Did you know that humans have somewhere between 50,000-80,000 thoughts a DAY?
That’s a lot of thoughts.
I like to categorize thoughts into the following:
Not useful or negative
Neutral
Useful or positive
Every single thought is optional, and so once you slow your brain down enough to notice what your thoughts are, you can categorize each thought and then get to work on self-coaching through a thought.
There is so much thought-work that can be done. Thoughts that you think are just facts (“I’m not good enough.” “Everyone else can do it all but me.” “I don’t have patience”) are truly rewirable (is that even a word? Well, now it is).
And then there are the sticky thoughts. The thoughts that despite your greatest efforts seem to stick to the walls of your brain and refuse to budge. You learn to rewire it, and they come right back. You try to neutralize them, and they just revert back to their ugly self.
Yeah, sticky thoughts.
So what do you do about those?
You let them be there. Wait, whaaaattttt???? Yes, I did say ‘you just let them be there.’
BUT YOU GIVE THEM NO ATTENTION AT ALL. Kind of like when I explained anxiety in an earlier post, I wrote that you can let anxiety sit in the passenger seat of the car, but it doesn’t get to drive.
So that sticky thought that wants to keep coming back—you give it no power. You don’t identify with it.
It’s like, “Oh hello there, “not-good-enough.” I see you. I see that you want me to believe you, but that’s ridiculous. So you can just hang out right there and do your thing, but I refuse to acknowledge your presence and give in to you.”
And then the magic is … the thought gets bored of being there unacknowledged. And it can slink away on its own.
It’s powerful stuff.
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