Episode 61: Don't Fall For Mental Spam

Do you ever catch your mind sending messages that SEEM true but leave you anxious, panicked or confused? Just like spam in your inbox, some thoughts are meant to deceive — but when you pause and look closer, you can begin to see what’s real. In this episode, I’ll share a few ways to recognize the lies and tune your heart back to truth.

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Full Transcript:

You're listening to the Think New Thoughts podcast with Emily Ricks, episode number 61. Don't fall for mental spam.

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.

So a couple months ago, I got a text message on my phone that said, your vehicle has an unpaid parking invoice of $4.35. To avoid a late fee of $355, please settle your balance promptly.

And then there was like a link where I was supposed to go to to pay. And for a minute, I felt a panic and an urgent desire to click on that link to avoid paying $355. And then I was like, wait a second.

I don't know anyone $4.35. I didn't even park anywhere recently that I had to pay. This is spam. They're saying I owe them money, but they're lying to me.

They don't even know me. All they have is my phone number. They don't have my identity.

They don't have my license plate. They just want me to put in my credit card number so they can steal my money. So of course, what did I do then? I scroll down, I go delete and report junk.

And I tap that. Or sometimes I get emails from companies that are like, your account was charged $570 for your antivirus software. If this is incorrect, click this link to resolve, right? And they want me to get super scared so that I'll type in my info, but that's spam.

It feels true when you first read it, but if you slow down and look a little closer, you can see that it's bogus. They're just trying to steal my money. So the same thing happens inside your mind.

Thoughts come all the time, almost like emails or text messages, right? And so many of the thoughts we think are actually not true, but we believe them anyway. So I want to talk today about why this happens and what you can do about it so that you can stop falling for mental spam. One of the core pillars I teach as a life coach is that your thoughts create your feelings.

And this happens, even if you believe a thought that isn't true. Okay. An untrue thought still creates feelings inside of your body.

So here's a story to illustrate this. Maybe you've heard it before. It's called the cookie thief, right? So it's basically, there's a lady who's at the airport.

She's going on a trip and she buys some cookies and then she sets her stuff down and she's reading a book while she waits to get on her flight. And this guy sitting next to her starts eating her cookies. And she's like, Oh my gosh, that is so rude.

And so she's reading her book and he's doing his thing. And he keeps continuing to take a cookie. And so then she's like taking a cookie and eating it.

And he's taking one and eating it. And she's getting more and more frustrated that he's having half the bag of the cookies that she bought. And then there's only one cookie left.

And by this point, she's getting really, really upset. And she looks over at him and he looks over at her and he smiles. He breaks the cookie in half.

He gives one half of it to her. And she just can't believe it. Right.

She's like, what? Like, how could he do that? Then she gets on the airplane and eventually opens up her purse and she finds her bag of unopened cookies and then realizes what really happened. Right. So her first thought was he's eating my cookies.

That's so rude. And so when she's thinking that thought, she's feeling angry, even though it's not a true thought, right? He's not actually eating her cookies. She's eating his that's the truth.

But she was believing that he was eating hers. And so she was feeling angry because thoughts create feelings, even if the thoughts themselves are not true. And then once she stopped believing that thought that wasn't true, she didn't feel angry anymore.

She felt regret, right? She felt like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I did that to him. So that's what I want you to remember. Even untrue thoughts still create emotions.

Another way of explaining this is with an April fool's joke that was done to my husband. One time, one of his coworkers put, I think they call it an exhaust whistle, but it's basically like a little thing that you can put in the tailpipe of a car. And then when enough air is blown through it, it'll make this like crazy whistling sound.

Okay. So as an April fool's joke, they put that in his car, in his exhaust pipe. So he's driving along.

And as he accelerates more, he hears this super weird noise coming from his car. And so his thought was, Oh my gosh, something is really wrong with my car. And so when he was believing that thought, he felt concerned.

He felt unsafe driving it, right? This was, it was a source of worry for him. So he ended up taking it into the shop to get it fixed because he didn't know about exhaust whistles and he takes it in the mechanic and they pull out the whistle out of the exhaust pipe. And they're like, your car is fine.

So even though he felt like something was wrong with his car, there actually wasn't anything wrong, right? Even though he felt unsafe, he wasn't unsafe. There was nothing wrong with his car. He wasn't unsafe.

But when he believed that there was a problem, he felt very concerned. You see what I'm saying? So untrue thoughts still create emotions, just like true thoughts do. And your body doesn't know the difference between an untrue thought and a true thought.

It's just going to create an emotion to match. I recently taught a masterclass called stop being mean to yourself. And in it, we explored some of the ways that we tend to be unkind to ourselves, like telling ourselves we're not good enough or that we're failing, believing we don't deserve love because of our mistakes, telling ourselves other people are more talented, more important, or more whatever than we are.

Maybe we call ourselves names like fat or ugly or stupid or incapable. It's really interesting to me how mean we can be inside of our own minds in the way we think of ourselves. All of the insults and the negativity floating around in our brains, it's just thoughts.

But if you think you are worthless and that no one loves you, it might feel true to you. But this thought is an exhaust whistle. You're not actually worthless.

You really aren't. If you feel worthless, you just have an exhaust whistle in your tailpipe. You're believing a spam thought, and this is called emotional reasoning.

I feel like an idiot. So I must be one. I feel like I'm unlovable.

So I must be, I feel like I'm not making any progress. So that means I'm not, I feel anxious and scared. So that must mean I'm in danger, but it doesn't always right.

Your emotions don't reveal the quality of your life. Your emotions reveal the quality of your thinking. You feel the way you think, right? So if you think I'm angry, so that means that it was your fault.

What happened? Well, no, your emotions don't prove anything. They just help you discover what you're thinking. So something to keep in mind is that a thought doesn't create an emotion unless you believe it.

Okay. Okay. Here is a way to illustrate this.

Let's say you get a phone call that says your daughter has been in a terrible accident and she's in critical condition at the hospital. If you received this phone call, you would most likely feel concerned and worried and want to get in the car and go see her. Unless your actual daughter was sitting right next to you eating lunch.

Then if you've got a phone call that said your daughter had been in an accident, she was in critical condition. Then you'd be like, eh, I don't think so. I think you have the wrong number, or I think you're mistaken.

There's no way that could be true because my daughter is sitting right here. And that same principle applies, right? If I get a spam text that says I need to pay a $355 parking fee, but I don't believe it. I know it's a scam.

Then I don't actually feel panicked and urgent because I don't believe the message that's coming through. So what I want to tell you today is I just want to encourage you to take some time to examine your thoughts, especially the ones that create really strong negative emotions, because you don't have to believe everything you think. A lot of times when people start to do thought work, they think that the goal is that they need to get their negative thoughts to go away.

Like I needed to stop thinking that, but they're not going to go away. The real work is actually to stop believing those thoughts. And then they won't have the power to create negative emotions inside of you because you'll know that they're not true.

So what are some of the mental spam texts that you fall for? What are the messages that are coming into your mind that actually aren't true? They're just trying to steal your joy. I get mental spam all the time. Emily, you're inadequate.

You're not doing enough. This person's a better mom. You're not making a difference.

You're not making any progress. Your clothes aren't cute enough. And sometimes I fall for it and I go, Oh yeah, I'm inadequate.

I need to do more to prove that I'm not inadequate. What else can I do? Do do at certain times of my cycle. I get loads of mental spam, like a barrage of messages.

You're ugly. You have no friends. You've never accomplished anything important.

I think you do matters. Those are just the thoughts that come. And when I believe the spam, when I fall for it, then I feel discouraged and depressed and dark.

But what I want you to know is that it is possible to receive spam, to have those thoughts go through your mind and also not believe them. That's true in your email, right? It's true with your texts. So when you feel super discouraged or angry or lonely, I want you to know you don't have to believe this spam.

It's just trying to steal your joy. It's just thoughts floating around that you don't have to believe. So how do you find out? How do you find out if it's spam? Well, that's where we use the self-coaching model, right? It's circumstance, thought, feeling, action results.

So you write down C T F A R. And the first thing that helps you to get a lot of clarity is just to distinguish between what the facts are and what the thought is. Just that one thing alone makes a really big difference. So maybe you have a really big project that you're working on or a goal that you were trying to achieve, and you've run into some obstacles and some setbacks, and you're not getting it done in the way that you want it to.

Okay. So on the circumstance line, you might write what some of those setbacks are, what the timeline was that you originally wanted, what the date is today, just, just the facts. And then on the thought line, you would write something like, I'm a total failure.

And maybe that's what you're thinking. And it feels reasonable to think that because you didn't reach the goal that you wanted, right? And you'll notice how you feel when you think that thought I'm a total failure is very, very discouraged and down, but that's actually a spam thought. It's not true.

It's just trying to steal your joy because you could just as easily make a case for showing all the progress that you have made, all the things that you are learning, or you could read all sorts of different autobiographies of people who failed 10,000 times before they found the success that they were looking for. So really what you get to decide is, do I want to believe this? Do I like how I feel when I believe this? It is just a thought after all, just because I received this text message. Doesn't mean I need to click the link just because I received this email.

Doesn't mean I need to call the company. Do I want to believe what this message says? That's what you get to do inside your own brain. And if you want, you can go the rest of the way with the CTF AR model and find out, okay, how do I feel when I think this thought? And then when I feel that way, what do I do? And when I take that action, what does that create in my life? And if you don't like how you feel or what you do or what you create, when you believe a thought, then you can be like, yeah, delete and report junk.

This thought steals my joy. I don't want to believe it. And one final piece on this.

This is something that I think is very helpful. If there's a thought that you struggle with. Okay.

So let's say that you've been able to separate the facts from the thoughts. And you know, that when you think this thought that you are worthless or that you've made too many mistakes to be forgiven or whatever other kind of thought might be really heavy and dark for you. And it's going to feel true.

Right? And so maybe it doesn't work to tell yourself like, oh, that's not true. That's spam because you still believe it. Here is something that I find to be really powerful.

Find a quiet place and sit down and ask God, is this true? What do you say about me? And listen for what he says. And the answer might come as you're reading scripture. The answer might come as you're listening to uplifting music.

The answer might come when you're on a walk, the answer might come. I've had this happen to me. The answer might come when I'm interacting with my own children and feeling really intense love for them, even though they have made a mistake.

And then sometimes that's when God whispers to me, see, that's how I feel about you. And I go, oh, oh, right. Quiet time with God and reading his word and listening for his voice.

That is a long-term strategy. The more you do that, the more you'll be able to recognize the mental spam when it comes your way, it will get easier and easier to not believe it. Okay.

So if you believe a thought, whether it's actually true or not, you will feel an emotion, but you don't have to believe everything you think you can challenge your thoughts. You can slow it down. You can find out what's actually true and you can delete and report junk.

When you find out that it's spam, I want to remind you that a thought is just a thought. You can notice it with curiosity without buying into it, without believing that it's true. Okay.

Hopefully this is helpful. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend. Thanks for joining me today.