Ep. 25: How to Actually Think New Thoughts

Coaching is all about thinking new thoughts so that you can get new results in your life. But the tactical, practical nuts-and-bolts way to get rom thinking “I hate my job” or “I am so bad with money” or “I just can’t get in shape” or “I have the worst luck”, to thoughts that are much more useful and will ultimately get you better results in your life, is not something most of us are ever taught how to actually do. Enter today’s episode. Coach Stephanie walks you through how it is that thoughts actually do create your results, with relatable examples from weight loss to money habits, and then walks through the steps you need to take in order to change your thoughts, for the better, and for good. Changing your thinking isn’t magic or even that hard - you just need to know how to do it. This episode will give you exactly that.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the I'm the Problem podcast. My name is Stephanie Finigan. I am your coach and host, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to actually think new thoughts.

This is really important because thinking new thoughts is obviously very foundational to all things coaching, all things personal development. If you wanna grow, if you wanna change, if you wanna move anywhere different in your life, your mental life, your emotional life, even your physical life, you need to think new thoughts. You know, it's that old saying, right? In order to get different results, you need to take different actions. In coaching, we go back even further than that, and we say you need to think different thoughts that create different feelings that then create different actions that then create your different results. That's how it works. So thinking new thoughts is the most important thing that you can do when it comes to your own personal development and growth, because that's what's gonna ultimately lead to different results for you.

That being said, how to go about actually changing your thoughts, it's something that, like so many other things, like financial literacy and all of these basics that we are not generally taught in school, we should be. Every one of us has a brain, every one of us has experiences in life where we want to change our thinking, but learning how to actually do that consciously and on purpose in a way that's going to help us create results and create a life that we want intentionally. We just aren't taught these skills. I am so grateful that I learned these skills through coaching from my coaches, from my certification, from the work that I've done. So I'm really a little bit surprised that it's taken me 25 episodes to actually walk through something as foundational as this. But I do think it's really important. So for those of you who know this work, then this will be a good review episode for you. And for those of you who are newer to this work or newer to working with me or newer to coaching in general, welcome! And this will be a really useful, really foundational episode. You're going to learn a very essential skill that you need in order to move your life forward in a new direction.

Okay, so we're going to start with the question, why think new thoughts?Why is it important to do that? The reason is what I just referenced a minute ago, which is our thoughts create our feelings. That's how it works. You have a thought, and then that thought creates a vibration in your body that is an emotion, a feeling that you have. So our thoughts create our feelings. Our feelings then lead us to act, take action, and our actions create our results. If you have the thought, I'll never get out of debt, the feeling that that creates in your body is overwhelmed. When you feel overwhelmed, you might be somebody who spends money to try and feel better. And so the action you might take from the feeling of overwhelm is to go spend money. And the result is you are still in debt or you're in more debt, right? You essentially have proved that thought true. That's how it works. Whether your thoughts are helpful or not helpful, whether they're thoughts you want to keep or not, whether you're conscious or unconscious of them, it doesn't matter, that's how it works. You have a thought, it creates a feeling, which then leads to actions, which then leads to results.

So the reason we're gonna wanna think new thoughts is not only because we wanna feel better, because the thought like, my boss is pissed at me or I'm a terrible parent or I hate my job just feel crappy but really the reason that we want to choose to think different thoughts or better thoughts is because ultimately we want to change our results and the way you change your results is changing your thinking whether you're talking about a relationship, your career, a business you want to start, a goal you have, the marathon you want to run, the dog you want to adopt, the home you want to buy, the book you want to write, the weight you want to lose, whatever it is, it all starts from your thoughts. And you're not going to change your results until you change your thinking.

Okay, so with that being said, why do we think the thoughts we think now? How did we get here, basically? If you're in a situation where there's something in your life, or maybe many somethings, that you're not happy with and you want to change. In order to get there, you have to change your thinking, but you need to first look at where you are right now and the thoughts that got you here, okay? Whatever thoughts you're currently thinking are creating the results you have right now. And the way that this works, what happens every time you think a new thought is that you create a new neural pathway in your brain. And this is something, if you're really into the science behind this, you can obviously Google a lot. I will put a few different books in the show notes that actually have helped me further understand this work. But essentially, you can think about it this way, very simply, like just think about a new, we call them thought highways in coaching, just a new highway in your brain that's being created every time you think a new thought.

Here's the thing about thought highways though. Anytime we think a new thought, so the thought like, I wanna leave my corporate job to start a business. I wanna quit my nine to five, I wanna start a business. Okay, so that's the beginning of a new neural pathway when you're thinking that. So just imagine you're standing in the woods and they're creating a new road to run right through the middle of the woods. Upon first creating that road, the road is dirt. It is bumpy, it is rocky, it's going to take a lot of effort for you to drive down a new highway because it's made of dirt, there's potholes, there's rocks, there's trees, there's things to drive around. It's uncomfortable to drive down a dirt road.

It's the same thing for your brain. If I'm thinking the thought, it's possible that I could leave this corporate job in a month and start my new business. My brain does not like that thought. It's a brand new scary thought and it's uncomfortable for my brain to think that. Now, the more I think that thought, I'm gonna leave in a month to start my business. If I just keep thinking that thought or similar thoughts or related thoughts over and over again, you can imagine it as if I'm in my car driving up and down that dirt highway over and over and over again. And of course, what happens if I was to drive up and down that highway over and over and over again? Eventually the highway gets paved, right? It gets smoother. The dirt gets padded down, the rocks go away. It gets faster and easier to drive on that highway. And so I can actually reach that thought much faster and easier and without a lot of effort. And that's what my brain wants. My brain wants easy and effortless because it's always trying to conserve energy. And the easier it is for me to think those thoughts means it's that much easier for me to believe them and feel a vibration in my body of excitement or motivation or inspiration. And from that place of excitement or motivation or inspiration or confidence or belief, I can then take different actions than I would sitting there thinking, I don't know if this is possible. I will take actions that will then create a result for me. So that's how thoughts are created.

The reason why we're oftentimes thinking the same thoughts over and over again, and why it seems hard to think new thoughts is because the thoughts that we have that we've been thinking for a long time are just highways. All thoughts are choices, all thoughts can be changed. But if you've been thinking a thought for five, 10, 15, 30 years, then you know what? It's going to be harder for your brain to start thinking something new. That's just what it is. So if I've been thinking for the last 20 years, there's no way I could be an entrepreneur, that's just not who I am. There's no way I could do that. I've got to stay at my corporate job. If I've been literally thinking that for 20 years, imagine how smooth that highway is. Same if I've been thinking like I hate my body. I'm not skinny enough. I hate my body. I hate the way I look. Whatever that nonsense is, right? But if I've been thinking that nonsense for the last 20 years, then you know what? That's a pretty paved highway and that's gonna take some effort for me to change that thinking. So the only reason why you're thinking thoughts over and over again, like whatever your goal is, it's not possible for me, I can't do it, it's not realistic, there's no way. It's because you've spent a lot of time thinking that it isn't possible. When you're struggling to believe something new, it's just because you're not used to it yet and it's uncomfortable for your brain.

Okay, so with that then, how do we go about thinking new thoughts? How do we break the pattern of just driving up and down the same highway over and over again? Here's how you do it and I'm going to give it to you in just a couple of very basic steps.

Step number one, you first have to figure out where you are and where you want to go. Imagine it like a GPS on your phone, where you gotta figure out what's my goal, what do I think and feel and act like, and what results do I have now? And then, where do I want to end up? Where do I wanna end up? What do I wanna be thinking and feeling and acting like, and what are the results I want?

So weight loss, I'll use that as an example here. Your thought might be, I want to lose weight. Your feeling might be discouraged or frustrated. Your actions might be, you kind of diet, you yo-yo diet, you work out, you don't work out. Sometimes you binge, sometimes you don't eat enough. You're just kind of all over the map, and your results are you don't lose weight, or at least not sustainably, okay? Let's just say that's the current spot you're in. Where you want to be in an ideal world, you might want your thought to be something like, I love my body, I have a perfect body. And your feeling there might be confident or motivated or proud, and your actions then, when you're feeling confident or motivated or proud might be that you eat well for yourself but you don't overeat and you don't under eat. You eat healthfully. Maybe you just don't think about food that much at all. Maybe food's not a big deal for you. Maybe you work out only when you want to. Maybe you work out just because you like to, not because you feel like you have to. You might have all of these very different actions that you ideally want for yourself. And the result is you have a body that you love.

So the question becomes, how do you get from, I hate my body, to I love my body. So the way you start thinking that new thought, I love my body, it's actually not by jumping to that thought. And this is where I'll talk about affirmations for a minute. I am not a big fan of affirmations and I don't coach on them typically. It's not that anything's wrong with them I just don't find that they are very useful because our brains are smart and our brains don't like change So if you are saying an affirmation like I love my body, I love my body or I have so much money I have so much money if you're saying all these things that are not currently facts and that you currently don't believe, and that you want to believe in the future, but that you don't believe right now, your brain is going to call bullshit on that. Your brain knows when you are saying something that you just don't truly believe. What I believe happens with affirmations, and I know people feel differently about this, is that even if they do work for you, you have to spend an awful lot of time convincing your brain of something that your brain doesn't want to believe. And that takes a lot of energy. Your brain does not like spending energy. Your brain wants to conserve energy. So I don't think affirmations hurt. And certainly if it's something that's useful for you, like by all means, keep going. But I don't think they're all that helpful.

The one place where I do think they're helpful, when you are saying an affirmation, it helps to kind of normalize for you in your brain the idea you have, right? So if the affirmation is I have a successful business or I have a loving partner or I have more money in the bank than I know what to do with, you know if if those are brand new thoughts for you and you're saying those affirmations over and over again and those affirmations make you feel good and they help you start to believe that those things are possible for you, that's great. But again, I think for many people, your brain is not really going to sink into that and therefore those neural pathways aren't going to start to get really fired up and built and smoothed over the way that we want because your brain is going to call bullshit because it doesn't believe you. It's going to say, where's the evidence and here's all the reasons this isn't true and there's no way and I'm just, what's the point? I'm not going to get off the couch and try and do anything new.

So instead of affirmations, I want to move to the next step here, which is thinking a thought that you can believe. This brings up the concept of ladder thoughts. And so what that is, is if you've got the thought, the starting point of, I hate my body, and then you have the end point where you want to be of, I love my body. What's going to actually be more effective than just trying to convince yourself, I love my body, I love my body, is to say, okay, let me start with moving up the ladder to a thought that is slightly better feeling than the thought I have right now. I hate my body doesn't feel good, but what could feel slightly better that's moving me in the direction of that thought I ultimately want to have, but that I still believe, that I genuinely believe today. That's the thought that you want to lean on next. That's the thought you want to grab for next. So this example, I hate my body to I love my body, is this big stretch.

My old coach used to use this all the time as an example of going from, okay, if you can't get there right away, how about going from I hate my body to I have a body. That thought might not feel amazing, but it also maybe doesn't feel as bad as I hate my body. It's just I have a body. It's a very neutral thought and it might create a very neutral feeling inside your own body. And if it does, neutral is certainly better than discouraged or depressed or whatever other feelings I hate my body is bringing up for you.

So the goal here is to choose a thought like that, a ladder thought, a thought that is one step up the ladder from where you currently are, moving in the direction of where you want to go. And you start practicing that thought over and over again. Not dissimilar to the way that you would with an affirmation, but the difference is you actually believe this one. Hard to argue with the thought, I have a body. It's a pretty neutral, pretty inarguable thought. Practicing that thought over and over is key. And that could look like a lot of things. You could write it down 30 times in the morning and 30 times at night. You could put it on post-it notes all over your wall. You could set a reminder on your phone and every time the alarm goes off, you could write it down a couple of times. You could set it as the background on your phone or your laptop. I like to do that a lot with quotes or ideas or thoughts that I want to keep building. Anything that will help you surround yourself with that thought so that you start to normalize thinking about it. And anytime you notice your brain moving to the thought that's where you currently are and where you don't wanna be, so in this case, again, it's anytime your brain's moving to, I hate my body, you catch yourself and then you say, no, I don't hate my body, I have a body. And you just correct the thought. And what you're doing there is literally building that thought highway.

Essentially, you can imagine it like you're in the car that's been driving up and down the cement highway of I hate my body I hate my body forever And now you basically are veering slightly to the right and you're driving up and down that bumpy dirt road saying I have a body I have a body and Just know the more times that you say that the more times you drive up and down that road the smoother that that rides gonna Get for you the easier that thoughts gonna be to reach for once you notice that it doesn't take you much effort to think that thought, then you can think another thought. You can practice a new thought that's one more step up the ladder. So that might be something like, I have a body that functions well. I have a healthy body. I have a body that knows how to take care of itself. It could be something like, I have a body with nice eyes. I have a body with nice arms. I have a body that looks good in dresses. Just anything that you, again, you believe, and that's the key, you have to believe the new thought, but believing that thought and letting that thought become the next normal thought for you by continuing to practice it. And then once that feels normal, you keep going until you get to the thought that you really want to get to. Also, your ideal thought might change along the way. You want to be open to that too, but whatever it is, the goal is to continue to move away from that thought you didn't want and move toward the thought that you do want so that you can start creating feelings that you wanna have, which then will create different actions for you, which then will get you the results that you want. That is the whole goal of this.

Another quick example here just to drive this home, and this is something that I've used a lot. I have done a ton of work on my money mindset. That was a huge piece of when I first got into coaching, like specifically what I was getting coached on. I love using this example because money used to be such a Achilles heel for me, and my money thoughts would cripple me, really blocked me from earning money and really kept me in a bad spot. And now I genuinely don't worry about money. I just feel very calm and confident when it comes to money. So the way that I got there was through a lot of coaching, but one piece that I used when I started to change my thinking was that I noticed the thought that I had, which was definitely a highway for me, was I'm bad with money. And I just sort of grew up understanding that that was the case. We didn't have a lot of money, money's hard, and I just somehow internalized all that messaging and thought, okay, I'm bad with money. And where I wanted to get to was money is easy. That's the thought I realized I wanna get to. I didn't even wanna get to like I'm good with money, I just wanted money to be fucking easy. And that was the thought I wanted, money is easy. I couldn't get to money is easy right away. But I started to have the thought going from I'm bad with money to I have some money, I have some money. That's like a super neutral thought. It's not good, it's not bad. And so I started just any time I would think about money and be stressing about money or open a credit card bill or pay the rent or whatever it was or get my paycheck, whatever it was I was freaking out about, I just started to notice and then sort of gently correct my thinking, essentially just veering the car onto a different highway where I was thinking, no, it's not that I'm bad with money, I have some money. And that very quickly became kind of just a normal thought for my brain. And I would think it all day long. I remember like paying for coffee and like just going throughout my day, I would be thinking like, I have some money, I have some money. And then I moved to, I have enough money. Like I have enough money. Sometimes it would be, I have enough money to get through today. I have enough money to get through this month. And I would just stay focused on that because I believed that. I didn't know if I had enough money to get through the next 30 years, but I knew I had enough money to get through today. And then I went to, I'm not great with money, but I'm not bad with money. So that was another step on my thought ladder and so on and so on. And then eventually I got to money is easy. I got there a lot faster than I thought I would too.

But what happens is like once I got to money is easy, along the way money started to become easy. So because as I was changing my thinking, I was also changing my feelings and from not feeling like panicked or desperate, which is how I had been feeling when I was thinking I'm bad with money and bad with money. I just was feeling so anxious and nervous like I wouldn't even look that closely at my bills. I didn't want to budget because I was scared of what I would see. And so I was bad with money. And then fast forward as I got better and better in terms of my thinking, my feelings became less tense and more neutral and then eventually a little more open and a little more abundant and a little more at ease, kind of normalized this idea that money is easy for me. And as I did that, I changed my feelings. And as I did that, I changed my actions. So I'm somebody, when I was like super stressed or tense about money, I tended to overspend in order to make myself feel better. And I know a lot of people do that. It sounds super counterintuitive, but it's what a lot of people do, which I didn't know at the time until I actually started getting coaching on this. I didn't realize how normal that reaction really was because we don't talk a lot about money in our society, like our personal habits with money. But that's what I was doing. I would feel so like depressed or anxious about money or overwhelmed or scared that I would just spend money to make myself feel better. And then I was just kind of getting myself in a really bad cycle, right?

Fast forward to the thought money is easy. My emotions are much calmer, much more confident with money, and I pay a lot of attention to money. If money is easy, I pay a shit ton of attention to it, as opposed to just ignoring it and putting my head in the sand like I used to do because I was so scared. And then from there, I create a lot more money. I have a lot more money. I spend with ease, it's not a big deal. So again, this just kind of illustrates the importance of why changing our thoughts is so key, and also just gives you another example of how you can use a thought ladder to help you out as you change your own thoughts.

Okay, so that's all it takes. That's what it takes to change your thinking. It's not that complicated. Again, we just don't get taught how to do this. So again, the steps are, notice where you are right now, what results you have, and what are the thoughts and feelings and actions that are getting you to those results, and then decide on purpose where you want to be ideally. Where are you going on the GPS? Where are you gonna land, okay? What are the thoughts, feelings, actions, and results you ideally wanna have? And then think one thought that you believe right now that is just slightly better, one step up the ladder from the thought you currently think that you also believe, and that is the key. Practice, practice, practice that thought until it's normal, whatever way you need to, write it down, sticky notes, alarms on your phone, whatever it takes. Put it, like, write it in pen on your arm and roll up your sleeve during the day, whatever it takes. Get yourself used to that thought, normalize that thought for you. Again, build that thought highway in your brain, and then once it is normalized for you, once it's easy for you to think that thought and you genuinely feel comfortable with it, then you move to the next thought up your ladder towards your ideal thought. Keep going until you get there.

And remember one other thing, okay? This is a different analogy than the highway, but this also just might help. I like to think of new thoughts as, it's like wearing Invisalign. So I have crooked teeth and I wore braces as a kid and then was lazy about my retainers as many of us were. But so then I got Invisalign as I became an adult. When, when I wear my Invisalign religiously, my teeth straighten out pretty quickly. And when I don't, I have a tooth on the bottom that likes to just sink backwards and it just sits behind my other teeth. And if I'm not on top of it and wearing my Invisalign every night, then that tooth will go back to where it wants to be. It wants to be crooked, okay? My tooth will just go back to that. It's the same way with new thoughts. If you have a new thought and you might be thinking it, you might be getting to that new thought, money is easy, I love my body, whatever the thought is, you might get there and feel it for a while and that's awesome. And then you might notice over time that you're not really practicing it as much or life circumstances might happen. You kind of might just find that you're slipping into some old thought patterns. It's like not wearing your Invisalign for a couple of days and you'll start to notice those old thoughts creep in the way that I notice my crooked tooth sort of moving backwards, right? That's okay. Nothing's gone wrong. It just means you have to be diligent about it. So you have to stay on top of your brain until those thought highways are really, really baked in, or until that tooth is really, really spent a lot of time in the front of my mouth and not sitting behind my other teeth. So I just want to say that just to give you another visual, but also just to let you know, sometimes old thoughts do creep in, that's okay. Just like I have to put my Invisalign back in and get back on it, it's the same thing. You just have to get back, just notice when your brain wants to kind of go back to those old thoughts and then gently kind of steer yourself back to your new thoughts because that's what you're going to need to do if you want to make real change in your life.

But here's the thing, it's entirely possible. I have done it so many times. So many of my clients have done it. It is your turn. You can absolutely change your thinking. That is the roadmap for how to do it.

Okay. That's what I have for you guys today. Let me know if you have any questions at all. I love this topic and I love helping people create new thoughts. You can always find me on Instagram at pivot underscore coaching or you can email me at info at makeyourpivot.co and if you wanna get a little bit more in depth with all of this, then you can reach out for a consult or you can email me for free email coaching which I offer. All that information's over on my website at makeyourpivot.co. All right guys, I hope this was helpful for you. I'd love to hear from you about your new thoughts. So reach out whenever you feel like you want some extra help or you wanna chat, and I will talk to you guys next week.