Episode 43: How Thoughts Are Like Paint

What do your thoughts have in common with wall paint? Turns out... a lot. We’ve been preparing to have our main floor repainted this summer (and wow, it’s been a process), but it got me thinking about how much thought work is like picking paint colors. In this episode, I’m sharing three ways your thoughts shape the emotional vibe of your life—and how to start telling your mental painter what colors you actually want on your walls! 

Grab a free mini session and I'll help you look at some new ideas of thoughts you could think to create a fresh new vibe in an are of your life. :) 

Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 43, How Thoughts Are Like Paint.

I'm Emily Ricks, and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way, so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Hello, how's it going? We are getting our main floor repainted this summer. It's kind of a big project.

It's fun in certain ways, and it's overwhelming in certain ways, but we've been in this house for nine years and had the same paint on the walls, and so we're ready for a fresh coat of paint, and also ready to do some new colors. So it's been a giant process, right? First, we went to the paint store and just kind of started looking at colors and options. We brought home some books, looked at some suggested pairings, we held up paint swatches, and then we sort of zeroed in on a few colors that we felt good about.

So we got the samples and put them on our wall to see how they looked in different lights, and ended up not actually liking them. So we went back to the drawing boards. We tried out some more colors.

We didn't really like those. So eventually, we hired a designer to come to our house and give us her suggestions, and you know, she brought briefcases and briefcases of all of these color swatches and was holding them up, and then like, oh no, we need to try this, or we'll do this lighter shade of this, or whatever. It was really fun to watch her work, and in the end, we did use a few of her ideas, but not all of them, or we were like, yeah, we like that hue, but let's go with a slightly darker once we, you know, painted all of these boards and stuck them up around our house and looked at them in the different lights and things like that.

Last week, we finally decided all of the colors that are going to be part of our main floor, and we have somebody who's going to come paint in a couple weeks. And part of me is like, man, this is so much work. Why are we even doing this? And the other part of me is really, really excited to have new colors on the wall and a new vibe on our main floor.

Today, I want to share with you three ways that thoughts are like paint. Number one, like paint, thoughts are optional, and there are millions of choices. Number two, just like the color of paint you choose creates a vibe or a feeling in a room, a thought you choose to think and believe creates a feeling in that category of your life.

And number three, you tell the painter what colors you want him to paint. So let's talk a little bit about each one of these, and my hope is that there will be something today that helps you claim even more of your power to think new thoughts. Okay, number one, like paint, thoughts are optional, and there are millions of choices.

You know this, right? You can literally choose any color you want to put up on your wall. You go into any kind of a paint store and there's dozens, hundreds, thousands of those little paint swatches have the squares. And even if you were just looking at yellow, hundreds, thousands of options.

If you were just looking at green, there's lighter and darker and Hunter and Stratton. And I mean, there's so many different names and options of possible colors that you could pick. And what we fall into, I think in our minds is we think, well, there's like two choices, you know, like I either have to be mad at her or I have to let her walk all over me.

And I'm like, no, there are way more than two colors to choose from. But people will say things like, I either have to yell or I have to just pretend. I'm like, no, when you're painting your house, you're not like, well, I either have to do dark blue or I have to do magenta.

And it's like, no, that's not true. There's way more than two colors. So I like to keep that in mind, thinking about my thoughts as paint colors.

The second thing is just like the color of paint you choose creates a vibe or a feeling in a room, a thought you choose to think and believe creates a feeling in that category of your life. So if you're going to make a change to paint colors, it's helpful to start by understanding the color you currently have and what you like about the vibe it creates and also what you don't like about it. So for us with our paint project, the color we have in our living room is kind of like a tannish whitish, but it feels yellowy to us.

So we don't really want it to be quite so yellow, right? So what we, the new color that we want to have, we're like, let's not have it be quite so yellow. And in the kitchen, it's kind of like this topi sort of Brown, but it also in certain lights looks really pink to us. And so we're like, okay, when we repaint, let's pick something that's not quite so pink.

So not as yellowy in the living room, not as pink in the kitchen. That's kind of what we were going for. And thoughts are like that too, right? If you think of emotions as colors, then you might say, huh, that thought is kind of angry.

I think I want something that feels a little more calm. Or, you know, that thought of that I've been thinking over here is a little bit helpless. I think I want something that's more empowering.

So do you see how that's like choosing paint colors, that there's so many options. And once you get clear on what you're going for, then you're going to be able to choose something that can accomplish that for you. So here's a question I love to ask.

How do you feel when you think that thought, how do you feel when you think the thought I have to, I don't have a choice. Resentful. Yep.

That's the feeling that that thought creates. How do you feel when you think the thought she's so annoying? I kind of feel annoyed. Yeah.

That's the feeling that thought creates. How do you feel when you think the thought I'm not actually powerful enough to control them so I can stop trying to, I feel relief. Yeah.

That's the color that gets painted on my wall when I think that thought. So I love asking that question. How do you feel when you think that thought, what is the vibe that that thought creates in this room for you? Here's what I want you to know.

You can change your mind if you don't like the feeling your thought creates for you. You think between 40,000 and 60,000 thoughts in a day. 90% of those are repeats from yesterday.

So we all have these same paint colors that have been up on our wall for years. We get used to the colors and that's fine. And you can keep thinking the same thoughts every day, but you can also decide that you want to try something different.

In our previous house, before we moved here, we had in our living room, kind of a two-tone darker green on the bottom and then like a chair rail and then lighter green on the top. And that was really vibrant and it was energizing and it was fun. And we really liked that.

And when we were thinking through for this recent project, okay, what color do we want to have in our living room? At one point we were like, well, we could go back to that thing that we did in our other house. Like we liked that. That was fun.

And so we got some boards and we painted that darker green and the lighter green on it and just kind of held it up. We were thinking about it and we realized like that was fun. That was vibrant.

That was energizing. We liked that. But actually I think for this room, we want something that's a little more tranquil, a little more calm, a little more anchoring.

So we chose something with a different vibe. So colors aren't good or bad, right? It's not like green is bad and this other like bluish turquoise that we picked is good. They just create different feelings.

Thoughts are the same way. They're not good or bad. They just create different emotions, which drive different actions, which produce different results.

So that's what I just really want you to know is that there are thousands of options and ultimately you are the one who gets to choose. Okay. Here's my last comparison between thoughts and paint.

You tell the painter what colors you want, not the colors you don't want. Okay. So think about this.

Imagine if we were to tell our painter, okay, well, um, yeah, we want you to do the main floor and these are the rooms we're going to do and just kind of paint and see how it goes. I mean, don't paint it black. Don't paint it green.

Don't paint it a color. That's going to make it feel too dark, but like, let's just kind of see how it goes. Like, no, you would never do that.

You tell the painter exactly what you want. So we formulated a list of very, very specific colors. Once we made our final decisions, right? It's like 1543 is going to be in the kitchen.

2099 40 is the one we want for the accent wall. And that's going to go here, right? We're going to guide our painter through those very specific choices because we know what we want and we're not just going to leave it to chance. But I see so many people with their brain and with their thoughts, just kind of leave it to chance.

Like, well, that's okay. I mean, let's just kind of see how it goes or tell it. I don't want to be worried.

I don't want to be stressed. I don't want to be this, but not actually really deciding like, yeah, but what, what do you want? That's what you tell a painter, right? You don't say these are the colors I don't want. Go ahead and paint.

You say, this is what I really want to create. And here's the color that I want you to use. So I want to encourage you to tell your brain what colors you want, what thoughts you want it to think.

You don't have to figure out your whole life in one day, but I would encourage you to choose a category of your life. That isn't the color you really want. That isn't creating the feeling you want and try out some new thoughts.

Brainstorm. What are some other options of things that I could think in this situation that would feel better to me. And then think those thoughts for an hour or for a day, put up that swatch, see how it looks in different lights.

And if you land on a thought that feels better than the one you've been thinking, then tell your brain, hey, let's paint with this color. And you'll need to tell your brain when you wake up and 50 other times during the day, what color you want it to be painting, what thought you want it to be thinking. A lot of practices that I have and that people have that helps their mindset is basically telling the painter what color you want it to use.

So having a vision statement that you have come up with and then reading that vision statement every morning. That's something that I do that helps me remember what color I'm wanting to paint with. Getting clear on my values and reviewing those regularly.

That helps me tell the painter what color I want. Writing down in the morning, just a few things that I'm thankful for. That helps me paint with a color that creates a feeling of gratitude in my life.

I love that color. Reading scripture helps me to tell my brain, hey, these are some great colors here in the scriptures. Let's paint with those today.

That's going to create a feeling of peace. That's going to create a feeling of connection. That's going to create a feeling of rest and of patience.

That's what I want, right? Praying, meditating, any of these kinds of practices, the reason they're helpful to people is that it helps you to tell the painter what color you want. I'm not just going to let the painter come in and decide what he wants. I'm not just going to let my brain think any thought that it wants.

My brain works for me. The painter works for me. So I get to tell him the colors that he's supposed to put on the wall.

So that's just kind of a fun way to think about it. Hopefully that's helpful for you. Here's the final thing I'll say about this.

This project of painting has taken a lot of work and it's going to take a lot of time and we're not done yet. There's still additional things that we need to do to prepare and there will be a lot of time and energy and resource that goes to this project. But also it's going to be so worth it.

We can't wait for the feeling that we're going to have when we have fresh paint and new colors and a little glow up on our main floor. And thought work is the same way. It does take time.

It does take energy. It does take work to go inside of your mind to take inventory to understand what you're thinking and feeling and then make different choices. But what I feel is that it is so so so worth it.

It feels so good and so fresh to think new thoughts and to get some new paint colors inside of your mind. If you have some thoughts that have been on your wall for a while and you're ready for a change, I'd love to help you. I think in this metaphor I'm actually the color designer which is hilarious because I am in no way qualified to help you choose paint colors for your house.

For sure do not come to me for that. But like my paint color designer walked me through lots of options, helped me understand what it was I was trying to create, suggested some ideas. As a life coach, that's what I can do for you.

I can help you understand your thoughts, what feelings they're creating for you, help you figure out what you really want, and guide you through trying out some new colors, some new thoughts that create some exciting changes in your life. Go to emilyrickscoaching.com/mini-session schedule a free call and let's get you some new thoughts, creating some new feelings in your life. Thanks for joining me today.