Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 486 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! I hope you’re having an amazing morning, afternoon, middle of the night, whenever you’re listening, I bet you’re here because you hope hear something that yo can use to make your day just a little better, I will try not to disappoint.
My husband sent me a post and in it it said something like get the real dopamine of life…sauna, workouts, climb the mountain, have the relationship, it continues to say don’t live your life on a screen for you can never reach your full potential when dopamine is that easily attained. Woah so true
We weren’t meant to get our highs and lows from a screen. The dopamine we get from social media is so saturated that everything else feels boring in comparison. It’s like eating donuts and hamburgers and milkshakes and then wondering why the broccoli tastes so bland. If you’ve been wondering why some of the things you used to LOVE feel a little boring it could be your brain is hyped on saturated dopamine. It may need a cleanse. That’s just a little food for thought, the quote made an impact on me so I thought I would share.
Ok. So in Mondays episode I talked about how sometimes I have thoughts like I am tired of having high standards. Just a momentary thought but one that is not useful and so I talked about wrangling it to the ground. And that’s what I did. If it pops up again I will be already aware that it’s not useful and I will wrangle it to the ground again. In other words I will get control of it before it gets control of me.
That’s probably one of the more useful tools I have discovered from my years of studying stoic quotes and reading Wayne Dyer and Eckart Tolle is recognizing those thoughts that could be problematic BUT we have control over them. We don’t have to just allow them to run our life. We can turn them around.
Marcus Aurelius a roman emperor and stoic philosopher once said “ the happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thought, therefore guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable-nature. ”
I like that idea of not entertaining a thought that isn’t useful. Simply not entertaining it. What does that mean? Well it holds the reality that we are going to without a doubt have thoughts that are not useful but also the reality that we get to decide whether that thought is going to wreck our day, cause us to cancel the plans, pick a fight, drink all the alcohol, whatever it is you do when you entertain thoughts that aren’t useful, it holds the reality that it doesn’t have to be that way. That is the idea of not entertaining a thought.
A thought is the seed to every action. If you look at the things you’ve accomplished in life. They started with a thought. If you look at the things you’ve done that maybe you wish you hadn’t, they started with a thought too. Our whole life is driven by our thoughts..which is scary given the fact that we have around 50,000 thoughts a day, 80% of which are negative…
So our job as the watcher and the creator of our own life is to sift through which thoughts are going to move us forward and which ones are going to set us back. We are going to have both. It’s one of our biggest jobs is to decide which thoughts to entertain and which thoughts to disregard.
When my family was in town recently for their religious convention, they were with my other sister who we doesn’t have anything to do with us because we are not in her religion, but my mom and dad and big sister and aunt and cousin was in town too. They don’t invite us to go to dinner with them like they used to because of my sister. I noticed thoughts popping up like they could stand their ground for me or it’s ok to hang out with me when she’s not around but when she is I’m left out. I noticed a couple of those thoughts pop up. Now the thoughts aren’t wrong but they also aren’t useful. They aren’t serving me. So I changed them. I told myself that I get to see them way more than she does and it makes them happy to get to spend time with all of us so it makes me happy for them to get to see her. I’m happy they are happy. That’s where I left it and anytime a little thought popped up that was negative about that I just reminded myself by choice I’m not there and I’m happy they’re happy, which was true. I wasn’t lying to myself I just wasn’t letting myself go down a rabbit hole that wasn’t going to serve me or anyone else. Those are the type of thoughts you want to wrangle to the ground quickly. Get hold of them before they get hold of you.
I have been reading a book at night it’s a little bitty book, I recommend it to anyone who listens to this podcast regularly, you’ll like it. The name is “ “. There’s a man speaking with a sage throughout the book, at one point they come to a fork in the road and he asks which one is best for him, she tells him both lead to the same place but one of them is MUCH more difficult. As I look back on my own life I believe that to be true. I’ve made decisions that have set me back and decisions that have catapulted me forward. The decisions that set me back, they made life hard but the growth that came from them I wouldn’t change, and looking back I realized I needed the growth that came with the mistake. So here again thoughts of regret over past mistakes are not useful.
Don’t entertain thoughts about things that aren’t useful. Simply don’t entertain them. When one pops up, and it will, tell yourself, just say “come on, that’s not a useful thought”. I do it a lot. The other day Eric my husband was a little grumpy and I noticed I had a thought like “I’m so tired of him being grumpy” which could have led to other not great thoughts about him and then I realized wait a minute, he’s never grumpy really. He’s awesome, he’s just a little stressed over a few things so I just need to be empathetic, which he always is with me”. And that changed everything. Later that evening he thanked me for always being so supportive, he knew he was being grumpy and he felt my support. Sometimes if he’s grumpy I get grumpy but I changed my thought and it made our life better just that one little adjustment. I didn’t allow myself to entertain the thought of his being grumpy. Even though I had the thought I didn’t entertain it by continuing to think it and adding to it. We are going to have thoughts but we don’t have to entertain them.
I know that’s not always easy but it is always possible. The more you do it the better you get at doing it which strengthens your mind.
There can be no peace of mind without strength of mind., and learning to not entertain negative thoughts is a good place to start strengthening your mind.
My challenge to you this week is to notice one time you have a negative thought and actively say to yourself..you know what I’m not going to entertain that thought and then think something that feels better. There’s always a better feeling thought. Share this with three people that
