Bloom Your Mind

Ep 145: Thought Bridges

• Marie McDonald

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Last week, I hit pause. A middle-of-the-night migraine, a body that said “nope,” and—after three straight years of weekly episodes—I let myself skip a week. Not because I didn’t care, but because I chose health over hustle for this week. That tiny, honest shift is exactly what today’s episode is about: thought bridges—the believable steps that carry us from an old, harmful loop to a new, supportive one.

If you haven’t listened to Episode 144: Regenerative Thought Cycles, start there. Awareness comes first: noticing the thoughts running under the surface, the feelings they create, and the way our actions keep “proving” those thoughts true, through the evidence our brain is collecting on repeat. Once you can see the loop, you can change it—without gaslighting yourself, and without pasting sparkly positivity over real experience.

In this episode, Marie walks you through how to build a bridge from that awareness to a new way of thinking; one that your body actually believes.

What you’ll learn in this episode: 

  • A quick, honest story about choosing rest over perfection—and why that counts as a win.
  • Why it doesn’t work to just stop thinking a negative thought 
  • How introducing a new thought can backfire
  • How to tell when a new thought is congruent vs incongruent 
  • How to build a thought bridge that will replace a degenerative loop with a believable, regenerative path.
  • How to strengthen that new neural pathway until it becomes your default way of thinking 

Try this now (2 minutes)

  • Download your degenerative thoughts into the left-hand column of a three column sheet.
  • Write: Degenerative thoughts (left column), Ideal thoughts (right column). 
  • For each pair, create a thought bridge in the middle.
  • Say each bridge thought out loud. Circle the one that your body believes. 
  • Practice those new thoughts until they become your default

If this episode helped, share it with a friend who’s hard on themselves, or leave a quick review so more humans can find this work. And if you’re building bridges this week, tag @BloomYourMind so we can cheer you on. 🌱

How to connect with Marie:

JOIN THE BLOOM ROOM!
We'll take all these ideas and apply them to our lives. Follow me on Instagram at @the.bloom.coach to learn more and snag a spot in my group coaching program!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Bloom your Mind podcast, where we take all of your ideas for what you want and we turn them into real things. I'm your host, certified Coach Marie McDonald. Let's get into it. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to episode number 145 of the Bloom your Mind podcast. Today we're going to build on my last episode, the one called Regenerative Thinking, and in that episode I talk through a cognitive process our brains are jamming on all day, every day your brain is doing it, my brain is doing it when our automatic thoughts are creating a loop of behavior and evidence collection that keeps our old ways of thinking stuck.

Speaker 1:

I'm reminding you about that episode now because it's super important that before we try to change our thoughts which is what we're focused on today we first take time to notice them. Awareness is the very most important step when we want to change Awareness of our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors. And that awareness has to come with compassion and non-judgment for ourselves. We have to be cool with ourselves, we have to be gentle with ourselves if we expect our brains to really show us what's going on. Otherwise, we're going to hide from ourselves. So if you're skipping right to this episode and you're all about changing your thoughts. But you haven't listened to the last one. Just pause, go back to that last episode and listen to number 144 first. It's called regenerative thinking. That's all about where we'll practice awareness and being present with what is before we try to change it, and from there change becomes totally possible.

Speaker 1:

So today I'm going to teach you how to change your thoughts in a way that's grounded, realistic and that doesn't override your nervous system. When your body says, no, I ain't buying it, I'm not going to some super positive way of thinking. That happens when we try to yank out old, harmful thought patterns and paste in some idealistic, sometimes toxically positive thought patterns instead. So when we realize that we have really negative self-talk, for example, and we become aware of it and we try to replace it with really positive self-talk generally, that's not going to work. We have to bridge the old way of thinking and the new way of thinking in our brains and in our bodies. So today that's what I'm going to teach you. I'm going to teach you how to build those bridges between your old neural pathways, the old ways of thinking that are keeping you stuck and stopping you from making your ideas real. We're going to teach you how to build a bridge to the new ways of thinking, to build new neural pathways that will take you to where you want to go right now, where you can make your ideas real. So this process is called bridge thinking and you're going to love it. It is the most magical tool that I know to create change in yourself.

Speaker 1:

But first let me tell you about a big fail I want to celebrate. So last week I sat down to create content for you, as I do. I had the outline and the ideas for my podcast episode, had the time set aside in my calendar and then, for the first time ever, I had a legit migraine show up. I've thought before that I've had migraines and now I know that I had not. I woke up in the middle of the night and I, straight up, could not move. It was like this giant gong was going off in my head over and over again Wong, wong, just this like throbbing pain vibrating in my head, the kind that makes it impossible to think I just had to lie, really still. So I did the thing last week that used to feel really impossible for me I just stopped. I set everything down. I rescheduled eight clients that day. I let myself not power through. Even though I had already burned through my backup episodes because I've been traveling a lot, I had no more backup episodes pre-recorded in the vault. So for the first time in three years, I did not record and release a new podcast episode last week because the following day my head still hurt so much and I was foggy, and so I let myself off the hook.

Speaker 1:

So today I am both celebrating the fail of missing my very first week of making a new episode for you, and also I am celebrating that I loved my reasons for doing it. I rested, I rested and I rested and I rested. Instead, Eventually, I read some books and then I rested some more. My body got what it needed, and that's where today's episode begins, because what was really going on in my head was like a negative thought pattern. Ideally, I would have thought something really different, but the decision ultimately was based on me creating a thought bridge. I went from I have to make my episode this week to I can make the decision that's best for my health.

Speaker 1:

So let's talk about that thought bridge. What are thought bridges and how do you use them? Starting with why we just can't stop negative thoughts in their tracks, why we just can't stop negative thoughts in their tracks. So last episode I talked all about regenerative thought cycles, which are my way of kind of. This is my concept that I teach about how our thoughts cycle through us and through our lives. We learned about how our brains cycle automatic thoughts that are running on that subconscious level, many of which are very negative, because our brain has a negativity bias and because we're all pretty good at reliving our pasts over and over again under the surface, especially the stuff that didn't go well. You can think about maybe negative thoughts that you have that you see over and over showing up in your life. We all have them right.

Speaker 1:

So we talked last week about how those thoughts that are repeating under the surface create a feeling in our body that leads to our behavior and the result of our behavior, which proves the original thought that we were thinking in an endless, sometimes hellish cycle. It's just a big self-fulfilling prophecy circle. Our brain looks at the result of that loop and start that, that loop that started with our thought and our brain's like I told you so and collects evidence that the thought was true. So, to be clear, that evidence is resulting from the behavior that originated from the very thought. It's a closed loop system that only listens to itself. It's like the recycling symbol with the arrows pointing between thought behavior results, thought behavior results, over and over and over again. It's a closed loop system that's very self-referential and very, very biased, because our brains love to be right, so they lead all of our behavior to keep proving our old ways of thinking true, in that loop-de-loop-de-loop, until we catch them in the act, which is what we talked about last time With total compassion.

Speaker 1:

We can lovingly start to become aware of those negative thought cycles. When we do it, we make the invisible visible, we pause our unconscious thinking and make it conscious by noticing it without judgment. And once we do that, once we find the thought that's creating a degenerative cycle of behavior and results that are leading us away from what we want, that's when it's time to change the thought, to do some neural reprogramming. So neural reprogramming is the work of actually changing our brains and this work will change your life and it will help you make any idea that you have into a real thing. And it is totally doable by you. You're in the right place and you can totally do this. I've worked with hundreds of clients on this and it is possible for all of them and it is possible for you. It is proven by science. So when we're doing this work of neural reprogramming, the first step I'm saying it for like the third time is to notice the thought, practice, awareness, be present with the feeling in our body. That's the good news. We're catching the degenerative cycle and stopping it in its tracks and just being present with it for a minute.

Speaker 1:

So when you notice a degenerative thought, something like I'm falling behind or I'll never figure this out, your first instinct, most of our first instinct, is just to stop thinking. It Be like no, that is not what I want. When we see how much control we have over the results in our life, we're like let me stop this immediately. I want to shut it down, I want to delete this thought. That's what today is all about. Our brains don't work like that.

Speaker 1:

Neural pathways are like roads in your brain and every time you think a thought, it's like running a car over that road and making that road of that thought, that way of thinking, stronger and stronger and stronger. So the longer you've been thinking something, the stronger that neural pathway is in your brain. Over time it's like that road becomes a highway because you've thought the thought so many times. If it's a painful thought, some of those turn into what neuroscience teacher John Overdurf calls the bully on the block. They're really old, they're really strong, they're loud, they're bossy, they're always cutting in line, they're easily triggered. You go to those thoughts really easily and even though that's true, your brain is neuroplastic. You can build new roads to replace those old, well-worn roads, but you can't just tell yourself don't go down that road. You have to give your brain a new road to drive on instead. So you can't just stop thinking a thought. You have to give your brain something else to think instead.

Speaker 1:

All right, so let's talk about how to do that. I am going to give you a process to use that I teach in the Bloom Room and the Moxie Mastermind to engage in neural reprogramming to reprogram your brain and it will change your life. Neural reprogramming to reprogram your brain and it will change your life. Remember, first step is becoming aware of the thought and being present with the feeling in your body. So here are the steps of how to create thought bridges to reprogram your brain.

Speaker 1:

Step number one catch the degenerative thought. We learned how to do that in our last episode. Write it down. And what I'd like you to do for this practice of creating bridge thoughts is take a piece of paper and create three columns. On the left-hand side it's your old thought, on the right-hand side it's the new thought and in the middle it's your bridge thought. So you catch the, the new thought, and in the middle it's your bridge thought. So you catch the degenerative thought. You realize what you're thinking, with compassion and love and non-judgment, and you write it down on the left hand side. Maybe that's? I'll never learn this. Okay, that's going to go on the left hand side Now.

Speaker 1:

Next, you're going to come up with your ideal thought that you wish you could believe. This is the intentional thought that you're going to come up with, your ideal thought that you wish you could believe. This is the intentional thought that you're reaching toward. In an ideal world. This is how you would be thinking about the situation. Maybe that's? This is going to be a piece of cake. I can learn this. Of course I can learn this. You're going to write that in the far right-hand column, leaving the middle column blank for now. Step number three you're going to check.

Speaker 1:

Check how your body feels when you write that new, intentional thought. A lot of times it will feel way out of reach. You're not going to feel any better than you did when you were thinking the original thought, your old thought. You're going to feel uneasy or anxious or even hopeless, sometimes Like, ah, I don't buy it. When we try to override those feelings of, nah, no, I don't actually buy this new thought, when we do that we create what's called cognitive dissonance, when we try to force ourselves to think a positive thought that we don't actually believe. Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort that people feel when we're holding two or more conflicting beliefs or values or attitudes or thoughts, or when our behavior contradicts our beliefs. So, said in another way, if your body isn't buying what your brain is telling it, it's not going to fly.

Speaker 1:

That thought is not congruent, and if it isn't congruent it will not stick, it will not help. So instead it probably feels kind of like toxic positivity. It can feel like you're gaslighting yourself a little bit, like you're trying to just brush it over and say it's fine, it's fine, just believe this. Instead, when your body's like no, that is not true, it's too far from what you actually believe. So instead, we're going to find a bridge thought, the bridge between what we believe now the old belief, the unconscious, degenerative thought and what we want to believe, that new, shiny thought that we're working towards. We're going to find something in the middle that creates congruence in our body, that feels like, yeah, I'm chill, I'm safe, I believe this, I am not gaslighting myself. When we create that bridge thought, it's a bridge that we can walk across in a way that actually changes our brain and our neural pathways. It actually starts building that road.

Speaker 1:

So here's step number four, after we've checked in with our body, because if our body feels fine with that new ideal thought, great, we can go with it. That happens sometimes when our body doesn't feel fine. That's when we build the bridge. So in the middle column between your old thought and your new thought, write a thought that feels one step closer to neutral, something that brings even a little bit of relief or creates a feeling that's more neutral than the thought on the left. Oftentimes, instead of feeling hopeful or joyous or badass, which is maybe our ideal state, the bridge thought, the one in the middle, that we're going to start practicing, will make us feel like focused, kind of neutral, kind of focused, committed, maybe disciplined. So, for example, maybe our old thought is I will never figure this out. Our ideal thought that we're working towards is I can do anything I set my mind to, it's going to be a piece of cake, something an example of a bridge might be. I'm willing to take this step by step. And when we practice that bridge thought every single day, I am willing to take this step by step. That becomes a new regenerative cycle. The more we practice it, then we feel and behave in line with it, and it creates a result of us taking it step by step, which is way more helpful to us than that degenerative cycle of never figuring things out and staying stuck. So once we find the bridge thought in this case, our example is I'm willing to take this step by step.

Speaker 1:

Then test it in your body. Say the bridge thought out loud. How does it feel when you say that thought? Your body's the gauge for what your brain is ready for. When you try the new thought, notice what happens. Do your shoulders soften, does your chest open up? Does your stomach kind of relax, even just a little bit? You can feel that congruence in your body. Or, if it's not congruent, your body might tighten. Your body kind of rolls its eyes at you. It's like uh-uh, that's incongruence and that means you need to keep searching for a bridge thought that actually resonates with you. So the trick is to find a bridge thought that your body believes. Sometimes it works to replace the old degenerative thought with an ideal regenerative thought and practice that. But more often you need a bridge. So when you feel even just a little bit lighter, a little bit better, you've got your bridge. And the last step is to practice that thought over and over again every day.

Speaker 1:

Write it on a Post-it note, put it somewhere where you will see it all the time, on your lock screen on your phone. I love good old-fashioned notes. I will write myself a note. I don't know if it's a post-it, but I write it and I put it right where I need to read it. Or if I'm working in a Google Doc, or I'm working in some, you know, on a whiteboard or whatever space I'm working in that the thought is related to, I write it right there at the top. So it's gonna remind me every single time. I write it in my planner. I designed a planner that's in line with the work we do in the Bloom Room and the Moxie Mastermind. I write my thought at the top of my week. I keep a list of my intentional thoughts or my bridge thoughts, the ones I'm practicing, and they put me in the right space every day.

Speaker 1:

All right, so your homework this week is to practice creating bridge thoughts. You're going to create three columns and you can do this with tons of thoughts or just one. Catch the degenerative thoughts, put them in the left-hand column. Come up with what you wish you could believe and put that in the right-hand column. Now check how they each make you feel. How does the old one make you feel in your body? How does the new one make you feel? If the new one feels great, awesome, practice that thought. If you do not feel congruent with that new thought, if you're not ready for it, if your body doesn't feel better, practice coming up with a bridge thought. The bridge will be something in between the one on the left and the one on the right, and you'll practice that bridge thought until you can create enough of a new neural pathway that the ideal thought is more within reach. You're going to practice it over and over.

Speaker 1:

One little hack before I close out. One little hint is that sometimes it can be really helpful when you're looking for a bridge thought to start out with. I'm willing to try, or I'm learning to or I can. For instance, I'm willing to try to take this step by step. I'm learning to take this step by step. I can take this step by step. Okay, so when we catch ourselves in a degenerative thought loop, instead of trying to stop thinking the negative thoughts or slapping a glittery sticker on it, our practice is to build yourself a bridge, step by step, walking across it.

Speaker 1:

So last week, when I was telling myself I have to record this episode somehow, I've never missed one I got to do it. It felt like a sinking feeling in my stomach and then I was like okay, I don't want to think about it like this. I tried to create a new way of thinking and I thought I don't want to think about it like this. I tried to create a new way of thinking and I thought I don't need to release an episode every week. It's no big deal to skip one. And that also did not feel true to me. That was my ideal thought, but it didn't resonate with me. It didn't feel congruent Because I've been working so hard to record podcast episodes for 144 straight weeks without ever missing one. That's almost three years. So for me it was kind of a big deal. So I found a bridge thought. Instead, I thought I can put what's best for my health above my productivity. It's just this week, and that felt congruent. It felt awesome because it was in line with my values, my pillars, what I believe and the work that I'm doing to not burn myself out all the time.

Speaker 1:

So that's how we reprogram not just the conscious mind but the subconscious mind too, how we reprogram and rebuild new neural pathways, while we also retrain our bodies to trust us. And that's how we walk ourselves into the life we actually want to live. Making ideas real, one idea at a time. That's what I've got for you this week Back clear-headed, no migraines, and I will see you next week. If you like what you're hearing on the podcast, you gotta come and join us in the Bloom Room. This is a year-round membership where we take all of these concepts and we apply them to real life in a community where we have each other's backs and we bring out the best in each other. We're all there to make our ideas real, one idea at a time. I'll see you in the Bloom Room, thank you.