How to Change Your Default Thoughts to Feel Better

Do you ever feel down without knowing why? This week's episode will teach you how to change your negative thoughts into positive ones. I'll guide you through identifying and changing your negative default thoughts that silently create your feelings and actions. By following a few steps, we'll create an awareness that encourages a shift in your inner dialogue. This shift promises to unlock feelings, actions, and results that resonate with the life you want to live.

If you're ready to improve your mindset, join our community of amazing women in the More You membership. Together, we'll become the best versions of ourselves and live life with purpose. Check out the Mindset Makeover for some extra inspiration. Until next week's episode, have fun nurturing your mindset. Trust me, your future self will thank you.

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About Wendy Johnson:

I'm a certified life coach for women who want to take their 'good' lives and make them extraordinary with personal development and life coaching tools. If you are going to find your passion, increase your self-confidence, make more money, strengthen your relationships, build your business, and do it with less struggle and frustration then you're in the right place. My programs are for busy women who want to feel better and live well in their everyday lives.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You're listening to the Extraordinary Everyday podcast with Wendy Johnson, episode number 47.

Speaker 2: 0:08

Welcome to the Extraordinary Everyday podcast where women come to be inspired and motivated to become the best version of themselves and elevate the quality of their everyday. Now here's your host, certified life coach, wendy Johnson.

Speaker 3: 0:26

Hello beautiful friends.

Speaker 1: 0:28

How are you doing today? I am doing great and I'm very excited to be with you Today. I want to talk about how to change your default thoughts. I want to talk about what default thinking is and why it matters, and the problem is, many people go about their lives thinking by default and automatically, without realizing, thinking patterns become habitual. They don't know their thoughts create their feelings, their feelings create their actions and their actions create their results, but not you. You're here and listening to this episode on mindset and changing your mindset. You care about changing your thoughts to have better feelings, actions and results. So let's get started.

Speaker 1: 1:25

What is default thinking? Thoughts in your brain on the unconscious side. It's automatic, and it can be really sneaky. The default mind wants to make sure you're comforted. When anything is discomforting, it will fight us and it wants to win. There's one thing I want you to know, though there is good news that some of your default thoughts are positive and empowering and they're helping you to achieve what you want.

Speaker 1: 1:59

So we're looking at those default thoughts that are negative, that are affecting the life you have, and we're all human, and we've all adopted some limiting and negative thoughts that are holding us back from our true potential. The way you're showing up in the world, what actions you're taking and the results you've achieved have all been done with how you're thinking and feeling, and we as humans tend to notice what we're doing or we're not doing. Let me give you an example of that. If you consider yourself as a quitter and you never finish what you start, you're only looking at the actions you didn't complete. But the actions are connected to your thoughts and feelings. You have control over what you're thinking and feeling. You, me, all of us picked up those thoughts along the way from our upbringing, our environments and society. You want to give yourself grace here. When we learn that our negative thoughts got us to where we are now and why we're stuck, then we know we can change them. And when we want to make changes to our lives and we want to feel better and have better habits, behaviors and actions, then we're going to have to learn how to think different thoughts to get us to that imagined future.

Speaker 1: 3:35

I like to think of it like brushing your teeth. You're never done brushing your teeth. You don't brush your teeth twice a day for a month and then say now that I've brushed my teeth this past month, I don't have to do it again. If you do, then you'll have rotten teeth and smelly breath, and the same goes for your brain. As long as you're a human being living the worldly experience, your brain will have thoughts you don't want.

Speaker 1: 4:12

All the things that we think are problems are our perception of how we see the world, with our thoughts and feeling. Most problems are problems. There is the facts and there's our opinions of the facts. The point is your brain has picked up thoughts that are automatic, that you may not even be aware of. The brain likes to be sneaky. Rather than saying things to yourself that are obvious, the brain will send out subtle, low-grade thoughts that hurt you but you don't realize them. While you're getting dressed this morning, you may not have been aware of a sneaky thought that says, as you look at yourself in the mirror I wish my breast didn't droop. Here are some more examples of low-grade default thoughts. Oh my gosh, I don't like the wrinkles on my face. My hair is thinning in its back. This cellulite on my hips is awful. I wish my stomach weren't so darn poochy.

Speaker 1: 5:23

What happens is that place of feeling bad about yourself is a low-vibration thought, and low-vibration thoughts produce low-vibration feelings that aren't in alignment with who we truly are. When we're feeling a low-vibration feeling, we tend to look at more of what's wrong. It makes the day-to-day experience worse and we are hurting ourselves. We end up having feelings of frustration and worry that we don't want and we don't know. Our low-vibration thoughts are the cause of these feelings. We think these thoughts so fast as we look at ourselves in the mirror that we don't even realize they're automatic and subconscious, and the most important thing you can do is to clean up those unwanted negative thoughts. Maybe you're thinking you're a positive person and you don't think you think negative thoughts, but with this mirror example, did you notice that you actually do say some negative things to yourself? It's so subconscious, it's something we're not even saying out loud. It's something that we're thinking in our head to ourselves. We're judging ourselves. So let's come up with thoughts that create amazing feelings.

Speaker 1: 6:54

Okay, how do you change your thoughts? I want to give you a five-step process and I'm not going to go very deep in this. This is something that I do inside my membership. I want to give you an awareness of what's available to you, and the first step is to make space for your thoughts. Human thinking is complex. Pay attention to your default thinking this next week with some mindfulness. Slow down and give yourself space to be the observer of your thoughts. If there are thoughts you want to let go, you absolutely can.

Speaker 1: 7:37

The second step to change your thoughts is to notice your thoughts. You'll become more aware of how your mind works by simply bringing more attention to what you're thinking and more time being the observer. After you talk to yourself, silently or out loud, notice if those were negative or positive thoughts. And the third step is to hold your thoughts lightly. What I want you to do is be curious and kind to yourself. You aren't beating yourself up for thoughts you've thought for many years and you're definitely not broken and you don't have to be fixed. These are small tweaks you make. You're only treating yourself with love and compassion and allowing yourself to be an observer of your brain.

Speaker 1: 8:32

And the fourth step is to practice the new thought. Create intentional thoughts about what you want to believe. You can make upgrades by thinking thoughts on purpose, deciding those thoughts ahead of time of what you want to think and writing those thoughts down. In my membership I teach the thought letter and that is how to take a negative thought and make it a little bit better, and then, when you believe that thought, you make it better yet. This is how you create the life you want, instead of allowing the brain to use those default thoughts without effort.

Speaker 1: 9:13

And the final step is to seek evidence for your new thought. If you've created this new thought, what feelings are you feeling now and what actions are you taking? I'll bet you're taking new actions, the ones that you really want to take, and then I guarantee you're going to come up with different results. So what you're doing is looking for the evidence of what you've created. You're looking at the new habits, the new behaviors and the new actions and by all means, have fun with this. Think of this like brushing your teeth. You're incorporating it into your day-to-day experience and you're creating better experiences and better feelings in your day-to-day experiences.

Speaker 1: 10:08

So let me just repeat the five-step process to change your thoughts. Number one make space for your thoughts. Two notice your thoughts. Three hold your thoughts lightly. Four practice the new thought. And five seek evidence for your new thought. And when you do this, you're adopting more positive thinking patterns and you're becoming more aware of what you're thinking, and you're gonna feel so much better. Rather than having a day-to-day feeling of being frustrated, you're gonna have that day-to-day feeling of being hopeful or being empowering. When you have 60,000 thoughts a day, it's hard to know what the brain is doing and the feelings that you have are going to alert you about the thoughts you're thinking, and then you can really begin to give yourself that awareness and step back with love and compassion and notice what you're seeing. I hope you found this helpful and this is all I have for you this week. Thank you so much for being here. Please share with a friend and subscribe and follow me every week. I look forward to seeing you next week. Take care, friends. Bye-bye.

Speaker 3: 11:39

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out More. You, my community of like-minded women. We show up to create the highest version of ourselves and elevate the quality of our everyday. Along the way, head over to ontracklifecoachingcom forward, slash, join. That's O-N-T-R-A-C lifecoachingcom forward, slash, join. I'd love to see you in there. And if you haven't grabbed your copy of the Mindset Makeover, head over to ontracklifecoachingcom forward slash makeover and get a copy that teaches and inspires you to show up as your most extraordinary self.