062: Three Key Concepts to Bring Positive Change in your Life.

What if you could rewire your brain to create positive change in your life. In this episode, I am sharing three key concepts for transformative  self coaching in any area of your life. We kick off with our first key concept that our thoughts fuel our emotions that further lead to our actions. We further discuss the second key concept that your thoughts are not real and they have no moral value. The third key concept is to feel your feelings before changing the original thought. 

This practice can lead to significant improvements in health, finances, career, and relationships. By understanding the societal and cultural conditioning that shapes our thoughts and feelings, we can release the narratives that hold us back. 
Learn practical exercises for identifying and processing your emotions, and challenge the age-old belief that hurt people must hurt others. 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I truly believe that to coach ourselves, there's three key concepts that you need when I'm working with my clients. Most of my clients are struggling with either one, two or all three of these three key things that I'm going to share with you today. Let's dive in. This is Flauthentic Me, a self-love podcast for South Asian women. A place where we celebrate self-love even when we feel imperfect or flawed. A safe space where you can be raw, real and authentic. And here's your host, self-love and mindset coach, sunny Lamba. Self-love and mindset coach, sunny Lamba. Hello, my friends, welcome back to another episode of Flawthentic Me. I'm your host, sunny Lamba, and today I'm going to share with you three key concepts that I coach my clients on over and over again. Most of my clients are struggling with one of these three or all three of these. In fact, last week, I did a training on procrastination. It was a free training, open to anyone, and as I was working on this training, I realized that these three key concepts are also part of procrastination or, in fact, any challenge that you have in your life. So let us get into these three main concepts and as I get into them and I start explaining, you will see that how every area of your life can totally transform once you understand and start applying these three key concepts. Whether it is your health, finances, career, business, success, relationships, anything like joy, your anxiety, anything, these three things play a big role. So here they are. Number one your thoughts create feelings, which then motivate your behavior. Number two thoughts are not real and they have no moral values. And number three feel your feelings. Let's get into it and dig deeper. So the first key concept is your thoughts create feelings, which then motivate your actions or, in some cases, even inaction. So when you don't take action on something that is still coming from your thoughts so this is a one direction path your thoughts will create feelings or emotions and those emotions will then cause the behavior or lack of certain behavior. This is a one direction path.

Speaker 1: 2:57

As I said, you cannot go backwards. Let me give you some examples. Let's say you're going on a date, a first date, and your thought comes that I do not deserve this person, or this person is so amazing, I am not good enough. This thought will then cause an emotion, maybe anxiety, and this emotion is going to lead to your behavior. So you're on this, you're not going to be yourself, because you're already feeling anxious now. So how do you think you're going to behave on this first date? Another example your boss calls a meeting and the first thought that comes is I think I messed up, maybe something is wrong, my boss is going to fire me. Now the feelings or the emotions that come up are fear. How do you think that meeting is going to go? Maybe your boss didn't even call you to fire you, but now you're going to act in a certain way and that might in future lead to you being fired.

Speaker 1: 4:03

Another example is you want to do a new project. Let's say I wanted to record this podcast. When I first wanted to start, the thought came what am I going to talk? I don't have much knowledge, I don't know how to do it. So if you go back and listen to my first episode, it sounds so different because I have this fear what if no one wants to listen to me? I don't have anything to say, my thoughts are not of that much value that someone would tune in. And today, sitting here, more than 3,000 downloads later, I can tell you that I truly believe that people want to listen to my thoughts and I have so much value to share. But you see, it's the thought. That is the first thing. The thought comes and that leads to a certain emotion, and then that emotion will lead you to a behavior, in my case, not having a really good podcast episode that first episode. You also have to know that, as I said, this is one direction. You cannot do it the other way. You cannot swim upstream Only salmons can. So if you think that I am going to change my action and that will lead to a different thought, it's not going to work. How many times we have tried to motivate ourselves to take certain actions and how did that go? How many failed promises or resolutions can you think of right now? So when we say I'm just going to do the thing whatever it is, I'm just going to start exercising, you have to understand I have said this in the past that sometimes you just have to get started.

Speaker 1: 5:49

For example, let's say you have to make some client calls and you have all these thoughts that clients are going to hate me, da, da, da, da, da. And now the emotions are coming fear of judgment, fear of failure and you don't make those calls. I have said this to my clients if you're a client of mine that just make one call. Just make one call and that will lead that motivation, will lead you to more action and more calls. But you have to see that even to make that one call, that first call, you still had to first change your thought. So it is one direction First you have to change the thought. You go and say, okay, you know what, let me just make one call, I can get through this one call, I'm not going to die. So you still first changed your thought. So you cannot do it the other way. It can't be like, oh, let me just try doing this.

Speaker 1: 6:36

One thing Again thought is first. It's not like you're just going to jump into something, do it and that's going to change your thought. No, it doesn't work backwards If you try to do it backwards, thinking that I can do the action first and then the thought will come. It will not work that way. It's kind of like trying to sail a boat in the opposite direction of the wind. It's not going to go that way. So that is the first key concept. If you understand this one concept, you can make so many changes in your life. Your thoughts create the feelings or emotions, and those emotions then cause the behavior, if you're resisting any behavior or any action, if you're not taking action on something, sit down and ask yourself what is the thought that's coming and then what emotion is linked to this thought, and then work backwards. First change the thought, which will change the emotion, and you will be able to do that action. Same thing for procrastination. During that training, this is what I taught you have to first change the thought. There is more to that, which is the third key concept, but let's first talk about the second concept.

Speaker 1: 8:00

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Speaker 1: 9:00

Second concept is thoughts are not real and they have no moral value. It is necessary that we understand this concept that thoughts are not real, because what happens is we have been conditioned to judge ourselves or beat ourselves up based on our thoughts. How many times growing up we were told don't think like that, there are good thoughts or bad thoughts. There are thoughts that are considered sinful, that you're a bad person because you're having these thoughts. So I want you to understand that your thoughts are just sentences in your brain and that's it. Don't beat yourselves up for your thoughts. Don't think that if I'm having this thought, then I am probably just a bad person or I'm a certain kind of person for having these thoughts.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Our thoughts are coming from our belief systems and our beliefs come from many, many factors, starting from genetics. Then there is epigenetics and I'll go over that evolution, cultural and social conditioning, our upbringing, what the society teaches us, and then also our own lived experience. So genetics our thoughts come from our evolutionary biological predisposition, which most humans share, way back when our ancestors had to survive in the wild, and that is one of the reasons that our brain automatically usually goes towards the negative, because our ancestors were exposed to the nature, exposed to the elements of nature on a day-to-day basis, they had that threat of life or death. Let's say they're out in the wild and a lion attacks. It's a life or death situation. If they ate some wrong plant they could get poisoned and die. So the brain evolved to go to the negative first, just for the survival. It is a survival instinct. Don't eat that thing, you might die. Don't go on that path, there might be a lion. Don't go out at night because predators are out there. So your brain automatically, because of the way our evolution worked, goes to the negative. So that is the genetic basis of our thoughts.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Secondly, epigenetics. Epigenetics is that the trauma that our ancestors went through. Epigenetics is usually four generations down. I don't want to get into the science. That is out of the scope of this podcast. It will be a really long podcast. But if you're interested, read the book. It Didn't Start With you. I can't think of the author name, but his first name is Mark. So go find that book.

Speaker 1: 11:59

We get trauma from our parents at least four generations deep. So the trauma that your parents went through and your grandparents and your great grandparents went through lives in your body and we call it epigenetics, because it's not just the DNA, it's the other epigenetic material outside of the nucleus, material that is passed down to the embryo. Those of you who listen to this podcast all the time you know that I love science, because only when I understand science I'm able to put two and two together and I'm able to understand Wow, that's why this is happening and wow, that's why this is happening. That's why I feel the trauma, even though I didn't go through that trauma, even though it was my grandparents who went through the British rule and the independence and the division of the country, all that I know. My grandfather's side of the family were close to the Pakistan area. So all that trauma is passed down at least four generations and your thoughts come from that as well.

Speaker 1: 13:09

The other place that your thoughts come from is, then, your own lived experience. If you had a bad experience in the past, you're going to be more careful in the future. Let's say you were crossing the street and a car suddenly came. Now, in the future, every time you cross the street you will be more careful and you will have this thought Be careful, there might be a car coming. So it is from your own lived experience. Any bad experiences you've had in life, or even good experiences you've had in life, would lead you to negative or positive thoughts. If you've had an amazing, let's say, marriage or a partnership or a relationship, your thoughts will be that the world is full of love. But on the other hand, if you've had a few broken relationships, your default thought might be there are no good men out there or there are no good humans out there. Love does not exist. So that is based on your lived experience.

Speaker 1: 14:03

Then there is also thoughts that come from your cultural conditioning. What the society, the religion, the people around you tell you, especially when you were little, growing up, the things you saw, you observed, all the things that were explicitly told to you. So if you grew up in India and I know most of my listeners are South Asian, so I'm using the example of our culture If you grew up in India or in any developing country where things were not in abundance, your thought might be money is hard to earn. It's a thought based on the cultural conditioning or what you saw, what you observed growing up. If you were told growing up that girls don't work or girls should not have big dreams, then your thought, even though you have these big dreams, when you try to take action, your thought would be I don't deserve this, I'm not good enough to have a business, I'm not good enough to make a lot of money. That is the cultural conditioning. So your thoughts are not real and they have no moral value. So you have to understand that your thoughts are just electrical signals in your brain, they are just sentences in your brain.

Speaker 1: 15:23

Your brain is a meaning making machine. It does not like uncertainty, it does not like confusion. So what it does is it stores all this information, the genetic information, the epigenetic, the generational trauma, what it heard from the society, the experiences it had. If a teacher said something, it stores all this information and tries to make meaning out of it to keep you safe. The purpose is to make life easy and to keep you safe so that your heart is not broken again. So if your brain is telling you that love does not exist or there's no good men out there, that is your brain just trying to protect you from heartbreak, because you had heartbreak in the past or maybe your parents' relationship was not really good, so now you have this thought that relationships are painful. So remember this. Thoughts are not real, they are just sentences in your brain.

Speaker 1: 16:23

The reason this is a key concept in my coaching is because whenever I'm coaching a client and they tell me that this is what I'm going through, I ask them what is the thought? And then I question them is that thought really true? I know I was talking to one client who is trying to find a life partner and she's had a couple of bad experiences maybe more than a couple and her belief is there is no good men out there. And that is the thought she has when she is out there trying to make connections or find a life partner. So I questioned her thought Is this really true, that there is not a single good man out there? And she said well, no, but there's no. But Are there no good men? Not a single one out there. So question your thoughts. Your thoughts are just trying to protect you from heartbreak, from failure, from fear of criticism by others or anything. So question that. That's the reason I wanted to have the second concept, the other part of the same.

Speaker 1: 17:33

The second concept is thoughts have no moral value. As I said in the beginning, your thoughts are coming from your brain and the world tells us that it is sinful to have certain thoughts, or there are good thoughts or bad thoughts. There are no good or bad thoughts. So don't beat yourselves up if you're having negative thoughts. Don't beat yourselves up if a thought comes to harm someone, but question that thought. There's nothing wrong when we are hurt. We want to hurt others. Hurt people, hurt people.

Speaker 1: 18:07

That's a quote from Vishay Lakhiani and I really like I understand that quote. Hurt people, hurt people. But I also want to question that quote that hurt people. Don't have to hurt other people if they start questioning their thoughts, if they start saying okay, well, I'm getting this thought, I am hurt and I don't want to be nice to anyone because I'm hurting inside. But what if you start questioning those thoughts and say hold on, I'm having this thought that I don't want to be nice to others, but what if I am nice to others? Maybe then I won't hurt as much. I digress. So that is the second key concept. Remember that question your thoughts. They're not real. The third piece of this puzzle is feel your feelings. So I said that thoughts create feelings or emotions and those emotions then lead to a behavior change. Any kind of action comes from those feelings or emotions. So while you can question your thoughts and try to change those thoughts, you will not be able to change those thoughts until and unless you first process those feelings.

Speaker 1: 19:17

We have been criticized or blamed for our feelings, especially us women, because there is this whole idea that men are not very emotional and women are too emotional and we are sometimes ashamed for our emotions. There's men who say, oh, women can't make decisions because they're too emotional, especially in the workplace. I have heard this that you cannot be a good leader because of your emotions Not directly said to me, but I'm talking about other women. Or I remember my boss especially. She was a servant leader and she led from her heart, but there were times when it was said that, oh, she's too emotional. I think women are amazing leaders because of our emotions. Having said that, we women are shamed for our emotions. So we have learned to put this hard crust around us and I know most of my listeners are women. But if you are a man and you're listening to this, you probably do understand that men are also conditioned to suppress their emotions. From a very young age, boys were told don't cry like a girl, don't be a sissy. So they learned to suppress their emotions From a very young age. Boys were told don't cry like a girl, don't be a sissy. So they learned to suppress their emotions.

Speaker 1: 20:29

It is so, so, so significant to feel those feelings, to understand and really feel those emotions if you want to change the thought. You cannot change the thought and create a new emotion leading to a new action until and unless you first feel the emotion that you're having at the moment. So what are feelings or emotions? Feelings are physical sensations in your body. Don't confuse the feelings with thoughts. I have heard this and I have said it myself in the past I feel that my sister doesn't trust me. This is not a feeling, this is a thought. You think that your sister doesn't trust you, but what is the feeling that is associated with this thought? So when you think that your sister doesn't trust me, what feeling comes up? Maybe it is sadness. And where do you feel that? In your body? So you have to have a very clear distinction between thoughts and feelings.

Speaker 1: 21:32

Feelings are physical sensations in your body. You have to feel them in your body. So when you're sad, maybe your heart is beating slower. So what is the physical change in your body? So do an exercise with me right now. Think of something very sad. Think of that. You are really, really sad. How does your body look like? What's your body language? Maybe you have droopy shoulders. Maybe your mouth is drooping downwards instead of upwards. A smile is upwards but downwards. You're sad. Maybe you have a frown on your head. Then you're irritated. So what are the physical sensations?

Speaker 1: 22:11

With my clients, I work on a few different ways to feel those feelings. So when I say feel your feelings, you have to actually feel them. Let me share one way with you. There's a few others, but just for this podcast. So the one way you can feel your feelings is be very, very objective in defining how it feels in your body.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Let's use anxiety as an example. How does that feel in your body? Your heart is racing. Maybe you have shallow breathing. Maybe your body feels warmer to touch or cooler to touch. So you see, I'm only describing physical sensations. I'm not saying racing thoughts. Racing thoughts is a symptom of anxiety, but it's not a physical symptom in your body. So, hot or cold, tingling fast, slow. How's your breathing? How does your body touch, feel to the touch? This is a way to explain your feeling and it is also a way to feel the feeling. So that's just one way.

Speaker 1: 23:11

So these are the three premises you have to feel the feelings in order to then go back and change that original thought, and that would lead to a different emotion and a different action. So I want you to imagine me in front of you, holding you by your shoulders and shaking you, and telling you that if you take these three concepts, you can change any area of your life. Self-coaching is a tool that I give to my clients as well, and I tell them you can take any challenge that comes your way and take it through the self-coaching model. There's a few other steps in it, but this is the basis. If you have the basis, you can start working on it right now.

Speaker 1: 23:54

Let's recap. Number one your thoughts create feelings or emotions, which then motivate you into action or inaction. Number two your thoughts are not real and they have no moral value. Number three feel your feelings first and then try to go and change the thought. That's it, my friends. You have the key, or three keys, to change your behavior in any area of your life.

Speaker 1: 24:21

I hope you take this. Don't just listen to this episode and forget about it. Just take this and start applying it in small things in your life. And if you think that you are struggling with is this a thought or is this a feeling, reach out to me. Or you're struggling with naming your emotions, or you're struggling with how to process those emotions, how to feel them, because you've suppressed them for long enough that it's so hard to really start feeling them again. If you're struggling with that, reach out to me. I would love to have a conversation with you. You can find me on Instagram at Sunny underscore Lamba.

Speaker 1: 24:58

And that's it for today. Thank you so much. I am truly grateful for each and every one of you who take the time out of your busy lives to listen to this podcast and in return, I bring all this tremendous value to you. And on that note, this is Sunny signing off. Until next time, keep loving yourselves and stay Flauthentic. Thank you for listening to the Flauthentic Me podcast. Did you relate to something or had an aha moment? I would love to hear your thoughts. Connect with me on Instagram at Sunny underscore Lamba. You can also sign up for our newsletter so that you can get weekly tips and tools. Until next time, keep loving yourself and stay Flauthentic.