On this week’s episode of Let’s Talk About…, Elise sits down with co-host Sarah Joseph to talk about how our thoughts affect our emotions.
Sarah is a certified emotional intelligence coach whose mission is to help you get comfortable with your emotions and master them to live a more purposeful life. She understands how our lack of emotional management can impact the longevity of our relationships and can inspire our emotional healing by plugging into our most powerful tool, the Mind. Her philosophy is that our emotions show up in every aspect of our lives and it’s your right to learn how to manage them effectively to your advantage.
On this week’s episode, Elise and Sarah talk about tuning into your mind, the self-coaching model, how childhood patterns affect our adulthood, and how can we retrain our minds to create new patterns.
“The mind likes the process, and it likes repetition and it likes to continuously do things. And with that, it will begin to create a pattern for you…Think of it as a really skinny road, right? It’s a really, really, really skinny road, and it won’t grow unless you nurture it. It won’t expand unless you put more concrete into it if you do some construction.” Sarah tells Elise on Let’s Talk About.
Check out our show’s full transcript below.
[00:00:00] Elise: Hi everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of Let’s Talk About. We’re continuing our series on emotional intelligence with certified emotional intelligence coach Sarah Joseph. Sarah, thanks for joining us again today.
[00:00:12] Sarah: Thank you for having me. I’m so excited for our topic today.
[00:00:15] Elise: Yeah, so today we’re talking all about how our thoughts create emotions, which feels very timely for me cuz I was just listening to a podcast, uh, with Jay Shetty.
How we have something, and this might not be the direct, uh, stat, but it’s something like we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day. , 80% of those thoughts are negative. And 80% of those thoughts are we repeat, are repetitive. Yes. So he, this, this podcast was on a slightly different topic than what you and I are gonna talk about, but I just think it’s so interesting about how, what, what we say to ourselves, not only just necessarily out loud, but what the conversations we have in our head affect our reality.
Um, for sure. Yeah. Thrilled to be jumping into that today, because then we’ll talk about on next week’s episode, just how we can change that behavior pattern too. Yes, exactly. So a, a couple good, like a, a two-parter fair to say the next Yeah.
[00:01:15] Sarah: Two-parter. Yeah,
[00:01:16] Elise: a two-parter. Okay. Awesome. So you mentioned something to me when we were kind of going through what, what we’re gonna talk about next, this self-coaching model.
So can you take us through like what is this self-coaching model?
[00:01:29] Sarah: Yeah, so this is not a concept that I created at all, and this was not a concept. This is a concept actually, that I learned from another leading coach in the industry, and her name is Brooke Castillo, and if you don’t know her, please get on her pages.
Go take a look at her podcast because she’s amazing at what she does and she’s inspired so much of my own work that I, I don’t think I’d be this far in where, in what I’m teaching without what she’s taught us. So amazing, amazing woman. Please check her out. But she developed this concept, or she works with this concept called the self-coaching Model.
And essentially what this does, it gets you to the root. Of your action of why you aren’t taking action or why you’re taking an inaction. And it really gets you to analyze those thoughts and those feelings that are creating all of what’s happening kind of in your life. And she’s used a bunch of universal teachings from different practices, from different teachers, just about what life kind of.
thrown her way and then she’s used it to understand it in a way that’s more digestible to your mind so that you can understand it better and you can apply it in almost any area of your life. And I know that’s a big, that’s a broad area to say that you can, broad statement exactly to say this, that you say you can use this in any area of your life, but you really can, and I’m gonna walk you through it.
I’m gonna show you how to do it, and then you’re gonna be able to apply it in your own life. . So essentially, let’s say that you wanted to start a business, right? Or let’s say that you haven’t started yet. You wanted to start it, but you didn’t make that first initial post or brand it yet. Maybe you created that Instagram page that you wanted to create that content for, but you never got around to doing it.
Or maybe you wanna get into this long lasting, happy relat. A healthy one at that, but it’s just not happening for you. Right? Or maybe you’re struggling with vulnerability and you’re not sure why these patterns are coming up for you over and over again. So this model kind of helps you to get that going in terms of what the model is.
You can get it a piece of paper if you wanna write this down, or we can link it in the, description somewhere in our, in our show today. But here is the es essentially the roadmap for the model. So the model is, your circumstances, which are your triggers, so anything that’s out of your control. Create these thoughts.
These thoughts produce these feelings, and these feelings generate these actions and these actions cause these results in your life. So in simpler terms, what I’m really saying is that you’ll have a circumstance, a thing that happens to you. Then you’ll create all these thoughts about what it is, what it means, how it happened, and those thoughts will create all these chemical messages like we talked about in our last podcast.
Sure. How you’re gonna feel about this specific situation. And then from those feelings, you will either take an action or an inaction. So you’ll do it or you won’t do it, and that will cause you to have the specific results that you’re having in your life. Right? So it’s. This caused this to happen, right?
So cause and effect almost. So essentially what we’re getting to is that when you can hone in on understanding what this process is for you, you’ll be able to use it in any area of your life. And finally, take control of the things that have really been out of control and use it to your advantage.
[00:04:57] Elise: is this, as you were like going through that process, I’m like, it feels like it’s a self, does is it like a self-fulfilling prophecy?
of what? Like if you don’t stop that, right? Like, okay, so my thoughts, let’s use like a simple example like, oh, my, my boyfriend’s on his phone at dinner. Right. So then my thought, so that’s the, that’s the circumstance, right? Right. The thought is, oh, he must not be interested in me. He doesn’t wanna talk to me.
Talk more. Something else is more important than me. So that’s my thought. And then is the action the next step, or was there
[00:05:33] Sarah: something, so the feeling, so from those thought patterns, what do you feel?
[00:05:37] Elise: So then I feel like neglected, I feel hurt. I feel like he doesn’t like me. I’m gonna pull away as well. . And then my action could be that I then pick out my phone and go on my phone and, or I maybe I, you know, we talked a little bit about how we manage and things maybe that, maybe I have like an outburst and be like, why aren’t you paying attention to me?
Like, why don’t you love, et cetera, et cetera. And then over time does that kind of like, maybe he doesn’t wanna talk to me anymore, maybe, yeah. . So I don’t know, like, is is that the thought is that it can be a, is there exactly part of it that can be a self-fulfilling
[00:06:13] Sarah: prophe. . Exactly. You, you just kind of marked it out right there.
Right. And from those thoughts, those feelings that were generated for you were probably anxiety, probably insecure. Right Now I’m feeling it. What if he’s talking to someone else? Right? Yeah. What if he’s not interested in me? Right. So now I feel like I’m not lovable. Right. And now you’ve making all these broad, really broad statements about yourself, which is really the underlining manual or the blueprint of how you’ve been thinking about yourself for a long time.
But what if we were able to change those thought patterns into, he’s just checking his phone because he is checking a work email and something that was important to him. Maybe he’s just sending a text to his mom. Right. Because his mom is really important to him and it has nothing to do with me. Right.
But it has everything to do with how you decided to think about it. Right. And as the result of that, let’s say you were going through those insecure processes or those thinking patterns, The result would be that I don’t feel good enough in the relationship. I am not enough in the relationship, and therefore maybe I need to look for another partner.
Right? Or maybe this person isn’t the one for me. Right? So we end up in this kind of cycle over and over again because we never get to the root cause, which is our thoughts and our feelings that are creating this constant loophole that.
[00:07:27] Elise: and that’s like you mentioned, the blueprint. That’s like what we’ve talked about in past episodes of it’s like our past experience and what we’ve told ourselves.
Exactly. Got it. Okay. Interesting. Is there anything else that I should, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else that I need to like unpack there. ? No, but how is, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.
[00:07:45] Sarah: I don’t, I don’t think there’s anything else there. Okay. The next one will really unpack it though. Next one. Okay. And like.
[00:07:51] Elise: So that’s, that’s the model of it makes total sense. Um, I remember actually hearing a similar story. I think it was like Brene Brown shared something about her encounter with Oprah and like, she thought Oprah didn’t like her. Do you know this story? Have you heard? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t remember the exact specifics, but it’s like she thought Oprah.
Wasn’t interested in what she had to say, and then later, many years later, something, they had a conversation. It was like, no, Oprah just had a million other things on her mind that day. Had nothing to do with anything personal to her. So it’s very interesting how we do we do, we take personally things that, I mean we do, right?
Like things that happen to us, like the Brene and Oprah example, the example I just gave with boyfriend on the phone. Like, do we just assume that it has something to do with.
[00:08:39] Sarah: Right away. Yes. Naturally. Right? Not naturally, sorry. But yeah, we do right away because maybe we’ve been programmed to believe that for so long.
Right. So it comes with that self-value, that self-worth that you have for yourself, that self-confidence to know that, hey, this actually doesn’t have anything to do with. Me, right. That’s actually out of my control. And whether they like me or not, again, out of my control. Mm-hmm. . Right? So recognizing that they can even choose to like you or not like you, and that should be okay.
But we live in a society where, , gaining someone else’s approval is so heavily reliant on our self-worth and our self-confidence that we take that concept or that behavior pattern into every single thing that we do, right? Mm-hmm. so it can get toxic when we start to victimize ourselves, right? And say that, you know, it’s because of me that they don’t like X, Y, and Z, or it’s because of me that my partner isn’t X, Y, and Z, right?
[00:09:37] Elise: Hmm. Really interesting. So how do our thoughts then create our feelings? Like is there something. Scientific, hormonal like that happens.
[00:09:48] Sarah: So there is definitely a lot of science that goes into it. So I’m gonna try to explain it as simply again as possible so we don’t get people lost in the in the chaos, right?
So let’s start with circumstances. So these are usually things that happen that are completely outside of your control. So, Things like your past, right? You can’t change what happened in your past, other people’s behavior towards you, their thoughts and feelings, right? That’s something we can’t control and a lot of us spend a lot of trying, trying to control other people’s thoughts and feelings and behavior towards us, but that’s just simply something we cannot control, and it’s, you set yourself free when you’re able to begin to accept that concept and things that happen to you.
So things. , you know that stranger that we used in that last episode, uh, that made that racial sl towards you or that comment towards you, right? So, um, , let’s just say that those are all things that are outside of your control. Then there are things that are within your control. So it’s what you decide to think consciously, what you decide to feel, and your present moment.
These are all things within your control. So what we wanna do is then look at our thoughts. So most of us are reacting to our subconscious thoughts because we think that we’re not in control. , right? So the problem here is we are actually in control of them, but these are thought patterns that have probably been ingrained in your mind.
And if you’ve never done any mind management before, then you’ve never gone in to look at your mind and notice what your thoughts look, feel, and sound like that self-talk. You are basically operating in your adult life as the three-year-old, four-year-old or five-year-old toddler that had learned those behavior patterns in the very beginning of your life, right?
So that is where you really learned how to shape. Control. You really learned how to shape what other people do to you. Makes me feel X, Y, and Z, right? You really learned those core values and beliefs about the world and yourself, and you’re now taking all of those patterns, especially if they made you feel bad and you’re bringing them into your adulthood.
So really your mind management. Although on the outside you look like a mature 20, 30, 40 year old on the inside, you’re operating from. The immature child or a child that doesn’t know better. And that’s okay, right, to recognize that. But once you recognize that, what we wanna do is go in to understand where that really comes from.
So then we talk about our feelings, right? So, and this is important because everything we do in life is so that we can feel a certain type of way. So let’s say you go to watch a scary. . Okay? And you’re watching this scary movie, and then you come out of it, and it’s mostly because you wanna feel a certain type way.
You wanna feel scared, you wanna feel, you wanna feel suspense. Maybe you wanna feel an adrenaline rush, but let’s say you come outta that movie and you don’t get any of that experience, you’ll most likely not rate the movie very well. You most likely won’t rave about it, or you won’t tell anyone to go and watch it, right?
Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. . Why is that? It’s because you didn’t. Physical feeling or sensation happening to you in your body that created an experience, right? You were going for a physical experie. . Then let’s say you go on a rollercoaster, same thing. You’re going on the rollercoaster to feel feelings of excitement and joy or a rush of adrenaline again, right?
And if you didn’t get that from that rollercoaster, you most likely won’t rave about it. Won’t talk about it, won’t encourage other people to go on it. You’ll probably say that it sucked. Right? And that’s because you didn’t get a physical feeling out from it.
So then we talk about our thoughts. So if your feelings are caused by your thoughts or your thinking, right? Then everything you and everything you do in life is because you wanna feel a certain way. I think it’s really important that we know what we’re thinking and have it be conscious, right? So a lot of us are reacting again to subconscious thoughts. So this is the part where you want to start to tune into your mind, right? And you want to be, and this is where tools like meditation, tools like, uh, journaling, for example, are really, really beneficial because they force you to kind of sit with yourself and observe your thinking and you have to observe your thinking from a third party perspective, right?
So going into really understand and listen to what is going on in there, right? . And when you get to understand what’s going on in there, you’ll know what your self-talk sounds like. You’ll know how you really communicate back to yourself and you’ll know how you’re communicating back to the world. And I think there are many, many mistakes that people make when they first start tuning into their mind.
And it’s crazy what our thinking can really do when it comes to how we feel, how we react, how we respond, and then how we take action in our life.
[00:14:39] Elise: So you mentioned that. , like it’s learned behavior from being a child. Is there, can you give like an example of like what the, what the parent’s behavior might have done for then the child to have whatever their experience and then that, how that translates later.
[00:15:00] Sarah: Right. It may not necessarily always be from your parents. Right. Okay. It could also be the circumstance that has happened to you. So, okay. Let’s give an example where maybe you are in your adult life right now, and let’s say you have a bit of a de eating disorder. Okay. Maybe you eat a bit too much and you’re not a, you just are not able to exercise, you’re not able to get yourself to lose any weight, but that’s your goal. You really want to achieve that. So let’s go back as to the thinking process, right? So the thinking process is that, you know, maybe nothing ever worked out. Maybe everything I’ve ever tried, just never worked out.
I’ve done all these, you know, weight loss training and I’ve done all these diets and exercises, but nothing ever works. So the thinking pattern in there is. Thing ever works, but then you go deeper into that and you find that, hey, the reason I maybe eat so much now is because when I was growing up as a child, we didn’t have this luxury, right?
I didn’t grow up having a lot of food served on the table all the time, right? Maybe my parents just couldn’t afford to provide such a big meal all the time, or maybe there. Where I didn’t eat right. Now that you have an abundance of food, it can be hard to break that pattern, right? Where you’re now overeating as a result of not having anything before.
So that’s kinda how you can track it back a bit. Okay? That’s kind of where your childhood patterns and behaviors really stem into your adulthood. .
[00:16:27] Elise: Okay, interesting. I’m just also thinking like there’s never a way to come out of, and we’ll talk about like childhood and future episodes and inner child, but there’s probably never a way to come out of.
Your formative years like unscathed in any way. . Right, right. .
[00:16:45] Sarah: You always have to face it eventually.
[00:16:47] Elise: Yeah. . So when we’re using this self-coaching model, what are some common errors that we might make or mistakes that we might make in the process of you? Also, is it, is it fair to say you also use a term mind management?
Mm-hmm. is, Can, is that like a replacement term for the self-coaching model or is mind management something totally different? Um,
[00:17:10] Sarah: they’re fairly the same thing, but the mind management is more just being able to tune into your mind and manage what the heck is going on in
[00:17:17] Elise: there. Okay. Okay. And then this is like more of a model.
Okay. So in terms of the mistakes that we can make with using the model, what are some of those like typical roadblocks we might.
[00:17:26] Sarah: Right. So for anyone that has never really tuned into their mind before, this is the first time you may be hearing about this process and you’re going, whoa, my thoughts create my feelings.
Let me try this thing, right? Mm-hmm. , I want a different action. The first common mistake people make is when they tune into their mind. It’s scary in there. Like there’s some crazy ass thoughts in there and you’re going, holy, how the heck did, like, why do I think this way? Right? And I feel like it’s
[00:17:54] Elise: always at like 4:00 AM.
[00:17:56] Sarah: Yeah, yeah. . Exactly, exactly. It’s always those 4:00 AM thoughts, right? Yeah. But it’s crazy in there. It’s a shit show in there. You’re going, oh my God, why do I think this way? I can’t believe I think this way. And then what we do is we go into this place where we beat ourselves up for having these thoughts and feelings, and then we go into this place where we need to immediately fix it, right?
So when we go. Place where, oh my God, I hate these thoughts. I want them outta my brain and I wanna change them. We’re not coming from a place of self-acceptance because we need to do a little more work before we can begin to change the thought. We need to accept that these thoughts and feelings exist for us and have a little compassion around why we feel that way.
Right? So, Let’s go back to that. You know, maybe let’s go to an example where you’re facing a lot of fear because you feel unlovable, right? And you’re not getting into a healthy relationship, and you tell a friend that, right? Your friend is probably gonna give you the best advice ever, right? They’re gonna be there for you.
They’re really gonna support you. They’re gonna be your rock during that time. . But when we tune into ourselves and we notice these thoughts, we immediately beat ourselves up and become bull, become bullies towards ourselves, right? So we’re not even our own best friends. We don’t even have our own back, right?
So what we wanna do is focus on being your own best friend. Go into it with more curiosity and understanding. Hey, I have this thought. I need to do a little more work. Because it’s coming from something that probably happened to me in my past. Right? So can you go back into your childhood, your adulthood?
Maybe it’s your early teen years, right? Where an event happened to you that created this traumatizing factor that has now. Caused you to think this way about life and yourself in general. Right. Only when we get to that place of, of course I feel that way. Like look at what I went through when I was a child.
Right. I had no food. Of course I overeat now. Right. That makes so much sense. That’s exactly what your friend would probably tell you, right. They’d have that empathy and compassion for you to say, Hey, be patient with yourself. And that’s exactly what you wanna do when you’re noticing your thoughts for the first time, is to not reject them.
It’s to actually go and to accept, Hey, I hear that. The other part is we’ll probably face a lot of anger and fear and resentment for having these thoughts in the first place and noticing that they. Noticing that they’ve been controlling the way that we think and feel and the actions in our life. And that’s really important because you want to also understand and accept that those ang, those feelings of anger and fear and anguish are really important to help you to get to the other side.
So we don’t wanna reject the fact that we feel angry. We wanna go into validate it, right? Of course, you feel angry. Look at how much of your life was robbed because of these thinking patterns, right? Look at how much these emotions have hijacked you. Having a happy, healthy relationship. Of course, you’d be upset and angry, and you are allowed to be, except that you’re allowed to be.
The other common mistake people make is they go, yeah, yeah, yeah. I took a minute to listen to my thoughts. I hate what’s in there. I’m gonna bypass the thinking and the feeling part, and I’m gonna go straight to changing the action. Right? So now what they do is they go into all these different areas where they try to change, change, change, change, change.
I’m just gonna change waking up early. I’m gonna change this habit. I’m gonna change my hair color, I’m gonna change this. I’m gonna do that. , and that might provide you with some temporary growth, but then you’ll find that it stops working. And the reason that it stops working is because it’s, it’s still fueled by that theme, that same thought and feeling pattern that you had before that was creating this result that you didn’t want, right?
So if those same old thinking patterns and behaviors or fuel are, are the fuel for your new action. , they most likely won’t work, or they’ll work for a period of time and then yield the same results that you had before. Right? So what we wanna do is, again, remember that changing the action is an act is just a temporary bandaid.
And what we wanna do is we wanna go into changing the thought, acknowledging, sorry, the thoughts and feelings that are there. First, accepting where they’ve come from, and then shifting into that positive change. That’s the kind of the only blueprint that I have there,
[00:22:11] Elise: because I could imagine. , if you are just going to the end of changing the action, that there must be other issues that come up from that.
Right? So like, I’ll go back to my example. So let’s say I don’t blow up on my boyfriend for being on his phone, and then I just stay quiet and then I don’t say that something is still like, Eating at me inside that then will lead to a whole other set of issues, essentially. Exactly. I’m guessing.
[00:22:41] Sarah: Okay. Yeah.
So now you’re trying to change that action
[00:22:44] Elise: because I changed that action that I didn’t blow up, but Okay. Keep going. Sorry.
[00:22:48] Sarah: Exactly. No, no. You’ve got it all down. This seems to be something that’s resonating with you, I assume. Yeah,
[00:22:55] Elise: because I think, I never thought through the I, I’ve always known how powerful.
let me not say. I’ve always known. I’ve, I feel like over the past few years in listening to, whether it’s reading different material or listening to different podcasts, you do understand how much, how much your thoughts play into things, I guess. Mm-hmm. , but I feel like I just am sort of in the neck, I feel like through Covid anyway.
I think more of us had time to kind of reflect, I guess, and see how and, and think, or. Look, go through our emotions more and I do see how the stories we tell ourselves like, come cause the action. Right? So. Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s super interesting. Um, and I think for me, the first thing that I more try to do, and you tell me if this is when we talk about how we can apply it to our daily lives, I’d imagine one of the first things, it sounds like one of the first things might be being quiet with yourself, meditating, journaling, but I’m also thinking like in the moment, right? Like practically applying this not so what I bet you, I’m guessing that there’s, and we could talk about maybe some proactive things like the journaling, meditation, but I’m also just thinking of like, okay, when you’re confronted with a situation later today, what’s like the initial step you could take is, Probably you talked about mind management, just seeing the thoughts that I tell myself and being aware of those thoughts and is Then, is there also just, is it the right thing to do to try to stop those thoughts?
Like say they’re a negative thought, is that the right thing to do, or is it like deeper than that? ,
[00:24:41] Sarah: it’s a little deeper than that. So what you wanna do is go into doing all that thinking and that processing on a, in a time where you’re actually feeling okay, where you’re feeling good and you’re not being triggered.
Got it. Right. And that’s gonna help to set up the foundation of how you wanna think later, because when you are in a circumstance where you’re triggered, , all you’re thinking about is that trigger, right? Mm-hmm. , all that’s happening to you is that chemical response happening in your body over and over again.
And that’s why I really emphasize working with a coach or a therapist, because what’s great is that in the times that you’re not triggered, you’re in an environment where you feel safe, where you can confide in someone, where you can talk about different mindsets, where you can talk about how to think about something or feel about something.
And what’s great is that you can then slowly begin to take those little seeds that you’ve planted in your mind implement them into the areas where you’re triggered. Now, the first few times that your boyfriend, for example, goes on his phone during dinner, you’re still gonna wanna snap, right?
understand that this is okay. This is part of the process of you being patient with yourself, right? You are doing the work, right? You are going into manage your thoughts and it’s not gonna change right away. You’ve had this thought pattern for maybe the last 14 years of your life, 15 years of your life, or more.
How could you expect it to change in three days, right? Or two days or one day of sitting down to journal and meditate, right? Right. We haven’t built the skill enough, and this is where we wanna have some compassion and empathy for ourselves and be patient with our divine healing. Right? Be patient with when your time is your time.
And you’ll start to notice bit by bit by bit. , you’re gonna be in tune with your thinking. You’re gonna be in tune with your thoughts. They’re gonna be so loud. You’re gonna go, whoa. That was just a whisper before. Right? And now I can really hear this new thought pattern coming in. I know for me personally, I struggled with this a lot, right in the beginning when I first used the model and I first understood the concept and I went, why is this not working right?
Why did I. go through all that work and it’s just not yielding the results I want. And that’s when I recognize that I wasn’t, I was being way too hard on myself. Another place where I was beating myself up for not getting it. So that perfectionist part of me was also coming up and it was going, you need to get this down pack right now, or that man is gonna leave you.
Right. ? Mm-hmm. . So I was blaming myself in the same time and I was being a victim and there was just so many elements that were coming up and then, Bit by bit. I started going, okay, you know what? I’m gonna go at my own pace. There is no rush to figure this out right now. I have been doing this, I’ve been thinking this way for the last 14, 15, 16, 17 years of my life.
I need to give myself a little time to make this goal of mine more action oriented later in the future. So I am doing the work right now. I’m taking little micro shifts that are gonna actually make massive shifts later, and what I’m doing is doing it by the process of repetition. So that’s kind of how the mind works.
The mind likes process, and it likes repetition and it likes to continuously do things. And with that, it will begin to create a pattern for you. So it’ll create a new neuron or a new neuro pathway in your brain to start to think positively, right? Or start to think in this new direction that you want it to think.
But think of it as a really skinny road, right? It’s a really, really, really skinny road, and it won’t grow unless you nurture it. It won’t expand unless you put more concrete into it if you do some construction, right? Whereas this old thinking pattern is really thick, right? It’s got a lot of pathway to go on, and it’s the path of least resistance.
So what we wanna over time as we continue to train our brain to go from this old thinking to this new thinking, you’re building that muscle in your mind to not only make that old pathway smaller, but you’re making the other pathway bigger. And over time, give it a couple weeks, months, or years, you’ll be following this new pathway like a T.
Like you will not have any issues, but you have to be a little consistent with it. and keep going back to going, okay, I’m being patient. I maybe had a bit of a blow up right now, but this part of me is gonna teach me how I can excel by beginning to think this new way of thinking.
[00:29:01] Elise: Okay. And are there some like steps then?
That we can take or actions like the journaling or things that we should be doing to get to, to hope that we’re better people in the coming months and years. ,
[00:29:15] Sarah: right? Yeah. And I don’t even think that better processors, maybe . Yeah. Better. Better processors, that’s for sure. Uh, so. Something you can start doing where this is what I initially did was pick a few areas, or even just start in one area of your life where you, you know, you’re really struggling or you’re taking an action and it’s not yielding the results you want, or there’s something you wanna do with your life, but you haven’t done it yet.
Why not, right? And what you wanna do is kind of pull out a pen and paper and you’re gonna do something called a thought download. And this is where you’re gonna go into your mind and you are gonna write down every single thought that comes to mind about this specific topic, right? And completely raw and completely unfiltered.
If you need to use, you know, harsh language in it, use those harsh language, use exactly what’s coming up in your mind. And what I like to say is, when you’re doing. , do not limit yourself to any time. Okay? Allow yourself to keep going and you know you’re ready to stop writing when your mind is actually completely quiet.
And what’s happening is as you’re writing, you’re channeling different parts of yourself. So maybe the past, your inner child, your perfectionism, your people pleaser, your. Fear of failure. You’re channeling all these areas of yourself that have been holding on to past thoughts and feelings, and it just needs to get it out.
And you finally focusing in on you. You’re able to get those thoughts out and your mind will become quiet when it knows that it has gotten all the undivided time and attention that it needed this entire time. Once you’re done that you can even do this in a voice note. If you’re not a writer, you’re not somebody that writes a lot.
You can do this in a voice note. You can even do this, uh, in meditation if you’d like to observe your mind or journaling. I prefer journaling. I’m more of a writer. I like to see the thoughts literally coming outta my body as I am journaling. Then what you wanna do is do something called a feelings download.
Okay? So you’re gonna go in to recognize all the feelings that are associated with those thoughts. , some of us have a hard time identifying our feelings from a thought, right? So what you can do is you can pull up something called an emotions wheel on Google, and you follow the chart and you literally look at all the emotions that resonate with you with a specific topic and just write them down.
[00:31:34] Elise: Hmm. .
[00:31:35] Sarah: The other part is sometimes there’s some of us that go, okay, Sarah, I get it. I know what I’m feeling, but I don’t know what I’m thinking. What do I do there? So I know I feel anxious and tired and stressed out, but what do I do about that? Right? I don’t know what I’m thinking. I don’t know what’s causing it.
Start with the feelings down low first, get out all the feelings and then go to the thinking. So you can kinda
[00:31:59] Elise: do this after our conversation.
[00:32:01] Sarah: Oh my God. Tell me how I feel you feel?
[00:32:03] Elise: Love that. It’s amazing.
[00:32:04] Sarah: Great. So once you’ve done that, you wanna go in and then take a hard look at those thoughts and feelings.
Like really go into it without judgment, without criticism, without any type of rejection of what you’re feeling and thinking and shame. Go into it with curiosity and fascination and exploration and go. Okay. This has what has been in my mind, and this is my manual. This is how my brain is set up to think about this specific area in my life.
For example, love, for example, my business, or whatever example that you need that you’re gonna use in your life. And when you do that, come from a place of acceptance. So then what you can do is take it one step further if you want. Again, working with a therapist or coach would be great because then you can go into that inner child healing a little bit more, or understanding those root, root causes or events that have happened in your life that caused this thinking, and what you’ll do is go in to notice. Okay, so why do I think I’m unlovable? I wrote that down. I wrote, I Am Unlovable. Why? Literally ask Why that is. , the number one question you can ask yourself to initiate all this thinking, all this processing, and when you start to begin to ask why, you’ll go into, well, that guy broke up with me when I was 15 and I really loved him.
That meant that I, he didn’t love me and I was unlovable. Right? Or maybe my mom told me that. I’m always so hard to please. Of course I’m unlovable, right? Or someone tells me, maybe my best friend tells me I have such high expectations. Of course I’m unlovable, right? But go into understanding that this is how you’re thinking it’s not the end result. It’s not how you want to feel the rest of your life, but this is just how you’re thinking temporarily right now. This is how you’ve been operating. This is your system, your manual. And then what you can do is begin to understand with a little bit of compassion. 15 year old self had it really rough when that breakup happened.
Right? And I didn’t fully heal, I just kind of tied it up in a little pretty box and I put it away and I never thought about it again. But look at the damage that it’s done to me now. And we can use this in every little area of your life moving forward. We won’t get into how to fix a thought patterns because we wanna first go into accepting them, right?
And in another episode we can conquer. How do I go into, Hey, I understand these thoughts and these. Loose feelings and this thinking pattern, but now I wanna go in to really change it because I see that I fully accepted it, I understand where it comes from, and I wanna move in a direction where I can build happier, healthy relationships, for example.
Mm-hmm. Right. So we’ll get into that in another episode. Okay, great.
[00:34:46] Elise: Well, I love how. There can be moments of time to your point where you’re not, I love the example of how you flipped it too. Like you can go with emotions first. Cause I feel like especially this time of year, like we could feel stuck. We could feel like, you know, it’s winter, it’s not so what am I feeling?
And then reverse it into what I love that I never thought about it that way. So very interesting. And yeah, next week we’ll kind of dive into the second piece. Exactly, actually. Amazing. This was all, I loved this episode very informative.
[00:35:17] Sarah: I loved it too!.
[00:35:18] Elise: I feel like there’s some, some activities that I’m gonna do , after, after we sign off, can you let everyone know again, just where you know, if they can’t wait to get more till next week, where they can find you and take a look at some of the other, um, things that you share on, on social and on your.
[00:35:34] Sarah: Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram @sarahjoseph_coach, and then you can also find me on TikTok @sarah.eicoach, and then you can find me there. My website is still underway, so we are still in the way of making that happen. But you can find me there. You can DM me if you wanna work with me or if you have any questions or comments about anything we’ve talked about in the podcast, you can let me know.
[00:35:59] Elise: Great. Well thank you so much, Sarah, and we’ll see you next week.
[00:36:02] Sarah: Thank you
