52 - 5 Powerful Beliefs
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[00:00:00] Hey y'all, this week has been so awesome doing my live masterclasses on self-care and service. And I just wanted to give a huge shout out to those of you who have been showing up, seeing things in a new way, and investing in yourselves. I can't wait to see what's next for you.
[00:00:18] If you happen to miss the other two masterclasses that I've done, I have one more. It's on Wednesday, February 15th at 11:00 AM central time. It's a hundred percent free and it's only an hour long. But it's changing the lives of the women who are showing up for themselves learning about how to balance self care and service and excitingly moving forward in their lives. So, please come join us at www.thelightcoach.com/masterclass, or you can just check the link in the show notes and it'll go to the page to register and save your spot. I don't want you to miss this simple shift in your life that can harmonize self-care and service in a new empowering way. Can't wait to see you there.
[00:01:08] My friend, do you remember the moment where you first realized that your thoughts create your feelings? I remember. I was driving my car to a friend's house. They had had a family emergency and I was taking making them some dinner. And I was listening to Jody Moore's podcast "Better Than Happy " and she was teaching me that my thoughts create my feelings.
[00:01:38] Now, I remember being a little bit resistant, but also feeling like it was familiar at the same time. And you have to know that at that moment that I was taking dinner to someone else, my life felt like it was falling apart too. and I honestly was serving someone else to try and escape the emotion that I had been feeling about spinning out and not feeling like myself lately.
[00:02:02] It made my brain want to just stop and digest that information. So, I turned off the podcast, went and delivered dinner to my friend, and then I remember going down the street a little bit, parking on the side, and turning it back on and listening to it again.
[00:02:19] "My thoughts create my feelings. What does that mean for me? "
[00:02:26] And I thought about my relationship with my kids. I had been feeling very overwhelmed. This was 2018. I had just brought my fourth child into the world and I felt like I was completely failing as a mother. "Your thoughts, create your feelings. " Well isn't it the fact that I just had a fourth kid and I have no sleep that's creating my feelings? Surely it can't be my thoughts.
[00:02:50] Well, what about my relationship with my husband? I'd been feeling really distant from him lately because he was thriving and I was failing. And I had some identity crisis around that because our past pattern in our marriage was that I was the strong one.
[00:03:05] And seeing him thrive was really hard for me to be honest. And I thought, "Well, I could see a little bit how the way I'm thinking about my husband is making me feel insecure. Okay, I could see that one. " And that connected dots for me. And I thought about my relationship with the friends that I had at the time where we had been trying to reconcile our relationship for months. And I just felt so hurt and abandoned and judged.
[00:03:37] What if what I was feeling there was because of how I was thinking about this friend and our relationship not the words that she had said to me. Well, I had a lot of resentment there and I hadn't got to a place of forgiveness, so I wasn't quite sure I believed that.
[00:03:54] But my brain started trying to chew on this. "What does that mean for me? " And as I was processing and figuring this out, it took me weeks of thinking through it, and resisting it, and trying to prove a wrong to get to a place where I finally said, "I actually think this is true. *I think that it's true that my thoughts create my feelings. And if that's true, then I have all the power in the world to create my own experience. "*
[00:04:26] And that was so freeing and completely frightening to me when I first really embraced it because then it was all on me.
[00:04:35] I couldn't blame my kids for being disobedient or my husband for being distant or this friend for her words she had said to me. It was all what's going on in my own head that was creating how I was feeling.
[00:04:49] Now, as much as that scared me and I wanted to resist it, deep down, I really actually wanted it to be true because if it's true that your thoughts create your feelings, then you don't have to change anyone else's behavior for you to change what's going on in your life. This truth is one of the most empowering moments that I get to witness with the women who come to me wanting to change something in their lives and feeling stuck, not knowing how to move forward. When I help them see that they don't have to change the husband who keeps being unsupportive or negative with their kids, for them to feel like they can create a peaceful, loving environment in their home.
[00:05:38] Or that they don't have to make that child behave for them to feel like they've been a good mother. Or that they don't have to delete the painful parts of their past for them to move forward and love their life without feeling triggered and burdened by past trauma.
[00:05:58] *Your thoughts get to create what you are experiencing now. And it is so freeing to believe and embrace that truth. *
[00:06:10] There are a few beliefs that have had big changes in my life and others that I want to offer to you today, too. They might just change the way you are experiencing your everyday life.
[00:06:23] *Belief number one: there is no perfect formula for being "healthy. "* Mental and emotional health is a beautiful invitation to be more aware and be more purposeful about your interactions with other people and how you take care of yourself. *But there is no one right way to be healthy. *
[00:06:46] Dropping that belief of chasing that healthy lifestyle is so freeing. Instead, embracing that God will guide you to whatever you need to be supportive of _you_. You can use those tools you've been taught. You can reference what you believe is healthy, but putting that as your goal of what you're trying to accomplish often just makes us crazy cause it's non-existent and we can never achieve it. Instead, putting God in the center and saying, "All right, here's what I think guide me to what really will be helpful for me. "
[00:07:27] That will be so much more powerful for you than believing you have to be healthy or in recovery, or whatever terminology that your past has taught you is the way to say you're doing it right.
[00:07:41] There is your way, that when guided by God will lead you to the things that you really truly want in life. The things that are better than just checking the box that you eat healthy or that you exercise or that you have a good calendar or are good mom. Drop the belief that there's a box to check and invite God to help you move forward.
[00:08:06] *Belief number two: people are inherently good and they have good reasons for what they do*.
[00:08:13] One of the things that my kids say that drives me crazy is, "Mom, he hit me for no reason. " and if you have any children, you know, that there's always a reason why a child hit another child. It could be to simply get a reaction, but there is a reason why they chose to hit.
[00:08:31] And often, if my other child would be curious about that reason a lot of times they influenced it. Like they pushed them first or weren't listening when they asked them to stop. Just like this is true in relationships between children, it's true between our relationships with adults.
[00:08:48] When someone cuts me off in traffic and I want to have all sorts of judgment about that person and how they have no good reason to have done that to me, what I believe to be true is that they did have a good reason. And that reason might be that they're struggling in their day-to-day life and it's coming out in the ways they're treating other people.
[00:09:07] Now don't get me wrong. I don't have to agree with the way they did it or think that it was a good or kind thing, but when I believe that they are doing it wrong or that they don't have a good reason for what they're doing, I just feel terrible inside. Try it next time somebody cuts you off. Think, "I bet they have a good reason for that. Either they're in a hurry somewhere that's an emergency or they must be really struggling right now for them to act that way. "
[00:09:38] Because guess what? When you choose to practice those types of thoughts, you get to have way better feelings than if you're frustrated thinking that they have no good reason. This definitely applies with me with my children.
[00:09:51] When I think, "They're just trying to be defiant " or, "What in the world are they thinking? There's no reason why they should have done that. " Have you caught yourself thinking that? I think that all the time. I have to practice this too. But when I catch that and I think they do have a reason here. With whatever they understand right now, that's what's natural for them, even if they're trying to be defiant to get attention (which is something my mind wants to get angry about) taking a moment to think, "They have a good reason for wanting to get my attention and be defiant. What if they need a little extra love right now? What might their reason be? They're valuable, just like me. " People are inherently good inside and they have good reasons for what they do.
[00:10:34] That leads me right into belief number three: *everything is for me, not against me. *
[00:10:41] Sometimes I think about time this way where it's like, "Ah, everything is getting in my way. It's all against me:. Or my husband isn't doing things to help me. He's doing things that feel like it's making things harder. Or I'm driving down the road and I hit traffic. I'm like, "Oh, of course, of course we would have traffic when I'm already late. "
[00:11:00] Those are chances for me to practice the belief that everything is for me, not against me. That if it's something I don't like, it's for my learning and my growth.
[00:11:11] We live in a fallen world and things just happen sometimes that don't go the way that we want them to even things that are terribly damaging and frustrating. But what we believe about them changes how we experienced them. And I believe in a God that wants to give me good things. And He looks for every reason to bless me.
[00:11:36] He doesn't orchestrate the bad but He can make beauty from ashes... that all things work for the good of those who love God and that this world and the experience here was created for me.
[00:11:51] *Believing that helps me have more gratitude for the good and see purpose in the struggle. *
[00:11:59] And this is not "everything's about me " like I'm all selfish. But it's that everything that I experience in this world can be for my good, that God is going to do everything He can to take the fallen world that I live in and help it be for me. That's a belief I choose to practice and it helps me feel more willing to go through the ups and downs.
[00:12:23] Which leads me to another belief that I have, *belief number four:* * Life is 50/ 50. *
[00:12:30] Everything in the world that I see has a balance, a positive, a negative, an up a down, struggle and success. This is the way that the world around us keeps on functioning. If you just look in nature, that balance is everywhere. So, of course my life is designed to also have that balance.
[00:12:52] 50% up, 50% down. 50% success. 50% struggle. And it's okay that I have that 50/50. And when I choose to embrace that. Then I don't get so mad at myself when I have a hard day 'cause I'm not expecting myself to be a hundred percent positive and successful all the time. I'm like, "About half the time I'm going to struggle and that's okay. It's meant to be that way. That struggle is for me. "
[00:13:21] Because here's the truth: when you believe it's supposed to be 80% positive and 20% negative. Whenever it's negative, you're going to feel gypped about that negative and make more negative energy and then you tip the scale the other way.
[00:13:35] Instead, embracing the parts that I've labeled as negative gives me a chance to learn from them, which is a negative hack cause then you get a positive about whatever the negative is. I'm telling you, my friends, embracing the 50/50 and believing that life is supposed to be that way will free you from a lot of the judgment, a lot of the perfectionism, and give you more space to enjoy the journey of the ups and downs along the way.
[00:14:03] Now, *belief number five* is a simple one but it honestly affects my day-to-day more than almost every other belief.* I believe that when I see the clock at a number that's the same all the way through it's God sending me a little nudge that He's going to help things work out for me. *
[00:14:22] I know that's simple but it happens all the time, especially 11:11. When I'm really having a hard time, I'll glance over the clock and I'll see that it's 11:11, and I just fill this reassurance that God has got my back—11:11, 3:33, whatever it is that's the double digits on the clock, I just believe that God is giving that gift to me as a little bit of a boost in my day and it changes my attitude all the time.
[00:14:52] In that same energy, I believe that birds are the sign the angels are near. It's simple and I have no grounding for the reason I believe this. I just chose to believe one day that when Blue Jays come around, it's a sign that my sweet cousin who passed away with cancer is trying to say hi to me. And can I tell you what? I see Blue Jays all the time and always lightens up my day, feeling closer to heaven.
[00:15:18] And that's just something I choose to believe that God has given me little signs throughout my day, like numbers on a clock or birds in the sky to give me the reassurance that He's there, He cares about the little things, and He's going to help things work out for me whether it's up or down for me to learn or grow or succeed —It's all for me. Because I'm inherently good and there are good reasons for the things that happen in my life.
[00:15:47] You see how they all tie together? *This one big belief that life is good, God is on my side, and my ups and downs are okay. *
[00:15:58] These are things that I believe and remember thoughts lead to your feelings, which drive your actions and create the life that you are living right now.
[00:16:11] *What beliefs are you practicing in your life? *
[00:16:14] There might be some you want to let go of and others that you might want to practice. Maybe there's one that I shared that really resonates with you, that you can practice believing too. Practice believing something new today.
[00:16:28] It might be more powerful than you even think.
[00:16:32] Because you are a creator.
[00:16:36] Go create something amazing today, my friend. Have a blessed day.
[00:16:40] Are you getting my TLC Tuesday emails? They are filled with tips, insights, and invitations to help you add light to your life. Go to www.thelightcoach.com/subscribe and make sure you're included. Because big things are coming and I don't want you to miss them. *Together, we can create confidence, connection, and clarity in life after therapy.*
