Your Thoughts Shape Your Reality So What

In this episode of The Coherent Life, Shaman Tai Ma explores a powerful idea that many people have heard but still struggle to apply. Your thoughts shape your reality. Now what?

Tai explains how we do not experience the world directly, we experience our thinking about the world. You will learn how thoughts create feelings, how those feelings drive actions, and how these patterns can keep you looping in the same results even when nothing external has changed.

Tai also shares a powerful example around guilt, especially for people in marginalized communities who feel conflicted about experiencing joy while others are suffering. Through a clear coaching model, you will see how guilt is created, what it produces, and how shifting both your thoughts and your state leads to more grounded compassion, more capacity, and more sustainable impact.

This episode introduces coherence as the bridge between awareness and action. When your brain, body, and nervous system are in coherence, you gain access to clarity, choice, and forward movement.

Book a clarity call with Shaman Tai Ma: https://shamantaimallc.mysamcart.com/clarity-call/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Coherent Life. I'm Ty. We're going to kick back and talk about survival mode, coherence, and creating your life on purpose. Through real conversations about things like relationships, money, health, and the patterns that keep repeating in everyday life. If you already know that thoughts create reality but keep getting pulled into old patterns, stress, or overwhelm, you're in the right place. Before we get into it, I want to quickly share how you can work with me. I help queer folks, BIPOC, and allies feel better, accomplish goals, and navigate challenges. The first place to start is with a free clarity call. This isn't just a casual conversation. On that call, we get really clear on three things. What you actually want right now, what's keeping you stuck, and what would need to shift for things to start moving forward for you. Most people leave that call with more clarity in 60 minutes than they've had in months, sometimes years. And if it feels aligned, we can talk about working together. If not, you still walk away with direction. The link to book the free clarity call is in the show notes. All right. If you've ever felt like life is just happening to you, like you wake up already behind, like your brain is running before your feet hit the floor. There's something you keep thinking about, and it just keeps repeating in your brain. You think about it in the shower, you think about it while you're driving, you think about it at night. It keeps weighing on you. You feel stuck, you feel helpless, you're not sure what to do. Maybe you tell yourself, you'll try to figure it out later, but later never comes. And then there's this quiet thought in the background. Why do I keep ending up here? This is hopeless. If that's you, this is going to click something into place because here's the shift. As Byron Katie would say, we don't experience the world, we experience our thinking about the world. A thought is just a sentence your brain offers you. That's it. Just words in your mind. And your brain is generating these constantly about who you are, what things mean, what's possible. And here's the part most people don't realize you don't question most of your thoughts. You live inside of them, like they're facts. Thoughts like nothing I do here will make a difference. I'm stuck here. People don't care. Those thoughts feel true, but they're still sentences, and those sentences shape how you feel. And from there, it cascades. Your thoughts influence your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, and your actions create your results. So when something in your life isn't working, it's not enough to just look at what you're doing. You have to look at what you're thinking. Let me show you what I mean. Two people, same situation. One thinks this is an opportunity, the other thinks this is a problem. Nothing changed externally, but their experience is completely different. One feels open, the other feels stressed, one takes action, the other hesitates, one moves forward, the other stays stuck. Same situation, different thought, different life. And this is where people get tripped up. We assume that our feelings come from what's happening around us, but they're coming from our interpretation of what's happening around us. And if you believe your feelings are caused by everything outside of you, then your personal power stays out there too. Something I see a lot, especially with people in marginalized communities and allies, is what happens when the world feels heavy. Someone starts to feel okay, maybe even good, and then a thought comes in. I shouldn't feel good when other people are suffering. It's wrong for me to be okay right now. Who am I to feel joy when others are struggling? And that creates guilt. And guilt can feel like you're doing the right thing, like you're being aware, like you're being responsible, like you care. But if you actually look at the results that guilt creates, it drains you, it collapses your energy, it disconnects you from your own life. Let's slow down using a simple model. If something good happens in your life and you think it's wrong for me to feel good while others are suffering, you feel guilt. So you dim your joy, you overextend, you don't rest, you stay stressed, which results in you burning out, you having less capacity, less clarity, less positive impact. And it reinforces the belief feeling good is wrong. Now, same situation, different thought. Something good happens in your life, and you think my well-being doesn't take away from someone else. Being resourced helps me show up better. I don't have to suffer to be in solidarity. I can thrive and be in solidarity. Now what happens? You feel grounded, open, compassionate. You rest, you regulate, you set boundaries, you contribute sustainably. And that results in more capacity, more clarity, more innovative ideas, more long-term impact. And just to be clear, this isn't about ignoring harm or pretending everything is fine. This is about understanding that your internal state determines how you respond. Because if you're exhausted, overwhelmed, and burned out, you don't actually have more capacity to help. You have less. So this is where alignment comes in. When your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions are all pointed in the same direction, you start to move differently and get different results. I had a moment with this recently. I was really intentionally practicing believing in my work, and I noticed the difference in how I was feeling. Before I would have taken action and sent an email or created a post from a place of thinking, I hope this works. And this time it felt like this work matters, the right people will find it. Same action, different energy behind it. I posted on my Instagram story inviting people to book a clarity call. And that same day, someone booked who didn't even follow me, didn't even see the post. It was my thoughts and feelings that created my internal energy, and my energy mixed with taking action that resulted in someone booking with me. And from an indigenous perspective, this connects to what's often called great mystery. Not everything is direct cause and effect, but your internal state still matters. It still creates your results because you're always in relationship with something larger. So this is where the nervous system piece comes in. Because yes, thoughts shape your experience, but you don't have access to new thoughts when your body feels unsafe, when you're in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Your system is flooded with stress hormones, and your brain shifts into survival mode. So you're not thinking creatively, you're thinking protectively. In survival mode, you loop, you avoid, you react. In coherence, you choose, you see options, and you move forward. So coherence isn't separate from thought work. It's what makes thought work possible. It's what gives you access to different thoughts, which create different feelings, which lead to different actions, which create different results. So practically start by noticing your state. And if you're activated, pause actually pause. Because if your body was on fire, you wouldn't say, I don't have time. You would immediately stop and put out the fire. Notice when you're activated, drop into your body and create a coherent state on purpose. If you take one thing from this episode, you're not experiencing life as it is, you're experiencing your thoughts about it. And when your state shifts, your access shifts. And when your access shifts, your life starts to shift with it. The link is listed in the show notes. And if you have noticed that you're often in survival mode and want to make a shift, start with the stop, drop, create coherence series. It's a four-week self-led process to help your nervous system come out of survival mode so you can more easily create what you want. You can find it at shaman.com under the stop drop create coherence tab. That's s-h a m-a-n t aima dot com under the stop drop create coherence tab.