You're losing YEARS to thoughts you don't even notice...

There are thoughts that don’t just affect your mood.
They affect your entire life.

Some thoughts don’t cost you a day.
They cost you years.

In this episode, I break down the 5 thoughts that quietly steal time, trap identity, delay growth, and keep people living beneath their real potential.

These are not just random negative thoughts.

They are deeper internal patterns.
They shape:

your behavior
your confidence
your decisions
your self-image
your emotional state
your future

And if they run unchecked, they can steal years of progress without you even realizing it.

This episode is about recognizing those thoughts clearly, understanding how they work, and breaking their power at the root.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
the 5 thoughts that silently drain momentum and waste years
how certain thinking patterns become identity loops
why repeated thoughts shape emotional states and behavior
how overthinking, fear, self-doubt, and false stories delay your life
why these thoughts feel true even when they’re destructive
how to interrupt the loop and rebuild from a new internal operating system
what it takes to stop losing time to the same mental patterns

Most people think they are stuck because of circumstances.

But often, they are stuck because they keep thinking the same thoughts and then living inside the emotional and behavioral reality those thoughts create.

That is how years disappear.

This episode is for people who feel like:

they know they are meant for more
they’ve lost too much time to fear or hesitation
they are tired of repeating the same internal loops
they want clarity, momentum, and a new identity
they want to stop being controlled by old patterns of thought

Because the truth is:

A thought repeated long enough becomes a pattern.
A pattern repeated long enough becomes an identity.
And identity shapes reality.

If you can identify the thoughts that stole your time, you can stop letting them steal your future.

This is not about guilt.
This is about awareness.

And awareness is where power begins.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

There were five thoughts that secretly wasted years of my life. Not because they were true, but because I believe them. And here's the thing: they're probably running in your head right now, in the background, quiet enough that you don't notice them, and loud enough that they're controlling everything. I want to show you exactly what they are and how they work, and how to override them. Because once you see them clearly, they lose their power. I want to tell you a quick story about someone that I'll call David. David had an idea that he'd been sitting on for three years. It was about a business that he wanted to build, a direction that he wanted to go. He had notebooks full of planning, research, strategy. But here's the thing David never launched. Every time he got close, he found a reason to wait. He felt that he needed one more course, a little bit more knowledge, a little bit more information, a little bit more planning, a little bit more strategy. He wanted to make sure it was perfect. And he wanted to prepare for every single little thing that would happen. And he wanted to make sure that the timing was right. And so three years passed. It was the same idea and the same starting point. And here's the thing. And this is what we're going to cover today. So the loop was thought, went into the emotion, then went into the identity, then went into the action, then went into a timeline. And so this is the exact loop that he was running for three years. And the thing is that it started with thought. And thoughts can be very dangerous if they're not set up properly, if they're not done correctly, and if they're not in the right place. And how this loop actually works is a thought creates a specific emotion about, you know, let's say he had been thinking about this whole project or this whole business for the three years, and every time he was thinking about it, he would have an emotion of excitement, like, yes, this is gonna be amazing. This is gonna be groundbreaking, it's gonna be phenomenal, right? Amazing product or service, whatever it is that he was, you know, working on, right? And then those emotions would then go into his identity, then his identity would dictate his actions, and then he would get a specific timeline in terms of his life path. And ultimately, what this means here is that you're not losing, and he didn't lose three years by accident, it was this entire cycle, right, that was running on autopilot, and he was not aware of it that it was happening, like he would get all these thoughts about uh, you know, it's amazing, it's gonna happen, and then simultaneously, he would have thoughts about, Well, I'm not ready, what if this, what if that? And so it's this constant loop, and he was never aware of it. But now I'm gonna show you exactly what this loop is and what these thoughts are so that you can become aware of them, and so you don't have to run this cycle. And so think about it this way it's just like running old code on a new computer, right? Old software on a brand new computer that isn't going to work, right? If you have Microsoft Windows 95 and you're trying to run that on a brand new computer, right? It's just not gonna work. And so then you keep wondering why you're not moving when it really doesn't have anything to do with you specifically, it has to do with the program that you're running. So let's go over each one of these thoughts individually. So, thought number one. I'm not ready yet. And this is the thought that kills more dreams than failure ever could. Here's what it does: it essentially keeps you preparing versus acting, right? Like you're getting every single little thing ready, you're trying to, you know, dot your I's, cross your T's, make sure that you have the right exact business plan, the right strategy, the right people behind it. You're getting, you know, confirmation from other people in the space, and they're validating, you know, your idea, all of these different things that are not allowing you to actually take action. It's the whole paralysis by analysis, and what it ultimately does is it reinforces the identity of I'm not ready yet, and it blocks opportunities and it delays everything, not by days, by years. And you see, that was David's thought. I'm not ready yet. And the thing about that thought is that it's very tricky, it's one of those things where it's like I feel responsible that I'm not, you know, taking action on this because I don't have everything in the right place, right? Like the stars are not aligned, like I don't have every single little thing precisely, exactly how it's supposed to be before I'm even launching this or I'm even doing this. So it almost like feels like it's a responsible thing that you're doing, but it's not, it's really just a loop that's continually running. Because think about it. When is the time for actually making that move? Like, when is the right time? Who makes that choice? Who dictates that? Right? And what does that mean? Like, have you defined that? Right? Like, that's the problem with this whole thing about making sure everything's perfect and everything is ready. Is that it never comes, and you're never going to be ever 100% ready. Like, from my perspective, I look at you know, taking action in terms of now, uh, 60 to 70 percent of the information of the knowledge, and then I make a move, I take action, and then from there I course correct, right? It's the mentality more so of ready, fire, aim, right? And what that ultimately does for you is that it allows you to take action, gather data, gather feedback, iterate, adjust, modify, and then move forward. Because if you wait for 100% of things to be perfect, it's never gonna come, it's never gonna happen. Because what is 100%? How do you dictate that, right? Like, how do you define 100% clear or done or ready? It's really subjective, and so what you're essentially doing with this is every time you tell that to yourself, you're moving the goalpost, right? Like, oh, you know, three years go by, I'm not gonna do it yet because this new thing happened, and I need to adjust, I need to modify because you know the economy or this or that. So it's really important to realize that it's never the right time, the right time is now and yesterday, right? But 60 to 70 percent should be the threshold in terms of having enough information and then taking action. And let's go to thought number two. I need someone to validate this first, okay? So you are essentially waiting for somebody to tell you that this is a good idea, and this is the right move. But here's the thing you can ask a bunch of different people, they're all gonna give you different perspectives, different advice. One person may say, This is an amazing idea, another person may say, you know what, this is not a great idea because of X, Y, and C. So you have to make that decision because if you're trying to get validation from other people, it starts to limit your ability to you know really depend on and focus in on your own intuition, it puts your potential in somebody else's hands, it disconnects you from your future self and it weakens your identity every single time that you're seeking external validation and outsourcing your decisions. Because here's the thing I want to put this right here. If you need permission, you're not free. Okay, you're essentially waiting for somebody to tell you yay or nay, right? Yes or no, and that's taking away like your own free will, right? Your own intuition, right? Your own gut feeling, which is often right. And with David, he wasn't just waiting to feel ready, he was waiting for somebody to tell him that it was a perfect and great idea. And every time that he didn't get that confirmation, the I'm not ready voice became louder. So think about it. Two thoughts, one loop, three years. And let me give you another example, another story. So, with this, let's call her Elena. And so Elena had everything lined up the skill, the vision, the desire. And so by every measure, she was ready to move. But every time she got close to taking a step, the same question showed up. What if it doesn't work out? You see, what she would do is she'd be running the worst case scenarios, all the different types of scenarios that, like, this can happen, that can happen before she even would make a move. She would think to herself, like, what if nobody responds? What if nobody buys? What if nobody likes this stuff? What if I get embarrassed? What if I invest my money and it fails and then everything collapses? And so she'd wait. And while she was waiting for the anxiety to settle, for the conditions to feel right, for the motivation to show up, the time kept passing. Months and then another year. And I truly recognize Elena because I've been there. I've started a lot of different businesses that were failures, and that I really questioned myself, you know, whether I should do it, or you know, I need to do a little bit more research. What are people gonna think? What if it doesn't work? What if I'm embarrassed? What if I look dumb? All these different thoughts would consistently go through my mind. And here's what I didn't understand then. Elena wasn't being cautious, she wasn't doing risk assessment, she was running a fear-based identity underneath a very logical sounding thought. So let's go with thought number three. What if it doesn't work out? Now here's the thing with this. This one right here is probably one of the most silent killers because this is something where you can sit there and like find millions and millions of reasons why it could not work out, right? Like you can convince yourself, what if this, what if that, what if people don't like my product, what if people don't like my service, what if they think I'm weird or whatever it may be, right? Like, if you had that thought about everything in your life, then you wouldn't even come out of your house, right? Because what if you walk outside and you get into a car accident? What if you get hit by a bus, you know, God forbid, right? Like, if you think about your life experience with the thought process and the thought of what if it doesn't work out before every single little action that you took, then you wouldn't do anything, you would just be at home and not getting out of your comfort zone in terms of going out into the real world. Because when you're thinking about this and you're thinking that thought of what if it doesn't work out, that automatically shifts your emotions to anxiety. And anxiety collapses your confidence, then your collapsed confidence builds an identity of hesitation, and an identity of hesitation attracts failure outcomes because your behaviors start matching your fear, not the vision. Think about it this way: if you come up to a bridge and you need to get to your destination that's on the other side of that bridge, but you before you cross it, you're thinking to yourself, Man, what if this bridge collapses? You're going to stop yourself dead in your tracks, and you're not going to be able to go over that bridge because you're going to essentially think, right, that you're going to not make it because the bridge is going to collapse. Now, that plays into a huge factor that's a topic for a different conversation. But what you're actually doing when you're having that kind of mentality and thought of what if this happens, what if that happens? And you go out into the real world and in your reality, what ends up happening is it gets reinforced, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now, it doesn't need to happen in terms of like the bridge collapsing, right? Like it's not going to physically collapse, but if you don't think of yourself as a confident person, then you're going to not act confident, which then people are going to not treat you as a confident person. So ultimately, this is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so if you're forecasting failure, then you're likely going to get failure in return because that is what you're putting out into the universe, and then that's being reflected back to you in terms of your experience, experiencing failure. Okay, so let's go to number four. I'll start when I feel motivated. And this one's very subtle because it feels reasonable. But here's what it actually does: it keeps you in a passive state, waiting for an emotional condition that isn't coming. Motivation is unreliable because motivation fluctuates, right? It's like one minute you can feel super high and motivated, and maybe you watched a video that gets you all hyped up and you're ready to go, but then the next day you can feel off. And so if you're waiting to just feel motivated before you take action and do something, then you're gonna be waiting a long time or you're gonna be going in different cycles, right? Up and down. You should not use motivation to get things done. Because if you keep constantly waiting for motivation before you take any action, then your identity becomes the person that waits for motivation. And with Elena, she was waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel that motivation, waiting for the moment where it all felt safe, it all felt aligned, but that moment never came. Because here's the thing motivation doesn't create action. Or if it does, it's very short-lived. Okay, it's like energy, right? Think about like a battery. If you use motivation, you're gonna use up a lot of your battery, and then once your battery's out, then you're no longer motivated, then you can no longer take action, so it's not consistent. Action creates motivation. Think about you taking small little minor micro actions on a daily basis that all build up over time, and then you keep looking at that, and then you're like, Man, I'm actually making this happen. I'm taking the right steps, and you see that body of work over like a month or so, you're gonna get motivated and fired up because you're seeing those results, you're seeing things happen, right? And so you're gonna look at all the results and all the outcomes that you're getting, and you're gonna get fired up. So that's what's going to create your constant motivation. Because most people believe that you need to feel motivated, and that's gonna get you to take action on a consistent basis, but it's about flipping that, taking the action so that you see the results, and then that gets you motivated and fired up, ready to go. Okay, so let's go to thought number five here. Maybe this is just who I am. This is the most dangerous thought on this list here, okay? I'm not ready yet. I need someone to validate this first. What if it doesn't work out? I'll start when I feel motivated, but this one here, this one is the main main culprit, and this will keep you stuck and locked into your identity forever. Okay, like this is having a fixed mindset that you don't believe that you're capable of more, of having abundance, of having something different than what you've always had and always seen. And this is one of those that doesn't really show up loud, right? Like, you don't really feel anxiety, you don't really feel like fear, stress. It's one of those where it shows up in acceptance when you accept that, right? When you accept that maybe or this is just who I am, when you accept this, you no longer have tension, there's no fear, there's no anxiety, but then you get exactly what you are and who you are, and you're not able to change, and so it's that whole acceptance thing because if you accept it, then you acknowledge that you are a certain way, and then you box yourself in, right? Like you go like this, you have a box here, okay, and you can never leave this box, you're in here, okay. And whatever you try to do, you can't. Maybe you go to the edges over here, you know, corners over here, but you can't, versus if you do not accept this, then these walls dissolve, right? There's no box because it's unlimited, right? There are no limits, and this is something that I've wrestled with before as well. For a period of time, I thought that my identity was a certain person, a certain way, and that I couldn't do X, Y, and Z, right? Bigger things, have expansion, and that cost me a lot of years, a lot of time. And what I know now from the other side is that that thought isn't acceptance, it's resignation, it's the moment that your identity stops evolving. This is like mistaking a go right here, mistaking a chapter in a book, okay, for the entire story. Right? Let's say that you come in and you're reading a book, and you go through chapter one, and you see this person, he's raised a certain way, he doesn't have a whole lot of motivation, he struggles a lot, he's not really confident, and so that's like you thinking that that first chapter, that person is who that person is, and you are not able to read further and realize that down the road, chapter four, chapter five, this person's completely different, he's a whole new person, like you wouldn't even be able to really recognize them because they're just on a whole different stratosphere, right? Whole new level of identity, and so why these thoughts are so powerful is because they become self-fulfilling prophecies. And let me show you the loop. So the loop here, okay, is belief goes into your behavior, then this gives you evidence, and then this is all reinforced, okay. Reinforcement. So you have a certain belief about yourself, about who you are. You act in accordance with your behavior. You then give back feedback and evidence regarding that. And then your belief is then reinforced all over again, right? So this all really comes down to being self-fulfilling prophecies. Just think about it, right? Like your thoughts generate an emotion. An emotion drives behavior. Your behavior produces evidence. And then that evidence confirms that original thought. Then the loop closes, and then it continues to run again. And keep in mind, all of this here, in terms of this process and everything that you're running here, these are all programs, okay? They're all running whether you realize it or not. And I think the biggest thing here for you is to realize and understand and acknowledge that these are running and that now you're able to become aware of them so that you can change them. Because ultimately, you're not failing by accident. You're simply running a program, and the program is running exactly as designed. If this is resonating with you and you want to work with me one-on-one to upgrade your internal operating system so you can become the best version of yourself, click the link below, fill out the application, and we'll see if we're a good fit. Okay, so now what I want to go over is the thoughts override system. This is a framework, a system that I developed so that you can override these thoughts. So let me go ahead and erase the board here. So step number one this is the T. You want to trace the thought? Because before you can override the thought, you have to understand where it's coming from. And you want to ask yourself three questions whenever you have a thought that comes in that is not productive, right? Not empowering. So three questions here. One, where did this thought come from? Okay, number two, whose voice is this? Now, this is actually really powerful here because oftentimes if you really stop and you become aware and you just listen to your thoughts in terms of the voices that are playing in the background that are saying things like, you know, this is not who I am, I'm not ready. What if it doesn't work out? All of these different things, right? Whose voice is it? Is it the voice of your future self? Obviously, not, right? But it's really ultimately your current self. Okay, it's trying to stay protected, trying to stay safe, right? It's typically the self right now that you have, your current identity, just trying to protect itself, just trying to stay status quo, because if it steps outside of its boundaries, it's gonna have to dissolve, it's gonna have to go away. So it's trying to protect you and protect itself. And so number three, this goes into the identity, right? What identity does this thought belong to? We just realized here that this identity is likely belonging to the current identity, your current self. Because it wants to be safe, it wants to be protected. But when you are going through those thoughts and they're happening, stop, pause, become aware, realize that it's your current self trying to protect you, it's not trying to go outside the box and go into uncertainty, into the unknown because it wants to be in a familiar setting where it's safe and secure, right? And it's really important that you realize that most of the thoughts that are running in your mind right now and running your current life, they didn't originate from you, they were installed by your environments, by your experiences, by your family, by society, essentially by people that are unaware of their own programs that are running. And so if you can really trace this back to like, let's say, a specific person that told you something a certain way, right? In terms of like, I remember for myself growing up, and you know, I moved out of my house since I was 18. And one of the things that I used to always hear from my family is that hey, you don't know what the real world looks like, you don't know what it means to pay bills and all this stuff, right? And like, you know, live in the real world, and so that really stuck with me. And interestingly enough, I actually use that as fuel for me to actually prove them wrong, but that's an example of something that your family, society, right, conventional wisdom can be told and said to you, and then you could take it in as like gospel, right? Like maybe your family was and would tell you that hey, money doesn't grow on trees, or we can't afford that. So then now, growing up, you look at things from the lens of like, hmm, that's too expensive. I don't know if I can afford that. I should play it cautiously. All of those are inherited and programmed and installed without you really even realizing it. So think about this as like being under a spell, okay? And awareness. Whoops. Let's put this here awareness breaks the spell. Okay, awareness is what allows you to go into like a dark-lit room, walk in, flip that light on, right? So you can see it all very clearly. Okay, so let's go to step number two. This is the O. Observe without merging. This is the psychological distance step. Very, very important here. When you have the thought of, I'm not ready, instead of accepting that, you step one layer up above that, and you realize and you become aware that you're actually having a thought that says, I am not ready. So you're distancing yourself and separating yourself from the thought because your thoughts are not you, they're separate. Your thought, right? Your thoughts, and then you. Two separate entities, essentially, right? And when you can really acknowledge that and understand that and become aware of like, I'm having this thought. Hmm, does it make sense? Is it true? Is it real? Is it for real? Right? That's what we really want you to do here. And what's really, really powerful is just become aware of it and acknowledge the separation. Because what this does for you is it allows you to become just the observer. Hey, you're just seeing this thought fly by, right? It's just coming through. Think of it as like a conveyor belt, right? And like it's just going by, right? Almost like the luggage. Think about like you're in an airport and you have the conveyor belt that's just kind of running in circles, and on one of the you know, belts there, it has a piece of luggage that says, I'm not ready, and it's just there, it's just coming through, right? And then you can pull that out from the conveyor belt and then toss it out, right? So it no longer shows up. And the reason why David had a lot of trouble with this in terms of every time he would say or think, I'm not ready yet, it's because he actually merged with it, he became that identity and became one with the thought in terms of I'm not ready yet. And so that's how it had power over him, it had control. But if he would have separated himself and just observed that thought without any judgment, then it would have been a whole different story, right? Okay, so let's go to the final one here. S. This is where you shift into future identity, and this is the recode, and you want to ask yourself three questions. Number one, what would my future self think in this moment? Number two, how would they interpret this situation? And then number three, what decision would they make today? Not eventually, but today. And so these three questions here are extremely important because they allow you to step into your future self and to really ask and get responses and see the world through the future self, right? Which is a version of you that already has everything that you want or has at least reached a new level to where you want your desired reality to be, right? What would the future self think in this moment? Like, go through and really think about this. Anytime that you are facing a situation, an experience that isn't so great, you know, whatever you're going through. Use this, okay? Think about a situation. How would they interpret the situation? Right? Are they going to freak out? Are they going to acknowledge it for what it is? Are they going to accept it? Are they going to just do what they need to do to make you know things happen to get their desired reality, no matter what it is? And then the decision. What would they do? What action would they take? Now, let me show you what this actually produces. Let me give you a quick story. So, two different people, same thoughts, but different responses to them. So, person A and person B, right? Two different people. Person A. Person B. Okay. With person A, they recognize their thoughts all intellectually. All of the previous five thoughts that cause these issues, right? Like they understand them, they realize what they are, and they acknowledge them, right? They watch this video, they've taken notes, they see the clarity, like they feel it, like they fully understand and grasp the concept, and they feel something shift inside. And then they go back to their lives and they're still running the same old patterns because recognition and awareness isn't the same as an actual override. Then they have the thoughts come back. The I'm not ready. And without this practice, right? The TOS system, the trace the thought, the observe without merging, the shift into the future identity without actually executing on that, they run the same old program. You see, their identity didn't change, it's just that they became aware of the system itself. But you can't just change the system by becoming aware of it. That's the first step, right? The first step is becoming aware of the system actually running so that you could change it. And then a year goes by and they're still running the same loops, and now they're even more frustrated because they're aware of what's happening, like they know what's going on, but they can't fix it. Now, person B is a little bit different, right? Person B has one thought, and they have the thought of, I'm not ready yet. Okay, but then they run it through this entire system here. They trace the thought, they observe without merging, they shift into the future identity, and something magical happens. They actually are able to move the needle and actually have real change. And the first week it feels a little bit unnatural. In the second week, it's a little bit difficult, like there's a lot of pressure, there's a lot of effort involved. And by the fourth week, that thought is still coming in, but it doesn't land the same, it doesn't hold the same amount of weight. Think about it this way. So we talked about the example of like being in an airport and you have the luggage pickup, right? And you know how the luggage pickup continually goes in a circle. Well, previously, it was this huge, large piece of luggage, but now, perhaps it's a tiny little briefcase, barely noticeable, and still noticeable, but doesn't have the same weight. And so 12 months later, they have a completely different reality. Not because the thought completely disappeared, but because they stopped letting the thought drive the bus. Same thoughts, different relationship to them, different life. The TOS system isn't about eliminating the thought, it's about removing its authority over your identity. David spent three years waiting to be ready. Elena spent years forecasting a failure that never came. And I spent more time than I'd like to admit, sitting on the thought that maybe this was just who I was. None of us were broken. We were just running the wrong code. These five thoughts didn't steal years from us because they were powerful. They stole years from us because we believed them. You don't need more motivation, you don't need better circumstances. You need to override the thought that's been running your timeline without your permission. One new thought can give you back everything that those five cost you.