Let’s begin with a visualization. Picture this: It’s a beautiful summer day, and you are at the beach. You decide to go for a swim, and once you are in the ocean gazing back toward the shoreline, you lie back in the water, close your eyes, and start to float. You are suspended in the water, and it takes no effort on your part whatsoever. You can feel the sun warming your face and are completely peaceful. All of the noise disappears; it’s as if you are floating in amniotic fluid in your mother’s womb. Complete peace-a state of bliss! And then, for just a brief second, you feel something brush up against your leg!!!! Quickly, you jump upward out of your reclined position, and your eyes dart in a circle at the water around you. You are treading water frantically, and your heart is beating out of your chest. Do you make a mad dash for the safety of the shore? What is going through your mind? The peaceful experience is gone, and you are now in panic mode. Even if this has never happened to you in your life, I’m sure you can relate in one form or another. We have all been cruising along in life when, out of the blue, something “touches your leg,” and the perfect peace you have been experiencing is shattered by fear.
Life is like that. We are all vulnerable to changing thoughts and emotions that can rock our world. Have you ever experienced a health scare, chronic pain, the loss of a loved one, a financial setback, a critically ill child, betrayal, aging parents, relationship troubles, or even complete fractures such as a divorce? You are not alone. We have all gone through or are currently experiencing difficult circumstances in life.
Circumstances like these take us out of balance and put us into a position of complete discomfort where we have a choice to make: Do I sit in the victim’s seat and play “woe is me” and assign blame to everyone, including myself, and become bitter? Or do I choose to experience the pain and discomfort and use it for my growth and to become a better person? Will I use this experience to make me stronger, wiser, more empathetic, and resourceful? Because life is not a dress rehearsal. We only have one shot at it. It may seem like it’s going at mock speed, or conversely, it’s going at a snail’s pace, depending on your circumstances.
I remember when I was a young mom with two kids in diapers. My mom had just had a stroke, and she, too, was in a diaper. This was on the coattails of losing my father the previous year. It felt like I would be stuck in that season of life forever! But then I blinked, and now I’m an early 60-year-old woman living clear across the country where, in my wildest dreams, I never thought I would be! Now, it seems that time is going so quickly; if I allow myself to believe it, the time I have left is very short.
What happened in between was a series of life events that have defined my character and that have formed me into the person I am today. You see, I became I life coach because it felt like I was stepping into my calling. I wanted to use the difficult times in my life, of which there have been many, to ask this one question: Are there others around me who are struggling from a similar woundedness? And how can I use what I have learned to help them?
If we wait until the circumstances in our lives are all good, for the stars to align to be happy, we are going to miss the magic of life. It’s the floating-it’s a choice. By taking my thoughts captive, I’ve learned to make a deliberate choice to be happy in the moments of chaos, uncertainty, and pain-to know that these are the times that shape my character and make me the person that God intends for me to be!
If we miss it, we are going to be disillusioned by life, resigned to complacency and mediocrity, and forget the miracle of each moment-which is really all that we have. We are not guaranteed tomorrow, and there’s NOTHING we can do about yesterday. But we can choose what we do now-how we respond to what today brings.
SO…..What does it look like to respond in a way that reflects who we are authentically? It starts with examining our thought lives. By taking a deep dive into looking at our habits of thinking we can identify where our thoughts are leading us astray. Why? Because our thoughts lead to emotions-how we feel about what we are thinking. Our emotions, if out of alignment with what is reality, can take us down a path we really don’t want to go and cause us to behave in ways that don’t let us show up as our best selves.
A perfect example of this… How many times have you behaved poorly from behind the wheel of your car? Maybe you addressed a fellow driver with words like “idiot”! Or perhaps maybe something even more colorful because their driving skills don’t measure up to what you thought they should be?
Here’s a fun one I’m going to tell on myself. About ten months ago, I was at Publix, waiting in line to pay for my groceries, and I noticed a young woman standing in the line next to mine staring at me, and then without taking her eyes off of me, reached over to whisper something in her partner’s ear. I was so offended! I couldn’t image WHAT she was saying, but I was convinced it was something insulting and, in that split second in my mind, had summed her up as a real you-know-what! She must have seen the look on my face and decided to immediately diffuse the situation because she smiled at me and said, “I was just telling my husband how pretty I think you are!” I was so embarrassed and couldn’t have been more wrong!
You see, our thoughts, when at risk, can really get us into trouble. They cause more upset, catastrophizing, and anxiety over things that probably didn’t or will never happen. Moreover, they can cause us to react in a way that isn’t in line with our character or our values. Have you ever reviewed your day in your head and thought to yourself, now, why did I say that, or why did I do that?
So now that you have a better understanding of how our thoughts can hijack our emotions and change our behavior, I would be remiss in not mentioning that 90% of our thoughts go unnoticed-that’s right, they’re subconscious. So, how do you identify those? I’m glad you asked! I spent the first half of this year receiving a second coaching certification that addresses that very issue.
Habit Finders is an organization that trains coaches to help you create an awareness of your thought life in order to change the habits of thinking that keep you from living your best life. We use an assessment that mathematically measures your patterns of thinking, and the results show you where these thoughts are showing up in a way that is either helpful or harmful. The assessment is free and only takes about 15 minutes. You get your results immediately, and once you have them, you can schedule a debrief session where we go over your results in order to get a better understanding of how your thoughts are holding you back in certain areas of life. Unlike DISC, Enneagram, Myers Briggs, or so many of the other assessments that are used today, this is not a personality or a temperament test, which can be radically altered based on what we choose to allow others to see. It’s essential to bear in mind that YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. Thoughts are situational and vary depending on what is currently happening in your life. Thoughts can be triggered by past trauma that can affect your behavior. Can you imagine how useful it would be to have an understanding of how your thoughts can create unwanted emotions and behavior?
So, that visualization that we did earlier when you were floating oh-so-peacefully in the ocean? You got it-it’s a product of your thinking habits. I’m pretty sure most of you went to a worst-case scenario, like a jellyfish or a shark! I doubt many of your thoughts were a sexy version of Aqua-Man coming to tell you how beautiful you looked floating there in the sunshine!!!
If you are serious about identifying your subconscious habits of thinking so you can reap the benefits of a healthier thought life, please consider taking the Habit Finder assessment today. You will be able to identify those sneaky thoughts that you are currently not aware of that are keeping you from your best in both your personal and professional relationships. Just click on the link below to access your free assessment.
