Are my thoughts the cause of my feelings?

It is unbelievable how many thoughts go through our mind. Some say well over 60,000. That is a lot of thinking. What is unfortunate is most of our thoughts do not serve us! For instance, I am never going to lose weight. I am never going to stick to my exercise plan. I am not smart. All these thoughts create feelings that make us feel either bad, anxious, and or just plain sad. Yes, this is one of the first things that I learned that has really stuck with me and can admit that it has helped me in the last 10-12 years. One of my favorite books was written by Byron Katie, Loving what is, in which in it Byron explains how our thoughts are just thoughts and are not facts and we should question them! Also, a favorite life coaches insists that we should continuously coach ourselves on our thoughts daily. I know I have talked about this topic before simply because it has so much impact on our lives. You guessed it, women think way more than men do. What I mean by that, our thoughts can go crazy and they are generally just plain less emotional.

These thoughts, create our feelings, and these feelings create our actions, and these actions of course create results. Let that sink in. We have a negative thought, then it creates a sad feeling or emotion, and then we look for something to make us feel better and that is where are results come from. It is quite different that if we had a thought, the thought gives us a warm good feeling, which kicks in the dopamine, which makes us feel good, and we do something that is good for us, and we will most likely have good results. So, see how that works? It is not as easy as just to say change a thought. First, investigate why we have that thought and find something that we can replace the thought with. We cannot be happy 100% of the time. Life happens. But, we can chose our thoughts and or question them. So, next time when you are reaching for the Cheetos, check in with your emotions, ask yourself “Am I eating to make a negative emotion feel better?” You will be surprised how many of us emotionally eat to make us feel better.

This week monitor your thoughts. Our they serving you? Are they true? Do you know positively that they are true? If they are not, find a new thought and throw that one out!

Have a beautiful day!