241. Watch Your Thoughts: The Creed That Shapes Your Destiny

 Your destiny starts with a single thought. In this episode of The Mindset Cafe, Devan breaks down the timeless creed: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your feelings. Watch your feelings, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your lifestyle. Watch your lifestyle, it becomes your destiny.”
We’ll unpack how confinement forced reflection, how thought patterns dictate reality, and why self-talk isn’t fluff—it’s architecture. You’ll learn how to spot destructive loops, upgrade inner language, and intentionally build the habits that build the life you actually want.

Chapters

• 0:19 Mindset Creed Introduced
• 2:08 The Chain: Thought to Destiny
• 4:19 Negative vs Empowering Thought Loops
• 6:43 The Trap of Neutral Thinking
• 8:55 Inputs, Focus, and Reframing
• 12:10 Self-Talk Scripts and Language
• 15:23 Feelings as Signals, Not Orders
• 18:16 Actions to Habits to Lifestyle
• 21:10 Reverse-Engineering Destiny
• 23:39 Proof, Environment, and Next Steps
• 24:54 Gratitude, Thanks, and CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:19

What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Mindset Cafe Podcast. It's your boy Devin Gonzalez, and today bringing you another solo episode. Today's episode is off of this creed, I would say, um, that I heard, and it's really true about mindset, and it all does start with your mind, right? That's one of the things that I've talked about multiple times why I love mindset and why I believe so much in mindset is that everything begins and ends with your mind, right? In your mindset, right? You believe you believe something that you in uh if you believe that you can achieve something or you can succeed, then you can, you will. But the moment that you stop believing that you can achieve it or that it's a possibility, then it is. So the creed, I want to say, is a reminder as well as a chain of things that you have to realize each step is just as important because it affects the next step, right? Next thing in the chain. Most people don't realize how much their thoughts control their destiny, control their lifestyle. So this creed says essentially, watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your feelings. Watch your feelings, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your lifestyle, and watch your lifestyle because it becomes your destiny. So, as you could see, each step is the precursor for the next step. I'm gonna say the creed one more time for you. Um, think about each of the steps, and we'll dive into it a little bit today of all the different steps and why they're important. But watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words because they become your feelings. Watch your feelings because they become your actions, watch your actions because they become your habits, watch your habits, they become your lifestyle, and watch your lifestyle because it becomes your destiny. So I used to just think that this is one of those like motivational quotes uh that you slap on the wall until you really think about it and you break it down. It is more than that, it's not just one of those sayings or you know messages that looks good, sounds good, it is true. So I wanted to break this creed down today, not in a poetry kind of way, uh, but as a playbook, because you are truly capable of more than you let yourself out to be, right? Then you let yourself believe you can. And this is whether it's in fitness, I see it all the time. Someone says they can't lift something, someone says they can't do something, then they can't, right? It's too heavy, the exercise is too hard. Uh, business, you you know, you don't know what to do to launch a business, so you start telling yourself, I don't know what to do, I can't do that. Well, then you can't. So we're gonna break this down a little bit because everything is a ripple effect, as you've heard over numerous episodes. I believe that every action has a ripple effect on your next actions or the actions of others, or essentially your opportunities. So let's break it down a little bit. Um, in terms of essentially the creed itself, thoughts, words, feeling, action, habit, lifestyle, destiny. Again, the chain goes thought, word, or thoughts, words, feelings, actions, habits, lifestyle, then destiny. Each is a link to the next, right? So if it was essentially on a poster, it'd be like thought and then have an arrow. Word, have an arrow, right? Kind of deal. But for example, the first one, thought. You have a negative thought, I can't. Well, the next step, your word is I can't. Then the next step, your feelings are gonna be anxious. The next thing is gonna be your action, you're gonna avoid it. Then your lifestyle is a habit of quitting, and then you become your lifestyle essentially becomes very limited, and you know, that is your destiny, is essentially a limited lifestyle. Let's start the chain again with a more positive or empowering thought, right? So thought is empowering, the word becomes I'm resourceful or I can. The next thing becomes your action, right? And then that's gonna be words that reflect essentially your optimism. Then you're gonna have your feelings of confidence, you're gonna have actions of trying again, then you're gonna have a lifestyle of the habit of persistence, right? Getting up when you get knocked down. Just like we all know happens in fitness. You don't have a good way-in, you don't have a good uh check-in, you know, you have a couple days off, you had a cheat day, whatever the case may be. Get back up because that's that's who you are. Business, you know, a quarter doesn't go the way you wanted to. Well, that doesn't mean that's that you can't do it, just means that you had to learn some things along the way. Let's go into another one, neutral thought process, right? First one negative, then we had like empowering. I can, I will. Next one, neutral. Neutral is a not a good place to be, but not a bad place to be. You don't want your life just to be in neutral, right? Doesn't really go forward, doesn't really go back. You doesn't really know where to go. Um, for example, let's say you're an athlete, you know, the first thing would be, you know, I'm neutral thoughts about myself. Then the words would be, you know, this is well, this is just practice. This is just practice. And it's gonna be a lot calmer tone, right? Like a little lighter feeling, but then your actions are gonna be a little soother as well, right? Uh smoother as well. So there's a time, there's a place for it. Maybe you don't need to be on hyperdrive all the time, but realize that you have to know when to have that, you know, hey, maybe this is just practice. Or, you know what, I need to step it up and get we, you know, we have a game coming up. But your thoughts are inputs, right? So that's what I want that all to kind of be, I guess, categorized as or or boiled up to be is the first step is essentially the input to the chain of events. You don't control every thought that goes into your brain, but you do control the focus that you have on that thought. So I'll say that again, real quick. You don't have control of every thought that comes to mind, but you do have control over your focus on that thought. You have to think which thoughts you feed, you multiply. For example, you wake up in a dreading state, right? You don't want to get up, you're groggy, whatever. Then you start doom scrolling on Instagram. Well, now the day is gonna feel heavy, right? The week's gonna start to feel heavy, a little gray. Let's say you wake up grateful, you know, you can list three things that you're grateful for. Well, the day is already feels primed, you're ready to go, everything feels good. Now that's just a start, right? That's it's a snowball effect. So realize that you can always, let's say you get a thought that's negative, you know, I can't do something or I have to do something. Well, instead, just reframe it until I get to do something. Because not everyone gets to go through what you're going through, not everyone gets to experience the lessons that you're about to learn. If you caught that, you some people think of stuff as you know, a stress or you know, why is this happening to me? Reframe it and realize that this is something that on the other side of it is going to be a lesson learned. Not any, not everyone gets to experience this lesson. After you've learned the lesson, it becomes common sense to you because you've already experienced it once. You know what to do when it happens again. Not everyone gets that chance or that opportunity, right? So instead of being like, why me? Why not me? I'm built for this. So it's important just sometimes when those negative words come in, just to reframe them. And it and it's not gonna be easy at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets, and the faster your body will get and your mind will get at reframing negative thought patterns into positive, empowering, or even sometimes neutral when it needs to be. But think about words the words you tell yourself, the self-talk you tell yourself, and sometimes you might even just be joking around, those reinforce thought patterns, right? You know, I can't do that, I'm too fat. I can't do that, you know, I'm not big enough. I can't do that, I'm not whatever. Fill in the blank. Well, that starts to reinforce that thought pattern. So now anytime something similar comes up, immediately the first thought that's going to come to mind is something similar to what you're telling yourself. Self-talk becomes a script that your nervous system starts to believe, your subconscious doesn't know what's true and what's not true. So when you're talking to yourself, why not use empowering language in positive language so that your thought patterns are almost delusional in a good sense? There's nothing you don't believe that you can't achieve. Anything that you put your mind to is a possibility. Why not have that mindset? Right? We had that mindset when we were kids. We were told that we were able to do anything we wanted to do in life. Where did that change? Are you doing are you living the life that you want to live? If not, why? Think about it. At what point did you settle? Are you settling? If you told yourself you were gonna get back into the gym, and maybe you started, why did you stop? Are you waiting for January 1st to roll around again and then you're gonna start up again? If you were gonna launch a business, it didn't work out, and now you're still not doing anything with you know launching a business. Why? I can promise you this isn't you know, Stripe 11, you know, the mindset cafe, all that stuff. This is not my first business. There's plenty of businesses that didn't work. They're all lessons learned as long as you get up again. You can't fail if you get up more times and you fall down. No one judges you on the failures, they judge you on the successes. Right? So some of the words I want you to are actually I'll give you examples of that maybe you're currently doing them, you can re start to reframe them, reshape them. Um, let's say you're someone that is financially irresponsible, right? From from the past. Instead of telling yourself or telling others that, yeah, I'm bad with money, the reframe, the reshift of words is I'm learning to manage my money. You're not saying that you're great with your money, you're not saying you're bad with your money, but I'm learning to manage it. I hate doing cardio. I'm building up the my lung capacity, right? Instead of I try, I'll try, I will. I'll commit. That's the biggest one. I hate when people say, I'll try. You know, I'll try to make it, or yeah, I'll try to do that, you know, work out. I'll try. It's like you already gave yourself an out, and then oh, it didn't work out. I tried. No, like fuck that. Commit to it. Tell yourself you're gonna do it. Why not? So those are some of the big ones, um, and and first ones that come to my mind. But the next thing going into feelings feelings you have to realize are emotions and they're supposed to be feedback, but they're not supposed to be orders or um commands, right? And what I mean by that is feelings arise from the words or from your thoughts, because that's the third step in the chain, right? But they don't dictate what you actually do. Feelings are signals that are supposed to be there to help you navigate, but they're not laws that you have to obey. For example, you all of a sudden get butterflies in your stomach, you're scared to you know, pitch a um a business idea. Well, that signal is really growth because you have to realize that anything that is scary, anything that is hard, anything that is going to take you outside your norm usually means it's an opportunity of growth. Usually it means this is a time for you to level up and get better at something you're not good at yet. This is something, this is an opportunity not everyone gets to do. For example, another one, all of a sudden you're you're tired, you know, before you're supposed to go to a workout. That's the signal. Well, this is a time I get to not quit. This is the time I get to go, you know, commit. This is the time I get to push through and not listen to my my mind telling me that I should just go home and watch, you know, Netflix. All of a sudden you get angry in a conversation. What's this what the signal would be your anger? But what is what is the the reason behind it? What's the action? Well, there's maybe some boundaries that were violated, maybe there's some lines that were crossed. So again, you don't need to react on that action, understand what happened, and allow yourself to adjust. Why did you get bad? What was the what was the thing the underlying issue that you know made you feel the way you felt? Your feelings don't dictate your actions, right? Your feelings, I'll rephrase that. Your feelings don't dictate your actions, they are the next step to your actions, but your actions essentially are controlled by you. So I feel angry, all of a sudden I could understand why I feel angry. Now I'm not angry, now my actions will not be out of anger. If that makes sense. Just because the feeling is A doesn't need to mean it it needs to stay as feeling A before I take the next step. I can change feeling A to feeling B and then take the next step to action. So realize that actions are your feelings but in motion. You can change your feelings just like you can change your thoughts from negative to positive before the words come. The words you can change a negative uh sentence, right? I can't to I will before the next step. Each step you can change and you get faster at changing them, and then they start to just go in a straight line of empowerment or encouragement or you know, self-belief. But you have to be willing to understand and evaluate the negative negativity or the limitations when they arise at any of the steps. So realize like the thought I can't sell, the words you know become more like apologetic to yourself. Well, I can't sell, I'm sorry. No, that the action is you don't even try to close, you don't try to sell the thing. But if your thought pattern is I'm a leader, I'm gonna show the team how it's done, all of a sudden you have a decisive self-talk, you have empowering self-talk, and now all of a sudden you have clear direction on how you're gonna try to show the team, right? If you have the thought pattern, the one that I hate, I'll try. That's your thought and your word. Now your action is gonna be half effort. I'll try. If it doesn't start to work out, I'm just gonna give up, right? I tried, right? So again, I take the I tried out of your vocabulary. That phrase, it is the most annoying phrase to hear. I promise you. Um just think about the last time someone told you that you were you were depending on them to do something, and they say, Oh, well, I I tried, I just tried. You know, it's like, okay, now what? Um after your after the actions, you have your habits, right? So your your habits are your actions but automated, meaning that you've adjusted that step multiple times, and now it's just an automation. This is this is what you do, this is who you are, this is how you do it. For example, you had to change the thought patterns at each step, getting up to being a daily gym goer. But now your daily gym attendance is autopilot. You don't think about it, you drive straight there after work. All of a sudden, you know, you're daydreaming as you're driving, you just show up at the gym because that's what you do every single day. That's what you do after after work or whatever the case may be, right? So your actions on repeat essentially are your habits. It skips the conscious effort of thinking, it skips the conscious effort of you having to decide what is good, what is bad. You've already built up the habit of it becoming a piece of you. Now, the lifestyle part, the last part of the the phrase is simply all your habits stack together. It's essentially your choices, your habits over years. For example, you eat fast food five times a week, your lifestyle is gonna be a little fatigued, a little overweight, a little, you know, lazy, sluggish. Let's say you have built up the habit of reading 15 minutes a day, you know, 10 pages a day, whatever the case may be. Well, you're gonna have a lifestyle of more of knowledge, you're gonna be more opportunistic. Opportunistic. Yeah. Um, and you're gonna have a wealth of knowledge that you can implement to help you at any stage of life or you know, doing different things. Networking weekly, let's say, well, the more you network, the bigger your network, the more opportunity you present yourself, right? So you have to realize that the habits that you start to do over time start to compound into your lifestyle. You go to the gym every single day for a month, it it's the start of a habit, but you go to the gym, you know, let's say five days a week, five days a week for a year, two years, three years, like your lifestyle is gonna be completely different than if you don't go to the gym for a year, two years, three years, right? So realize that your lifestyles, your lifestyle, which is the compound essentially of your habits, your lifestyle, and all your habits combined, essentially is adjustable to any new habits, any new actions, any new um lifestyle choices that you choose, which is your destiny. It's just your lifestyle extended over time. When people say you choose your own destiny, what they're saying essentially is you choose the habits that you do, you choose the actions you do, you choose the words that you tell yourself, you choose the limits that you put in your own mind, right? They reverse break it down. Right? Show me your lifestyle, show me your habits, and I can guarantee we can talk about, and I'll tell you how you talk to yourself, the things that you think, and and so forth. You choose your destiny by reverse engineering it. Start with your thoughts. Then comes what the words, then comes the feelings, right? And so break it down step by step over time, it starts to get easier, it starts to get better. And if you start to watch your thoughts, your lifestyle will change as long as you follow the rest of the steps. Um, but honestly, with that though, you have to realize that I know we mentioned it multiple times, and I talk about this, you know, with guests in on solo episodes, but you have to self-reflect. Something made you feel a type of way, why? And there's no right or wrong answer, there's only the answer that matters to you, and you're the only one that is gonna know it if it's truthful or not. But your understanding of that thing or that emotion or that action and your conscious effort to change it for the better is all up to you. You control this, no one can make you do it. I can't force you to tell you to think better about yourself. I can say the words, I can make you motivated, I can do all that kind of stuff in the moment, but then you walk out the door, and now again, you're in control. But why not give yourself all the opportunities in the world? Because, like you've heard me say before, you're not that special, you're not that special for it to work out for everybody else, and everyone else achieve goals, and everyone else, you know, get to the fitness goals they want, and the business goals they want, and the relationship goals they want, and it worked out for everyone else, but it not work out for you. If you do all of the habits and all of the things that you need to do on a consistent basis, not for a day, not for a week, not for a month, but day after day after day after day for as long as it takes, it is inevitable. You will achieve what you set out to achieve. You have to do so much that it is undeniable for you not to achieve it. So I just want you guys to really think about the the creed itself and hopefully break some negative, you know, self-talk, negative thoughts that are going to your mind because that's one of the biggest things people and clients over the years and and stuff have talked to me, and they're like, You're you're different. You just you know, you could do anything. It's like, no, I don't think that. I have to go through the same, you know, ramp up of proving to myself that I could do certain certain things, but it doesn't mean I believe in myself right away. I have to shift that mindset and understand why do I think that I can't. One of the things I do is I look at someone else that achieved it and said, well, if they could do it, I could do it. There's my proof. So I hope this helped. Um, one little actually last last little bit I just remembered is sometimes your environment also shapes shapes your your thoughts, right? Who are you hanging out with? Who are you spending the most time with? How do they think? How are they talking about themselves? How are they talking about you? Because your environment starts to shape how you believe in yourself. So if it's not currently aligned with what your goals are, maybe it's time to change your environment so that you can change your thoughts. Your thoughts can change to words, right? The words change to feelings, feelings to actions, actions to habits, habits to um habits to lifestyle, lifestyle destiny, right? So sometimes it's just the environment. Just because they're your friends, just because they're, you know, your family, doesn't mean you need to spend all your time with them if it doesn't suit what you're trying to achieve. As harsh as that sounds, at the end of the day, you have to do what you need to do to achieve the life you want to achieve. But I hope that got I hope that helps, guys. I know this is a little bit longer of an episode. I just want to let you guys know I appreciate all you guys. I love all you guys. If you guys ever need anything, just reach out to me. You can you know message me on on IG or or any of the platforms. Um happy to help any way I can. Make sure you guys leave a review and share this episode with a friend.