. Again, it's rare that we say something that completely goes against what we're thinking in our head. It's either a duplicitous thought, which yes, that's a big word, meaning double-minded or opposite of what's true. Or you've deceived yourself, or you're deceiving somebody else, right? When we say things over and over, like when a client says to me, I'm no good at that, or when my son says, I can't do that, believe me, folks, we all say it, every single one of us, all the time. So when we say those things over and over, these are the same things that happen in our head. Now, if you stand in front of the mirror and think, Oh, I have too many wrinkles, or I'm getting old, or I'm not pretty, or I'm fat, or I'm not good enough. If those are the kind of things that are recurring, write them down. You have to identify this stuff. When you go to the doctor with an ailment, they don't just throw things at you to fix you. They want to identify exactly what's wrong. It's called diagnostics, right? So basically we want to run some diagnostics. So we're identifying our habits and conditioning, our recurring thoughts, and then really look at patterns, okay? These can be anything from time frames to circumstances. For instance, we we joke about people being hangry. You know, it's like you're you're hungry, you're angry because you're so hungry. It's like this kids get hangry, adults get hangry. Um and for me lately, I've noticed that I have been getting really exhausted and really defeated, like a complete crisis of confidence, to the point where I am literally saying things like, I should just throw in the towel. Right? This is too hard. I don't want to do this. I can't build this business. I can't, right? And I know you're probably sitting out there thinking, wait, what? You? I'm like, yes, me. I say these things. My friend, my best friend said to me, You need to come up with your own word that's similar to hangry. And right now we've got a working, we've got a working draft, and I'm gonna share it with you. But what happens is I get physically, emotionally, and creatively exhausted because y'all, I'm learning so many new things. I'm doing a lot of creative work, I am building relationships, I finished, I'm finishing up a pilot for our membership program, I'm taking a lot of feedback, which anybody knows anything about a disc personality where I is the top, which is the influencer. We want to be liked by everybody. Feedback is the most terrifying thing in the world. But I'm learning to take it and I'm learning to use it, and all of that just uses up all the gas in the tank. So I become exhausted and I hit a brick wall and it just comes out of nowhere and I get defeated. And so I looked at my husband and I said, I need a word. And he goes, All right, how about defosted? And I said, What? And he said, You're defeated and exhausted, defosted. I said, Oh my gosh, that's perfect. Because when I'm that way, and you understand this, you all have something like this, you get to a certain state of mind where when somebody points it out to you, it's not a happy process, right? Because I get whiny and but that's not a great word to say to me. Um, and so being able to identify the patterns and knowing that I hit that. So when I start getting those thoughts, I'm like recognizing it. So just recently I said, Oh, I'm defosted. And of course, it just makes me laugh because it sounds like defrosted, but it's not. It's defosted, like defeated, exhausted. But that's a pattern, okay? Other patterns are things like, you know, just like a kid that needs a sleep. Like if you're if you're not don't have enough rest, that's when your thoughts go crazy. Maybe it's hormonal cycles. Everybody has them. You don't want to necessarily point them out to people, but recognize them in yourself. What about times of the year? Winter can be very difficult for people who need sunshine. All right. So look for patterns. Once you identify your habits and your recurring thoughts and your patterns, then you need to decide. Here's a second thing, decide what to do with them. I know I say that word decide a lot, and you're just, that's just what's gonna happen. I'm the intentional optimist. We decide things and we do them. I decide to be optimistic. That's just how it works. So we're gonna decide what you want to do with your thoughts. Do you want to keep them? Are they serving you? Are they helping you get where you want to be? Are they helping you feel the way you want to feel? Are they helping you have good relationships with others? If they're not, you need to do something about it. Number three, gather your tools. Things like the model. I'll share that in a second. The noom behavior chain. I'll share that. Journals, like a thought journal or a gratitude journal. I just interviewed somebody, you're gonna hear her in a few episodes, and she said she writes everything down. And I'm gonna, I'm not gonna totally steal her thunder, but and she has a good practice that I'm adopting today. Or actually, I adopted it yesterday. And you'll hear me talk with her about it on that episode. I'm not gonna steal it. Um, or read books. I've shared with you the different types of books I read: atomic habits, mindset. Just finish up reading the big stretch. Those are the three I'm gonna talk to you about today. And then number four, take action. Take action using those tools. Give yourself tangible evidence of the facts, not the thoughts, but the actual facts. Let me give you an example of this. Um, because I'm busy and because this week I had some things come up that were opportunities, great opportunities, but they took a lot of my creative time. I'm recording this podcast later than I normally want to. And that's just because I did, I did take advantage of some opportunities this week that use up a lot of my creativity and a lot of my actual hour time. And I was starting to feel a little bit like like my meals weren't planned, and I I just I felt like my schedule was getting out of control, and I literally thought I'm out of control. And I thought, oh, I don't even know who's got family movie tonight, movie night tonight. So once a week, my family has a tradition. We do family movie night. We have a rotating schedule of who gets to pick. That way we don't argue because it's really easy to say, nope, I get to veto. Well, no, the person picking gets to pick. And every once in a while there's a veto. I'm just not gonna watch a shark movie every other week. So, and y'all who anybody who has a middle school aged son probably gets that, but I'm just not going to. So I didn't even know who had family movie night tonight, and it's supposed to be relaxing where we get to just pick a movie, put on movie light, which means the lights are down really low and all the shutters are closed, and we all eat popcorn for supper. It's great. It's a lot of fun. But I had no idea whose pick it was. Now, it's on the calendar on the wall in the kitchen, but I didn't have anything written down on my personal calendar that I look at every day and that I use for weekly planning with my husband and for kind of keeping my goals and everything. I've shared my journal with you, so or my calendar with you. But What I did was, I took five minutes and I mapped out on each month mom, dad, Nathan, mom, dad, Nathan. I put the schedule on the calendar. All of a sudden, I thought, oh, peace came over me. And I know that sounds super simple, but what I did was I took action using a tool of planning that gave me evidence of the fact that my life is not out of control because doggone it, if I know nothing else, I know who's got family movie night tonight and next week and the week after next. So when we take action, it really matters. The foundational pieces of personal growth are things like awareness. If you don't know who you are, where you are, where you're going, and what you're doing, you can't change. So you have to be aware. Your values, you gotta know what they are in order to be able to set your boundaries, determine your guardrails, know how to make decisions. And the third piece is your thoughts. Your thoughts touch on every single tenet of intentional optimism. I told you a minute ago I'd share them what they are, so here they are. Optimistic, guess what? There is hope. You can change your thoughts, but you have to be willing to see the positive opposite for whatever it is, or you have to be able to see where you want to be and then be proactive about it and put those new thoughts in place. For the tenet of being present, you've got to step back and be in the moment. Be kind and generous to yourself, energetic. Guess what? You get to be super creative with how you teach yourself any new thought habits you want. But the key is to do something. Then you can experience the joy and excitement that comes when you watch new patterns emerge. You want to talk about wisdom? Boy, does this fall under wisdom. You have to understand what's going on, you have to identify everything, and you have to be really, really careful and aware of the words you use with yourself. There are times when we talk about ourselves in a way we would never talk about somebody else. I do not allow my son to say he's stupid. I do not allow my son to say he's a piece of garbage, which for a preteen or a tweener, that's those kind of hormonal words come out a lot. I'm so stupid, right? We don't do that. We have to pay attention to the words that we use for ourselves and respect yourself, my friend, at least as much as you respect others. What I really want to say is more than, but I'm sure I'd get hate mail. You've got to respect yourself. If you want to talk about courage, John Maxwell says the very first person you lead is yourself. So it's time to try something new. Break out of the old habits that are at best preventing you from achieving your goals, my friend. At best. But they're more likely causing you pain. It is time to teach yourself resilience, and this is the best place to start, right? No broken bones, trying new things, no expenditures, you don't have to do this in public. This is all a perfect exercise to teach yourself resilience in your thoughts. And then intentional, really, come on. Let's make a plan. I'm gonna share with you right now what helps me and some other options that I found. And this is a perfect place to begin to design your own purpose. We've talked about that a lot in the last few episodes. Here's a really good draft purpose for you in this exercise. I'm going to teach myself to think in ways that are beneficial to my health, growth, development, and future. I'm gonna teach myself to think in ways that are beneficial to my health, growth, development, and future. That is a beautiful purpose. It will affect absolutely everything that happens in your life. All right, let's talk about some tools. I've mentioned before books. If you want the basics on mindset, Carol Dweck's mindset book is perfect. It's really good. Atomic Habits, how many times do I talk about this book? It breaks things down into really simple, easy steps. And he talks about the science behind it, the neurological science, the psychological science. It's a really positive book. He has a great email that comes out every week. He has a really good, um, there's a Facebook group out there that's called Atomic Habits. I don't know if it's his or not, but it's great. Um, and then I just finished reading The Big Stretch by Tanisha Jackson Warner. And I'm gonna talk about here in a second some positive things that you can do that will help you figure out the kind of thoughts you want to have. And I got them from The Big Stretch. So that's three books: Mindset, Atomic Habit, and The Big Stretch. I've shared these in multiple show notes and anywhere and everywhere, okay? Number two, the model. This is an exercise pulled together by a coach named Brooke Castillo. The and she even admits the information's been out there forever. She just pulled it into a really simple exercise. And you've probably heard it referenced with the C, T, F, A, and R. And it's just a really simple five-step process that you walk any circumstance and thought through, and you can actually change the thought, and you can see how it reflects a different action and result. Now, I'm actually providing a free resource for you this episode, and you can download it at the intentional optimist.com forward slash model. I will put this in the show notes, but it's just it's a free resource. It's just a page kind of explaining it, showing an example, and then walking through a couple of them so you can see how you switch the thought out to be something different, something that you want, and how your actions and results are then affected. So, what does it mean? The model is you have a circumstance that happens. I opened the door, the heat hit me in the face. You have a thought in response to that circumstance. I thought, I left the heat on downstairs, and I probably turned it up too high. In response to the thought, you then have a feeling. Honestly, I felt anxiety. My body is really affected by the temperature, and if I'm going to be recording a podcast, I don't need to be hot and sweaty. I know that's a really pretty visual for you, but I had this feeling of anxiety. Next is your action, because actions always stem from your feelings. If I'm feeling anxious, what do I do? I tense up, I think, I can't record a podcast, right? It's like sometimes an action is another thought. And then maybe the result is I don't get my podcast recorded. All right. But what I did was I went back and said, okay, the heat's on too high. I probably left it on. I started feeling anxiety. And fortunately, this is a habit that I have, so I know what to do about it. I actually just went and turned the heat down. Granted, I'm sitting here now, my toes are cold, and I have a jacket on, but the result is different. I'm recording my podcast, right? This works really well with self-deprecating type thoughts. Um, it works well with food management or weight management. Um, things like, I have a okay, here's a good one. I have a friend who instead of saying she has a weight loss plan or a diet that she's on, she has an eating protocol. I love the fact that she makes it something that sounds really like simple, clinical. It's just like these are the facts, right? And I think that's probably why she does that, is because she wants to make it a non-emotional process. But let's say I have an eating protocol and I'm I'm out with friends and I'm not able to eat on that eating protocol. For instance, we all go to Kentucky Fried Chicken. It just, I know, never happens. Would Chick-fil-A sound better? Either way, we go to a fried chicken place, which there are plenty of them. At the fried chicken place, it's really hard to eat within a protocol that fits my own within my own protocol, right? I like to eat healthy. I prefer to not eat fried foods. So I have this thought of, oh, I'm not gonna be able to eat on my pro my eating protocol. And then the feeling is anxiety or depression or um sadness or even defeat. Oh, well, I blew my protocol today. So the action is I just go ahead and eat, and the result is I feel icky because I ate fried foods because I don't usually eat them on my protocol. Okay. So again, the free resource, it's an amazing way you will be shocked at when you what they call run the model on a specific thought. Whatever the circumstances, whatever your normal thought is, just plug in a different thought and then see what feeling, when you plug in the new thought, what kind of feeling comes in. The new thought going to a fried chicken place could be, well, I'll just take the skin off and I'm still gonna eat chicken and I'm gonna be all right, right? Well, what do you do? Well, I take the skin off and I eat the chicken and I'm okay and I don't feel bad and I enjoy time with my friends. It's amazing how just doing these little things. I know you're probably thinking, Andrea, this sounds too simple. I'm telling you, it's how your brain works. Okay. The second tool is called the behavior chain, and I got this from Noom. It is a mindful way to eat. It's an app for weight management, okay? It's similar, but it only has four steps. The first one is the trigger, the thought, the action, and the consequence. Now, if you want to run that one, if I'm going to the fried chicken place, the trigger is I walk in, it smells really, really good, and I historically love fried chicken, but I've decided I'm not going to eat fried foods, right? So I have this thought, what am I going to do? If I am going to eat this, and then and then it's I can't not eat fried chicken, I'm in a fried chicken place. So that I eat it, I feel bad, and the consequences, you know, the action is I eat it, the consequence is I feel bad. Or I can change my thought the same way and just say, I'm gonna take the skin off, right? I could take the skin off. That's a good way to do this. And the action is I do that, and then the consequence is I don't feel bad. Now, I do want to tell you I love Noom. Many of you have heard the fact that I've had got quite a weight loss story. And later on in the summer, I will be sharing with you an interview that I did with a nutritionist in which I explain and talk about my weight loss journey. I'm a gastro bypass patient. It is a tool that I use, but the other tool that I use, I've tried a bunch of different things and I have found that Noom is the best thing for me. It's a psychology-based weight management community. It's an app where you have a coach, a group coach, and a community in there to talk about things. You have daily articles in which they teach you all of this mindset stuff for weight and weight management, and it's accountability, right? So on my website, if you go to an individual episode that I have posted, say on social media, it'll take you, it won't take you to Apple Podcasts or or Spotify or wherever, it will take you directly to my podcast website. And on that, you will see a little ad for Noom. That's because I'm an affiliate. I like Noom enough. I use Noom every day. I lost 25 pounds last year and well, in 20 before the pandemic. So now I'm working to get the last bit off, but I'm convinced that I need to stay in the mindset where I have somebody that I can talk to on a regular basis, a coach, where I have a place to record my food and to get good articles and learn and be in a community where other people are striving towards the same things. So when you go to my individual episode on my web, any individual episode on my website, you should see a little ad there for Noom or a link at the bottom. And Noom, it says basically stop going on a diet, start going on Noom. It's a mindful way to eat. Learn how to intentionally challenge your mindset in order to take control of your health. That's a really practical example of why our thoughts matter. The third tool, notice and write down your patterns. We talked about this at the very beginning. Specific circumstances or triggers, what are they? Do you have any cyclical patterns? Are they hormonal, fatigue related, blood sugar related? Are they financial? Do you live from paycheck to paycheck and right before each paycheck or at the end of the month? You're always stressed out. What about life event anniversaries? A lot of people talk about things that happened. Um, you know, when the my mother's the my mother's death date comes around every year, there's always an emotional trigger there. Um grief cycles are very, I had conversations the uh this week about different people with different types of grief cycles. When you know what they are, you can identify them and you can work on them. Okay. Tool number four, make a list of the things that you want. Again, this one comes from The Big Stretch by Tanisha Jackson Warner. And let me tell you, for some reason, we do not think it's okay to say what we want. Maybe it's a female thing, maybe it's a southern or an evangelical thing, but somehow we feel selfish when we say what we want. But the reality is it's okay to want things. So I made a list. If you're some wrestling papers, it's because I'm picking it up and I'm gonna read you a couple of things. I want to be debt-free. Why is that bad, right? What are the things I want in my environment, in my home? I want it to be simple, clutter-free. I want to be able to enjoy nature. I want some space to breathe. I want a peaceful environment. I want an I want it to nurture me, to be clean, to be safe. What do I want in my work environment? I want it to be collaborative, growth-oriented, authentic, open to share. I want to travel. I want to be free. I want to feel safe. These are all things that we want. And when we know what we want, then we can take the thought model and we can plug in some things where we have thoughts that are not serving us. We can then plug in a thought that does serve us because I want this, right? If for some reason I am not debt free and I get my credit card statement and I don't like what I see, my first thought could be, I will never be out of debt. Right? Really easy to think those kind of things. But if I know I want to be debt free and I know I want to be financially independent, I decide how I want to do that. I decide what I want, and I plug in a different thought. I am working to reduce my debt. It's amazing. Then I make different decisions and different actions based on those thoughts. And number five, make a plan and work the plan. I know that sounds super simple. You can have all the lists of things you want. Things that you things you want, right? You can have all those lists. You can notice and write down your patterns. You can work the behavior chain or the thought model. You can read all the books. Actually, those numbers don't work. One, two, three, four, five, six is make a plan. Work the plan. I know you're laughing. It's okay. Because I often joke a lot. We need to be careful what we say about ourselves. I joke that I'm an in your face coach. And you're getting a little bit of that today. Now, I also say I do that with a smile and an unshakable southern accent, which you also hear. But y'all, it is important that we make a plan and we work a plan. If you've been listening to me at all, you know I specialize in helping you do. And if you want my help, I'm here. Many ways to be in touch with me, many ways to work with me. I can help you make a new plan. I can help you figure out these things and get your thoughts serving you rather than being your worst enemy. I can help you make your thoughts your best friend. All right? Let's figure this out. If you want if you need a personal growth plan, if you have a dream that you want to launch. Nothing's gonna happen if you don't do anything. Nothing's gonna launch by itself. You see, I can help you begin a journey. I give you the equipment you need and I help you launch from the beach. That's my favorite saying now. And if you're already started on your journey, but you need somebody to just hang with you and sail with you, I can do that. You might need some new skills or you might need to level it up. I can help you with that. I can help you get to the next big finish line. I offer accountability and encouragement that's necessary to actually sail together towards that horizon. So, if you need to get to know me, the easiest place to do that is in our Facebook community. It's the intentional optimists. We're building a community with a culture that helps us all learn to think and live with intentional optimism. Another way to do that is through my newsletter. Both of these are available on my website, the intentionaloptimist.com. At the very top of the page are all the buttons that you might want. Like if you want a disk assessment or if you want to get on the newsletter, that's like right underneath my picture. If you want to be in the Facebook community, there's a button right at the top of the page. So just go to my website and you can find all of those things. If you want to know how I teach, right, you can hear me on here, you can hear what I'm like as an interviewer and a little bit of a teacher. But if you really want to know how I teach, my new mini course called Uncovering Your Core Values is where you should start. It's designed to empower you to move forward in your own direction based on the discovery and alignment of your core values. And you can also access that right at the top of my website. It says uncover your core values. I think it's an orange salmon y colored button. You can just push that. Now, if you're a high-performing, mission-minded woman, type A's, I'm talking to you. Mission-minded means your energy is spent someplace else, like on a mission, a side hustle, a nonprofit. You've got skills that you've developed for your job, but you don't spend your emotional energy in your job anymore, maybe. Or there's incongruity, like your skills don't match up with your strengths, and you really want to develop your strengths. That's what I'm here for. And I have a brand new membership community called Launch from the Beach. Like I said, it's my favorite phrase. You can go to the intentionaloptimist.com forward slash launch, and you'll either get the coming soon page or you will be sent directly to the page where you can actually join the community. Now, if you're ready to dive deep or strategize, set goals and really make some progress, I have one-on-one coaching slots open, and you can set up a consult right there through my website as well. I hope this has been helpful for you. Your thoughts should be your best friends. And if you need help with that, check out the free resource, The Model Exercise, and it's at the intentionaloptimist.com forward slash model. Link is in the show notes. Use your tools, use their exercises, and let your thoughts become your best friends. As usual, thank you so much for your time today, wherever you listen. If you find this podcast helpful and encouraging, first subscribe and then take a moment and leave a rating and review. Your kind words and positive rating will help even more women find us and get the intentional optimism they need. Until next time. Hey, thanks for listening today. If you're an intentional optimist and you love this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review with a five-star rating. You can also snap a screenshot right where you're listening, share it to social media, and tag me. This helps others find us and we'll have an even bigger impact. If you're curious what it would be like to work more closely with me, or just to step up button unconventional leader in the month, invite me to schedule a free discovery session and talk with me in the morning. Just email me at hand at the intentionaloptimist.com. If you're looking for an encouraging and uplifting community on Facebook, run over and join the intentional optimist group, encouraging women from all uncritical women in the community, and email links right here in the show description wherever you listen to the podcast. Until next time, email the end of the group. You are the future of leadership and the role models of the future of generations.