Some Thoughts on Thoughts….
By Kate Horney
If your goal is to live a healthy, happy, and balanced life, at some point you have to address your thoughts. Today, Beyond Baby Coach Natalie shares 4 questions that she uses to examine her thoughts and ultimately make a positive turn around. Check it out…
As a mom, I want to be the best model for my children. I do pretty well on the nutrition and exercise front but I need more work on the emotional/mental part. As I am sure a lot of you can relate, I am a type A personality, a list maker, a routine orientated person, and I do not deal well with change. You mommies out there know that this does not work well with one child, let alone the four that I have. 🙂
I am the type of person that plays things over repeatedly in my head, often wishing the outcome was different and basically fighting reality.
[box]I have known for quite a while that I want to be a positive role model for my children and that my negative attitudes would become their attitudes if I did not change.[/box]
I also realized that my negativity also had an impact on the health choices I made. The problem has been that I have not known how to change.
Now I come to the point of this blog which is to share with you a great tool that I have learned that is allowing my to love what is happening in my life and is helping me to teach my children to do the same.
I was recently told to read the book “Loving What Is” by Byron Katie. I reluctantly started reading it because I was made aware that my outlook on life and the stress I was harboring has been holding me back physically.
Basically, the book teaches a four question process to allow a person to look at anything that is troubling them and allow the painful thoughts to fade away. In the process, the person learns that it is actually her thinking about the problem and not the problem itself that is causing the suffering.
[box]What I have found is that I was waisting so much energy on the negativity that once I changed my thoughts, I felt more at peace and had so much more energy to act.[/box]
I use the Work on any kind of thought that causes me unhappiness, but let me give you a quick example. For instance, I sleep in one day and miss my workout. In the past, this might have resulted in a lot of negative talk in my head and poor food choices for the day. But here is how the four questions of the Work are applied and how I feel after applying them…
Here are four questions to turn my thoughts around:
- Is that statement true? My initial reaction would be that yes it is true because working out is good for me and I had a workout scheduled.
- Can I be absolutely sure that statement is true? When I really consider that, my answer has to be no. The reasons for this is that I might actually have needed the rest and felt worse if I have worked out and the reality is that I did not get up. Reality is always true because so my statement has to be false.
- How do I feel when I think that thought? Well, it makes me feel sad, frustrated, depressed, etc.
- How would I feel if I did not have that thought? I would feel rested and energized and ready to start the day. I would probably fit a workout in later in the day because I felt so good and I would make good food choices.
The final step is called the turn around. So, my turn around would be that I should NOT have gotten up and worked out this morning and that I should have slept in because I needed the rest!
Hopefully you can see that the Work has allowed me to be free of the negative thought and in turn, probably changed my outlook and choices for the entire day. I hope this has been helpful to a lot of you. I know I am not the only one that struggles with letting go of negative thoughts and can feel them pulling me down!
This process can be done about issues related to relationships, work, money, self-judgement, body, and even the worst things that happen in life. It has truly been life changing for me and if it resonates with you, I would highly recommend reading the book.
P.S. One final thought- it may seem strange to some of you that this mindset technique is posted on a site dealing with physical fitness but as you can see from my example, our thoughts directly affect our choices when it comes to exercise and nutrition as well!
Here’s to living healthy, happy, and balanced lives! 🙂