Learning that I could choose my own thoughts changed my life.

As someone with lifelong anxiety and a history of anxious thoughts, I had no idea that I had the ability to choose my thoughts.

It wasn’t until I started practicing mindfulness and working with my thoughts that I realized that I could do something about them. That I didn’t need to believe them. That just because I had a thought didn’t mean that it was true. 🤯🤯

Thoughts are just thoughts. They’re not facts. And when I have an anxious thought, the first thing that I do is I check the facts.

“Is this true?” and “How do I know it’s true?”

Because our thoughts can FEEL true. Thoughts about ourselves. Thoughts about what others think about us. Thoughts about the thoughts we have.

The thing is, we talk to ourselves. All.the.time.

And we listen to what we say. The problem is when we believe it 100% as fact.

Growing up, I was so in my head about everything. I spent a lot of years worrying about what I THOUGHT other people were thinking about me. As it turns out, I am not in face, a mind reader, so I have no idea what other people are thinking.

But in my head? My anxiety used to convince me that other people were constantly judging me and that I was felling short in their estimations.

Only…

Choose your thoughts

With a regular mindfulness practice we can learn how to be with our thoughts without attaching to them. Like clouds floating past in the sky.

To recognize when we’re getting lost in our thought and to pull ourselves back.

This way we can choose which thoughts we feed and which ones we don’t/

What do I mean by feed our thoughts?
Think about the last time you felt anxious or nervous – what kind of thoughts did you hae? I’m going to guess anxious & fearful.

Our thoughts feed our emotions which in turn feed our thoughts.

We can have an anxious thought that might start off small but we feed it with out thoughts and our thoughts grow until we start to engage in catastrophic thinking.

Suddenly that launch you were going to do goes from giving you butterflied in your tummy and making you a little nervous to being the end of the world if it doesn’t make $$$$ amount of money. And now you FEEL like you’re going to die.

Thankfully, we can’t actually die from a thought – but man, does it every some times feel like we just might.

This is a great time to practice some of the tips I shared – my favourite to use in these moments is to say it out loud – “woah GETHONS!”

In these moments, our mind can run towards judgements and judgements lead to suffering which ultimately makes us feel worse.

We can stop this by learning how to choose our own thoughts through meditation.

Choosing your own thoughts as an entrepreneur

Learning how to pay attention and to choose your own thoughts is especially important as an entrepreneur.

We’re constantly facing new experiences and moments that bring up feelings of doubt & anxiety – the perfect feeding ground for imposter syndrome to raise its ugly head.

These thoughts & judgements contribute to feelings of overwhelm and can eventually lead to burnout – if we don’t learn how to address them first.

As a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher, I KNOW the importance of using meditation & mindfulness to manage stress. 

And I still almost burned out within the first few years of my business. 

It wasn’t until I started bringing mindfulness INTO how I run my business that everything changed. 

After taking some time off to address my burnout, I created a toolkit full of strategies & practices from my time working in the mental health field, my experiences as a psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher as well as what I’ve learned works for me.

I started to have confidence & clarity in myself & my decisions. I let go of a misplaced sense of guilt around taking time off to rest & to heal. I learned how to create spaciousness in my business to allow for mental health breaks. And most importantly I stopped beating myself up for not being able to do as much in the day as my peers. 

The Sustainable Business Toolkit was the result and I am sharing more about it inside of my free training.

Our thoughts, especially when they are critical and full of judgements are the biggest thing that keeps us stuck.

If we’re constantly telling ourselves that we’re not “good enough” or that “no one wants to hear what you have to say” or “now’s not the right time, I should hold off until I (take this course, reach x number of subscribers, etc.) how will we ever take action on our goals and build the business of our dreams?

But when we learn how to pay attention to our thoughts and to the things that we say to ourselves we can instead make the choice to take action and to let go of the judgments.

Inside this training, I go through this in more detail. You can sign up by clicking the button below

The tips that I share in this training are the exact same ones that I’ve used to keep my business running smoothly in the midst of recovering from neurosurgery.

For a moment, imagine the peace that you could feel when you take time off without mentally beating yourself up.

Sign up today to start feeling more spaciousness, peace & ease inside your business today.