9. The Power of Your Thoughts

today we're going to be talking about the power of thoughts and thoughts is a really big thing that we've we sort of briefly touched on a little bit throughout previous episodes in the podcast, but we thought it was so important that we're going to do a mini block on thoughts alone. So today we're going to talk about the power of thoughts. Next week, we're gonna have an episode on introducing more positive thoughts into your mindset. And the week after we're going to discuss intrusive thoughts. And how to deal with them as well.

since 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before. So what that showing is that not only are the vast majority of our thoughts negative, but actually we're having the same thought patterns or mostly the same thought patterns every day. So our thoughts don't change very much on a daily basis. What that means is, if you're thinking something negative, like you're a failure, you're going to feel like that every day. And it can feel so real to think something in your mind. But thoughts are just stories that we tell ourselves about the world. They aren't even always true. But unless we fact check our brains will believe that thoughts are facts, and this will affect our actions.

And there's this really great concept in a book and I'm going to mention it because I think what we're talking about kind of relates to this a little bit. The book is a fictional book, it's called one nine and 100,000 by Luigi Pirandello. It's from the 1920s. So it's a pretty old book, and it's not scientific. It's fictional, but it's the overall concept of the book really, that got me thinking. We will pop it down in the show notes if you do want to read this, but just to warn you, it's a pretty deep story, so take that as what you will. Anyway, I hope you're all able to follow this because it's a pretty hard concept to kind of describe, but the basic gist of it is the main character, realises that no one really knows him at all. You see, the person that you think of as you only really exists in your own mind. Every person that you will ever meet in life will create a version of you in their own mind. So you will never be the same person to your say Mom, Dad, friends, family, siblings, neighbours, co workers, or even strangers. Actually, there are 1000 different versions of you out there in other people's minds. That means that you see yourself differently than how other people see you. So to simplify, it basically means that we don't ever really comprehend the 1000s of versions that exist of us in other people's minds. And those versions that they have, of course, are probably not negative. Now we know that's a very strange concept to follow and understand, but what was mind blowing to me was when I found out that we have an 80%, negative thoughts on a daily basis about ourselves, it's really no wonder that when we believe that only one version exists of us, we actually believe that narrative of negative thoughts from every single perspective, but the reality is our own perspective is not how other people view us or sales. So we don't ever really know what anyone else is thinking about us. It does mean that the version that we create about ourselves is not always 100% Real to everyone else around us. And I just thought that concept was really mind blowing, really, because we always do this, don't we? We always say that person's thinking this about us. That person's thinking something bad about us, but we don't actually really know. And the reality is that most of the time, those people have actually got a very positive perspective of you. And they're just thinking about themselves.

Yeah, I think that's really powerful. And certainly for me, I didn't really realise that you had power of your thoughts until quite recently, I would say in my life, so certainly all throughout my teens and the first part of my 20s I very much thought that the voice in my head was was was my thoughts and you know, that that was that? I couldn't really challenge or or question that. It sounds really silly, doesn't it? But the concept of thinking to yourself, you know, no, I'm not going to think that way anymore, or that's really negative. I'm going to stop thinking that I just had no idea that you could do that and how powerful that is to take control of your thoughts.

No, I think what I mean by I didn't know is I wasn't aware. No, no, no, it's not like I thought about controlling them and couldn't do it. I wasn't aware that you could I'd never tried and no one or no one had ever told me that you could say for me like I can easily let my thoughts spiral and I still do it now is still absolutely something that I do and when something's going slightly wrong because I catastrophize it and make it into a big drama, but I'm much much better at catching myself realising that I'm spiralling and stopping that train of thought. And I think that that's something that has massively made a huge impact on my mental health, because I could go into sort of misery spirals for days and days over really quite insignificant things. I

No, you're right. They're, they're not thinking about you at all. And this is one thing that heard before and it's about like, you know, when you've got a spot on your face, we will go around thinking, Oh, my God, everyone everyone is is looking at me and they're they're thinking about how I look at the moment. But actually, if you were to ask those people, they would say, I didn't even notice that spot at all because they weren't thinking about you. They were thinking about themselves. So it's very difficult sometimes when you're in that headspace to actually think that way. But we just have to keep reminding ourselves that not everything is always going to be about us and that other people do think about themselves too in the same way.

So as always, we've got a science bit for you. And this week, we've got an experiment that showed that the speed of your thought can actually affect your mood. So for this study, they had participants read statements either very quickly or very slowly and the patient the participants who experienced a more positive mood and elated mood, in response to the statements are the ones that had been thinking fast rather than slow. And this makes a lot of sense, really, in sort of normal day life. When you think of when you're working on a project. You're doing something if you're in a real flow then generally things are moving quite fast, your mind is racing, you're really positive. Whereas if you're sort of sluggish and struggling to get motivated, feeling quite low, you're probably not accomplishing a great deal at that time. That's when you're most likely to be sitting on the sofa scrolling through social media or I am anyway so we'll link to that study in the show notes if anyone's interested in reading it in full

fascinating study there and I didn't even know that the the speed of your thoughts can affect you like that. So that's a really great one to hear shall thank you for the science as usual. So now we're going to talk about how to impact your thoughts in the best possible way. And the first one is just as Sean said earlier, is to be aware of the stories that you're telling yourself. If you're constantly feeding yourself this negative information and put yourself down. This affects not only your mood, but also your options as well. And in a previous episode, we did touch on this show, we talked about how how you would talk to a friend so you wouldn't say negative things to your friend you would say positive things. So that's what we need to be aware of what we're doing to ourselves as well, because you're we're constantly telling ourselves these negative stories on a daily basis. Just think about what that's doing to the power of your thoughts.

and you know what a great way to achieve this. Well, the concept that I'm going to give you right now is something that I learned in CBT. I know we're talking about CBT a lot in this podcast, but it's something that I really think is going to help a lot of people so I'm just going to mention it here. If we think about our thoughts like this, imagine you're in a court and this is Brian courts. So you have to give evidence based on your thoughts alone. Have we got any evidence to prove that our thoughts are actually a reflection of reality? So when we say things like I'm a failure, I'm a loser. I'm this I'm not. How true are those thoughts that we are having? If you're in the court, and you had to justify those thoughts with evidence to a jury or a judge? What evidence can you give them? That would mean that that thought is true? Have people said that to you? Have your friends said that to you have your family said that to you? I can guarantee that most if not all of the time. Those thoughts are just your thoughts and not their thoughts. And when you put yourself into that situation where you look at it from a perspective of a court and what evidence actually lies there you will actually come to the conclusion that there is actually no evidence for you to think that way.

urine and just just, you know, just as I said before, sometimes you can take things that people say, way out of context, way out of perspective. There's many times that you've probably read a message and you've read it the wrong way and taken out a context but that person doesn't mean it that way. And then you probably thought to yourself well you know, that's evidence but that's not evidence because you're not taking in the true context of what that person means you're putting your own thoughts into that person's head. That person may have said something that you didn't like or said it in a way that you thought was rude or whatever. But that doesn't mean that person means it that way. And I think sometimes we're we're human. We all do make mistakes. And we all say things that are wrong sometimes and we say things like, you know, maybe we're having a bad day and we say something that's a little bit off to someone or it comes across as rude. But that doesn't mean we hate that person. That doesn't mean what we're actually saying is the truth. So I think sometimes we do need to bear that in mind as well. So our thoughts don't spiral down this dark hole.

I know that when you're in that mindset, it's hard to just stop overthinking it because you're in that mindset and you think, you know, this is what's really happening. But you know, I shall said when you are in that moment you are in that headspace of just saying to yourself, maybe I am just overthinking this, just let me calm down. Let me relax and then let me tackle the situation when I'm a little bit calmer. Maybe it's time at that point when you can feel yourself boiling over and you don't really know how to respond to this situation. Maybe that's a time to remove yourself from the situation and it's easier to actually think straight and get a bit more clear in your judgments.

So that's everything for this week. Next week. We're going to be talking about positive thoughts and the week after we're going to be discussing intrusive negative thoughts. So all that's left for us now is our little kicker. And this week's little kicker is a quote from Ghandi, which I think really sums up so well. The message that we've been trying to get across in this week's podcast, and the quote is this. Carefully watch your thoughts for they become your words, manage and watch your words that they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits for they should become your values understand and embrace your values for they become your destiny. I