Episode 54: 3 Keys to Help You Think New Thoughts

Want to change the way you experience life? It starts with the way you think. In this episode, I share three simple but powerful keys that will help you unlock new ways of thinking: awareness, ownership, and intention. Tune in to find out how to use these keys to stop spinning in old patterns and start moving toward more peace, joy, and possibility.

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts Podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 54. Three keys to help you think new thoughts.

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.

Hey, welcome back to the Think New Thoughts Podcast, or if you're here for the first time, welcome.

If you've been with me for a while, you already know that my passion is helping people change the way they think, so they can change the way they feel. And let me just say, it never gets old. I love to watch discouragement give way to hope.

I love to see resentment soften into gratitude, and fear dissolve into love. All as a result of thinking new thoughts. It is such powerful, meaningful work.

So today, I want to talk about the three keys you need to unlock the freedom that comes from thinking new thoughts. Imagine that your mind is a hallway lined with doors. Each door can lead to a little more peace, joy, or clarity.

But sometimes, those doors get stuck, or even locked. So today, I want to share three keys that will help you to get past the three biggest blockers that might be getting in your way, as you're wanting to change the way you think. Key number one is awareness.

I would say over half of what we do in coaching is simply becoming aware. Thought work is like investigation, like your Sherlock Holmes, but instead of a magnifying glass and a funny hat, you're looking inside your own mind. Awareness means noticing.

How do I feel when I believe this thought? What do I do? What actions do I take when I'm feeling that emotion? And what is all that creating for me in my life? Awareness is the first step, always. It's like standing in front of a giant mall map. You can't get to Bath and Body Works unless you find that little red, you are here dot.

Or when you type an address into your GPS, it can't give you directions until it knows where you are. Simple enough, right? Just notice what you're thinking. And it is simple, but it's not intuitive for most people.

Most of us actually resist this awareness. We don't realize it, but we push our thoughts away, usually because they're uncomfortable. So resistance sounds like, Oh, I don't want to be feeling this.

I hate this. I shouldn't be thinking that I shouldn't feel this way. I just want that thought to go away.

When resistance is even stronger than this, it can turn into flat out denial. Like, I'm not anxious. I'm not buffering.

Or I don't believe that thought, even though a part of us actually does. The temptation is to skip over the uncomfortable awareness part and go straight to a positive thought, which is kind of like trying to put a sticker over your check engine light. Like, yeah, you're going to feel better for a couple minutes, but nothing really changes until you're willing to look under the hood.

So the first key to thinking new thoughts is awareness. Take the blindfold off and ask yourself, what's my story here? What am I believing? You can use the CTFAR model to map it out. Be the compassionate watcher of your own mind.

So awareness is a door that opens the way to wisdom and compassion and a new path forward. Resistance is one of the things that blocks that door. When you resist feeling your emotions or refuse to admit what's happening, or when you deny what you are actually believing in your own mind, you shut the door on awareness.

You block it. So here's an example. Let's say you've gotten into a habit of shopping when you feel upset or overwhelmed, and maybe you've racked up some consumer debt.

You might be thinking thoughts like, Oh, I shouldn't have spent so much. I shouldn't be like this. I don't want to be getting into more debt.

I hate that I'm doing this. Even when I say I'll stop. And you might tell yourself, this is awareness that you know exactly what's happening.

And now you just need to buckle down and stop doing it. But actually this is resistance, not awareness. And the resistance, the thoughts of hating it and being mad at yourself are actually going to block you from the true awareness that will help you start to form new habits.

If that's what you want. Awareness in this situation would come from getting curious with yourself instead of being disgusted with yourself. So that could sound like, I wonder what I'm really feeling when I get in the car and drive to the mall.

What's the emotion that's driving that action for me. I wonder what the beliefs are that are so distressing for me that are leading me to continue taking this action of buying stuff. Even when I know the overall result financially, isn't what I want.

And then you become the detective and you get out your magnifying glass and you start to investigate your mind. You will get so much more awareness from a place of curiosity than from a place of hatred and judgment. So key number two, to help you think new thoughts is ownership.

Ownership is saying I'm the one creating this. My thoughts, my feelings, my actions, my results, they're mine. Now, of course you can't control what other people say or do.

You can't control your circumstances, but you're always 100% responsible for how you respond. We call that the other four fifths of the model. Circumstances, the C line of the CTFAR model are often outside of our control, but the other four fifths, thoughts, feelings, actions, results, you create it all.

The opposite of ownership is blame. Blame says, it's not my fault. She was being a jerk.

Or my kids are so disrespectful. How could anyone have remained patient in that situation? My boss, my past, my parents, they're the reason that I'm like this. And listen, if you're looking for a scapegoat, you can always find one.

Blame is sneaky like that. But here's the problem. The moment you hand over responsibility, you also hand over your power to change.

So blame is something that blocks the door that ownership will open. Now let's be clear. Ownership is not the same as self-blame.

Ownership doesn't say, oh, I'm the worst. I'm stupid. If I just had more self-discipline, I wouldn't have screwed that up.

That's actually just another kind of blame, but turned inward. And that will also block your ability to think new thoughts. Ownership is different.

Ownership says, I see that I created this. Maybe I didn't realize I was choosing this before, but I see it now. My circumstances aren't always up to me, but what I think and feel and do is totally up to me.

And I claim that and I own that. And here's why that's such good news. If you created it, you can also create something else.

So when you can own that, you are the one creating whatever your results are. Now you open the door to being able to create new results, which you begin doing by believing new thoughts. So that's key number two, awareness of the thoughts, feelings, actions, and results you're creating, even if you're not doing it on purpose.

And then ownership. I am the creator of all of this. Blame will block your progress.

Ownership will propel you forward. And the third key to help you think new thoughts is intention. Intention is living on purpose.

It's deciding who you want to be, what matters most to you, and then aiming your focus in that direction. Without intention, life is aimless. You wake up, mindlessly scroll on your phone, run through your day, reacting to whatever comes at you, and collapse into bed exhausted without really moving toward what matters to you.

It's like playing a game of darts without a target, just throwing darts, but with no intention of where you want them to land. Living with intention feels really different. With intention, you know where you're aiming the dart before you throw it.

You clarify your values, your goals, your vision, and then move toward those things one thought at a time. I always think of Alice in Wonderland when she asks the Cheshire cat, which way she should go. He says, that depends on where you want to get to.

And Alice says, well, I don't care much where. And so of course he says, then it doesn't matter which way you go, right? Because without intention, any path will do. With intention, you're charting a course.

And by the way, don't confuse intention with perfection. Intention isn't about never messing up. It's about living with clarity instead of just doing it by default.

It's about saying, this is who I want to be, and this is where I'm headed. And then from there, plan to fall short, plan for the dart, not to hit the bullseye, but then you can titrate your strategy and get closer and closer to the target by continuing to intentionally aim and then making adjustments. One of the main blockers to intention is not knowing what you want or being unclear about it.

The other blocker though is knowing what you don't want and putting all of your focus there. Like creating this whole dart board that you don't want to throw darts at and thinking about it all the time and how you don't want to be angry and you don't want to judge people and you don't want to lose your temper and you don't want to be overweight or lazy or stingy. And here's the thing.

It can be helpful to spend a little bit of time clarifying what you're not aiming for, but in the end, you need to spend at least as much time and hopefully a lot more thinking about focusing on throwing darts at what you do want in order to be able to bring that into your experience. I think anxiety is what we feel when we focus on what we don't want. Worrying is focusing on what we don't want.

Frustration is focusing on what we don't want. But on the other hand, we create feelings of motivation, clarity, and joy when we focus on what we do want. So on your journey, as you want to think new thoughts, I want to encourage you to take some time to shape your intention.

What do you want to feel? What do you want to experience? What do you want to create? And then you can decide what thoughts are going to lead you in that direction. So there you have it. The three keys that will help you think new thoughts.

Number one, awareness instead of resistance, which blocks it. Number two, ownership instead of blame, which blocks it. And number three, intention instead of aimlessness or focusing on what you don't want.

Awareness, ownership, and intention. These are the main tools that make change possible. And when you start using them, you'll notice your discouragement can turn to hope, resentment to gratitude, and fear to love.

But let me be honest with you. We call it thought work because it really actually is work. It takes effort to lean into awareness instead of falling into resistance.

It takes courage to claim ownership instead of shifting blame. And it takes discipline to live with intention instead of just being aimless. And yet I believe it's the most energizing work you'll ever do because unintentional living, the resisting, the blaming, the drifting, that's what drains you.

Thought work, on the other hand, will actually fuel you forward. It takes effort, yes, but it gives back tenfold. So listening to the podcast is awesome, but if you're ready to take it to the next level, I recommend that you start writing down your thoughts so you can gain more awareness.

I have a new resource. It's called Catch That Thought. It's a simple faith-based tool to help you notice negative self-talk and gently shift it to new, more joy-filled thoughts.

It's a little worksheet that's an easy, doable place to begin if you want to start noticing your thoughts a little bit more. You can download it for free at emilyrickscoaching.com, so go check it out and open the door to some more awareness in your life so you can start thinking some new thoughts. Thanks for joining me today.