Episode 19: How Your Inner World Shapes Your Outer Reality

You'll likely have heard the phrase "Thoughts become things" - thanks Mike Dooley - but have you really considered how true it is?

The state of your inner landscape plays an enormous role in the way your outer circumstances unfold. Your thoughts and feelings influence your actions (or lack thereof) heavily.

In this episode I share:

- How your circumstances are not the problem, your perspective on them is
- The way your thoughts influence your feelings and emotions
- Why affirmations don't work and what does instead
- How to observe your internal world so you can make positive changes
- The art of shifting beliefs
- Why your triggers are excellent teachers and something to embrace
- The role self-awareness plays in creating your external circumstances

Self-mastery is the key to a smoother, more enjoyable experience of life. If you're ready to take back the reins of your life, book a complimentary call with me here.

#lifeguide selfawareness #purposefilledlife #changeyourthinkingchangeyourlife #mindsetcoach #mindsetmastery #personaldevelopment #personalgrowthjourney #personaltransformation #womenempowerment #wayfinder 

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If you know you want more from your life or career but you're totally stuck about where to start, I invite you to book a complimentary strategy call with me here.

We'll uncover what's holding you back from the goals you want to achieve and you'll leave the call with actionable steps to get you moving in the right direction.

For the tea on me, how I work, who I coach and the packages I offer, please visit my website - www.emmaobriencoach.com

You can also connect with me on Instagram @emmaobriencoach where I share an abundance of tools, strategies and brilliant content, you might also see the occasional dog.

Transcript

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Emma O'Brien: Hi, folks, welcome to episode 19 of the lemons and pineapples podcast with me, Emma O'brien. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about how your inner world shapes your outer reality and what you can do to be able to change the inner. So the outer

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Emma O'Brien: transpires differently for you. I think that's often what we want is something different in our external circumstances. But in order to make some changes to that, we have to

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Emma O'Brien: start to do some work in our inner landscape. What's happening inside ourselves and understanding ourselves better, so we can shift ourselves to allow the outer circumstances to better line up for us. There's a really interesting psychological model

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Emma O'Brien: that says we have a set of circumstances.

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Emma O'Brien: We have some thoughts about those circumstances, the thoughts we have about our circumstances dictate the way we feel.

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Emma O'Brien: the way we feel dictates the action we take.

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Emma O'Brien: So the work for us

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Emma O'Brien: in personal growth, work, in self-development, work in being able to change what's happening on the outside is to start to change what's happening on the inside. And that involves getting a handle on what is happening in your mind of the way you are thinking, the kind of thoughts you are thinking, the thoughts you have on, repeat, the way you think about yourself, the way you think about other people, the way you think about the world.

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Emma O'Brien: So if your life is not as you want it right now the place to go digging to find out why is to start to have a look at what's happening in your head.

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Emma O'Brien: Lots of people who talk about mindset work. It's really important. Mindset work is a big part of what I do. Let's break down a little bit what mindset work is. So mindset work, isn't.

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Emma O'Brien: It? Isn't affirmations. It isn't thinking positively. It is digging deeper into what are the things that drive you

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Emma O'Brien: to think, the thoughts you do, that, then drive your behavior and your your actions. So if you're somebody who has

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Emma O'Brien: done affirmations before, and they haven't worked for you. The reason they haven't worked for you is you're trying to rewrite a way of being that is driven by a deep belief system that an affirmation can't shift. You have to get in and do the mindset work with the beliefs you are running.

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Emma O'Brien: Our beliefs tend to sway our thoughts about the circumstances that happen to us, and then drive this pattern, the thoughts, feelings, actions, pattern. So you'll be able to relate to this. If you have had something

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Emma O'Brien: happen, a circumstance occur.

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Emma O'Brien: Let's say you apply for a job, and you don't get it.

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Emma O'Brien: and that starts to lead to a bunch of thoughts of I'm not good enough. This isn't fair. I worked really hard. I don't deserve this. Everything else.

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Emma O'Brien: those thoughts you're going to start to run, and especially if they're negative thoughts, they'll start to run on a bit of a loop in your head, and those thoughts are going to generate a set of feelings and emotions that come up. You might feel angry, you might feel frustrated. You might feel really pissed off at the world.

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Emma O'Brien: and those feelings are going to drive the way you behave. So if you're feeling angry. The chances are you're going to be less tolerant of other people, and you're probably going to be quite revolting and quite reactive. So anybody who is reactive with you

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Emma O'Brien: is being driven by their own inner world. We're all driven by our inner worlds, and when we can get a handle on them we can change how we show up. And when we change, how we show up, people respond differently. Things happen differently to you. So you might also be angry and come back and type out a really snotty email to somebody and send it because you're feeling angry, and they might as well have it as well.

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Emma O'Brien: which sets off a whole cascade of other events happening.

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Emma O'Brien: So this is why you'll often see people who are like, I say, very reactive. They're very frustrated all the time. They're very stressed out. You'll look at them and they'll sit and go. My life goes from bad to worse, and I cannot understand why, and you just want to say to these folks, take a step back.

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Emma O'Brien: Do you want to have a think about how what is happening in your head how you're feeling and how you're behaving

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Emma O'Brien: when we show up in the world. And we're angry and we're frustrated, and we're short with people, and we're rude, and we're nasty and we're intolerant.

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Emma O'Brien: You tend to set other people off, and it's just a kind of to and fro of negative, unhelpful energy circumstances, and it feeds the circumstances of shitty circumstances coming back again that you have to deal with when we're not in control of our emotions and our behavior.

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Emma O'Brien: we are at the mercy of those things.

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Emma O'Brien: you said. I think the perfect example is a little extreme. But why not? The perfect example is, when people have road rage and get out of a car and stab somebody else because they've completely lost control of themselves in the moment, and in that moment, in being driven by

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Emma O'Brien: a set of thoughts and a feeling and a behaviour. They end up in jail for the rest of their lives. If you aren't in control of it. It controls you.

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Emma O'Brien: So the way to really start to shift that is, to start to do some observing

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Emma O'Brien: and start to look at yourself and your thoughts, the way you feel, the way you behave, the action you're taking objectively.

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Emma O'Brien: because when you can do that and be the observer of yourself.

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Emma O'Brien: objective observer, and sometimes we need to be a compassionate observer.

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Emma O'Brien: You can start to have a look at. Oh, I'm actually playing a really big role in the fact that my life is not panning out the way I want it to.

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Emma O'Brien: I talked in the previous episode about self-sabotage, and that is one of the behaviors we will run, and one of the actions we will take or not take

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Emma O'Brien: when we are feeling a certain way. We're not feeling good enough. We don't feel like we deserve something.

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Emma O'Brien: because we've been driven by a bunch of thoughts, and when you can shift the thoughts you can shift the feeling, and you can shift the action that you take. And this is a huge part of the huge part of the work I do with clients.

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Emma O'Brien: So one way you can start to observe yourself. If this work is very new to you, it might sound a little bit obscure like, well, how do I watch myself

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Emma O'Brien: is just pay attention to pay attention to your thoughts right now, as you're listening to to this, podcast what were you thinking about 30 seconds ago?

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Emma O'Brien: What are you thinking about right now? What set of thoughts are going through your head?

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Emma O'Brien: It might be a judgment about how I'm talking, what I'm talking about, or you might be thinking, this is really interesting. But observe, observe your thoughts, look at them and go. What is happening here. How do I talk to myself.

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Emma O'Brien: It's a big thing to start to shift your inner narrative as well.

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Emma O'Brien: And one actionable tool. I'm going to share with you here in the podcast is to start to have a look at the things that trigger you.

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Emma O'Brien: So our triggers can be our biggest teachers in life.

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Emma O'Brien: So let's say, for example, you are standing in line at the supermarket. You're waiting to pay. The cashier's going slowly. Somebody's fiddling around trying to pay with brown coins in front of you, and you're feeling really, really impatient. And you listen. How does that dialogue go? Can you notice in the moment I'm feeling really impatient, what thoughts preceded the feeling of impatience.

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Emma O'Brien: Was it a judgment about the cashier? Was it a judgment about the person paying with brown coins? What were the thoughts that set off the feeling of impatience.

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Emma O'Brien: and then you can kind of track back and go. Oh, interesting! What was! And and if you pick up those thoughts, maybe it was a judgment

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Emma O'Brien: that the person should do better on the cashier. Why is this person paying in brown coins? What the hell.

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Emma O'Brien: what drives the judgment. Why does it matter to you? Why can't you just stand in line and wait patiently?

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Emma O'Brien: So if you can start to really listen in on what's going on.

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Emma O'Brien: and then you can kind of have a look at. Okay.

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Emma O'Brien: maybe I'm running late and they're holding me up. But if you track back a little bit. Why are you running late? Are you running late? Because you didn't plan your morning properly?

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Emma O'Brien: Probably.

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Emma O'Brien: So what can you do differently to plan better, so that the next time you're standing in a queue at the supermarket, you're not in your head, you know, kind of virtually wanting to stab everybody because they're holding you up. How dare they?

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Emma O'Brien: So when you can listen.

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Emma O'Brien: you'll meet people in life that you don't really know why. But you're like, Oh, my God, you're so triggering!

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Emma O'Brien: What is it? What is that person triggering in you?

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Emma O'Brien: What are they doing?

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Emma O'Brien: I was having a conversation with somebody

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Emma O'Brien: recently who is very frustrated that she's not further along in life, and seeing other people

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Emma O'Brien: buying things that she would like to be able to buy, but can't, is very triggering.

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Emma O'Brien: So where's the work in there?

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Emma O'Brien: It's a sign that actually, you like those things.

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Emma O'Brien: What do you need to do to be able to shift yourself more into a position of being able to get them

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Emma O'Brien: so often our own thoughts. If I'm not good enough, I you know I should be further along all of those kind of things actually just keep us stuck in that cycle of not doing anything. And when we're telling ourselves I'm not good enough, I should be further along. You feel really down on yourself, you feel angry, you feel frustrated.

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Emma O'Brien: You might not actually take any strategic action to move yourself forwards, because you're just stuck in this mental loop of.

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Emma O'Brien: you know. Fuck this shit for want of a better word, collection of words.

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Emma O'Brien: So start to have a look at and observe, when is my nervous system activated by somebody? When do I feel stressed? When do I feel angry? When do I feel annoyed? And what was I thinking before that happened?

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Emma O'Brien: And

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Emma O'Brien: what am I believing that is leading me to think that because when you start to do the deeper work on what beliefs are driving, being triggered by somebody having something that you feel you can't have.

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Emma O'Brien: I don't deserve that. I'm never going to have it. I'm never going to be good enough. If you can start to do the work there.

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Emma O'Brien: you can start to shift the thoughts that are happening.

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Emma O'Brien: You can start to get yourself into a more optimistic frame of mind when we feel better.

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Emma O'Brien: when we're experiencing emotions and feelings such as compassion

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Emma O'Brien: and excitement and hope and gratitude.

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Emma O'Brien: we are far more likely to be able to get into some sort of useful action that moves things forwards. Negative emotions can be very, very powerful, but they can be quite powerful in keeping you stuck or keeping you doing the wrong things, lashing out other people, as I've said, being reactive. But if you can shift those into a more positive

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Emma O'Brien: state, and that involves self-regulation. It involves belief work. You can then actually feel better and actually do something that's way more useful

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Emma O'Brien: than scrolling through Instagram and looking at, you know, comparing yourself to other people all of those things we love to do. It's really interesting when we talk about self sabotage it tends to become a cycle that we get sucked in by.

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Emma O'Brien: You'll start with a kind of oh, I'm not good enough. Let me just reinforce that belief of not being good enough by having a look at how much more other people have, how you know how much other people's businesses are doing better, and it does no good. It just keeps you stuck. So it's about breaking the cycle. And that starts with observing yourself.

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Emma O'Brien: So if you're curious about how one might go about doing this, let me know. You can book yourself a free strategy. Call in the show notes

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Emma O'Brien: my little arsenal of

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Emma O'Brien: growth. Work that I teach people is heart math, which is a system of emotional and nervous system regulation tools. Often we are thrown off by big feelings, like anger and frustration, because they feel overwhelming.

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Emma O'Brien: They completely hijack your mind.

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Emma O'Brien: and it's difficult to kind of get a handle on them. And then we're afraid we're going to get angry because it's too much. We can't deal with it. So heartmath is a really amazing set of tools that helps you regulate your emotions, regulate your nervous system so that when you do feel angry next time you can shift out of it quicker.

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Emma O'Brien: it's not about getting rid of feelings. We don't want to get rid of them. They're great messengers for work that we need to do, or directions we need to go in, but it's about being able to manage them. So they don't manage you. That's the problem.

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Emma O'Brien: So the other thing is doing belief work. I've talked about that a few times. Now it's starting to dig into what is the core belief I am running that keeps me in this pattern of not achieving what I want to achieve keeps me in this pattern of continuing to get into the same kind of relationship again and again keeps me in this pattern of starting something, getting really excited, and then stopping and not pursuing it, and then fulfilling the belief that I can't do this, etc. Etc. Etc.

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Emma O'Brien: And when you can really put the 2 of those together, you are empowered to be able to have some control over what's happening internally, and then you can have some choices as to how you show up. Self-awareness is key self. Mastery is what we're aiming for in order to be able to grow and develop and create the lives that we really want to have. If you want to find out more, hit me up.

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Emma O'Brien: Thanks for listening, folks. See you next time, bye, for now.