Thoughts That Hold us Back

I don’t know. I’ve never done it before. So I’m gonna challenge myself to do this. And it kind of plays into what I’m gonna be talking about today. And it’s the power of our thoughts, which you’ve heard us talk about many times on this podcast. But the things that we tell ourselves we believe, and our thoughts are really powerful. So for the first time ever, I’m setting a goal to do an episode in 15 minutes, I’m clicking my timer right now. Let’s do this. Let’s dive in. All right. So what I wanna bring to you today, this has been kind of on my heart for the last week or so when I’ve been praying about what I wanna talk about on this podcast. And it really is the power of our thoughts and in my own line, I’ve, I’ve recognized a series of thoughts that have come up and have in a way, held me back in many situations.

But even as I coach more and more women, I hear these SIM like the same kinds of thoughts coming up. And I would imagine that all of us struggle with the thoughts that I’m about to share. So what’s the point of talking about this? Like, well, part of it is to realize these thoughts, these thoughts that are, that pop up quite a bit in our day to day lives, what they’re doing, like what these thoughts actually do to us. And the more we become aware of it, the more we can ask ourselves, does this thought really serve me? Is it helping me? Or is this thought holding me back? Is this thought, keeping me stuck is this thought, keeping me from doing the things that I know that God is calling me to do, is it keeping me holding me back from the dreams that I have on my heart that I wanna go after? Is it keeping me from being the mother that I want to be? So that’s what I’m gonna talk about today. Now there’s many, many thoughts that come up and especially in our life coaching program. And the things that we talk about are really about

Uncovering these thoughts and realizing, gosh, what, what are they doing to us? Are they serving us? Are they helping us be who we wanna be? So these are just a few. The first one is the phrase. I can’t do blank. I can’t do anything. I can’t do it. How often do we go throughout our day saying I can’t do this, or I can’t do that. I just wanna bring this to our attention about the fact that our brain literally believes everything. We tell it. So if we tell ourselves I can’t do something, our brain instantly believes that we can’t do it. And it just shuts down. The brain says, well, yeah, you can’t do it. What’s the point of even moving forward. So these are those thoughts that we just wanna be really aware of. We often hear our kids saying this especially, as they’re learning new skills, I can’t figure out this math.

I can’t, you know, learn how to ride this scooter. Or, you know, some of my kids that are trying to learn how to do back flips right now. Some of my kids can do it. Some of them can’t and the ones that are struggling to learn this, I can tell that they have a mental block. They’re like, I just can’t do it. I can’t do it. And that thought is keeping them from actually figuring out and trying and practicing and doing it. So this is the deal, instead of saying the word I can’t, because it seems so harmless, right? Like, oh, I can’t, I just can’t do it. Well, let me tell you, when we talk about the model, when we put that word into the, that phrase into the model, we will see that if that is the thought that we have about something, it leads us to the results of not being able to do it.

So the moment I have a client tell me, Larissa, I just can’t do this. My response to them is you are creating your reality. You believing that you can’t do it or that you’re incapable of doing it is leading you to the result. That’s going to prove that that is true. A lot of times we’ll say it when it comes to trying to lose weight, for example, like I just can’t do it. I’ve tried it before. I’ve tried all these things. I’ve tried all these diets. I just can’t do it. And when we say that to ourselves, we are creating that reality. Our brain shuts down. Our brain believes that it’s not possible that we can’t do it. And it’s going to stop even putting in effort. It’s gonna stop trying. So what’s a different thought that we can believe when this, this thought creeps up.

Well, for me, and the thing that I teach my children is, Hey, yes, this may be challenging, but I know I can figure it out. I know I haven’t been able to do it yet, but I know that if I practice and I keep trying, then I will be able to get it. And it will be easy. All of my children at one point in their lives said that they couldn’t do a backflip, but now half of them can do it because they actually believed it was possible. It’s no different than all of us. We can lose weight. We can get out of debt. We can organize our homes. All of that is possible, but it’s not possible. As long as we’re telling ourselves that we can’t do it. So let’s be aware of this thought. When it creeps up in our life, let’s try to like, when it comes up, we need to, we need to like to toss it out because it doesn’t serve us.

It just keeps us from moving forward. Let’s talk about the next thought. All of these are kind of similar. They’re kind of in the same genre here, but I wanna, I really wanna address all of them. The next thought is this. I don’t know how, or even simply like, I don’t know how many times in the day we find ourselves saying, I don’t know. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how I feel about this. I don’t know what to do. That thought doesn’t necessarily just stop us in our tracks. The thought, I don’t know, keeps us spinning in confusion. It takes a lot of mental energy because we’re like, our brain just gets on this loop. This mental loop of confusion, doubt, you know, uncertainty. I don’t know. I don’t know. And when we’re coaching women on this, when a woman will say something like, I just, I don’t know.

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to overcome this. I don’t know how to handle this. One of the first questions we ask is we kind of like to invite them to just slow down, let the brain kind of slow down a little bit. And then we ask this question, but what if you did know what, if you did know how to do something, what if you did know the answer to this? What if you did know that you were completely capable of handling this situation and it’s fascinating what the brain does when you flip it. When you ask that question, all of a sudden, the brain believes that there is a possibility that there is an answer to that question and it starts looking for the answer. It’s so exciting. And I love asking this question to my clients because the moment I ask ’em this question.

And then they sit there for a moment. There’s always a long pause. And then all of a sudden it’s like these little light bulbs start going off. Well, what if I did know what if this is the answer? And then all of a sudden it’s like ping, ping, pinging, ping, all these like ideas, all like the brain starts working on our half and it starts solving the problems. And then we move out of confusion. We move out of spinning in the unknown to actually seeing the solutions right in front of us. We become problem solvers. So when our children say to us, I just don’t know. I just don’t know how to make new friends. And you look at ’em and say, but what if you did know what, if you, what, if you did have the answer to that? What, what, what is the possibility of the answer to that?

Let him sit with it for a moment. It’s amazing. Amazing. What the brain does. We put it to work for us. The next thought that holds us back is this is too hard. This is too hard. Life is too hard. You know, figuring things out is too hard. I just think it’s too hard. Again. The way the brain works is the brain wants things to be easy. It doesn’t like it when it’s too hard, too hard, shuts us down. The brain is like, mm, we like to be comfortable. We like things to be easy. And so the moment we tell ourselves that something is too hard, the brain doesn’t like it.

Yes. There are things that are hard every day. We are doing things that are hard. We are accomplishing things. We’re trying new things. We’re figuring new things out. But what I’m trying to say is having this thought and especially this thought on repeat in our brain, it doesn’t serve us. It actually just burdens us with the thought that this is too hard, makes everything that we’re trying to do. Especially the challenging things feel like an, like an immense burden. And then it makes the things that are challenging. Even that is much more difficult. And our brain wants to shut down, it wants to move on to something else or it wants to procrastinate. Why? Because we’ve just told ourselves it’s too hard. It keeps us stuck. It keeps us moving at a slow pace. So what do we, what can we say instead of this is too hard.

Again, we can say, yeah, this is challenging, but I’m getting better at it. I’m figuring it out. The more I do it, the easier it gets. We can even say something to ourselves. Like when you catch yourself saying, it’s too hard, I want you to, I wanna challenge you to pause and really ask yourself. But is it really too hard? Because like, if we think to ourselves, like I’m a pretty amazing person. I know I can figure it out. It doesn’t have to be this hard. It doesn’t have to be as hard as I’m making it. What if it’s actually easier than I’m making it out to be, once we start questioning that and like asking ourselves that, then we can come to this place and go, you know what, actually, it’s not really that hard. I totally have got this. We move into a completely different space.

And our brain again starts working for us. It feels lighter. It feels easier. We’re able to get things done faster and we feel more accomplished. It’s so powerful, but just recognize how that thought is too hard, how it holds us back. And finally, the last thought is this. I am not good at it now. Sure. All of us have things that we’re really good at. Just naturally, we all have gifts and talents that come easy to us. And then we have things that are much more difficult. There’s things that we’re not necessarily great at, you know, or we see other people and they’re so good at something. And, maybe we’re not, for example, I’m really good at having a big vision, trying to, you know, at inspiring people seeing the big picture, but I’m not very good at the smaller tasks, like the organizational things.

Things like that, the little details I’m not good at, but this is the deal. I don’t have to tell myself that all the time, it doesn’t serve me. There are some things I’m really good at when it comes to parenting my children. But there’s some things I’m not, I’m not good at cleaning. I’m not good at doing laundry. And this is the thing I have discovered with this minimalism challenge that we’re doing for years. I have just been drowning in laundry. And so for me, for myself, my goal, this lent with this  minimalism challenge is to get my laundry figured out and get it under control and get a plan into place. But the biggest thing that I’ve learned in doing this minimalism challenge is my mindset around laundry for the last 18 years. Since I started having children, I’ve been telling self I’m terrible at laundry, I can’t do this.

I can’t figure this out. I’m drowning in it. I’m horrible at this. I’m a terrible mother. I can’t figure this out. And guess what? That has led me to this constant, real reality of being terrible at doing laundry. I have proven my thoughts because I keep repeating them constantly. And yes, I’m not great at laundry. There’s some people that are really good at it. They’re organized. They love doing it. I’m not that person, but telling myself that I’m not good at it, doesn’t help me get better telling myself I can figure this out. I can actually be a woman that comes up with a plan and asks for help and gets, you know, ideas and input from other people that are really good at it. That’s gonna help me get better at it. And that’s how I can become successful in this area. Watch ourselves.

Like we need to watch our thoughts telling ourselves that we are not good at something only perpetuates, not being good at it. So what do we wanna say? Like, I’m not very good at cooking and for the last 18 years, I actually have proven that to be true. But what if I changed that? What if I was like, well, I’m not very good at cooking, but I can get better. I can watch YouTube videos and I can learn some new recipes and I can try and fail and burn things and mess up and try again and get better. If I have that mindset 10 years from now, I’m gonna be a much better cook because we all are not good at things until we do it and get better and practice and make mistakes and get better. That’s how we become an expert at anything by trying and failing and getting better.

But the moment we just tell ourselves and we believe, oh, I’m just not good at that. That just stuck in our tracks. It keeps us from trying new things and getting better. I’ll write my sisters in Christ to wrap up this episode. I just wanna say this. What are some other powerful thoughts that we can be thinking very intentionally throughout the day that can help us move from being, being stuck to be, to moving forward? Here’s some that work for me. One I’m learning. I’m figuring this out. I may not be great at it yet, but I’m learning. And just that idea of like I’m learning, I’m getting better. I’m figuring it out is a very powerful thought. And it keeps us excited to move forward. Someday. I’ll be really good at this. That’s another one. One thought that we could have is I’m not giving up.

Yes. It’s been really hard for me to lose weight and I’m working at losing weight, but I’m not gonna give up. I, I can do this. I can be successful. That’s just like an example. That’s, that’s a thought that I’ve been telling myself right now in my own weight loss journey. Another thought we can have is I’m a problem solver. I can figure this out. I have resources at my fingertips. I can Google it. I can ask a friend. I can call someone that’s really good at it. And ask for help. I am a problem solver. One of my other favorite ones. And I did a podcast about this a couple, couple weeks ago, but I’m the superhero of my life. I woke up in the morning. I can be the superhero. I’m not the victim. I’m the hero of my life. And if there’s something that I want to do, if there’s something, if there’s a goal that I wanna go after, I can do it.

If there’s a problem that needs to be solved, I can figure it out. And finally, if you’ve been around me at all, you hear this phrase a lot, but it’s this. I am the rock star of my life, or I’m a rock star. I’ve got this. Those are thoughts that keep us moving forward. Those are the thoughts that excite us, that they make us want to face the challenges that come at us with excitement and passion. And so my sisters in Christ, I think I did it. I was close to 15 minutes. I did my very best. And I hope that this podcast has inspired you to be attentive to your thoughts and start getting very intentional about the thoughts that are gonna keep you moving in your dreams. My sister in Christ, you are amazing. You are a Rockstar. You are a superhero. You are a Saint in the making, and God has great plans for you. You are not made for comfort. You are Made for Greatness, go out and crush this day. You’ve got it.