Episode 200: Do Your Thoughts Really Create Your Reality? What Most People Get Wrong

So I have had losses in my life. I don't think you make it to midlife without experiencing some losses. I've lost my mother. I've lost jobs. I've lost friendships. I've lost relationships with family members. I've lost a merit. I've lost dreams that I once had. I've even lost parts of my own identity over the years and how I think about myself. But loss doesn't just take something from us, it also changes who we are. And so if there is one coaching tool

that has helped me navigate those changes and those challenges and difficulties in my life better than anything else. It is learning how to manage my mind.

It is literally the superpower that I have now in my own life. And so that's what I want to be able to talk to you about today. Now, over the past few years, there has been an online debate. About, and this is all about the coaching theory that some people really buy into and think this is how it is a hundred percent of the time wholeheartedly and other people just f outright reject. And it's the idea that your thoughts create the results that you have in your life.

I wanna explore both sides of this and I wanna explore what gets lost in the conversation. Okay, so let's just dive into what it is I'm talking about. So Some of the greatest mindset teachers of our time will tell you that your thoughts create the results you have in your life or the thoughts create your reality. or some version of that theory. It can be Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Jim Rohn, Dr. Joe Dispenza, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Jack Canfield, there's so many.

And even some of the more um newer and younger um teachers. Lewis Howes or Gabby Bernstein, they talk about this concept. And there are also more spiritual teachers that weave this concept in with teachings on the law of attraction, which contributes to the dialogue around this topic, which is a similar but a different conversation. So thoughts creating the results that we have in our lives is not a new idea. It has been around for

I don't know, maybe a hundred years or more. Like you can go way, way, way back. And I genuinely think that that our thoughts Are really important to helping us create the life that we want. And I think that because we don't understand it as deeply as we should. Sometimes we reject the whole premise because we miss some of the nuances. So I'm going to talk about all of that with you today.

There is a distinction that I think is simple but hugely profound. Okay? And I want to share that with you now. So most people think. that what is happening in their minds is the same thing that is happening in the world. So, how we see it is how it is. How we experience something is how it actually is, as opposed to it just being our interpretation of what is happening.

And since we interpret what's happening in our external world through our minds, it's really difficult to distinguish between the reality of the external world and the interpretation of our world in our minds. And so most people don't realize that they're living inside their thoughts. not necessarily their reality. The clearest way I've ever seen it explain is from Brooke Castillo, who owns and runs the Life Coach School. And she created a tool called the model. And here's how she describes it.

Circumstances in our lives can trigger thoughts. Those thoughts cause emotions or feelings. It is our emotions that drive our actions, our choices, our behaviors, and then of course our actions, our choices, our behaviors are what drive the results that we have in our lives. Okay, so that's sort of the waterfall of how the model works. Now I want to go into each of these sections in a bit more detail so that you really understand it and how it works.

The model is the first way that I have seen these big broader concepts of your thoughts really matter to the results in your life. She's put it into a framework that I think makes it really consumable. So that's why I think it's important to share. So circumstances, think about circumstances as the facts of our lives, the reality of our lives, okay? And we have thousands of them, probably hundreds of thousands of them if you really dug into it.

Some of which we chose, some of which we would never choose, but are in fact a part of our reality. So, circumstances are the facts that you can prove in a court of law. That's how you know it's a circumstance. If you can't prove it in a court of law, it is not a circumstance. So some circumstances might be I am five feet four inches tall. This wall behind me is blue. It's 85 degrees out today. Okay, those are circumstances. They're facts. We can prove them. Circumstances are neutral.

They're not good or bad. They're not right or wrong. They just are. The wall is blue. You might love it. You might hate it. But it has nothing to do with the fact that the wall is blue. Okay? So it doesn't become positive or negative until we have a thought about it. Like, well, I like blue, but I don't like that shade of blue. So our thoughts. Think about your thoughts as they're just sentences that you create in your mind to make sense of the circumstances in your life.

And so how we choose to interpret the circumstance is what makes it good or bad. It's what makes it positive or negative. So, for instance, some people can look at an 85 degree day and think, oh my God, what a glorious day. And other people can look at an 85-degree day and think, ugh, it's so hot. Two exact same circumstances, but two very different thoughts about those circumstances. Now, a thought is a perspective based upon the totality of your life experiences.

You're gonna think something is great based upon your life experiences, or you're gonna think something is horrible, right? If you grew up in consistently cooler temperatures, like let's say you grew up in Vermont. You might think you're going to melt if it got to be 85 degrees. But if you grew up in warmer temperatures,

You're gonna think, oh my gosh, 85 is glorious. What a beautiful day. If you lived in Phoenix or Las Vegas in the desert, you would think, 85, what a nice day, because it's not 105. So neither perspective is right or wrong. It's just your thought. It's the sentence you created in your mind based upon the totality of your life experiences.

Two people can live in the exact same circumstance, in the exact same moment in time, and walk away with two completely different realities because they have two different thoughts about it. And I bet that happens in your marriage quite often. So circumstances are facts. Facts can be proven in a court of law, but facts don't create feelings.

Get it? Okay. Now let's go into emotions and feelings. So an emotion or a feeling is simply a vibration that you get in your body based upon the thought that you're thinking in that moment, okay? Let's say that Like we all know, when I say a vibration in the body, I want you to just sit with this for a second. Think about a situation that brought you sadness. Something that happened in your life that made you feel really down. And just think about that for a second.

And you might say to yourself, sadness. Sadness. I remember what made me feel really sad. And you're gonna feel something in your body. It might be subtle, but you're gonna feel something. Okay, now I want you to think about something that you are grateful for. Something or someone that you are genuinely grateful for and brings a smile to your face. And you might say out loud to yourself, I'm so grateful for fill in the blank. I'm so grateful for this experience. I'm so grateful for this person.

And the feeling, the physical sensation in your body changed, even if it was slight. it feels different. Right? So that's what I mean when I say it's just a vibration that's happening in the body. Yeah. If you feel joy or excitement, that might feel light, it might feel tingly, and you might feel it like in your chest. If you feel sadness or worry, that's gonna feel heavier. It's gonna feel more dense in your body. And you might feel it more in your stomach or your limbs.

But everyone feels it differently. But that gives you a sense for what I'm talking about. Now your feelings aren't random, they're creative. We have a thought, and that thought in our mind creates a physical sensation in our body. And that's what we refer to as feelings or emotions. How we feel is a result of our thoughts. And how we feel is incredibly important because how we feel is what drives our choices, actions, and behavior.

We like to think of ourselves as very logical people, very analytical people. It's why we make our pros and cons lists. Here's how I like to think about it. If we all made decisions based purely on logic, every single one of us would be driving a Prius. But that is not the case. We all drive lots of different cars. And that's because it is an emotional thing. Our cars are typically not a rational, logical thing. They're usually an emotional.

So our emotions are what drive our actions, believe it or not. And so they're really, really important. So think about it like this: if you feel excited, interested, curious. confident you are going to take some action. Even if it's challenging, you're going to be in motion in some direction. But if you feel scared, sad, grieving, Confused, you are likely not going to be taking action. I think of it like the like um the metaphorical fetal position.

Is that you're just gonna be moving really slowly, if moving at all. And so how we feel drives the actions that we take. Let's say that we are training for a marathon. The goal is I want to be able to run a marathon. And I think that, you know, let's say the temperature, the circumstances, the temperature is 85 degrees today. But if I have the feeling that, oh my God, I'm going to melt in 85 degrees.

I may not take that action. I may not go out and train today because I don't feel like it. The weather isn't perfect, so I'm not gonna do the hard thing. But if I have the same circumstance, if it's 85 degrees and I'm training for a marathon, same goal, but I have the thought. That, oh my gosh, what a beautiful day. I am much more likely to go out and take the action and train. And therefore, I am much more likely to get the result that I want. Okay? So that's how this works. Actions, you act

Based upon how you feel about the facts. You don't act based upon the facts. You act based upon how you feel about those facts. Now, how you feel determines whether or not you move forward or whether or not you stay stuck. And of course, we all understand that the actions we take. That's what leads us to the results that we have in our lives. Okay, so let's talk about results.

People who take action are much more likely to get the results that they want in their lives. It doesn't mean like, oh, take some action and you're guaranteed the results. It doesn't mean you're guaranteed success, but every single time you take some action forward, you're either moving closer to your goal or you're realizing what doesn't work. So you're narrowing the field in terms of how to get to where you want to go.

So, those who train consistently are much more likely to eventually run a marathon than those who only train when they feel like it. Or when the weather's perfect, right? When all the conditions are to their liking, that's when they train. They're less likely to ever get through a marathon. Okay. So our level of action Is going to dictate the results that we have in our lives or that we don't have in our lives.

And so now, this is where things get complicated and where sometimes we screw this up, okay? Because this seems pretty straightforward, especially when we're talking about something as harmless as the weather, right? Or training for a marathon. But there are some highly intelligent people, people that I respect tremendously, who look at this approach and they think this teaching does more harm than good. Okay, so I want to explore that.

So let's take incredibly difficult example of Someone being robbed at gunpoint. Or a child being abused. No one in their right mind would ever imply that it was somehow the victim's fault. But many people look at this theory. Our thoughts create our reality. And they land right there. And they're like, so you're saying my thoughts are what made this horrific thing happen to me?

My thoughts are what made my father abuse me, or my thoughts are what made this person rob me at gunpoint, that's what you're saying? And it sounds ridiculous, right? Of course it does. Or maybe my thoughts are what made my business go under. Or my thoughts are what created my cancer diagnosis. Or my thoughts created a war where people are suffering and children are dying? Doesn't even make any sense, does it? so I can understand why people hear your thoughts create your reality.

And then they go, that is complete and total BS. When it comes to the most challenging parts of our lives, the parts that we would never ever choose. The logic is not as easy to apply. So some people say that this is how it works 100% of the time. And some people say it's all a bunch of hoo-ha and everything that occurs is random. Sometimes it goes our way, sometimes it doesn't. But as I say about most of my teachings, the truth is rarely found in the extremes.

It lives in the nuance. Health always resides somewhere in the middle. So in our quest to think about things in binary terms, because human beings were kind of lazy, we're like, what is good, what is bad? Tell me what's right and tell me what's wrong. We miss the nuance.

And as with most things, the details really matter. So here are ways in which we misinterpret these teachings. So that we might be able to navigate the truth that your thoughts matter and not everything is your fault. Those two things can both be true at once. Okay. So the first, when something goes wrong. It is natural to look for who is to blame.

Okay? We look for who's the hero and who's the villain in every upsetting scenario because there's never been a book written or a movie made that didn't have a proper hero and a proper villain. So we are socialized to look for that. And so when something goes wrong in our lives, we're like, how did this happen? Who's to blame?

And so this is why oftentimes we reach for blame and blaming other people for the challenges in our lives. But when that doesn't feel good or when that doesn't feel quite right, sometimes we can turn around and blame ourselves. Blaming someone else? Keeps you powerless. Right? Because it puts you in the victim mentality in your life, and that's never gonna make you feel powerful in your own life or empowered in your life. So that's not awesome.

Even though sometimes it might really feel true. But when you turn the the the the pointer finger, the blame back to yourself, it's just as debilitating because and that keeps you stuck. It just leaves you feeling badly about yourself. And so then of course now we're back in the metaphorical fetal position, curled up into a ball and not taking any action and not moving forward, therefore not creating the results that we want in our life.

So we have to be able to hold the reality that something horrible has happened and maybe no one is to blame. Like maybe there is no hero or villain in this story. Not everything that happens is someone's fault. Now how we respond is our responsibility. But here's your mantra to you. I don't have to figure out why this happened or who's to blame in order for me to move forward. Because that is true. Sometimes I think we get too focused.

On blaming the other person or blaming ourselves, and we stay stuck right there for years. Never moving forward. And I want I want you to know that you can move forward. You are allowed to move forward without dissecting at all. Without digging around in it and understanding how did we get here and And who's to blame, who's at fault, all that stuff. You can just go, but here's where we are, and here's where I want to be. And you can focus there.

It's very much like the the whole idea of the the rear view mirror is very small and your windshield in your car is very big because it's way more important to know where you're going. It's not unimportant to know where you've been and how you got here. It's just way more important to see in front of you. That's the first thing. The ways in which we screw it up and the different way to think about it.

The second thing is that The idea of changing your thoughts so that you feel better, inherently it carries this underlying assumption that the goal is to feel good 100% of the time. And not only is that not the goal, it's not even possible. Okay, so here's an here's a very easy example. when my mother passed from Alzheimer's three years ago. I didn't want to change my thoughts. about her passing so that I could feel better or so I could feel good.

No, I wanted to feel the weight of that. I wanted to feel that loss. So I didn't try to make myself feel better because I don't carry the assumption that the totality of my life should feel good. If that were the goal, I'm not winning. And you aren't either. Right? Now let me give you a more nuanced example. So this happened more recently. My best friend of 25 years and I no longer were friends. And when it first happened, I felt deep sadness, rejection, and a little guilt.

Those feelings came from the thoughts that I had, which were: how could she do that to me? How could she not support me? Or understand me. I've always supported her and I've always tried to understand her. Like those were the thoughts that I was swimming around in. So then that created the feelings of rejection and sadness. And some guilt. So after a while, though, of swimming around in that,

Literally, like every day or every other day. I wanted to feel better. I didn't want to stay in that place. The circumstance was the same. We weren't friends anymore. But I wanted to feel better. So I reached for thoughts that felt absolutely true. That's the rule. This is not about lying to yourself. You have to reach for thoughts that feel absolutely true and make you feel just a little bit better. This isn't about going from feeling deep sadness to deep joy.

I am never going to feel deep joy about this circumstance. And I'm not even going to try to reach for that. It's a flawed assumption that I should feel joy about everything in my life. No, I shouldn't. So when I wanted to feel a little bit better, the thought I reached for was most relationships have seasons. We've both changed a lot, and what used to work no longer does.

That felt absolutely true, and it helped me feel more peaceful about the loss of a long-term friendship that meant a lot to me. Now I don't feel good about that loss. I just don't feel as bad as I once did. And that's helpful. So that's how you can think more intentionally to feel a little bit better in your life. Because life was hard. Life is hard. It was never meant to be easy. And it is in our most challenging times that we grow the most.

I like to think that most of us, particularly if you understand this concept that I'm teaching here today, that you can feel some version of positive emotion about 60% of the time in your life. And in the other 40%, you're gonna feel some version of negative emotion. We're going to feel negative emotion. It is part of the human experience, but we actually have to get better at feeling that negative emotion. We've got to get better at learning to surf, to ride the waves of the negative emotion.

Okay, number three. When something happens to us. That's about their thoughts and feelings, not our thoughts and feelings. Okay? So if we go back to the example of the person who was robbed at gunpoint, That was clearly about the robbers' thoughts and feelings. If you think about the child who was physically abused by their father, that was about their father's thoughts and feelings. Okay? The painful feelings. that people swirl around in

Cause them to lash out and hurt someone else. Have you ever heard the phrase hurting people, hurt people? That's what's happening. Their pain, their fear, their entitlement, or their rage created an action that caused harm to someone else. That's what's happening. If you look at a mass shooter scenario. Someone has some painful circumstances in their lives. Let's take an example. Example, maybe they lost their job. That person begins blaming.

And gets these victim based thoughts about their circumstance. For example, well, I'm unemployed because the immigrants are taking all the jobs. Those thoughts create feelings. And those feelings feel horrible. They feel blame, they feel anger, they feel rage, they feel hatefulness towards other people and righteousness in how they're thinking. And those feelings cause them to take some action, such as going to a populated place with a gun.

Where they think these people are going to be and shooting. That's how these things happen. But none of that has anything to do with the victims. It has to do with the mentality of the shooter. It has to do with their thoughts about their circumstances. And all of that trickles down to their actions. So those are really the three ways that we can live in the nuance of this teaching and still get all the benefit of it without getting into victim blank.

Which isn't what anyone wants to do. That's not healthy, right? So learning to think more intentionally so that we can better control how we feel as we move through our lives is by far the most impactful teaching that I have come across in my 13 years of doing this kind of work. And we don't have to cast it all aside and say it's all BS because it doesn't work in these scenarios. Or because we misunderstand or don't go deep enough into the teaching. Because nuance matters, my friend.

The details is usually where the truth lives. And a deep understanding of this matters because it can literally change your whole life and the outcomes in your life when you embrace This idea that my thoughts are super powerful in terms of creating the outcomes in my life. So let's talk about what's possible. No one taught us this distinction between the circumstances and our thoughts. So we become a world. Of where we're treating our opinions as though they are facts.

When they're not, they're just opinions, they're just perspectives. It's why the average person gets upset and feels threatened by people who see the world differently than they do. And this is why, as a society, we've become much more polarized from one another and, by the way, much more disconnected from one another. But think about what would be possible if each of us began to view our thoughts as simply just a perspective. It's just an opinion.

A perspective that is derived from our life experience. That's all. And someone else with an entirely different life experience would have a different perspective, would have a different opinion. And we'd go, no one is right or wrong, we just have different life experiences and therefore different opinions. So at a macro level, a really high level.

We'd probably begin looking out for our neighbors again and engaging with people who have vastly different experiences and thoughts and beliefs than we do. We can learn from one another. we could become more secure That our perspectives are just as valid as someone else's. Not more valid, just as valid, equally valid. And then on a micro level.

In our specific lives, we could have solid, healthy, loving relationships with our children, with our family members, and we could heal the disconnection inside of our marriage. When we stop trying to be right and needing to be understood and instead seeking to understand. and holding our perspectives with a bit more levity.

We could be in relationship with one another in a healthier, more productive way. We could feel seen and heard and understood by the people that we love, and we could open our heart. and experience the people in our lives with more curiosity. So seeing your thoughts and choosing your thoughts very carefully can change everything. It can help you make peace with the loss of a parent or someone you loved dearly. It can help you move forward after the loss of a marriage or a job or a friendship.

It can sh it can help you shed those old parts of yourself. In order to grow into a new and expanded version of yourself. And it can help you open your heart and your mind to the people around you that we were put on this planet to love. It can make this one precious and difficult life a little bit easier to navigate. Because we realize we do have more control over our lives than we're giving ourselves credit for.

So peace doesn't come from trying to control life. That is a fruitless effort. It comes from understanding your mind and being able to manage your mind. That's why I call it a superpower. And that's where it's literally one of the first places we begin inside my coaching programs is I want to equip people with this knowledge, with these tools. I think before we end this, it is worth saying

Because I know so many people operate from this place. You are not responsible, nor can you actually manage anyone else's mind for them. You cannot think for them. You cannot manage their feelings for them. You can't make anyone feel anything. It is their thoughts that create their feelings, just like it is your thoughts that create your feelings. So you cannot do something to cause someone to feel a certain way. And no one can do something to force you to feel a certain way.

It is your thoughts about their behavior or about their choices that's causing you to feel a certain way, okay? After all, every adult gets to do whatever they want to do. And and this is important, they get to live with the outcome of their choices. That's called adulting. Right? So you can't think for them, you can't manage their mind for them, you can't choose what actions they're gonna take or actions they're not gonna take.

And and you get to decide what you do with this information that you are fed. Because people are always showing us who they are and who they're capable of being. And you get choice in how do I engage with that or not. Now just because I tell you this, it doesn't mean we're not gonna try to do it, right? We're still gonna try to manage what they think about us, manage people's perceptions about us.

Or manage their feelings through our words or our actions. If I walk on eggshells, maybe they won't get mad. As human beings, I'm not going to say we don't influence each other. Of course we do. But we lose our way when we try to manage other people's thoughts and emotions. That is not our business. Other people's thoughts and emotions are not our business. Our only job is managing our thoughts and our emotions. And on any given day,

That's enough. That's enough to deal with. But for some reason, we go out looking for opportunities to try to manage other people's lives. We need to stop. Your job is to manage your mind, not someone else's. So stay in your lane, remain in your business, and then let every other adult manage their own lives. Азіф вині альтиви. Of course they're gonna have to manage their own lives. We cannot do that for them. We are mistaken and led astray when we think we can. All right, so

If you're feeling stuck, this is where this begins. Okay. Most women don't come to me because they lack insight. They come to me because they know what they see, but they don't trust themselves to act on it. So they question their thoughts, they second guess their feelings, and they stay in this loop of like trying to figure it out instead of moving forward, instead of taking action.

instead of using their mind in a way, thinking the thoughts intentionally, so that then they will take action and move forward. Because no amount of just Letting your mind wander unattended is going to get you to a place of taking scary action, taking uncomfortable action. And the reason I know it's uncomfortable is because if it was comfortable for you, you would have already done it. So it's how do we manage our minds so that we will move through the difficulties of our lives?

And so that is the work that we do every day. And so if you are in a place of where you are questioning your marriage, your future, or your next step, I want you to know that you don't have to do it alone. And you can go to clarityformymarriage.com and explore how we might be able to work together. The thing I want to leave you with today to think about and to chew on is what are you believing about your marriage right now that might actually be a thought and not a fact?

Okay, think about that. There's something that you've been believing as if it's fact when it might just be your perspective. Okay, until next time, please take really good care.

For you and I to work together so you can make and execute the right decision for you and your marriage. Go to ClarityformyMarriage.com to fill out an application now. That's Clarityformymarriage.com.