This episode walks you through how thoughts and emotions are different. Once you know if it is a thought or an emotion you can deal with it appropriately.
I taught this workshop in a group fro Christian business women. You can grab paper, pen and a couple highlighters and walk through the exercise of identifying thoughts and emotions. Deal with the thoughts. Listen to the emotions.
music of 2 minute journaling time: Music by Sergii Pavkin on Pixabay.
Heart Doodling with Jesus is a monthly membership with live workshops and practical tools for growing spiritually and emotionally mature.
Music by Romarecord1973 from Pixabay
Discipling mothers to disciple generations
Kingdom Mothers Rise Up is here for you. There is encouragement and practical steps to improve your relationship with yourself, God, and your child.
I'd love to connect with you. You can find me at:
This episode walks you through how thoughts and emotions are different. Once you know if it is a thought or an emotion you can deal with it appropriately.
I taught this workshop in a group fro Christian business women. You can grab paper, pen and a couple highlighters and walk through the exercise of identifying thoughts and emotions. Deal with the thoughts. Listen to the emotions.
music of 2 minute journaling time: Music by Sergii Pavkin on Pixabay.
Heart Doodling with Jesus is a monthly membership with live workshops and practical tools for growing spiritually and emotionally mature.
Music by Romarecord1973 from Pixabay
Discipling mothers to disciple generations
Kingdom Mothers Rise Up is here for you. There is encouragement and practical steps to improve your relationship with yourself, God, and your child.
I'd love to connect with you. You can find me at:
Today's episode is an edited workshop that I taught in a Christian women's business group on separating thoughts from emotions. Trust that it will be beneficial to you to see why it matters if you can tell if you're dealing with a thought or an emotion, and I walk you through how to deal with thoughts, once you recognize that they're thoughts and where they come from, and what to do with your emotions. And grab some paper, a pen to write with and a couple different color markers or highlighters and do this exercise along with us. I'm McCove Johnson and I have spent at least the last 30 years looking for more effective ways to be content, to be fulfilled, to have strong relationships. Learning because I wanted my kids to be better equipped as adults than I was coming into adulthood, particularly in the area of like self-esteem and relationships. And I am a coach, I'm an author and I'm the developer, the creator of Heart Doodling with Jesus, which we'll talk about a little bit later on. But I wanted to share in this workshop with you why it matters to learn to discern between your thoughts and emotions and how that can help you in life in general and also in your business in particular, so why it matters if it's a thought or an emotion is because we deal with them differently and I prefer to, I guess, kind of facilitate and have you do things along with me so that there's a reason for the teaching instead of just talking at you.
Speaker 1:I know, especially in the business space, I feel like we hear so much about mindset and if you want to change your life, you change your thoughts, and I've found that to not be true entirely. Our thoughts are super, super important, but the Western mindset or I don't know whatever it is, even popular psychology up until the last couple of decades has gotten it backwards. Our emotions create our thoughts far more than our thoughts create our emotions, and I didn't know this was true until recently, but I experienced it Like I spent decades working on my thoughts to see so little change inside in my core Once I started paying attention to the heart and the emotions. And you know we're told to believe when we believe in our heart and you know we're told to believe when we believe in our heart we will be saved. It's not when we believe in our head, it's our heart. And when the scripture mentions your heart and your mind, the heart always comes first and science is now backing that up and showing that our body and our emotions pick up things first, and then our brain makes thoughts and meanings around that. Learning to know the difference is important. And you know, jesus was talking to the religious leaders of the day and they were complaining about things, and he's like you, have evil hearts. How can you tell me you're saying good things? It's out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
Speaker 1:What I want you to do is to grab that paper and pen that I asked you to bring, and we're going to take two minutes. I'm going to do this right along with you. I'm going to give you a statement. I want you to write down the statement. I'm going to give you a statement. I want you to write down the statement and then, after you've written it down, we're going to. I'll just give you the statement first so you can write it down, and I'm going to. I'm I want in life and business, in life and business. Okay, so this everything that comes to your awareness in those two minutes. So you're going to read the statement out loud to yourself and then you're going to write. There's going to be words, phrases, sentences, like there's no right or wrong. It's just a recording of everything that comes to your awareness in the next two minutes. Thank you, thank you. Okay, that was the two minutes, and hopefully you have some things written down.
Speaker 1:So what I want you to do is grab a highlighter or a different color pen or whatever you have, and we're going to talk about the difference between thoughts and emotions. So an emotion can typically be summed up in one word. An emotion can typically be summed up in one word, though we also can use pictures of like I feel like I'm being weighed down, or I feel like I'm floating on air. You know we use pictures to describe, like you know, my stomach is in knots and butterflies. That's valid too. It doesn't have to be a particular emotion word, and thoughts are things that we think or things that spirits tell us. Like God is a spirit, he gives us thoughts. Tell us, like God is a spirit, he gives us thoughts. Satan is a spirit, he gives us thoughts. So first we're just going to sort out the thoughts and the emotions on your page. So I have thoughts like but how do I keep track of it? Do you? Was a thought that was in, that came into my head. Why aren't you as successful as you want? Then was another thought. That was another thought. How successful do I want to be? Was another thought. I circled them in orange.
Speaker 1:Thoughts are things that you think. You choose to think them, and thoughts can be so familiar that they seem more spontaneous, but you're thinking them. Emotions are something you experience and they're rather involuntary most of the time, like when something comes flying at your face, you involuntarily blink your eyes or jerk your head out of the way. When things happen and you experience them, you involuntarily have an emotional response to it, because God designed it that way. Once you've circled your thoughts, then you might have noticed, as I was reading, that some of my thoughts said I, how do I keep track of it? I do have what I need. I'm learning to use it. And then some of them used you Do you? Why aren't you as successful as you want to be?
Speaker 1:The I statements are my thoughts. The you statements are not my thoughts. When I'm observing, like the thoughts that are going through my head, god is not usually. Or if he does talk to me, I like accept it and put it in in the eye. And the first person right away maybe. Um, but I also hear the enemy talking. So if it's, if it's a discouraging, condemning thought, then that's not coming from the Lord, it's the enemy. So the do you that questioning like, do you actually have everything that you need? That's the enemy trying to create doubt, because God tells me in his word that I have everything I need for life and godliness. So we're going to just take input online through those thoughts that are the you statements.
Speaker 1:So I had the, the do you and the well, why aren't you as successful as you want to be? Then, if you have everything, to put a line through that too. Because if it was me asking like, why, why am I not? That could be a helpful reflection. It could also be me beating myself up, but often it's the enemy beating ourself up and if we don't take the time to put it on paper, we don't see the difference in our thought and his thought. So getting it on paper is super helpful for me. It helps, it brings so much clarity and if it's a question that God is asking, it's going to have a different feeling with it. It's going to come with that encouragement and that empowerment of like.
Speaker 1:There's something I want to show you here that's going to get you unstuck, versus the enemy, asking why aren't you as successful as you want to be? And it like having this heavy, like shame, shame on you. Look at how you're failing, or you're not good enough, or whatever it is. If there's any positive thoughts that weren't yours, you can like double underline those. Those are from the Lord. We want to hang on to those. The ones that weren't yours, you can like double underline those. Those are from the Lord. We want to hang on to those. The ones that we crossed out we'll come back to in a minute of what to do with those. We circled the thoughts. We crossed out the ones that we don't want to keep, and then use another color to circle your emotions.
Speaker 1:I have confident, confused, encouraged. Circle your emotions. I have confident, confused, encouraged, discouraged, weary and excited, which I noticed, like I kind of have like the positive and the not so fun on all of those kind of in pairs, but that's okay. So I have my thoughts in orange, my emotions in blue and our thoughts and our emotions are super connected. Like if we spend time thinking about things that aren't the way that we want to be, we're going to feel more discouraged and also, if we're feeling discouraged, our thoughts are going to reflect that and we can. When we talk about what to do with our thoughts, I guess we'll talk about that more On your paper I want you to take and see if you can connect the feelings you're feeling to the thoughts you had.
Speaker 1:So for me, I can connect confident and encouraged and excited, to the thought that I do have everything I need and I'm learning how to access it and use it more effectively. And I can connect the confused and the discouraged and the weary to the thought of but how do I keep track of it, and also to the thoughts that the enemy was trying to feed me. They're interconnected, they go both ways. Feeling confident and encouraged makes it easier to remember that I have what I need. Remembering that I have what I need makes it easier to feel confident and excited. So now that you see there's a difference between thoughts and emotions, then we need to know what to do with them.
Speaker 1:Scripture tells us to take every thought captive. What to do with them? Scripture tells us to take every thought captive. It does not tell us to take our emotions captive. And I talked to so many people whose upbringing and quite possibly their experience in church has taught them to take their emotions captive too. Just stuff them, don't deal with those. They're bad, they're going to lead you astray, they're wicked, all these things and I don't see that that's actually true, like the verse that's quoted most often is that the heart is wicked and deceptive and unrenewed. Heart is to an extent, but that even then doesn't mean that all emotions are bad and should be ignored. I do a workshop called Emotions Shouldn't Drive, but they do get a seat in the car. So our emotions are important, even if they might not, on the surface, be giving us the best advice. We're told to take every thought captive and make it obedience to Christ, and I think that's part of why knowing thoughts and emotions are different, because we don't take the emotions captive. They need attention, but that's different than being being taken captive.
Speaker 1:So the first step is to just recognize your thoughts, which hopefully you had a chance to do in the exercise. Recognizing your thoughts is the first thing, and writing them down is a super helpful way to do that. And, like I said, once I write them down, then I can see is this my thought, or is this a God thought, or is this a thought that's coming from the enemy and regardless of where it's coming from, then we can ask our ourselves how true does this feel? Because God can tell us you're amazing, I love you, I'm proud of you, you're doing well. And sometimes it doesn't feel very true and so we want to work on that because obviously God is telling us the truth, so we want to be able to work on having that feel more true. On the other side, the enemy can tell us that we're a complete failure and we're never getting anything right. And there's times that feels 100% true and we don't want to come in agreement with that and partner with that, because we know anything the enemy says is not 100% true. So we look at how does it make it feel? So we recognize our thoughts, we identify where they came from and we ask ourselves how true does this feel? And then we can ask the question what would make it feel more true or less true, depending on what we need If we're trying to come more in agreement with God, what we need if we're trying to come more in agreement with God or if we're trying to come out of agreement with the enemy, that might need repenting, forgiving.
Speaker 1:The emotions need attention, which we'll talk about. They're just, they're extremely interconnected, but it's so important that we recognize that they're different. Then, when we've done whatever we need to do, recognize that they're different. Then, when we've done whatever we need to do, we need to receive the truth, and so that could be God restating what he already told us that we were struggling with, or him giving us truth to replace the lies that the enemy was telling us. So when we're listening to our emotions, we're told to take thought captives. We need to listen to our emotions.
Speaker 1:Emotions are messengers. They have important information for us, and the lord taught me, I don't know a few years ago now, the verse um, where he says his word never returns to him void. The word that he has, the message that he has for his people, never returns to them void. He built our emotions in to bring us messages. They don't go away until we get the message. There's even a book out there called like buried emotions don't die, they don't. Are all the thoughts and emotions connected, or will some exist independently? I don't think they can exist independently, like biologically even, I don't think they can exist independently. So if on the surface they don't seem connected, probably need to go deeper and if you mean specifically of like what you did in your little two minute brain dump, it could be that you just didn't have time to record everything that's connected.
Speaker 1:Our emotions are important to listen to because they have information for us. So the first thing to do is just to accept them. If you have kids when they're little and they have big emotions, just accepting I see you're sad, I see you're upset it goes a long, long ways. It goes much farther than calm down, knock it off. But so they need to be acknowledged and as adults, as I think, to be acknowledged. And as adults, as I think, especially as Christians. I was kind of taught like being happy and having joy were kind of the only acceptable emotions. Everything else was just supposed to be shut down and ignored. So the first step is to accept that you, your feelings, are what they are and they're not good or bad. They're certainly not good or evil. They just are giving them that space to exist and just be. This is what my emotions are right now. It takes a lot of practice, especially if you have been programmed that emotions are bad and should not be accepted, they should be banished and like dead with your old self or something.
Speaker 1:One of the really helpful things for me in accepting my emotions is putting into practice separating my identity from my experience. Our English language even isn't helpful for that. Like we say I'm discouraged, I'm depressed, I'm whatever, like that's an identity statement, even though that's not what we actually mean by it, but it is an identity statement. So instead changing the language to I'm feeling discouraged, I'm feeling confident, I'm feeling it creates a little bit of space. I'm over here, what I'm experiencing is over here, and so creating that space really helps to accept your emotions. And putting it on paper and I do that a lot through the heart, doodling with Jesus is a whole process of being able to put it on paper and create that space between I am here in my spirit-led self, reborn in Christ, and here's my experience. Once we can create that space to go okay, the emotions are here, I'm listening, and they feel safe, then they can share with us, kind of like with your toddlers, with your little ones. Once they feel safe and the emotion kind of diffuses a little bit, then you can talk and find out what's going on why were they so upset, why were they feeling scared or mad or whatever, and what the message is in that.
Speaker 1:If you are struggling with self-sabotage message is in that If you are struggling with self-sabotage, it's because there are emotions there that aren't heard so often in church. I've heard you know trying to get information to make the journey from your head to your heart, and you know what a struggle that is and it is. And the reason it is is because it's supposed to go from your heart to your head. You're supposed to believe in your heart and then your head follows along, not your head trying to talk your heart into feeling something different. Your heart feels what it feels. When we experience things as very young children, the enemy is right there to help us make meaning of those things, and that's often where these lies come from the fears of not being good enough, of being rejected, of feeling like an imposter. If we don't deal with the feelings of why that's there, all the mindset work is only going to get us so far and it's going to be a lot harder than it needs to be.
Speaker 1:Let me take stressed and overwhelmed, acknowledging I'm stressed and I'm overwhelmed. Validating I have good reason to be stressed and overwhelmed. So acknowledging for yourself it's legitimate that I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed, acknowledging for yourself it's legitimate that I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed and even that, like you typed it, I am stressed and overwhelmed, separate yourself. I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed and that's valid and legitimate. That that's what I'm feeling. It's not my identity, so what am I going to do about it? So that's where, like you've got the mess, the, the initial message of like hey, this is stressful, I'm overwhelmed, but then sit with the stress, sit with the overwhelm and be like so tell me about it, why? Why am I feeling stressed? Why am I feeling overwhelmed? And there's like the big, obvious things. But then there's the underlying, like what meaning am I making from that? Are there things I can do to prepare for that, so that it's not overwhelming? What do I do to prepare? Cause this is happening anyway and I don't need to stay stuck in this place of overwhelmed. I can see that, yes, I'm overwhelmed, and then I can look at, like, what's making me feel most overwhelmed, so that I can make a plan and see how many of these things that are stressing me are things that I have no control over, how many of them are things that the enemy is lying to me about. So I can actually be encouraged there and those kind of things. So just instead of like, oh, I need to stop feeling overwhelmed, I need to stop being stressed because the joy of the Lord is my strength and I'm supposed to be okay, there's messages there.
Speaker 1:There might be boundaries you need to put in place. There might be unrealistic expectations need to put in place. There might be unrealistic expectations Assessing you know if I'm overwhelmed, there's too much to do. Is everything that's on my plate to do? Stuff that God put on my plate? Because it's probably not. And some things we can easily like, just kick it off our plate and it's not a problem. Other things, it's a process to get it off of our plate.
Speaker 1:And there also can be that undercurrent of emotions saying you need to perform, you need to do more to be accepted, to be good enough, to be worthy of this or that. So as you sit with the emotions and you recognize the meaning that you're making from them, first of all, if the emotion feels way out of proportion to your current circumstance and the first idea that popped in mind is like running late for something, and instead of having like a level three out of 10 reaction, you have like a level eight reaction. That's a really good sign that there's some emotional stuff underneath that needs to be dealt with. Paying attention to like okay, I like way overreacted. What was I feeling? How old did I feel when I experienced that reaction? What was happening in my life at that age that made me feel this way, that made me feel so out of control? And seeing, what did that? What did I need at that age? Because that's exactly what you need right now. Need right now.
Speaker 1:So if I am having a level eight reaction about not leaving on time right now in my life, it's because I'm feeling like my boundaries aren't being honored. I feel very young, very helpless, very stuck and I've done enough work to know that was reality and so needing to remind myself I can set boundaries, I can require people, including my small child, to honor my boundaries and like I can put things in place to take care of myself now that I could not. When I was so young and experienced that when I was really stuck and helpless, when people didn't honor my boundaries, I reminded myself I'm not that way anymore. I can take care of myself and give myself what I needed.
Speaker 1:Then If you recognize a lie that feels really, really true, repenting for believing that, asking the Lord if there's anybody that you need to forgive for teaching you that lie, being able to really sit with. How has that made you feel? How does it make you behave so that you can start to be aware? Because God can work miraculously and change things in an instant. Often he doesn't, and our bodies and our minds have literally been physically formed to be used to doing the things the way that we've done them, of changing to a new way of living and a new way of walking, starts with just being aware. Oh, I was believing this lie, and here's all the ways that was showing up for me Not being like I need to change all that stuff right now. No, just just be aware and have compassion for yourself that there's a reason you're doing things the way you're doing them, even if they're not serving you and you don't like them. Being aware is going to open the door for those things to start to slough off, to come away.
Speaker 1:As you see, now that I'm thinking this way, this is how I want to do things, and I use the heart doodling to put things on paper. This is how I'm feeling, these are the thoughts that are going with it. And here is what God wants to say to me. Um, I do a picture of how I feel, because the picture is worth a thousand words and he speaks so much through the pictures. But then I journal how do I feel, what am I thinking? And then often ask God what he wants to say to me, which is that so it gives that space to sit with. Okay, this is what I was thinking and this is how I was behaving. This is the way it was showing up, these were the other things that it was making me believe, and and whatever. And then to do another picture of what does it look like?
Speaker 1:If I believe the truth, if I believe, like the accusation from the enemy of like well, if you already have everything, you need to be as successful as you want, why aren't you Like look at how pathetic you are. I can sit with that and then I can go. Okay, but I do believe that God said I have everything. I need to be as successful as I want. I am fully equipped for every good work. How do I act? How do I think? How do I treat myself if I believe that and put it on paper? You know, spend the time with that and, like I said, it's putting it on paper just brings so much clarity. It creates that distance where you need it. It's empowering to see.
Speaker 1:Oh, like right, I, I get to choose my thoughts, you know, which is where we take them captive and we're like, uh, yeah, you're, you're good, I'm keeping you, you are going to go, you are not serving me, you're not part of my life anymore. But understanding that it's a process, that it's going to be a practice and you're going to do this over and over and over again. But those places where you're getting hung up in your business, those places where you're hung up in your relationships, what are you really believing in your heart? Because it's what your heart believes that matters most. I think that's enough for today. Like I said, I feel like I gave you a ton. So if you have questions going forward, if you want to know more about heart doodling, let me know. I do a live workshop once a month. That's just. It's a $17 a month membership where you can do a live workshop with me once a month, and then I do coaching too, on on all this stuff. So