Ep #8: From Negative Thoughts to Amazing Results

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Hey there, and welcome back. I am always excited to record a new podcast, but today, I’m super excited because we get to give our first giveaway. So, I am giving three $100 spa gift certificates away to our listeners. And the way we’re picking this is, first of all, subscribe to the podcast, and then give us a preferably five-star rating and review. And what I will do is every few weeks I will pick one randomly.

We’ll read the review, share it, and you pick the spa of your choice or massage therapist of your choice and we will call and purchase the gift certificate for you to go and use. So you don’t have to be local, this is for any area. Wherever you live, this is available for you.

And the reason we’re asking you to do this is because – we’re not doing like marketing and advertising to get it out, and so it’s being spread by word of mouth, and also by higher ratings and reviews, that allows more people to find us, especially more people who think like you and want to listen to this type of show or this information. And by you giving feedback, it allows the show to be seen by more people. So we really, really appreciate that.

So for today, the very first winner is – now, bear with me because it’s not necessarily their name. So whoever this is is going to have to reach out to me. It’s Vieuxcarrie. So I’m not sure if that’s a last name first or what that looks like.

And the review is, “It amazes me how Kim is about taking everyday life experiences and weaving it into ways that expand our vision, to see things in new and different ways that will allow our business and us as individuals to keep on expanding.” Thank you so much, Carrie, for sharing. And it is my honor to share experiences and just things that I come to realize in my own path, in my own experience, and how I’m able to articulate that and share it in a way that is practical, simple, usable, not only for us as individuals, exactly as you said, but also for our business; our business of helping other people, helping expansion for humanity in general. Because that is what our soul is here to do, to evolve and to expand and to experience freedom and joy and all the perils of life, the contrast of all of the emotions that are available to us.

You know, I recall, back in the day, being in my own darkest times, or what I used to call the dark night of the soul, and I was like, you know, I’ve come to the realization that it’s the dark night of the mind, not the dark night of the soul. The soul is light. The soul doesn’t have that, it’s the mind, it’s our thoughts. Actually, we have circumstances that are very neutral, but then we have a thought about how things should be or shouldn’t be. And so our thought that we come up with, or opinion of the circumstance, is actually what creates the feeling, and that is the dark night of the mind, where we sometimes call it this deep despair or depression or – I used to think of it like being in a pressure cooker.

It was just so intense and so dark and I couldn’t break away from it, and I was really trying to figure out communication and how to make relationships work and how to be successful, and not just successful as in I show up, I go to work, I make money and clients come and that makes me successful, but truly successful in the way to receive abundance without shame. So, what I found myself in was I was having such a hard time finding a sense of belonging, that being successful was also painful because it eliminated me from a certain crowd or the way that I was taught or I believed, and then being successful – so it was never quite good enough.

So, having too much was scary and felt like I didn’t belong or, like, I needed to be afraid or I was going to lose people or I was going to not fit in. But then not having enough and not measuring up also had the same thing, so it was like this darned if I do, darned if I don’t, you know. Which one is more painful is what it eventually came down to.

And that’s something else I realized is we make the change when we’re actually at the crossroads of the pain of staying stuck exceeds the fear of moving forward, it exceeds the fear of moving out of familiarity and comfort. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today is I want to talk about, like, everything in your mind matters.

And I’m going to break down this concept about how our thoughts create our results. So, this episode is dedicated to thought work, which is a big part of the core of the coaching that I do, to help business owners as well as individuals. It’s something I do every single day, every single conversation I have with myself, with other people, how my thoughts just naturally work now and how I watch the process evolve into the results that I get.

And so, what happens is – so I’ve talked before about, I’ll use the word Samskara. So this is like from yoga, but what a samskara is, is it’s say an emotional scarring on the cellular level. So something happens at some point in our life that creates a scar, just like if you got scratched and you felt a scar on your skin. And then it heals. The body heals, but it leaves this – well I say there’s a cut but then it leaves a scar, right?

And so this kind of happens in our energetic body. So say you were four years old and something traumatic happens. And it doesn’t mean like big traumatic. It could be traumatic like a dropped my ice cream. But it’s what is traumatic to the four-year-old and the perception of that person at that time. So it could be anything. It could be someone bursting the basketball or someone taking your training wheels off and making you ride when you were afraid and you fall down and bust up your knee or, you know, whatever, and not knowing how to process the emotion that you’re feeling at that time.

And so, we weren’t taught as kids – you know, this goes for all of our generations. It just wasn’t a thing. We started off in this survival thing and it just wasn’t a big deal that feeling was anything of importance. It was basically like, yes, clean it up, get moving, pull your boots back on and let’s get going and let’s just forget that ever happened.

Well, now we know better. Now we know that these scars, per se, or these memories etched into our bodies actually still have meaning. And we go through life and they get retriggered. And so the next thing can happen when you’re 14 and you go into this feeling of panic or fear. And the root of it comes from the original, but then it happens later and then it happens later and then it happens later. And our mind thinks it has something to do with the current incident.

So this is what it would look like when people are walking around being reactive, always mad at someone, flipping you off in traffic, being rude in the Walmart line or thinking your boss has it in for you or it’s your husband’s fault why you’re not happy or it’s that teacher’s fault or that coach’s fault for not putting your child in. You know, things like that, that part of you, your brain’s kind of like, okay this is not a big deal, why is this feeling like such a big deal because my chest is heated and I’m feeling like this weight in my heart or it feels like it’s being suffocated and it seems like such a big deal. And my mind is like, come on, Kim, it can’t be that big of a deal.

So, if ever you’ve experienced anything like that, this is what I’m referring to when I say a samskara. It’s like just something like, no big deal, my mother in law said something, but oh my god, usually I can handle it but today it just pissed me off. So that kind of thing where it kind of doesn’t make sense, but yet you can relate it, but you’re not sure what you can’t get over this.

And this is what my clients will say, “I thought I was over this. What’s happening? I just can’t shake it.” And I’m like, well, there’s more to the story. And what happens is we get the trigger – so basically what’s happening is it’s an upset but it’s a setup, which is an opportunity for you to clear it; an opportunity for you to feel the unfelt perception or the unfelt processed emotion that happened at an earlier time. I hope you guys are following me on this. I’m going to talk so much about it in this episode and more coming forward. I’m going to keep reeling it back in so it will make sense eventually. But for today, I really want to drive in on where it comes from, and then I want to give you a system for you to start working and sifting through it.

So what I call the process is, first you’ve got to see it, then lift it, then shift. So we’ve got to see it, pull it up, and then we make the shift and the transition. So, part of understanding how thoughts work is understanding how emotions work. So we’ll go back into a circumstance. So, let’s just say your boss didn’t want to give you the day off. He knew that something was really important to you and you had to miss a certain event.

And you just get furious and you want to change the circumstance or you need to quit this job, and you get really over-reactive. Like, you make a really big deal out of it. And what’s most important here, it’s not so much about making the big deal about not getting the day off. It’s your thought about not getting the day off or not getting the time off. Like, I’m not appreciated, they don’t see the importance, they don’t understand me. It’s that. Like, what is the thought behind the suffering?

You know, typically, I say there’s two reasons that we suffer, and it’s always judgment and comparison. It should be one way, it shouldn’t be another way.  It’s like that for them, it’s not like that for me. I’m different. Those are the things that cause us suffering.

And so the thing to look at is not so much at the circumstance, like I wanted the day off, I couldn’t take the day off. It’s what do you make it out to mean about you or what do you make it mean about what you’re assuming that they’re thinking about you or whatever. I can give other examples about this too.

And what happens is, we have this personal conflict and we think, like, oh they’re out to get us, they don’t understand, everyone else gets it. And really, when we’re not in control of our own lives, of our own thoughts, it’s like we become the victim of the circumstance. And so one of the things that has really helped me is I truly believe that life happens for me.

No matter how things turn out, it’s exactly what I needed to experience for the growth and evolvement of myself or for, you know, just as a whole of what’s happening in relationships, in life, in career. You know, we experience the things that we need to take us to the next level.

So, if you took this back to, like, wanting a certain day off but other people were out at the office that day so I couldn’t get the vacation that I needed, you could change your thought. We don’t change the circumstance. So say you still don’t have the day off, but you get to figure out how you want to feel, how you want to be, how you want to act, you know, what are you going to make of the day of not getting off?

First of all, you’ve got to become aware of what is your thought. It’s not fair, they don’t appreciate me, they don’t understand how important it is to me, I have vacation, I should be able to take it. Like, just really write down – so you can pick any circumstance. It doesn’t have to be, I couldn’t get off of work today or my boss said I couldn’t take it off work. It could be, my mother in law won’t keep the kids or my husband doesn’t want to go on this vacation that I want to go on, or my girlfriends don’t want to go out to eat on Thursday night when it’s the only night that I have off. It could be anything like that.

But what’s most important is what is your thoughts about that? What do you think or what do you make it out to mean when they can’t go on Thursday night and that’s the only night you can go? What do you make it out to mean when your husband doesn’t want to go where you want to go? Is it like, of course, it never works out for me. No one ever does what I want to do. Well, of course, they ask and they don’t care and they don’t care what I think. Like, really listen to that because it’s really sneaky.

You don’t even realize that those thoughts are lurking, that that is victim mentality. It’s like, the underlying thought is, it never works out for me. It always turns out this way. No one ever appreciates me. Be very careful, because what we think, we create more of. And so I’m going to go back from the beginning.

So, let’s just start with the boss story. So, I couldn’t get off on the day that I wanted. My boss told me no. My thought is, this is unfair. I have vacation and I should be able to take it. And then when you think that thought, how do you feel? How do you feel inside of your body? What’s the sensation in your chest, in your belly, in your head, in your throat, in the back of your neck? Because that’s a telltale sign about that Samskara, about the old story that’s been running unconsciously in the background. So that’s how I link it back.

It’s typically nothing to do with the boss and nothing to do with today. It’s the unresolved stories. Because once you change your mindset, once you change your thoughts and you see things differently and your perception has expanded and opened up and you’re truly trusting all that life has to offer you, then you’re no longer the victim of the circumstance. You actually just see it as the circumstance. It’s neutral.

Nope, I couldn’t get off, so I’m just going to go and meet them on Friday, or I’m just going to go meet them on Saturday because I couldn’t get off on Thursday, or whatever it is. In other words, if the circumstance does change, it’s a byproduct of the thought changing.

So, this is what I really want to reel in here. So, you have a circumstance that is very neutral, but you have a thought that is your opinion, or what you believe about the circumstance. And then, that creates a feeling in your body. And how do you react when you feel that way? So, if you feel, like, pissed off and then you start doing a not great job at work, I want to say half-A it, that ultimately leads to the results that you get, which is what kind of work environment does it create, you know. Does it keep the story running and alive that I’m not important, my boss doesn’t see my value, what I do here isn’t acknowledged?

Because it’s actually not the circumstance that’s happening, it’s that you believe that and then you feel that and you create more of it by the attitude and action that you take. So really notice, when you didn’t get your way, what was this thought? It could be sneaky. You’ve got to really stop and get present to unveil this. When you don’t get your way, what is the thought that you think? And then how do you feel when you think that thought? And then, when you feel that way, what’s the action that you take?

Typically, it’s a kind of crappy attitude that we put off. You only do one of two things. You either react, or you regress. You either go inside and shut down, or you vent out and do something reactive. It’s only one or the other, no matter how you look at it. You either start acting badly, negatively, or start saying negative things about people or you start, you know, just venting, or you just completely swallow it, go inside and then start making up stories about how you’re not important, proving your lack of self-worth and value and all of that stuff.

That’s all just victim stuff. And this could all totally change just by recognizing what you do and then getting out of the habit. So, what’s happening is this is an old neural pathway. This is the paradigm you learned. This is the conditioning, this is the way you understood life, this is your perception and you just hadn’t had the opportunity to change it or it maybe it just wasn’t in your awareness what was creating more of it.

So, once you change your action, now you’re going to get new results, right? So let’s just turn that circumstance around. It’s like, my boss said I can’t have off. And your thought is, it’s not a great time for me to have this day off, or I’m not so happy about that, but I can make do, or yeah, this kind of sucks, but that’s okay. Like, what’s the thought that you can think?

It could be, okay I can’t have off on Thursday, but I can drive and go meet them on Friday. It could be as simple as that. It’s all in how do you want to think about not being able to take off? How do you want to think about if your mother in law can’t keep the kids or if your friends don’t want to go on Thursday night? You get to decide that.

You imagine that we have this huge basket and there’s 100 thoughts in it. really consider, what’s the thoughts that you choose? Is it the negative ones, is it the poor me ones, is it the victim stuff, is it the old stories, is it even true or is it just assumptions and taking things personal?

So, let’s just take the circumstance and say, well I’ll just drive and go meet you guys on Friday.  Imagine, the boss said no, so your thought is, I can’t have off on Thursday, so I’ll just go on Friday. And now, you feel neutral. Like okay, maybe you feel inconvenienced that, you know, maybe it feels acceptable, maybe it feels cool, maybe it feels doable. How do you feel? It’s going to be personal for each person.

And then, when you feel that way – like it could be hopeful, like I still get to go – what’s the action that you take? I get back to work and I go on about my day and I don’t have an attitude and I love my boss and I appreciate my job and everything’s great, I’m still going to get my paycheck on Tuesday, you know, whatever it is. It’s like, the action that you take is seriously going to be the result that you get, which is you get to create the work environment that you want.

That is a reflection of your thoughts, of your feelings, of your actions. Another way that I can prove this is just imagine you decide, like, I’m going to go do this workout program at 5:30 in the morning. That’s the circumstance. Wake up tomorrow, 5:30 HIIT class. And then your thought is, the alarm goes off and your thought is, oh my god, if I could just sleep one more hour. You feel – think about it – kind of resistant, right?

And then what’s the action you take? You turn off the alarm, go back to sleep. What’s the result you get? You get to continue not feeling like doing it. We just kind of do this rinse and repeat. So take that, alarm goes off, 5:30 HIIT class, and your thought is, yes today is the day it all starts. You feel hopeful, or excited, gung-ho, whatever you want to call it.

The action you take is you get out of bed, you put your clothes on, you’re right out the door, and then the result you get, you feel excited, you feel energized, you feel energetic because you created that. Everything is a choice. Everything is a choice but it stems from the thought.

And so you’ve got to be really careful when identifying and processing emotions. This stuff can be super tricky because what’s happening is we’re only using like 5% – the part of the brain that we’re using in the decision we’re making is like 5% conscious. It’s like, everything else that we do is driven by 95% of unconscious thoughts, old stories, old samskaras, old memories, old feelings that weren’t processed, old wounds that weren’t healed.

Now, there was a time when I really dove into this stuff and it was like, oh, if it’s on the left side of the body it’s momma stuff, and you know, or maybe it’s sister stuff, but it’s females, unresolved female issues, and if it’s on the right side of the body, it’s like masculine energy. It’s stuff from your dad or it’s stories from here. Or if it’s on the left side, it’s what you’re taking in, if it’s on the right side it’s what you’re putting out into the world. If it’s the neck and shoulders then it’s the emotional weight that you’re carrying of someone else’s load. If it’s the lower back it’s feeling ungrounded and insecure and not safe in your world and maybe having financial issues.

And this is all still true. I use this as a roadmap. I use this to get to it, but we don’t have to go into the whole long drawn out re-experiencing story and wound, right? We just have to bring it into our awareness that this is how our brain responds to repressed emotion. So it can create drama. It can create stories. It can create distractions or maybe behaviors, like overeating, or maybe feeling pain in the body.

It will create all sorts of things to keep you from feeling the emotion because the message that you gave it long, long ago was you need to shut it off, turn it off, and get back to work, not feel it, it wasn’t safe, it wasn’t welcomed, it wasn’t okay for you to acknowledge it. That was the messaging.

So, what that did is it created a neural pathway on that’s just the way things are. And what we’re doing now is bringing this into your awareness and we’re taking a different approach and we’re going to rewrite that neural pathway. But the first thing we have to do is we have to get really present and we have to realize where all of this comes from. We have to notice what we’re feeling. We have to notice what our thoughts are. We have to notice what’s happening in our environment, in our circumstances. We have to notice when we’re being reactive.

For an entire year, I worked on not being reactive. It was one of the most painful years of my life. It’s super hard. So just bring into your awareness and into your presence. That’s the first step. The second thing is we have to unveil, which means we have to get to the story, which it’s likely not about the husband, about the boss, about the mother in law, about the friends, or about the story. We have to unveil that story.

We have to begin to – and it kind of feels like an unraveling of your life, per se, because it’s all the things that you believed before that were keeping you victim. You have to be willing to see it. Like, this is kind of the pulling weeds part. And then we navigate through it, which is like we take a different approach. We catch onto what we’ve done and we create a new thought. We navigate. Instead of catching an attitude and doing a crappy job at work, instead, we navigate, we catch onto what our brain’s doing, we catch onto the unconscious story, and we make a decision to create a new thought to feel a different feeling and to take a different action.

And then, from there, we can begin to create our new future moving forward and create the new neural pathways. So some of these trenches are dug really, really deep, especially if you’ve had a lot of trauma in your life, a lot of experiences, a lot of changes and losses, and if you’re older. You know, that’s just typically the way it is.

So we’re going to keep talking about this. That’s enough for today. I wanted to give you a little bit of information on how you can change things. Just begin to start finding some presence and awareness in what your thoughts are. When you feel something in your body and it doesn’t feel great, ask yourself, why am I feeling that way? What’s creating this stress, what’s creating this anxiety, what’s my thought? And then run through here.

So I’ll repeat it one more time. A circumstance is neutral, it’s just a thing that happens. People die, we get in wrecks, people scratch our cars, you know, things just happen, just happen. It’s very neutral. It’s just a fact of life. But then we have a thought about it; it shouldn’t happen or it should have happened to so and so or it should have happened last year or it shouldn’t every happen to me, whatever the thought it. And then, when you think that thought, what’s the feeling? How do you feel? And then what do you do when you feel that way?

And then, when you do that, what’s the result that you get? And just start playing with that. And, guys, I invite you, we have Thursday night coach calls. Reach out, we have the Integrative Life Facebook group that you can join and I let you know whenever we have these coach calls, and we actually give you an experience of this process and stuff. So you can reach out to that.

But for now, that’s it for this episode. I look forward to next week where we dive in a little bit deeper and we’re still going to kind of stay on the same topic for a few more episodes, and then we have some guests already lined up to come in. I’m super excited about that. So, I hope you enjoyed the show. Don’t forget about the contest we have going. So give us a rating, review, follow along, subscribe to the podcast, share with your friends, let them know what you’re learning and invite them to the community.

This is just like a more conscious healthy community environment where we can support each other on personal growth, development, and especially if you’re in health and wellness, if you’re a practitioner, or if you’re in massage therapy, yoga, life coaching, health coaching, this arena, I especially would love to have you follow along, to have a conversation with you, so I can actually help you help your clients on a deeper level and help them break through some of this stuff, especially when we’re talking about physical pain and illness and disease and being stuck in relationship issues, that kind of stuff, because this is the unveiling, the unraveling of the stories that is most likely keeping them stuck. Alright, I will see you all next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Integrative Life Coach Training for Health and Wellness Practitioners! If you’re feeling stuck on your journey to mind body integration, head over to KimGuillory.com to download your Stability First Meditation today.