206 Life Changing Thoughts: Four Powerful Sentences That Changed My Life

accomplish goals and reach our dreams. And today, I want to talk to you about thoughts, because if you've listened to past podcast episodes, namely episode 153 154 and 155 you know that thoughts create our feelings. Feelings fuel our actions, and actions create our results. Therefore, a feeling like willingness is generated by thoughts. And as we grow up, there are a lot of thoughts that we start to believe. There are a

lot of stories that we believe. There are a lot of thoughts that propose us forward, and there are a lot of thoughts that hold us back. And what I wanted to do today is share with you four thoughts that had a really profound impact on my life, thoughts that changed my life. And one thing that I would be really curious is, if you're here live with me right now in Facebook, is share in the comments, some thoughts, some sentences that throughout the years, change your perspective

on things. So if there are specific sentences or thoughts or mantras that had a powerful impact on you and really changed things for you, I would love to read what those things are. So one of the things that we're talking a lot in the music mastery experience right now with my clients is that sense of alignment we're studying the work of Martha Beck, and that idea that there is an essential self inside of us that knows what we want and knows how to get us to a place where we feel

fulfilled and accomplished and happy. And I find that these four sentences, these four thoughts that I'm going to share with you, really helped me connect with that essential self, that part of me that feels at home, that feels happy or that feels fulfilled, that knows what it wants. They really shifted things forward for me, and there are many mores. Of course, there's more than four thoughts that had a powerful impact on my life, but those came at a time when I was ready

to receive them. They lended powerfully, and they really created powerful feelings that generated a lot of actions and results for me, and I hope that this can be a little bit of inspiration for you today to find these thoughts as they come in your life and use them as fuel for motivation for action. The first thought is only just one word, and it's one question. Really. I'll never forget the moment, as I was in a coaching session with my then coach, Jennifer Rosenfeld, who's

wonderful, and I was telling her something. I don't know what it was. I don't remember precisely, but it was some limiting belief, like, but I can't just do that, or I can't quit this, or I can't do that. And she looked at me and simply asked with a really gentle voice, really, and a very genuine voice too. And there's something about how she challenged that deeply rooted belief that I had, that I couldn't do something or couldn't quit something in that moment, got me to really shift

my perspective. Wait, what really what I'm saying right now is not the truth. So that word really made me question what I just said. I can't do this, I can't start that, or I can't quit this. I don't remember what it was. I wish I did it would make for a better story. I stated it as if it was the truth, and with the simple word, really, she doubted it, and by seeing her doubt it, I started to doubt it too. And around that time, I was hearing that other sentence, a lot, don't believe

everything you think. Don't believe everything you think. And there's something about hearing that little, really. That made everything come together for me, I'm really believing something right now. What if I choose not to believe this anymore? And that shifted things for me. So when you think about this, not believing everything that you're thinking, when you start to look at the statements that you make throughout the day. I can't do this. I can't just quit this

job. I can't just apply for this other job. I can't just apply for, like, whatever it is that you want to do, that you think you cannot do, or you cannot quit, or something you feel like you have no choice over don't believe it automatically. Maybe it's true, but insert a little bit of doubt. Ask yourself, really, is that true? Don't believe everything you think

automatically. So this one sentence for me, it really challenged what I believed, my thoughts and the things that I assumed that were all shaped by my upbringing, the things that were taught to me, what I see done around me. But ultimately, when you question things and you decide if you really do, deeply, sincerely believe it, then you make different choices, or you make the same choices, but intentionally, right? So ask

yourself, is what you believe? Is that true? Right? So that makes us question our limiting beliefs, and it makes us question the negative thought patterns that we have. So for me, it turned the things that I thought were facts, and it made me realize that they were just beliefs, and that I could question those things. What it can do for you? It can open up possibilities, alternate perspective on the path that

you're on. What if what you assume wasn't true? What if for a second you paused everything and you contemplated the absolute opposite. Could that also be true? One of the sentences that I really love from Byron Katie is, who would you be without this thought? I can't do that. Who would you be without the thought, Who am I to XYZ? Who would you be without this thought? And I think that there's so much more that we

could do if we didn't believe everything that we thought. So, for example, if you want to start a project, start a business, quit a job, apply for a position, and you assume it's not going to work. This is never going to work. Ask yourself, really, why not? What if you did right? So start to challenge what you assume about things and explore. I'm not able to do that really. Why not? You've done a lot in the past. So I invite you to insert that sentence more and

more in your everyday life. When you hear yourself stating things as if they are facts, I can't do that. I can't start this. I can't apply for this position. What it is that you want to do, whatever it is that you want to do, that you think you cannot do, or even more importantly, that you think you should do,

but maybe you don't want to do. Question, it is that a fact? The second sentence, the second thought that really impacted me powerfully, is something that I heard from Brooke Castillo, and she said that life is 5050, and that really landed for me at the time that I heard it, and that's because I think that often times, if things don't feel super rosy and super wonderful in our life, we assume that it's because something is wrong, that we're not in the right place, or we're not doing the right

things, or we're in certain circumstances, and certain things are great, other things aren't. Then we think, Oh, it's not right, because there's certain things aren't quite right. So that perspective of life is 5050, made me realize that everything is going to be a mix of positive and negative. Most life experiences are going to be a mix of positive and negative. I have some examples for you think about. The first

one that came to mind for me was parenting. How amazing it is, how difficult it is, how wonderful and fun and filled of love and laughter and joy and frustration and fears and anxiety, it's all of those things. It's a whole spectrum of feelings. So for me to. Change my mind from thinking that if I'm not happy 100% of the time, if I'm not comfortable, 100% of the time if I've not if I'm not certain, 100% of the time

something's wrong. That was really life changing, because I realized that when things don't feel amazing, when they don't feel easy when they don't feel joyful. That is part of the journey. That's part of it. I find that extremely reassuring, happiness, success, pleasure, challenges, difficulties, disappointment. It's normal to experience both. That's the life experience. That's what it is. Another example practicing at times it feels wonderful. At times it feels dreadful, and

when it feels great. I think we have a tendency to think like great. I'm on to something. This is really working. It's a sign I should keep going when we face challenges in the practice room. Then we see this as a sign that this is not right. I'm not doing this right. I'm not right. And then we start to make all sorts of assumptions about why we're not in the right place, and we

start to really spiral in our mind. So when you can accept the fact that when you're in the practice room, there's going to be a mix of good and bad emotions, doesn't mean that anything went wrong, I think that you can start to feel more at ease with handling and being with all of these emotions, and moving forward with all of these emotions, it's the acceptance of negative emotions, rather than resistance to negative emotions, that's really going to be helpful for you, because you've

heard this right What you resist persist. When you resist the negative emotions, you really start a spiraling of more negative thoughts. And right thoughts generate feelings. Feelings fuel actions. Actions create results. So if you are generating all of these negative thoughts, you're going to get tons of negative feelings that's going to impact the actions you

take in all of the results that you get. So when you stop resisting the negative feelings and you accept to live with them, you welcome them, you receive them, you explore them, you thank them for what they're teaching you, you thank them for what they're showing to you because they're giving you clues as to what's going on, right? That's a whole other episode

unto itself. So I'm not going to dive into that right now, but feelings will give you clues as to what's going on when you receive them and you accept all of them, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, this is when you have real control over your experience, and you're living the full life experience. So this resistance to negative emotions creates more suffering for you. Another things that Byron Katie says that I love another saying by Byron Katie is, when you fight reality, you

lose but only every time. And I just love that, because it is true. When you fight reality, you lose but only every time. So what is happening right now, what are you feeling? If it's negative, it doesn't mean that anything went wrong. It is giving you information. It's giving you data as to what you're thinking, so you can start to receive these feelings and thank them for what it's teaching you and learn from that

and manage it and move forward. And those negative moments will make the joyful one ever so much more delightful and delicious. So life is 5050, when you're experiencing negative emotions, nothing went wrong. That's just part of the journey. And we need both. We need both the negative emotions, as I said already many times, teach us lessons, and they're a compass that helps us gear our next actions. They show us where to go next, what to experiment with next so I encourage you to embrace these

negative emotions. Embrace the whole spectrum of the emotions you're going to experience, the beautiful one, the delicious ones and the negative ones. This is what creates a full life. It's really a. Understanding that difficulties, frustration, fear, anger, are just as much a part of the journey as joy,

happiness, laughter, ease, so life is 5050, my friends. The third sentence that really powerfully impacted me is another one that I heard from Brooke Castillo in a coaching and I forget what's what the topic of the coaching was, who she was coaching, but she just said that in passing. And for me, I feel like the world stopped. I muted the coaching and I wrote it down instantly, and it's been on the posted on my wall ever since it's, I don't know is nothing but a lie the

brain offers to keep us comfortable. Saying I don't know is nothing but a lie your brain is telling you to keep you comfortable. So what happens there? First, let me say that sometimes there are things that we don't know. Very complicated math equations. There are facts about lives. I don't know if you ask me, How many, what's the population of Monaco right now, I don't have this fact. I really, literally do not know that fact, that's okay. That is

not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is the more emotional I don't know, when someone asks us a question and we're avoiding, or like we're avoiding the truth, or we're avoiding a deeper understanding. What do you want to do? I don't know. What do you want to do with your life. I don't know what do you want to

do next? I don't know, right? So what happens there is, is we don't want to look for the answer often, because we don't believe we're allowed to think what we think, or we don't think that we are allowed to want what we want, or we don't believe that we're capable of creating what we Want, maybe we're afraid of failure. Maybe we are also just trying to avoid the reflection on a difficult topic. The impact of this sentence happens. You know, it can be

felt on a daily basis. When you're inside of the practice room, something's not working, and you tell yourself, oh, I don't know what to do. That's always going to be a lie. There's many ways that we can overcome that. One of the things that you could do is start by saying, Okay, I'm saying that I don't know what to do, but what do I know? And you start with one little thread of information. I'll give you an

example of this specific I don't know situation. I was sitting in a theory exam years ago, and we were analyzing a very difficult Hugo wolf lead, and I sat down to do this exam, and I look at the music and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I don't know. Like, I don't know how to do this. I can't do this. I don't know. But not doing it was not an option, right? I want to pass the class. I want to get the degree. So I'm sitting there, I'm like, Oh my

goodness. I don't know. I don't know what to do. And then I told myself, but, but what do I know? Let's, let's find something that I know in there. So I found a chord that looked exactly like a dominant chord followed by a tonic chord. I was like, Well, I know that, and I'll start there, and let's see if I look before that, you know, probably could be a predominant chord, I'm guessing. Let's go and see if that fits the My theory here,

and I look at it, and yes, indeed, it did. And then from there, I just pieced together together the things that I did know so from feeling overwhelmed looking at a problem and feeling like I just want to give up because I'm overwhelmed, it's too much. The thing is, it's not that I don't know is that I needed to slow down and find a place to start, and often that's what we need to do in life. So what do you know?

Where can you start? If you're in a situation, you're in the practice room, things are not going the way that you want, and you're saying, I don't know what to do. Well, what do you know? That's one thing that you could do. Another thing that you can do is trust yourself, right? If you did know what. Would the answer be? If there was no wrong answer, what would you say right now? Like, what theory would you put forward? The thing is, we know more than we think, but we often

avoid making a decision. We're afraid to confront our feelings. It's scary to take action, right? There's fear, uncertainty or discomfort. So it's easier to say, I don't know what to do. We don't want to make the decision. Often we don't trust our own judgment. We're afraid of making mistakes. So this is where the I don't know in your life come from, that fear of making mistake, not trusting your own judgment, fear uncertainty, discomfort, fear of confronting your feelings, and fear of

making the wrong decision. And all of this is really holding you back a lot of time, what happens is that we start to rely on others for certainty, and then we're living other people's lives instead of our own. So I want you to take the look back inside every time you feel like saying, I don't know to someone or to yourself, and start asking yourself, but what do I know? And if I knew, what would I say? And if there was no wrong

answer, what would I say? If there was no wrong decisions, which one would I make right now and when you go inward and you seek wisdom from inside. The answers usually come, but you have to go in and give it time. So don't be afraid to face something uncomfortable. Don't be afraid to take responsibility and have this trust that you know more than you think, right? So I don't know what to do, I don't know what I want. All of this is a lie that your brain offers to keep you comfortable.

As I said, deep down, sometimes we know what we want also, but we think that we're not going to be able to accomplish it. We are fearful of the discomfort of how challenging something is going to be. We feel like we're not allowed to want what we want. We're not allowed to think what we think. All of that is holding you back. So pay attention. If you slow down and you pay attention and you actually know what you want to say, but you

don't feel like you should or can. I'm here to tell you to trust yourself and move forward having this understanding that you know more than you think, and the answers are there if you pay attention long enough to find them. So here are some sentences that can help you. I want to give them to you one more time, because I don't know is really a shield that you're using is stopping you from making decisions and stopping

you from making progress. So when you hear yourself say, I don't know, you can say something like, Well, I don't know yet, but where could I find the answers? Where would the information for this be? Ask yourself, what do I know? So let's say I feel like I don't know what to do. But what do I know? Then, if you knew that's a really great question that I get asked a lot in coaching, and that sometimes I ask a lot in

coaching as well. And I don't know if my clients hate it as much as I hate it when my coaches ask me, but often time, if I tell a coach, I don't know, and they say, but if you knew, what would the answer be? There's usually an answer, and it's usually a good one. So if you knew, what would the answer be? And then there's no bad answer. There's no bad decision. So if that's the case and you trust yourself, what would you say and what would you do? So I don't know, is nothing but a lie

your brain offers to keep you comfortable. You do know. Trust me. You do know that last sentence is the reason not to do it, is the reason to do it. The reason not to do it is the reason to do it. And for me, this one goes with another sentence by Gretchen Rubin, which is the opposite of a profound truth is also true. And what that did? Good for me is to make me understand that a lot of times, the reason why I don't

want to do something is the reason that I should do it. The obstacles or the fears that are holding me back from taking action are the reason I should take this action. Because if I'm afraid of failure or I'm afraid of discomfort, this is actually probably the direction for growth for me, this is probably what I need to face, what I need to learn. So the reason not to do it is the reason to do it sparks amazing reflections for

me, and I would like to challenge you. Next time you feel like there's something that you shouldn't do, ask yourself, is the reason not to do it? Maybe the reason I should do it. So when you confront a situation, let's say I'm going to give you an example. I let's say you're offered a big concert. It's a little bit scary, a big hall, very difficult repertoire, with people you would really love to play with, but you're intimidated by for a big

audience, and you're tempted to say, no, why? Oh, I don't have enough time. The music is very difficult. Am I really at that level? What if you are? And what if all of the reasons for you, you're thinking you should not take that gig? What if there are the reasons that you should take it? What if learning this repertoire is precisely what you need? What if playing with these

people is precisely what you need? So always look at your reasons for not wanting to do something and see if those are the reasons why you should do it, and sometimes you shouldn't, of course. But for me, this sentence really helps me challenge again, going back to that very first sentence, it challenges my assumptions of things. So another reason, for example, another example, I should say, taking an audition.

Sometimes there's we make a list of reasons why we shouldn't take an audition when, in fact, we're just afraid, we're afraid of failure. So maybe signing up for this audition would be the right thing to do, right? So ask yourself, Are there reasons why I don't want to do this? The reasons why I should. It's not always the case, but it can be. So you want to turn the doubts in the hesitations into opportunities for growth, and what scares and discourages you might be exactly what you need

to face moving forward. So there's many more sentences that I feel were life changing for me. Of course, inside of the music mastery experience, we have a manifesto with a lot of these sentences, and I have some of them here. One of my favorite is by Gretchen Rubin, make it easy to go right and hard to go wrong on how I can make something easy to move forward with by being meticulous and intentional about the way I

approach it. Alignment over effort is a big one. He who stumbles and does not quit gains a step again by Gretchen Rubin and my favorite, my ultimate favorite, is between stimulus and response. There is a space in that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth in our

freedom. This is one of my favorite by Victor Frankel. So these are some of the sentences that profoundly impacted my life, and by challenging me to look at the assumptions that I had, the limiting beliefs that remained unexplored and therefore just happened by default, to change my perspective, on my approach, on everything. So here they are

again. Don't believe everything you think right? Ask yourself, really is that true life is 5050, I don't know, is nothing but a lie the brain offers to keep us comfortable, and the reason not to do it is the reason to do it, not always, but sometimes. So remember that thoughts can change your life, as I said at the beginning, thoughts generate emotions. Emotions fuel actions. Actions create our results. If you want to know more about this, listen to episode 153 154 and 155 of

the podcast. And because those thoughts. Are so important because they're in charge of our emotions. Be very intentional about the thoughts that you cultivate in your life. What are the thoughts that you welcome in your everyday life? And I want you to look at them, to receive them and explore them and see if those are thoughts that you wish to keep in your life if they're helpful for you. So I would love to know what some sentences that

change your life are. I would love for you to send them to me. If you're here on Facebook, please put them here in the comments. If you're listening to the podcast, email me or reach out to me via Instagram. You can email me at mind. Overfinger@gmail.com you can find me on Instagram at mind. Overfinger also on in on Facebook at mind. Overfinger,

I'm also on YouTube. Maybe you're watching this podcast on YouTube, so you can put in the comment below those sentences that were life changing for you in this way, we can all benefit from it. Sentences are important. The sentences that go through our brain create the life that we have. So it's important to notice what they are, and it's important to intentionally nurture the ones that will help us get closer to what it is that we want and get us to where it is that who it is that We want to be.

And there you have it. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and fellow musicians. Grab a screenshot, share it on social media and tag me. I'm mind overfinger on all platforms, and I would love to hear what your favorite takeaways were. Don't forget to follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts, and if you're enjoying and learning from the show, leaving a five star review

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on one coaching, I'm here for you until Next time. Much love going your way and abiento you