Our first inclination when we begin to manage our brains is to simply get rid of the thoughts that aren't serving us; we call this "thought swapping"! The problem with thought swapping is that it's not actually the thought that's the problem... it's the reason behind the thought.

Our brains send us messages for a purpose and it's usually to help us avoid pain or discomfort. If we can discover what our brain is trying to avoid, then we don't have to swap out the problematic thoughts. We can acknowledge our brain's concern, and still move forward anyway!

Want to figure out what your brain is holding you back from? Schedule a free call with me here.

listening to episode 30,

two of burning brightly.

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Give your brain what it needs.

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This is burning brightly, a podcast

for Christian moms who are feeling

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called to build a business and

share their light with the world.

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I'm Bonnie Wiscombe, a life

coach, mom, and entrepreneur.

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And I'm honored to be your guide as you

face this business building adventure full

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of highs, lows, and everything in between.

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This is where we help each

other find the courage to shine.

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my friends.

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Welcome back to burning brightly.

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Today.

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We're going to talk about

what our brain needs.

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Hmm.

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What do you guys think it needs besides

probably less sugar and more sleep?

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Well, brain is actually a super

efficient machine that wants two things.

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It wants us to be happy and

it wants to do it with minimal

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effort, lazy and happy essentially.

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Right.

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do we know this is true.

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Well, because we prefer Netflix

over reading difficult books.

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We prefer chocolate over broccoli

or Brussels sprouts, and we

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prefer sleep over like anything.

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And he sort of hard work, right.

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Maybe lying in the hammock rather than

making dinner or scrubbing the floor.

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Right.

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We prefer things that are

easy and make us happy.

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have to be even mad about this.

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It's just survival.

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It's how our brain has learned to survive.

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It wants to minimal effort so that

we can stay alive yet another day.

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but now that we have these really cushy

lives where we don't have to worry so much

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about our day-to-day survival, our brain

actually sometimes gets in the way of us

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building incredible lives that we want

to build because these incredible lives

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require some hard work on our brains.

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Like wait, but I don't want to do it.

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I don't want to be lazy.

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I want to be happy.

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Just want to watch Netflix all day.

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have to acknowledge and accept that this

is going to come up for our brain and not

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think that we're doing anything wrong.

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Right.

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We've talked about this before.

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this is what I've noticed.

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Amongst my clients and myself as well

is when we start doing life coaching

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or mindset work, thought work.

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We often jump straight to changing

the thoughts that we are thinking.

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Right.

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So we will do a model and we will identify

a thought that is causing some problems

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or some results that we don't want.

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And we want to just swap the thought out.

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We want to just kick it out and replace

it with something more beneficial or that

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will give us a result that we really love.

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But we life coaches are

trained to slow down and stop.

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Thoughts swapping.

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It's not a great idea to just

try to get rid of one thought

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and replace it with another Y.

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Well, because we actually think

specific thoughts for a reason.

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There are a million different reasons

why thoughts might be going through our

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brain, but it's very important that we

figure out why, because otherwise similar

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thoughts, we'll just replace them.

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When we kick out the ones we

don't like, it's not a matter

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of just changing an outfit.

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It's a matter of discovering why is our

brain going there and and how is it

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benefiting us in some way or another?

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Now a few reasons that we might be

holding onto a thought that doesn't

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really serve us is just an old habit.

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We have thought patterns and loops that

come back over and over and over again,

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we kind of get into these, these ruts.

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I love the author, John AECOM.

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He calls them soundtracks, right?

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They're just these soundtracks that

play in our head over and over and over.

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If you've ever had a thought song

stuck in your head, you know exactly

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how annoying this is, but that

happens with problematic thoughts.

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Sometimes just habits.

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Sometimes it's laziness.

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We just allow whatever thought.

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Comes into our brain to

stay there and take up.

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even though it's not giving

us the results we want.

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Sometimes it's actually faulty facts.

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Sometimes our brain is not

aware of all the facts.

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And so we start to think things that

aren't really true or aren't serving us,

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but there is always a reason that your

brain is thinking the thoughts it is.

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Now we can learn and benefit so much

more by investigating the why behind

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these thoughts, rather than just

dumping the quote-unquote unuseful

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thought and grabbing a new one.

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We have to figure out why

our brain is going there.

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So let's talk about what this looks like

in case you're a little bit confused.

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I recently coached someone who was

struggling with a relationship.

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firmly believed that this person

in her life did not value the

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relationship as much as she did.

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That was her main thought it

was, I'm not as important to

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this person as she is to me.

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Okay.

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That would be a painful thought.

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Right?

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You could see how that would be painful.

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Her brain then became expert FBI

investigator and came up with example

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after example, after example of

how and why this thought was true.

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Literally everything this person did

was somehow turned around in my client's

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brain to prove that that thought was true.

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It didn't matter what the, what the person

did that person could have brought a

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four-course meal, drop it off at the door.

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And my friend would've thought,

oh, It's not five courses.

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I know that sounds silly, but our brain

really, really is so good at finding

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reasons to believe a specific thought

that we've already latched on to.

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Okay.

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of course, my client's first thought

was, how do I get rid of this?

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This is causing me pain.

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I want to get through this

thought out of my head.

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I don't want to believe anymore.

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That I'm not as important

to her as she is to me.

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I just want to get rid of it,

but she couldn't let go of it.

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She said every time she tried to change

that thought, believe something else.

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She couldn't EV all this

proof just kept coming up.

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So we didn't try.

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We didn't try to change that thought.

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Instead, we just looked at the Y.

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Why was her brain so committed

to holding onto this thought?

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Have you ever wondered that

about one of your thoughts?

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If you ever thought, gosh, this keeps

coming up and I know it's not true, right?

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we just say it out loud on a,

maybe a coaching call or when

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we're doing our own journaling.

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And we think.

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That is foolishness.

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I don't believe that at all.

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I love doing thought downloads where

we just sit down and write down all

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the thoughts we're thinking about

a specific subject or person or

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something that we're struggling with.

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And I'll write down thoughts and

immediately think that is nonsensical.

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Why has that thought in my head?

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I don't believe it.

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I don't want to believe it.

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Or sometimes you do believe the

thought, but you know, it's not

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helping things is making it worse.

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why in the world would our minds

want to think something that keeps us

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stuck or in actual pain or discomfort?

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You think that our brain would just

be like, no, let's let go of it.

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And sometimes admittedly,

it is that simple.

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We will.

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Be on a coaching call.

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The coach will say, have you

realized that this is just a

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thought, this is not an actual fact

and we'll go, oh, you're right.

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I could just let that go.

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But it's rarely that simple.

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Most of the time we have to figure

out why we're holding onto it.

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So as this client and I chatted

more, we discovered that her

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brain was using this thought.

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To close herself off and

stop being vulnerable.

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This thought was helping to protect her.

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So let's take a closer look

at this really quickly.

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This was the model that we came up with.

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Something happened in this relationship

between my client and her friend.

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She had the thought she doesn't value

the relationship as much as I do.

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She felt sadness.

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Her actions looked like.

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Behaving badly towards those around her.

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She closed herself off a

little bit and pulled back.

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And maybe acted a little bit cold.

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And she even turned to a

little bit of anger, right?

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Cause anger is kind of that

protective protective mechanism.

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She was feeling sad and hurt.

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And so she turned to anger.

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The result was that she was

actually at risk of threatening

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the relationship herself.

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Her brain was getting her to act

in a way that the relationship

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meant less than it actually did.

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Does that make sense?

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So even though she wanted to be

vulnerable and she wanted to have this

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great relationship with this person,

because her brain thought that maybe

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the other person didn't feel that way.

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She started to close off.

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Okay.

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So relationships in particular require

both parties to be very vulnerable.

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So when our brain senses that maybe that

person isn't as committed as I am, it

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wants to pull back and protect ourselves.

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That makes sense.

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Right?

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Why would we want to be in a

relationship with someone who's

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not as committed as we are.

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That sounds terrifying.

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And it sounds like recipe for disaster.

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We're going to get hurt.

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We're going to get disappointed

at some point, let's pull back and

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close off, but that's the worst

thing to do in a relationship.

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So interesting.

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So let's take an analogy for a second,

cause you guys know, I love analogies.

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Let's think for just a second, about

how you drive the posture of how you

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drive in a car when there's no risks.

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Everything's going well, right.

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just kind of sit relaxed, maybe lean

back in your seat and you're kind of

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holding the steering wheel relaxed,

maybe just with one hand, right?

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But if somebody cuts you off or

you have a close call or someone

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runs a red light in front of you.

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W what is your posture?

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Do it tenses up, maybe you white

knuckle, the steering wheel.

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Maybe you swerve.

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Maybe you reach your arm out to the

passenger side to protect your kid.

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Who's in the seat.

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adopt a defensive posture in

order to try to save your life

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and your loved ones lives.

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exactly what we're doing in relationships.

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We throw our guard up when we think,

oh my gosh, this might be dangerous.

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Even when having the guard

down is what allows us.

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To drive safely, right?

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So we must allow ourselves in

relationships to let our guard down in

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order to love others and to be loved.

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But again, when our subconscious senses

danger, maybe it's in the form of a friend

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or a loved one pulling back somehow.

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Then that prompts us to protect ourselves.

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Our arms fly up, we get

angry, we pull back.

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Right?

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We things that actually damaged

the relationship because we

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don't want to get hurt and we

don't want to get disappointed.

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Isn't that so fascinating.

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I find it so fascinating.

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And guess what friends you knew

I was coming back to this, but

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it happens in business too.

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Absolutely.

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All the time.

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We will come up with thoughts.

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Like nobody wants what I have to offer.

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Nobody wants what I'm selling.

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our brain senses danger discomfort in

the form of potential disappointment.

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It does not want us to put

ourselves out there because it

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doesn't want to be disappointed.

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And it doesn't want to fail.

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So pay attention to this and don't

let your brain lead you astray.

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We can.

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Truly, truly find evidence for

any story we want to believe.

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We can find evidence that

nobody wants what I'm offering.

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We can find evidence that everybody

wants what we're offering.

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We really can.

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But just notice when your brain wants

to believe that you're going to fail,

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because that is a defense mechanism.

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It is trying to protect you.

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It's not trying to make you fail.

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It's trying to make you stop before

you actually fail before your

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failure gets really big and scary.

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Okay.

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Don't hate on your brain for this.

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Just acknowledge that is

trying to keep you safe.

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only believes the thoughts that's

coming up with, because it is so

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terrified of the alternative, which is

failure as it, as it deems at right.

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Just listen to this acknowledge

that this thought could be right.

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And we're going to put

ourselves out there.

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Anyway.

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I think this is so powerful.

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That's what we came back

to on this client call.

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I told my client, you can believe that

thought you can keep believing that the

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person is less invested than you are,

but show up as an amazing friend anyway.

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Love her anyway, a hundred percent.

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Do everything you would to a friend

that you felt was a hundred percent

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there because that's the kind of

friend you want to be and it's going

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to make the relationship even better.

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Same thing with our business friends.

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We can believe that we're

going to fail it's okay.

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Because chances are good.

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We're going to fail some at

some point or another, right.

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Chances are good.

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We're going to be uncomfortable or

disappointed or something go wrong?

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But by believing that thought early on.

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That we're going to fail and

nobody wants what we have.

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It just ensures that we pull back and

we don't show up a hundred percent

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and we deserve more than that.

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You can believe the thought that

maybe nobody wants what you're

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offering, but offer it anyway.

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Give it to the world anyway.

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Don't try to convince your brain

by thought swapping instead,

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just get out there, do the work.

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And then you get to prove to your

brain that it was wrong by seeing

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actual evidence of people signing

up for what you have to offer.

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Is it so fun?

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You guys, this stuff is so great.

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Thanks so much for tuning in this week.

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I

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I have something super exciting coming up

for you guys in just another week or two.

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So stay tuned on the podcast.

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be perfect, especially for any

life coach that is feeling stuck

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or like they don't know where to

go next to launch their business.

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I've got you covered.

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So we'll talk to you next week.