Awareness of thoughts

Good things are happening Today . I want to start out by telling you that most of us don't recognize . What's happening in our brain is a chooseable thought . Most of us think that our thinking is just happening to us . We're living our lives in a default mode .

I was talking to a girl one day and she told me that she thinks that her boss is very unprofessional . I was trying to explain to her that that is a thought , while it is very difficult for her to believe it because that's her reality . The thought of my boss is unprofessional is completely a choice .

Now you can switch it with another thought , something less negative , something that serves you a little more . The point isn't to lie to yourself and pretend that the boss didn't just ignore you at the morning meeting in front of everybody . The point is to choose a thought that is believable and the point is to know that that is a choice .

You can always believe a different thought . The real problem lies with us not knowing that everything we think is a choice . And as a life coach , I told her do you see your thought ? It is just a thought . Can you see your thought is putting you in a negative spin and resulting in a terrible attitude , most likely hurting your work ethics .

Also , very importantly , this is not about blaming . This is about helping her recognize that she is living in her life . Another point that I want to make here is that it's easy for an outsider to point this out , but when you're inside your life , living this out , it's not that easy for us to recognize that this is just a thought and an option .

When you're inside your life , you're not aware that you can actively take part in your own thinking as an observer . Now , when I point it out to her , or when somebody else points it out to her , she becomes aware of this powerful switch in her thought patterns , this shift that happens Now .

If you're unaware of all of these thoughts that are happening to you and you're thinking that life is just happening around you and this is your destiny , then I would highly encourage you to do something called a thought output . This is an exercise I recommend you do each morning . For 10 minutes .

You sit down and you write down every thought that's coming in your head , what you need to do today , how you're feeling right now , what it is that's happening around you , thoughts about your kids , thoughts about your family , thoughts about your work , thoughts about your religion , thoughts about your relationships , thoughts about yourself All of these are thoughts .

How I can simplify this is that we react to our circumstances through thoughts . Circumstances are always outside of us and they're always neutral . A thought happens in our brain and most of the time we're unconscious of it . To bring it to consciousness , it's helpful that we start writing down these thoughts .

Some of these thoughts might be negative and will make you feel uncomfortable , but just let me tell you , for this exercise sake , that these thoughts cannot hurt you . They're not going to jump out of the paper and start hurting you . It's just your amygdala , it's just your primitive brain at its best , providing fear of the unknown .

So let it do its job and you continue your job , which is the higher brain's job of writing down these thoughts . Now it becomes easier at this point to go into observer mode and to recognize that we can think these thoughts . It is very powerful to be able to think about these thoughts .

A very big roadblock that I run into when I'm coaching people is towards them recognizing their own thoughts as a neutral observer . As a neutral observer , as soon as they think they're having a negative thought , they start going into self-judgment , which is a great disservice that we do to ourselves .

Don't think negatively about yourself , about having a negative thought , because that's a double negative . You're really hurting yourself when you're doing that . Now you have a model on an original negative thought and you have a model on a self-judgment imposed on yourself .

That becomes very complicated , and then you can see how it's so difficult to come out of that . Going back to that boss's example , it is a possibility that when I coached this woman that this is a thought she's having , she could have told me no , it's not just a thought . This is how things are . This is my reality .

I mean , let's face it , how would you react if your boss repeatedly ignored you at the morning conference and never took any of your suggestions ? You'd probably feel the same way . That that's reality .

But what I'm hearing , though , for you that circumstances are always neutral until you have a thought about it , that circumstances are always neutral until you have a thought about it . And her having a thought of my boss is unprofessional , is a negative thought . Now this resistance of her recognizing her negative thoughts is stemming from avoiding feeling rejected .

This is our primitive brain at its best . Because if she admits that she is having a negative thought about her boss , then she is afraid she's coming from a place of fear about herself . She's coming from a place of fear of rejection . She will be admitting to herself that she's feeling rejected .

And nobody wants to feel rejected willingly until you bring in your higher brain and you tell your lower brain that it's okay . Feeling of rejection that a negative thought creates will not kill you . The feeling in itself will not hurt you .

This lower brain thought of feeling rejected might have served us in the primitive times when it was extremely important to stick around with the group , otherwise your chances of survival were low . Nowadays that's not the case . Feeling rejected or even outright being rejected by a group of people is not going to kill you .

So we understand why the lower brain is doing its job . It's just on overdrive . It's just not something that serves us anymore . Once you recognize that feeling is not going to kill you . You make space for that feeling .

Once you've learned to make space for this feeling of rejection or a feeling that this negative thought is creating , in a non-judgmental way and it is very important that you do it as a neutral observer then you can allow yourself to think your thoughts , even the ones where you're thinking your boss is unprofessional .

You recognize it's a negative thought , you let yourself feel the fear of being rejected and you don't let it mean anything about yourself . It's coming from a neutral circumstance . Your boss ignoring you has nothing to do with your talent , with your adequacy as your worthiness as a human being . One concept I'll introduce here is the concept of worthiness .

You are 100% worthy , 100% of the time . You are not more worthy because somebody said so and you are not less worthy because somebody said so . You were born worthy . You will die in that state . You were worthy when your idea was conceived and you will be worthy throughout this life .

The problem comes when we start attaching our worthiness to what other person says . What another person says or does around us is completely neutral , because that is a circumstance until we have a thought about it . And if somebody is telling us we are not worthy . If somebody is professionally ignoring us , then we make it mean something negative about ourselves .

That's on us , that's not on them . That is a very important distinction to make . It will solve a lot of your life's problems . Now , once you've learned to sit with this negative thought and the feeling it generates in a non-judgmental , neutral , observer mode , I want you just be aware of it .

Another mistake that people make at this point is that they want things to change immediately . Once they recognize they're having a negative thought , they immediately want to act and switch it for a neutral or a positive one .

Once you realize you're having so many negative thoughts about your life , about your finances , about your children , then you immediately want to switch them to a positive one . And I want to tell you that is not the next step .

The next step is acceptance , accepting yourself as a human being , as a self-compassionate , self-loving person , and I'm going to talk about the idea of self-love in our next podcast . It's going to be powerful .

And if this becomes extremely difficult , when you cannot hold yourself sacred space , you cannot hold neutral grounds for yourself then that's where a life coach comes in . Life coaches are trained to hold space for the clients to let them express their negative thoughts and feelings in a non-judgmental , neutral way .

But more powerful than that is that we teach the client to hold the same space for themselves so they don't become dependent on the life coach to be able to do that . The idea of acceptance is extremely important because , while your intentions of changing your negative thoughts immediately are very well intended , you have your best interest in heart .

What I'm going to tell you is that you cannot change something unless you have complete authority over it . And unless you have complete authority over your negative thoughts , you have completely accepted them as a part of you in a neutral way . You cannot change them successfully .

So do yourself a favor and truly feel the negative emotion that your thoughts are generating . The emotions are just a feeling . They will not hurt you . They will not physically harm you . I understand it feels bad . It's not a good feeling and I don't want you to stay in that state forever . Just enough for you to recognize that it is under your control .

I'm not telling you to stay in a negative thought and a negative feeling because I want you to feel crappy all the time , but because you have to spend enough time with the negative thought to truly recognize that you are the one creating it . Once you recognize that , with true self-acceptance , behavior modification becomes much easier .

Another powerful skin you gain from this is your stamina feeling negative emotion . It requires a certain rigor to be able to feel a negative emotion . But what I'm here to tell you , my friends , is if you're not afraid of feeling a negative emotion , there is nothing you can't achieve .

Every goal we set for ourselves , no matter how big or small , we avoid reaching it . We don't achieve it only because we're afraid of feeling a negative emotion

. Feeling a negative emotion that's how powerful feelings are . They are the fuel behind our actions . Everything we do is in order for us to feel , or avoid feeling , a certain way . Once you set a goal for yourself and you realize the worst that can happen is a feeling of rejection , then you really set yourself up for success .

And once you've learned to feel that emotion and really process it , there's nothing you cannot achieve . The sky is the limit . This is all I have for you guys today . I hope this helped . I pray to Allah SWT that he gives us higher level of self-awareness and self-acceptance . I pray that you all achieve the highest goal you ever thought for yourselves .

I pray that you achieve the highest goal you ever set for yourself . I pray that we design our lives with our conscious thoughts , rather than living a life thinking that it is happening to us . Thank you so much for joining me today , and I will speak to you in the next episode .