Dear Pinkies, Please welcome back Tre Thorsen of thoughtbythought.net, where she helps us all to redefine our reality by changing our perspective. Tre comes to us today with some wisdom about taking the reins back from the debilitating, out-of-control thoughts that so often discourage and paralyze us (sound familiar?). Thank you Tre – we needed this for sure. Enjoy, Pinkies!
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Being a passenger of a speeding driver can be an unnerving experience. You feel scared, out of control, nervous about not only your own safety, but the driver’s, your fellow passengers’, and that of those in surrounding cars. You feel stuck, alone, and you want out.
Hold that feeling. Switch scenarios.
This time you’re not sitting as a passenger. You’re walking around in your day to day life. And the speeding driver is the thoughts pressuring you, condemning you, attacking you, sabotaging you.
Your innermost self feels week, vulnerable, not safe … and you want out.
Here’s the difference:
In the first scenario, you can’t physically make the driver slow down. You can beg, plead, threaten. You can even fling open the car door to prove your point. But it likely won’t change anything.
But in the second scenario, you can absolutely take over. Why? Because in that scenario, we’re talkin thought. None of us have to sit there and be passengers of dictatorial condemning influences, especially when they come disguised as our thinking …
… like as we walk through our day:
“You suck.”
“You’re never gonna get done what you need to.”
“Why bother? Everything you ever try doesn’t pan out.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Here ya go again, what’s the point?”
… or as we’re getting dressed and looking in the mirror:
“What’s the point?”
“You’re ugly.”
“You’re fat.”
“You look heinously gross.”
“He/she is gonna take one look at you and see a complete facade.”
Can you relate?
Here’s the deal: if you cave … if you let the speeding driver rule a conversation in thought, you’ll get stuck in the mode of feeling constantly unsafe. But you don’t have to. At any moment, you can shut up – and shut out – that condemning mental influence. It’s not only vital in the moment, but is also imperative to begin to feel safe and confident about your choices in any situation, in any circumstance, and on any level.
It happens to everyone
Some days I wish I had a way to record the destructive self-babble that tries to stall all of us, and play it back in some kind of open-air arena so that every human on the planet would hear and see that he/she is NEVER ALONE in this kind of thinking. It’s just that some are better at ignoring it than others.
Here’s some ways to squelch the self-babble and maintain control of the wheel:
- Be Aware. Be aware of the conversations taking place in your thoughts. The first step to reclaiming control of your mental steering wheel is to recognize when it’s being driven by an influence counter to your values and productivity.
- Realize. Realize that these derogatory influences are not your inner voice. You didn’t cause them, create them, birth them, befriend them, and you sure as heck have never consented to align with them. Period. You are under zero obligation to respond or react in any way to these influences. And let me be clear: listening to them and tolerating one iota of what they say is a kind mental response, or consent. And you never, ever have to give your consent. It’s simply mental haze, and you have zero reason to feel guilty or wrong that you are having these thoughts in the first place.
- Refuse to consent. It’s that simple. You recognize the voice that is derogatory. You become the Joan of Arc of thought, refusing to allow those influences to govern your moment. It’s an adamant, assertive, defiant refusal: “No way. I’m not believing this balogne. Not for a single solitary second.” Often it takes several refusals, and a willingness to talk the derogatory muck down in order to shut it up and out. But refusing to consent is vital. It’s the refusing to continue to be the passenger of that reckless, speeding driver.
- Refuel with gentle truths. At any given moment, you know your “why.” You know why you’re sitting down to blog. You know why you’re getting ready to go out. You know why you’re striving to birth a new business. You know why you’re trying to nurture and grow a family, build stronger relationships with colleagues, cultivate a better life for yourself, and on and on. You know your why. (p.s. the voice that says “you’re a dumb idiot who’s aimless and doesn’t know her why” is one of those derogatory influences you’ve refused to consent to!). In the same moments you refuse to consent, flood your thoughts with your “why” – and I mean FLOOD IT BABY. You know what you’re about. You might make it as simple as cherishing the good you are about. Think of the ways you strive to see the good, to love more fully, to be more accepting, to forgive. Think about the effort you’re willing to pour into anything that would help a loved one, a neighbor or a population in a desperate situation whom you may never meet. But flood that thought girlfriend of truths about you. It helps to squelch the derogatory self-babble fully and finally.
- Breathe and Be. After you’ve flooded thought with these truths, pause. Breathe and be. We’re all in the process of sculpting lives of meaning; lives that matter. It’s not a “wham, bam thank ya ma’am” one-day, one-month, or one-year kind of effort. It’s a life journey. And this is vital to remember because patience and compassion are essential.
You owe yourself permission to drive … gently. Your safety, your ability to thrive depend that you master that self-babble.
Are you Pinkies familiar with the reckless driver of your thoughts speeding you down the road of life way too fast, and in the wrong direction? How can we help you take back the wheel?
I know you can do it!
Swerving and veering my way back to peace,
Tre
