The unrecognized power of our thoughts

As I have gotten more involved in life coaching thoughts and activities, I have come to see one thought come out more often than any other. The thought is "I should/shouldn't ..." I believe this thought, more than any other, causes us to become victims of shame and to feel unworthy, unlovable, and less than capable. Our brains are very good at protecting us from harm and dangers that are real. The problem is, they can't discriminate between a real danger and a perceived danger. "Should" thinking, to the brain, is a perceived danger. When we start telling ourselves we should or should not do this or that, we are setting ourselves up for a physiologic danger response. This is one problem with this type of thinking. Another problem is our brains trick us into thinking this kind of thinking is truth. We all have patterns of thinking that are not true. These patterns are called cognitive distortions. Our brains distort what is real, and tell us a message that...

I find it fascinating how complex our brains are. On one hand, they have kept us save, which we means we have been able to continue to change and grow. On the other hand, in achieving this safety, our brains actually hinder our ability to become our best selves. The reason this happens is that there are different parts of our brains, and they are responsible for different things. To keep things as uncomplicated as possible, I am going to say there are two parts to our brain that are involved in living our every day lives - the primitive brain and the thinking brain. The primitive brain is what it says, it is a much older part of our brains that are responsible for keeping us safe from danger. It is a surveillance system that is always on the lookout for danger. Once is finds something that is perceived as danger, it activates the fight, flight, or freeze system to help us get out of danger. It is a byproduct of earlier times in our development when we had to stay safe from marauders,...

I want to talk about fear today before I go into thoughts, thought work, and self awareness. I just recently started writing this, obviously. Yet, I have been on that proverbial "journey of self discovery" for several years. So why has it taken me so long to start putting this out there? FEAR!! I really thought about this after writing the first post, and I was reminded of several things about fear. The first thought was about being what Brene' Brown calls a "creative". It's interesting to me how much time she spends talking, not about creativity directly, but about vulnerability. I didn't understand why she did this for quite a while. But now I understand why, and that understanding has been powerful. How? There are innumerable ways to be creative. You can spend endless time talking about doing this, that, or the other in this field or that area. Is this going to be helpful? Maybe a little for some people. But this is so vast and so varied beca...

There is so much talk today about the myriad of negative influences in our world. This is without  question. What very few people are talking about is what our individual responses are to the circumstances of our lives. Thank you so much to Brooke Castillo and her Life Coach School podcast and Jody Moore and her podcast Bold New Mom, for teaching me about circumstances and and thoughts. One of the most powerful things we can realize and use in our everyday lives is to understand the difference between circumstances and thoughts. Knowing this difference is the first step in living an intentional life. I love Ephesians 4:14 - "that we henceforth be no more children. tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive."  Do you ever feel your life is so hectic, in such turmoil, that you are being tossed around like you're in a storm. I daresay we have all felt this at some poin...