Pre-Determining What you Want to Think

I am helping you figure out WHAT to think in order to get what you want.

When I was beginning to learn how to up level my life, I didn't know how to do mindset or thought work.....

So, I am breaking it down on the podcast.

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Courtney

Transcript

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Welcome to the Courtney Gray podcast the show for women who are ready to lose weight permanently, and love their body love the way they feel. And look, I'm going to teach you how to stop overeating and obsessing about food and your weight. So you can be more confident and empowered to then create an even bigger life. I'm life and body coach Courtney Gray. And each week, I'm going to be teaching you how losing and maintaining your ideal weight can be so much easier than it's been in the past. And by taking care of you and achieving your health goals, you will live in even more amazing life than the one you have lived so far. Let's get started. Welcome to the Podcast, episode 77 pre determining what you want to think. If you're in the United States, Happy Fourth of July, I hope you're having a fun day today with family and friends. We every year usually have a bunch of our friends and neighbors come swim with us and eat and drink and just celebrate and enjoy our pool in the backyard. So my husband and I just got back from a long vacation, just the two of us in Santa Barbara Santa Barbara is in Southern California, and it is one of our most favorite places on earth. And every year just him and I get away to Santa Barbara, just the two of us. And it is just the best if, if that's something you don't do right now, in your partnership with whoever you are partnered up with it is highly suggested, we've been doing it ever since our kids were little. And it is just an amazing time to connect in a in a city that we love. And we spend a lot of time together, we also spend a lot of time apart, I do my own thing I journal and go for runs and go for long walks and he usually surfs and we just have a great time. So I want to first say thank you for being here. If you're loving the podcast, I would love for you to follow the podcast. And it's very easy. It used to be called subscribe now it's called follow. When you go into the podcast just in the upper right hand corner, there's a little plus button and you can follow and what that will do is every week when a new podcast downloads, you will be notified, I talk a lot about how our thoughts create the results in our lives. And when I was just starting to learn about how much power we have over the results in our lives, but over anything we want to create. By using mindset. I was very hopeful. And I was very open. And it started kind of making sense to me. But I didn't understand like how to change my mindset. So I would hear like thought leaders say you have to believe big things, or you have to think that money is coming to you. Or you have to be the woman who feels at peace around food. And I was like This sounds amazing. How do I do this? I would hear a lot of people talking about, oh, you need to think this or that thoughts limiting or or don't think this do think this? And I was like great. This all sounds great. How do I do that? And I really didn't understand how mindset could help me do something like lose weight or make more money or be happier, I didn't really understand the how and I didn't feel like enough people were talking about the how, when I thought about mindset, I thought about just being more positive, being a positive thinker. But it's so much more than that. One thing that really helped me figure out how to use mindset was learning the model. And if you haven't heard me talk about the model before, you want to go to Episode 35. It's called changing your life with the model. It really was a game changer for me, and I'm going to talk about it again, if you've already listened that podcast, that's great, because you cannot hear this enough repetition is so important. And when I learned this model, and it's a model, you can actually write down and do it helps you really see how your thoughts create the results in your life. It will really make it clear how your thoughts are creating your results. But then again, what I'm going to talk about later in this podcast is okay, then how do I intentionally predetermined the thoughts figure out what thoughts are going to get me the results I want? And then when I know what thought I want, how do I actually start to believe that thought and so that's what we're going to talk about here today. So first, let me kind of dive into the model. Again, it'll be a great refresher for you if you already learned about it. And I teach this in depth to my clients as I think it is such a game changer for every area of your life. So we have a thought about something and this thought directly impacts the way we feel. And how we feel directly impacts the way we function the actions we take or the actions we don't take and the actions we take or don't take directly impacts the results in our life. lives. So I want to give you some examples. First, this is the perfect example because I think I told you here in Northern California, today, it's going to be 108 degrees. When I was really learning about the model, my coach gave the example of weather and it really was a powerful lesson on how circumstances things out in the world really are neutral until we have a thought about them. And the weather is such a great example because I'm sure you when you hear okay, Courtney's in a town where it's 108 degrees, you have a thought about it. And your thought might be like, that sounds horrible, or that sounds delightful. But the weather is totally neutral until we have a thought about it. So here is the model in action. The model consists of circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, results. Often when I'm doing a model, when I sit down and I write one out, I will put down on my piece of paper, C, T, F, F, A R and in a column, and then I'll write down next to see which means circumstance, it's going to be 108. Today, in Chico, that is the circumstance and it is totally neutral. Until we have thought about it. My thought about 108 I love summers in Chico, I love me 108 degrees. Now, if it was going to be 108 degrees all year long, I'm sure I'd get very tired, but it's going to be 108 today, then it's going to cool off a little bit. I love 108 I especially love 108. Now that I have a pool, before I had a pool, I didn't love it quite as much. So my thought is I love summers and Chico. And my thought directly impacts how I feel. And my feeling when I'm thinking I love summers and Chico at 108 degrees. I'm thrilled. So this feeling of thrilled leads me to take or not take certain actions today. So one of the actions I'm taking is I'm going to be in my bathing suit all day you come by the house, I'm in my suit, I'm going to close up my house so it stays cool inside my house because I'm going to prepare that it's going to be a little warmer in the house than it normally is. I'm going to buy extra ice, I'm going to put out my my I have this really pretty Pottery Barn water pitcher and I fill it with like mint, and strawberries and cucumber when it gets really hot, because I just know that we're all drinking more water. And it's just it just seems very fun. And so I put out this beautiful water pitcher when I know it's going to be really hot outside. I go for an early walk in the morning because I know I want to get exercise I want to enjoy the heat. But I also want to get out early because I don't want to be walking when it's 108 degrees. I get really excited about night swimming when it's 108 degrees. Because I know like tonight, it'll be like 99 o'clock at night. And our pool is literally about probably at five degrees or nine degrees right now. I use my oven earlier in the day. So I can you know not have the oven heating the house up later in the day. And all of these actions directly impact the result of my day. And my day is I really enjoy living here. That is the model circumstances 108 degrees. My thought is I love summers and Chico. It makes me thrilled. It gives me all those different actions that I take or don't take in my life. And the result is I really enjoy living here. I create a life that I really enjoy living. But here's what I am sure someone even if I just think of someone on my street, I can think of a few people I know actually, and that their thought about a circumstance 108 degrees is this weather is horrible. I've actually heard many of them say this weather is horrible. And that probably makes them feel exhausted mentally and physically. And how does that impact their actions? They I would imagine sitting in their house all day. They talk about how horrible the day is. They kind of dread the week they keep checking the weather and like pre dreading the week because it's going to be in the hundreds for a week. They pitch to everyone around them. It's like all they talk about I would imagine they probably talk about their relatives and other places telling them about the weather. They watch the weather they're like consumed by it. And the result for their life is they hate the summers here in Chico. And no people I know people living this model. But when I was first learning about thought work and managing my mind and all of that and, and learning how to create new results in my life, I would hear these two models. And I would ask the question, okay, if someone truly does not like hot weather, like if you're thinking if you're listening to podcasts, and you're like 100 Nate sounds horrible. If you really don't like hot weather, how can you go from not liking it to really loving it? So first you have to want to, you might not want to you might want to be like yeah, this that I don't want to love 108 degrees. So you have to want something different in order to create a different result in your life. So let's assume that you do let's say that you are also in a place that is 100 108 degrees and you Like I do want to be less miserable right now. So you might be thinking, Okay, if I am also living in a place where it's 105 degrees, 108 degrees, and I see how my thoughts are really making me miserable, how do I truly change them? How do I actually choose a better thought? And it really is deciding what you want to think pre determining what you want to think and practicing it. I'm taking a moment to tell you that I work privately one on one with women to help them lose weight permanently, and create a body they love. This is not a diet program. This is a customized program to teach you how to eat the way you want to eat forever. No more restriction, no more willpower, no more losing weight only to sabotage and then gain it back again. The problem is not you, we women are so hard on ourselves. And we think if we could just get motivated or more determined, if we could find the right diet plan or cut out certain foods, we will lose weight and be happy. But the answer is changing your brain and how you think and feel, changing your self image and how you talk to yourself. Learning how to trust yourself. This is how you lose weight permanently. It sounds too good to be true. But I promise you it's not. The work I do with my clients is powerful, exciting, and loving. And it's hard work to but the result is change forever. The women I work with are smart and successful in so many areas of their life, they just haven't been able to figure out their body. This is where I come in, head to my website to schedule a consultation. And we can talk about all the details back to the podcast. So this is what I want to talk about how to predetermine what you want to think how to be the creator of your thoughts. My favorite way to start being the creator of my thoughts is thinking about what I want, what do I want. So you think what do you want, maybe you want to lose weight right now. So let's say that you want to lose weight right now, even though it's summer, even though you have vacations coming up, let's say you want to lose five pounds by August 1, it's totally possible for you. Even if you haven't done it before, here's what you can do, we have the result you want to create the result is let's say by August 1, you want to be five pounds lighter. Think for a minute. And if you can actually listen to this podcast and write down this would be really helpful for you, we're going to basically do that model backwards. So result is we want to be five pounds lighter. So if you take a piece paper and you write out CTF A R and a column top to bottom, and in the our line, right where it says our put a dash and put five pounds lighter, then you go up and you write next to the A which is the action line, you're going to write down what is all the action I need to do you know the things I need to do or not do to lose five pounds in a month. And I regret creative and I would start thinking okay, what could I do to lose five pounds in this month, you might come up with a bunch you might say I'm gonna get twice as much exercise that I normally do. Even if you're going on vacation. In fact, I find that I exercise even more on vacation, I walk more, I get way more steps. And then I normally do I love working out on vacation. In fact, we kind of plan our vacations around being very, very active. So maybe you can get twice as much exercise. Maybe you could drink tons of water to make sure you're hydrated and that'll help fill you up. Maybe you can let yourself get hungry. Instead of always eating and snacking really allow your body to say, hey, we're ready for food. You can pre plan your food. So you have options. A lot of my clients love having options, pre plan options, healthy options for you to have even if you're on vacation. You can stop eating when you're full. Really start connecting to your body and thinking am I full right now? Do I really need to eat this second half of this sandwich or this second half of this meal? Am I full? Do I need to keep eating? You can stop eating after dinner most nights. You can really enjoy your food and eat slowly, which will actually help you really figure out if you're still hungry and you need to keep eating. If you do drink alcohol, can you drink one less drink? Can you choose a drink that maybe has less calories in it? So there's a bunch of action you can take to lose five pounds this month. The next question you ask yourself is in order to take all these actions, how am I going to have to feel and sometimes when you're new to thought work, it can be hard to come up with a feeling but really think about it. If you were doing all of those things, everything you wrote down in the action line. How would you be feeling when I was doing this prep work for this podcast, I thought if I was doing all those, I would feel confident. Another way you can look at it is, in order to do all those, how will you have to feel? Again, I would go back to I'd have to feel confident. And then you can ask yourself in order to feel confident, what would you think about your weight loss for the month, you're wanting to lose five pounds, you're wanting to take all this action, you're feeling confident? What thought What are you going to have to be thinking, to feel confident in your body? The thought I came up with for you is I can do things differently this time. Because for a lot of my clients, summertimes vacations in the past have been hard for them. And they really have a lot of beliefs that it's not possible. So that is a belief that many of my clients, I've suggested to many of my clients, I can do things differently this time. And that makes them feel confident. And then in the Sealine circumstance, it's your weight loss. So now we realize that your weight loss is totally neutral, you can think it's impossible, I can't lose weight on vacation, it's summertime, it's impossible. Or when it comes to your weight loss, you can think you know what, I can do things differently this time, I can still, maybe your thought is I can still have fun. Even when I'm losing weight, I can still have fun. Even when I go to a restaurant and eat a little bit less, you have so many different options of what thoughts you can think. And you can predetermine this thought. So now you have a predetermined thought that you want to think. But now you have to practice it. Seriously, you have to practice it, you can't just think of it and let it fly by, you have to include this thought in your daily work, write it down every morning, you have to maybe put it as a reminder in your phone, you have to say it to yourself, maybe put it on a sticky note and put it on your mirror or put it on in your makeup bag. And so every day while you are going about your vacations in your summer, you are telling yourself, I'm doing things differently. Or I can still have so much fun while losing weight, or I can still enjoy food, even when I'm losing weight, whatever thought you're intentionally pre determining to think you have to practice it. And every time you practice it, I want you to feel that confidence or that peace or that determination or that commitment in your body. And this also takes practice because a lot of times people are like feel the feeling my body, what are you talking about? It takes practice. Now, here's something to prepare yourself for. You're not always going to agree with this thought. As you are going throughout your week or your vacation or your month, you will often have other thoughts, you will have to keep going back to this predetermined thought. So let me give you an example of how what this looks like. So in the past for many, many years, I would work hard all year to go on vacation with my family, we'd go on a few different vacations. And then when I was on vacation, I would continue to work, I would continue to work while on vacation, I would continue to work, you know throughout the holidays. And I would keep I would be telling myself I have to keep going or everything might stop working. It was unintentional. But I really just thought that this I didn't realize that this thought was optional. But I had this thought I have to keep going or everything might stop working. If I stop working, the business will stop working. That thought would make me feel stressed or anxious. And then I would continue working even while on vacation. Even though all year I was working hard to be on this vacation, I would be on vacation and tell myself I couldn't stop. So I continued working on vacation. I mean, I still had fun. But I would make sure I woke up early or stayed up late or whatever. And I would be working while on vacation. So let's fit this into a model. Vacations are totally neutral until we have a thought about vacations. For many years, I had the thought if I stopped working, the business will stop working. That would make me anxious and then I would continue working. And then as I was working, I would kind of break myself telling myself I shouldn't be working I should just enjoy myself. And it was it really put a damper on me vacations. That's the result that came out of all that put a damper on my vacations. But let me tell you how this vacation. This Santa Barbara vacation was for me. Okay, so the vacation is totally neutral. We're going to Santa Barbara and I had predetermined my thought and my thought was taking time off from work with my husband is more important than anything else. That was my thought I had decided that was my thought and that thought made me feel peaceful and happy. And so with that thought I didn't work. I didn't post to social media. I didn't take very many pictures because my husband and I are just that's the kind of couple we are we don't take a lot of pictures. We I don't think we took one picture of us together and you might think that's crazy but we You just enjoy each other. And we don't think to take pictures. And a lot of times, I know I'm not going to be posting. So I don't think to take pictures. I'm just enjoying him. I'm enjoying the trip, I'm very much in the moment, a lot of times, I don't even take my phone with me. I read a lot. I worked out, I relaxed, I went on long walks, I went on long runs, I enjoyed food and drink with him, I connected with my husband, I wrote down this thought, taking time off from work with my husband is more important than anything. I wrote it down every morning and every night. And I reminded myself of it constantly. Those were all the actions I took. And the result was I had an amazing time. But, and this is so important. Even though that was my predetermined thought, and I practice it the whole time. I had other thoughts popping into my brain, throughout the vacation, I still had a bunch of old habitual thoughts there. I had thoughts like any progress I have made in my business is now going away. I had thoughts like I'm not being consistent. My brain would say to me, other people would be posting to social media, you should be taking pictures, you should be taking pictures of yourself that you can post after the vacation. I'm not taking my business very seriously, I had all these thoughts coming at me, less than less than they used to. But I had all these thoughts coming at me while we were on vacation. This is normal. And this is part of why I wanted to tell you this is because often when we hear these thought leaders saying you need to think amazing thoughts to create amazing things in your life. They're not saying Oh, and by the way, while you're practicing these amazing thoughts, you're going to still have shitty thoughts. And that's okay, too. Because I'll tell you all these kind of negative thoughts I just told you. They used to come at me hard when I started doing this work. And they definitely come at me, but less. In fact, I'll tell you, I was out to dinner with my husband. One night we go to this brewery in Santa Barbara that I absolutely love they have this time, they have these different beers all the time. And they had raspberry beer, and it was absolutely delicious. I loved it. But I was sitting there drinking my raspberry beer. And we were kind of people watching and talking and all of a sudden, a thought came to me that like I still hadn't taken any pictures. I should be taking pictures to post to talk about how to eat on vacation, enjoy your life and all the things. And I literally took a kind of a deep breath and I just went in I did not even expect my husband to notice I was doing this news. What are you doing? Are you alright? And I go, Oh, yeah, I'm okay. And I said I just had like a negative thought. And he goes, what? And I go, I just, I just had a thought that I really should be working. And he looked at me like I was crazy because he thinks I've got my act totally together, which I do. But that's one of the reasons why I actually decided to do this podcast is I seem like I have it all together. And I do feel like I have it together. But this is part of the deal. This is so normal that I'm on my vacation. Totally successful. Totally maintaining my weight, feeling amazing in my body, feeling at peace around food, feeling at peace, drinking raspberry beer, knowing that everything is exactly as I want it to be. And I am still having to do this work. This work never ends. And so I told him, I said, I'm still having this thought that I should be doing more. And he looks at me goes wow. And I go no, but this is the deal. I said, I know that my intentional thought and I told him I go my intentional thought is taking time off of work not posting not emailing. Besides what I had scheduled. I know that I might this podcast dropped when I was on vacation. I had pre scheduled that. But knowing that once I was on vacation, I was not going to work that that was more important than anything else. But that I was willing to allow these sneaky thoughts to creep in. And I would just take a deep breath and be like it is okay, that my brain is still trying to get me to work. Part of that is I think just old programming it there are old neural pathways that have been very well worn in my brain for years and years and years. While I built my jewelry business that told me years and years and years, this is how we're doing things you always have to work and I'm still allowing those thoughts and I'm making them not a big deal. So one thing I'd love to do when I predetermine how I want to think about something is I will actually come up with a bunch of the kind of negative thoughts that my brain is going to offer me that will be like in opposition to my predetermined thought. And this is really helpful because what it tells you is when those thoughts come up, it's totally normal. It does not mean you're doing anything wrong. And like I talked about in a few episodes back like we have to to have us in our head right. Once we realize we are going to have those thoughts that are in opposition to what we are trying to do in our life. Once we realize they're there, we realize it's not a problem. And we can see them and just go, oh, it's totally not a problem. Of course, my brain is offering me this thought. And then you can think intentionally. So for you, if you plan on going on vacation and still maintaining your healthy eating, and either losing weight, or maybe, maybe you've lost weight, and you just want to maintain your weight while on vacation, we all do things differently, right? So whatever you want to do, what thoughts might get in the way of your predetermined thought? So maybe you're gonna have thoughts, like, my friends are gonna think I'm not fun if I don't drink as much as them? Maybe you're gonna think I have never done this before. Why am I trying this right now? Maybe you're gonna think I should just start trying to lose weight after vacation. Maybe your brain is going to offer you this is too hard, or this is too hard to eat healthy at restaurants. All these thoughts are just thoughts. They are not truths. But you need to be prepared with what might come up. So you are prepared to go Oh, that's so interesting. And again, go back to saying, of course, my brain is offering me these thoughts, my brain is just trying to keep me from going to my next level, it's totally not a problem. Another thing you can do, too, is poke holes in these thoughts. So like, when your brain says it's too hard to eat healthy at restaurants, which that is a thought a lot of people think and I 100% disagree, I think I mean, some restaurants are hard to eat healthy. But you can find restaurants in most towns, that you can find something healthy on the menu. So if your brain says it's too hard to eat healthier at this restaurant, I want you to go is that true? How could that not be true? And try to kind of like poke holes in that thought or kind of question that thought. So when you take the time to predetermine how you want to think about something, you need to practice it over and over and over. That's the beauty of the daily work. That's the beauty of thought work is it never ends, if you want to be the kind of woman that feels at peace in her body and at peace around food that is available to you. But there are also going to be times when you have these thoughts that seem to contradict that piece. And that is okay. I will tell you, it gets easier and easier when you do this work and you practice. So this is what thought work looks like pre determining what you want, pre determining what results you want in your life, and then kind of figuring out what thoughts are going to possibly get in the way. So we're not surprised. And then practicing our predetermined thought over and over. And it is a practice, and you get stronger and stronger. And I'll tell you, it gets easier and easier. I was telling my husband it is every year we go to Santa Barbara, it is evidence that this work gets easier and easier. The thoughts are still there, the negative thoughts that make me want to question everything and go back to the way things used to be they're still there. But it gets easier to see them and have it be not a big deal. And you can feel more at peace, more confident with the way you want to do things with the results you are creating in your life. So this is what thought work looks like pre determining what you want to think what results you want, what thoughts are going to help you get there, and understanding what thoughts might get in the way. So you are ready. It's I kind of think of myself as like with my hands up like in a fighting position like I'm ready, those thoughts are going to come and it's going to be no problem, because I'm prepared for them. Reach out to me if I can schedule a consult with you. And we can do a personalized weight loss blueprint. It is a new resource I have for clients that are interested in talking about working with me and talking about what it would look like to lose weight permanently. And this blueprint is an amazing free resource that we do together on the console and then I send you the digital copy of it the next day. So I'm really excited. I do three of those a week. So make sure to reach out. If you are ready to schedule one. I can't wait to see you. Happy Fourth of July. If you are ready to lose weight and keep it off permanently, if you have tried diets and you know they don't work and you're ready for real change. I would love to have a conversation with you. I coach women privately one on one, and I'm currently offering consultations to talk about working together. click my link in the show notes or head to Courtney Gray coaching.com Or you can find me on Instagram at Courtney Gray coaching