The life changing reality of your difficult thoughts
“I’m surprised you can even taste your food,
Your nose is severely inflamed”
I’ve been dealing with regular nose bleeds,
Daily headaches,
A sore throat for months,
And brain fog I blamed myself for (ofc),
For months now.
Turns out I have this thing called a deviated septum,
You know the thing that made Rachel Green get a nose job?
That,
For possibly my whole life,
But only in the past 6 months have I really suffered with it,
Caught a wee infection,
Swollen up like Hitch after an entire 3 course meal of Shellfish.
3 days into my treatment and I’m like a new woman,
Working like a well-oiled machine,
Productivity my overworked 25 year old self would be buzzing with,
I even enjoyed my gym session yesterday,
I know right?
Thing is,
The treatment won’t be kicking in this quickly,
It’s not instantaneous,
And in fact the actual anatomy may need another rhinoplasty,
But that’s for another day.
The reality of the shift in how I feel is two-fold.
The first?
The relief of getting support and knowing I’m not broken means I don’t feel alone,
I’m sleeping without thinking the worst,
Because why is it when we go to bed the voices in our head get audaciously loud and wild?
There is a magical power in having your weird shit normalised,
The peace it creates,
When we share our fears to someone with empathy,
God bless the NHS and their excellent GPs,
We feel re-connected to the world around us,
And we all know the power of connection by now.
The second is the placebo effect,
I’m choosing to believe these things are already working,
I’m not googling the reality of the time course of action,
Because I’d rather believe it’s working already.
There’s some really cool research on the placebo effect,
Under the right circumstances,
A placebo effect,
In which the brain convinces the body a fake treatment is the real thing,
Can be as effective as the real thing.
This isn’t me telling you to sacrifice your needs for actual drugs,
To swap your creatine for another white powder you’ve never seen before,
Or your birth control for a sweetener tomorrow morning,
But it is,
For the purpose of this email,
A nice reminder that your thoughts and beliefs have power.
You can’t control the shape of your septum,
You may not feel you can control your eating,
The thoughts in your head,
But you can control the shame you feel around these things,
By sharing them with someone you trust.
I made a podcast recently,
12 steps to a calmer life,
And was surprised it was one of our top downloaded episodes,
So if you haven’t listened yet,
Get it here.
The crux of today’s musings though is that your thoughts,
Emotions,
Body sensations and behaviour,
They’re all connected.
What we think and do affects the way we feel.
If we think upsetting thoughts,
We will feel upset,
Then we are likely to do something that will increase the thoughts,
And strengthen the feelings.
It’s CBT 101.
The same is true when it’s flipped on it’s head.
Think helpful thoughts,
Feel more optimistic,
More likely to do something that will strengthen these thoughts and feelings of hope.
So why then,
Are we so intent on thinking critically towards ourselves,
Negatively towards a situation?
Convincing ourselves that an infection is something far more sinister?
If we think ‘negatively’,
We think it protects us from the hurt of when things don’t go right,
When in reality we simply forbode the joy,
By thinking things will go wrong,
Our emotions align with that fear,
And we lose out on the present moment.
The idea that you are not your thoughts is one that you should all be familiar with if you’ve read my email for more than a few weeks,
But it’s something that was truly ground-breaking when I internalised it,
I think it was back in the day of reading The Untethered Soul,
Solidified of course by Eckhart Tolle.
I know that feeling negative,
Ruminating over things you can’t control,
It gives you a false sense of having some control,
And leaves you feeling like these are the actions of someone who really cares,
But more often than not,
It simply saps the joy from your present moment.
Maybe you don’t believe you deserve to feel joy,
But that’s for another day and another email.
I think we all need a reminder,
And I include myself in this,
That we are not our thoughts,
That we have a choice whether to let the stories in our head consume us,
Change our feelings,
Change our actions,
Or not.
If you’re a coach who thinks you’re not good enough,
You feel like an imposter,
You lack confidence to show up as yourself,
So you don’t get clients,
And this will confirm that you’re not good enough.
It’s really that straight forward.
Where does that resonate for you in your life?
Meditate,
Journal,
Read,
Become more aware of the stories you tell yourself,
I literally ask myself in my journal,
What is the story I’m telling myself?
Any thought that occupies our mind becomes true for us and tends to turn into action,
It’s scary when you realise just how much your thoughts are creating your reality.
Your weekend challenge is to observe the conversations in your head,
What stories are you telling yourself?
“Eventually you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It's the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes the problems.” – Big Mike Singer.
I’m always here,
Em x
PS I say this with full recognition of the reality of shit that life brings sometimes. There are parts of my life I don’t share with you. Please know that I recognise both my privilege in the life I lead, but experience too, more outside of my control than you know right now.
