72: Your Thoughts Are the Story

Hi friends—welcome back! Quick life update: I started a new job, met some great people, and explored new parts of Utah. But while I was away, my husband mentioned there were big storms in St. Louis—right where my son is serving. My old patterns of worry kicked in, but this time, I caught it. I reminded myself: I trust him. I trust God. It’s going to be okay.

That’s what inspired today’s episode. We’re talking about the quiet, sneaky thoughts running in the background—thoughts that shape how we experience everything.

President Nelson’s invitation to Think Celestial isn’t just a spiritual idea—it’s a practical tool for the moments when your mind starts spinning. Today, I’ll teach you how to:

• Recognize when your brain is gathering negative evidence
• Pause and ask: Is this thought lifting me higher or pulling me lower?
• Shift into more peaceful, faith-filled thinking—even when life is still hard

We’ll explore real-life examples and simple ways to change the stories your brain loves to repeat. And we’ll anchor this in Philippians 4:8—think on these things.

God isn’t asking for perfect thinking. Just one thought higher.

If this resonated with you, send me a DM or email. I love hearing how these episodes land for you! Have a beautiful week, and I’ll see you next time.

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Transcript

0:30

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm glad that you are able to join me today. So just a quick update on what's going on for me and my life. I actually got a new job, which is really exciting. and I have been training and meeting a lot of new people. And so that's been fun. And I've seen some new areas of the state. I live in Utah, so I've gotta see some new areas in the state, and so just very enjoyable. So but I was outta town. I was up in Salt Lake City and I was doing some training, and when I got home, I was talking with my husband and he said, have you been watching the news? And I said, not really. and I'm not really on social media that much anymore, so he said, so you don't know what's going on in St. Louis. And I was like. Nope, not really. You know, and as many of you know, I have a, I have a son that's serving in St. Louis and he said, yeah, there's been a lot of storms and it's been kind of crazy. And he didn't go into detail, but that was kind of the gist of it. And it was really interesting to watch my nervous system and then also cue my nervous system to like, actually, it's gonna be okay. Actually, I think that, you know, whatever happens. I trust him to try and, to use his best judgment. I did send him a message on Messenger, which of course he can't really respond to until Monday. And I just said, I just want you to know that I trust you, that you're going to do the best you can with, you know, whatever situation you're in, and that you're going to be safe. And I trust God in this situation. If this would've been like four or five years ago, I, I don't know if I could have said that. I definitely, with my older sons. Felt very whiplashed about everything that was going on, on the mission. So if that's you, I just wanna welcome you to the journey. We are, here to just really love each other through and just lift each other up. And also there's space for all of us. And wherever you know you're at in this whole thing is, it's okay. But that's not what we were gonna talk about. I actually have a different topic. We are going to talk about thoughts, so don't roll your eyes and think, oh great, here comes mindset stuff again. Just stay with me. Hear me out. What if the very thing that you're struggling with most isn't actually happening to you, but is happening through the lens of the thoughts that you keep letting play on repeat. And so this brings me to something really important that President Nelson said that hits, hits like me straight in the heart. Every time I think about it is think celestial. And I would've never loved this idea. I would've been like, great something else for me to try and do in this, you know, in my checklist life. But now the way I view it is. Completely different. And so let's just like think about this for a second. So he didn't say like, let's, he didn't say, think convenient, or think about whatever feels good in the moment or. He definitely did not think everybody else needs to change so that I can feel better. He said, just think celestial. So we're gonna explore. While this is not just a beautiful spiritual idea, but it's an actual tool that you can start using immediately, especially if you've got a missionary leaving, coming home and your mom heart is feeling all of the things and you know me, I'm gonna keep this real. I'm gonna make it. As practical as I can, and I might even poke a little fun about how our brains just love to stir the pot sometimes. I know that mine does. Have you ever noticed how once you decide you don't like someone that maybe it's this mission president or maybe it's a mission companion or just like set the mission aside, maybe it's just somebody in your ward and then everything they do just irritates you Your missionary calls home and says, yeah, I got transferred again. Or. I didn't get transferred and I'm stuck here forever. And then your brain comes up with this, this thought like, like, he doesn't, he's out to get my kid, or I knew I didn't like this mission president, or like, I don't like this person in my ward. Or, just whatever it is. And it's like your brain pulls up a clipboard and says, let me just keep a very detailed record. And every time this person confirms my low opinion of them, and listen, you're not broken if you do this. It's just totally a human thing. It's called a confirmation bias. And your brain loves to be right and it's gonna go to work. Finding evidence for whatever story you've already decided to believe. If you believe that the mission president doesn't like your kid, guess what? Your brain is gonna come up with a thousand reasons to support that. But here's the kicker. Your brain is also doing exactly what it was designed to do, and it's trying to keep you comfortable, safe, and validated, and that's why I find President Nelson's. Invitation. It's so revolutionary because it goes right alongside the work that I do, and it is so genius. So he's saying, Hey, what if you gave your brain a much higher job? What if you put it to work, finding evidence of something celestial instead? So let me just share a personal story, mission aside. I was driving on the freeway one time with my husband and he does custom saddle making and saddlebags and things like this, and he had made some stuff for someone and he was supposed to meet them on the freeway'cause we were headed that way. It was just kind of convenient. They weren't responding to his text, and I could tell that he was getting more agitated as we got closer and I was driving. And so we pulled off and he's texting and he called and the, the person he was supposed to meet didn't answer. And so I got back on the freeway and he, like, his nervous system was like getting really amped up. And so. He was like, oh my gosh, what are you doing? And I was like, like, we're going on. We're not gonna sit here and wait for them. And, and he was, you know, I could tell like how upset he was starting to get with me'cause he wanted me to be patient and in my brain I was thinking he's being the biggest jerk. He just wants me to sit here and wait for somebody that's not even responding and knew we were coming. So that is not my problem. And because my brain was thinking, he's such a big, fat jerk, guess how I showed up? I was a big fat jerk. And so it's really interesting and we don't really talk about the law of attraction, but in this stand, like in this. Situation. I just wanna talk about it briefly.'cause they talk about how we manifest things and I would just would like to say that that that comes from like the way that we think it comes on the way that. We rationalize the stories that we are creating because there's always a lens that we're looking through and there's always a story that we're telling in our mind, or like, and if you don't like the word story, maybe it's just an interpretation of how we take something. And that's why it's like such an interesting idea when President Nelson shared that thought. let's talk about what to do with this and how do we move from, I don't like this mission president, or I don't like so-and-so in my ward, and maybe there's something celestial that I'm not seeing yet. So it starts with one simple word. Awareness. So your thoughts are like a playlist and they're just running quietly in the background. And if you don't stop and check in, you have no idea what's actually playing. And so here's a little practice that I want you to try this week. When you start feeling frustrated or anxious, pause and ask yourself. What exact thought is creating this feeling, because I've talked about it in previous episodes, that our thoughts create feelings. Our feelings create actions, and then from those we create results. But ultimately it starts with a thought, and this is just like regular life. I'm not talking about our nervous system being activated and being in team hyper hypo or anything like that, which we've talked about. Quite a bit on this podcast. All I'm talking about is just thoughts. So being able to be aware of what thought is creating, and then you wanna ask your thought, is this thought taking me higher or lower? And finally ask yourself, if I were to think celestial right now, what would it sound like? Okay, so this is not about pretending everything is perfect or sugarcoating the hard stuff like. That's not anything what it's like. And Elizabeth Gilbert, I love her writing. She calls this honoring the full catastrophic catastrophe of life. Honoring the full catastrophe of life. So you can feel it all. You can be mad, you can be sad, you can be frustrated like, but don't set up a permanent camp there. So don't start roasting marshmallows over the fire resentment. So. I've, I've shared this story before, but I find that it's very helpful in this situation, so I'm gonna share it again. I think it's worth sharing. When my son that's in St. Louis was getting ready to leave on his mission, and it was probably a few months before, like I kept thinking, I can't do this again. I can't do this again. And it was almost like I caught it in the, per my peripheral vision. It was like I just caught this thought like. And I was like, what do you mean you can't do this again? Like we are doing this again. And that just that little change of like, actually this is happening, so how do we wanna actually respond? Because me saying I don't wanna do this again, that that's totally not false. Like no matter what I was gonna do it. So I was creating this major internal struggle with that thought. So. Being able to catch it and like shift it just a little bit like what it did was I went from a victim mentality to a very empowered place because it gave me an opportunity to be very aware of the thought that was running subconsciously, and then I could consciously choose something that was. Serving me and my son a hundred times better, which is a way that we think celestial, but we have to be able to catch those things and we have to actually think about them and and question if they're true. So I know that some of you are thinking, okay, Michelle, this all sounds lovely, but what about when it's actually really hard? Like what about when it's really, really. Really hard. So let's break it down with some real life examples. So here's some that I had. My missionary, my older son missionaries, his mission president, told me that the mission was none of my business. So my default thought was, mission presidents are jerks. Right. So an actual celestial thought might be something like this might be an experience that he needs to grow into, who God is shaping him to become. Like everybody involved in this experience is growing in ways that I can't see, and I'm just gonna trust God that he has this. Another one, the mission president seems unfair. So my default fight might be he doesn't understand my missionary. A celestial thought could possibly be God works through imperfect people. Maybe there's something here for both of them to learn. You're worried about cultural differences or homesickness. Maybe a default thought that's just kind of running in the background. This is too much for them to handle and this might be too much for me to handle. And like a celestial thought, if you can catch it, would be God knew exactly where to send them for the kind of growth that lasts eternally and it doesn't look the way I think it should, and that's okay. So every time you catch yourself spiraling, you just wanna be able to pause and ask yourself, what does thinking celestial look like right now in this experience? Notice I didn't say, what does thinking perfectly look like? It's not about perfection, it's just about direction and being able to be mindful of your own brain and be on to be able to be on to what your brain is feeding you. And it's kind of like your brain will start to pull up the same patterns. And I notice this with food. Like I start to get really anxious and my brain immediately thinks chocolate would be good. This, this is the time and now I can like talk back to my brain and be like, actually, that's not gonna make me feel any better. But thank you for trying. So let's try something else, right? So instead of like just letting myself like, okay. I was in a calling one time. I was in a primary presidency, and this is probably 20 years ago. I was in a primary presidency and the primary president would call me during the week and we would, you know, talk about things that were going on and, and we had a really hard time filling all of the different callings. And I found myself standing in the pantry just mindlessly eating while I was on the phone. And that's because my brain had gathered some evidence that I would feel better if I ate. And so it created this neuro pathway in my brain. But if you can catch that before you walk into the pantry or before you go down that rabbit hole you can start to rewire and create new neuro pathways in your brain. And. It is such a an awareness like, and really giving yourself a lot of grace, but like little tiny shifts over time and you, and it's, you start to feel like this is actually miraculous What's happening? Like these changes. Because some of your patterns and some of the stories you've been telling yourself are so rooted and you've been telling yourself for so long. So being able to uproot them and to start to shift them. But they talk about this quite a bit in neuroplasticity, and so I love the idea that we can always shift and we can always grow. And so let's just anchor this in. A scripture in Philippians four eight. It says, finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true whatsoever. Things are honest whatsoever. Things are just whatsoever. Things are pure. Think on these things. Does this sound familiar? President Nelson's invitation, it just echoes this perfectly, and what I have found is that. Sometimes we catch ourself thinking about something we, you know, we don't really love. And so we're like, oh, I gotta, I gotta think about that. And so it's like trying to play whack-a-mole with our thoughts, which doesn't actually work because whatever we resist really does persist, but it's actually just trying to direct our thoughts and like, oh, like I see where you're going here and. I actually don't live in that house anymore. So it's kinda like when you buy a house across town and your brain just automatically, you know, on autopilot drives to the old house and then you're like, oh, wait a minute. I don't live here anymore. I. So then you drive, you know, to the actual house where you live or you're used to driving to work. And on Sunday you have to turn to go to the church. And so it's like taking your brain off autopilot. And so then you're directing your thoughts toward things that are higher, like more eternal, and they're filled with faith and we start to feel so much more peace. Even if absolutely nothing outside of us has changed, so your missionary might still be struggling, the mission president might still be imperfect and you, but you, you're gonna be standing in a completely different kind of peace. I. And this, when I learned some of these things, it shifted the way I parented, it shifted the way I showed up in my marriage. It shifted definitely the way that I show up as a, as a mom of missionaries. So this week I want to invite you to try this simple process. Try to catch one or two thought. And question it and see if you can choose a higher one. See if you can just direct it. And sometimes, you know, people talk about doing mantras and stuff and like, you know, you, you, you have looked in the mirror and you loathe something specific about yourself and then you're supposed to like look in the mirror and be like, I love me. And that doesn't feel believable. So we don't, we're not trying to do that. We're just trying to shift to, to like something a little bit higher. So let's just say you have a lot of evidence build up about the mission president. You don't like him or whatever. Or whatev, you know, or this particular companion or, or. Like you don't love the way dropping them off at the MTC. Like you don't love how that runs. So you have, you've gathered some evidence, you know, you feel very justified. But if you can start to like question one thought about it, like maybe there's something here that I'm not seeing. Maybe. Maybe this mission president is in the process of growing as well. Maybe my son is in the process, or my daughter is in the process of growing in a different way because your brain is always trying to prove itself, right? So we just wanna give something. Give it something eternal to work with and your brain will go to work trying to find it. That's one of the reasons gratitude journals work so well because you're, it start, your brain starts to go on autopilot, finding things to be grateful about. So if you're right, you know, if you're, if you're the glass half empty. Or glass half full. If you start shifting into gratitude, even when things are really, really difficult, what that does is it starts to wire your brain to see. Things that you're grateful for, even in the midst of really hard times. So, and they have proven this over and over with studies about how it increases happiness. So just imagine with me for a second, what would happen if every mom listening to this started to think a little bit more celestial, not just from your missionary, but, but, but for yourself, because you're on the mission too, here. All right you guys, that's what I have for you today. Thoughts. They are so powerful and they're not wrong, and they just run unconscious subconsciously, and we just wanna bring them to our consciousness. And so if this episode sparks something for you, I would love to hear about it. You can always reach me through email or send me a DM on Instagram. I do check those, and I absolutely love knowing how these con conversations are landing for you. And remember, God isn't asking for perfect thinking. Just a little bit higher thinking, and little by little, one thought at a time will start to shift in that direction. All right everybody. You have a great week and I will see you next week. Bye-bye.