688: A Powerful Way To Change Negative Thoughts

I'd say it was around 2014. That's the year I became utterly obsessed with tracking down lack thinking. Maybe now you've heard of scarcity thinking, abundance thinking. There's a lot of popular terms. But for me, lack thinking just epitomizes what I feel. Every time I want something, I try to create something. I think about moving towards something, embracing something. And this other part of me says, oh, that's not gonna happen. No. What? Who are you kidding? Oh, it's gonna be so hard. Do you know how much time that's going to take? And the barf pile of thoughts begins. These are lack thoughts. And there is a way to start to wrangle these little pesky things. Catch them like a barrel of silvery fishes, just grab them, dump them and replace them. Now why? Why would we want to do this? Because the more that we can replace the lack thinking in our lives, the more we can start to receive more. All the good and beautiful opportunities and possibilities that really are there for us, that are rolling in our way. We are deconstructing that brick wall of resistance that starts in ourselves. So with that, I want to welcome you to Flow Dreaming Still Kind of Woo Woo. Our episode today is called A Powerful Way to Change Negative Thought Patterns. Flow Dreaming Still Kinda Woo Woo is just what it sounds like. An escape into the world of woo. Also a ride into you and how to feel happier, wiser and more self aware in every way. It's your ultimate journey into personal growth and inner power. We'll explore ideas like how your energy self influences the kinds of opportunities you encounter. Or how your personal growth can drive your business growth. Or even how that feeling of being stuck is really always coming from something else. We just have to figure out what. That's right. We're a dash of Woo woo. A sprinkle of self care, a heap of problem solving and pattern busting, and a giant cup of income encouragement. We're going to relight so much passion, purpose, self love and confidence in you that you practically stagger. I'm Summer McStravik, your host and welcome to Flow Dreaming Still Kinda Woo Woo. You ready to jump into a way to knock out that negative thinking that seems to creep its way in when we are not looking. Now, I've done really well received episodes in the past on how to prevent other negative people, their negativity from drowning us, right? How to protect ourselves from those negative thinkers. But today I want to talk about us. Us as the negative thinker. Because lack thoughts. Oh, they are little devil dogs. They Are looking all over, finding ways and place to get into you. I'll give you an example. Like right now, today. Today, actually, I decided I'm going to start a new podcast. And another part of me said, what the hell? Why would you do that? You have a great show. You have a lot of listeners. You've got almost 700 episodes. Why would you start a new show? What is wrong with you? That's ridiculous. It'll never work. But maybe yours is something a little different. Like, I'm gonna start this new diet. I'm gonna do exercise. I'm gonna give good things to my body. I'm gonna definitely, like, have that discussion with my employees or my boss or whatever it may be. And then. Oh, God, then. Then the lack thoughts begin in earnest. They're little goblins that come out of the closet. Like, I shared mine with you. You've got your own set of them. Well, here's the thing. All of those lack thoughts, look at them. Like a rubber band that's been stretched. You stretch it forward with your desire, and then the lack thoughts snap and pull you right on back, and they pull you back to what's comfortable, to what's known, right? We know where we're at right now. It may be super uncomfortable and difficult, but we know where we're at. It's familiar to come back there. Now, you know this already. I'm just reiterating it for you. The thing that I really want you to carry away from today's episode is this idea that you can actually start a resolution or start a program for yourself. Make a commitment in your heart to say, what would my life look like if I had fewer and fewer lack thoughts? How would I begin that? Now, normally we start doing something and we don't even hear the negative rationalizations that start going through our brain. We don't even hear them right? We say, oh, you know, I think I might want to get some new blouses. And then we think, no, not until I lose a few pounds. Oh, no, I can't justify that. I'm not even going into the office. Oh, no. And the litany begins. And we don't hear it. I mean, we hear it, but we don't register what kind of thoughts these are. So here is number one. Like, this is the first part of the battle to reset that clock, that negativity clock inside us. And, God, I think we should all be resetting that negativity clock on a, you know, quarterly basis, doing a check in, like, has it corrupt up or not, but this is where you say, hey, I'm gonna buy a new blouse because I feel like it and it feels good and I look good in this and I want this. And you know it's gonna make me have a lot of pleasure to know that if I should go someplace nice, I've got something that makes me feel like a million bucks. And I'm gonna get it. That's what I want. I want you to notice the lack thoughts from the moment they begin spooling up. This is the number one trickiest thing to do because they are so invisible. And they're invisible because they're so freaking commonplace to all of us, even those of us who've been working on our happiness and our positivity and our mindfulness. The lack thoughts are, like I said, these little buried goblins that pop out of the ground and we don't notice them until there's 15 or 20 of them marching around. But you can actually make an effort to change this. You can make an effort. Here is one of the strategies that I often give my students, my MI school students, to help them find and dig up and notice the lack thoughts. I ask them, Think about something that you've wanted. Think about it for a while. What is it? Something you've wanted but you don't yet have. Something you've wanted to do. Try, test, become, change into, transform into, add into your life. Whatever it is now you don't have it, right. You just want it. You know what's happening. There's a tangled up little ball of lack thoughts in there somewhere. Go find them. Go look for them right now. Believe me, 100%, they are there. And they're gonna be something like this. Well, it's not time yet. Oh, I don't have the money yet. No, I need to finish this project first. I need to get through these classes in school first. Oh, I already committed to these other things. Ah, that's going to be a really hard thing to shift into. And we just start doling it on. It's. It's again, it'll be hard. I don't have the time. It's not going to work for me. I tried something like this before. There are no guarantees. Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip, Chip. And I want you to pay attention to these thoughts as they register in your mind. Like, okay, what are you. What do I always tell myself? Because there's a really big chance that those thoughts are pretty much your. Go to thoughts, like your habitual thoughts and you'll realize. God, you know, I keep saying I Don't have enough time for a lot of things to take. Nice, you know, good healthy lunch breaks during the day to get my exercise in, to give my friends a good call and cry, to look for that new position, to look for that new apartment. I don't have time. And you'll notice it's your go to and it might not be time for you. Could be anything else. I'm not smart enough. I am not young enough. No one will want this or want me. There are other people better than me. Oh man. We have our lists and we have a couple like our top five that are unique and individual to each one of us. I would love for you to find your top five. Pick one thing to start with because, ooh, there's a really good chance that at least three of those things will be ported over and transfer into just about every other thing that you want and don't do or can't have, et cetera. Because they're our go tos, our go to lack thoughts. Okay, I'm going to give you a second here to think about your top five and we'll come right back after this break and I'll start to show you how to craft a whole different direction inside yourself. Sometimes we need a good old cathartic do over. We've been flatlining, emotionally spent and wrung out like an old washcloth. We want to feel a different way, be a different way. We've plateaued. We're stuck. We need to gain purpose and direction and feel good again. We want to find the same self worth, confidence and inner strength that got wiped away from years of frustration, disappointments and emotional depletion. We're ready to uplevel and go bigger. And when we do, we want to know that we'll be wildly successful at it. This is what's kept me busy these last couple of years. I wrote a book called all about how to reinvent yourself up level and find your path again. I wrote three books actually, but only one is on its way to you. It's called stuff nobody taught you. And I took all the lessons from MI school and wrote them out. Not only that, but I go through MI school in the book with you, right alongside you. We both reignite and maybe even reinvent ourselves by the end. There are 40 actionable lessons. I want you to read just one small chapter a night and then do or think about whatever I ask you to do at the end. It's a formula and it works like crazy. If you pre order the book today, I've Got some fabulous bonuses for for you. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kindle, wherever you get your books. If you're listening to this and the book is already out though, don't worry, I've got some goodies for you too, including downloadable worksheets that will make reading it so much easier. So here it is. Stuff nobody taught you. I sure hope you love it. Oh you guys, I'm so excited about my book. Yes, that was just me telling you all the wonders of it. So I hope you'll take some time to check that out. Now let's jump back into this whole thought of what is negativity and am I a negative person? Well, no, you don't have to be a negative person to have lack thoughts. I'm probably guessing you're probably not that big of a negative person because you're here listening to a program about self awareness and self growth. But in our desire, in your destiny to completely clear and clean yourself of all the holdbacks in your life, all the things that contain you restrain you from really being you, your authentic, bold, bright, gorgeous self lack thinking has got to be near the top. It's funny because oftentimes we think I'm underperforming. I'm not living up to my own expectations, I've fallen behind, I'm shut down, I'm stuck, I'm paralyzed. And then we think, oh, I gotta run and find something to fix it, fill it. I'll take a class in, I don't know, real estate. I'll take a course in oracle card reading. I'll learn how to do. And we try to fill fill this with a skill as if everything would change if we just acquired a new skill. And oh God, raise your hand if you're like me. Like many of us, we have so many skills. Like we've done so many classes, we have certificates up the yazoo, and yet we still aren't really feeling the movement forward. There are lack thoughts swaddling up your desire like a little baby in a blanket. Except this is not a nice baby. It's a goblin baby. No, it's a goblin blanket. It's a goblin swaddle. Oh, you moms. You know what I'm talking about. So what your goal is is to back off from trying to fill your life with more skill sets while you sit and still pedal in place. Your goal instead is to say, I'm going to carry out a two week discipline of noticing when I go into these negative thoughts, these lack thoughts, these scarcity thoughts, There is not enough of this. There's not enough to go around. There is not enough for me or I'm not enough. They're all varieties. Like, we could spend weeks delving into all the different varieties. And of course, in psychology, there's a thing called negative forecasting. There is a thing called negativity bias. There's lots of information about this, but I'm. I'm not a psychologist. Hey, you guys, maybe you're wondering, who the heck am I? Like, where do I get off talking about this stuff? It's because I have been working in the world of personal growth for well on 25 years, and I have worked and learned from some extraordinary people. For those of you who are new, you know that I was or you don't know that. For many years, I worked with Louise Hay as my boss. For about a decade, I was Dr. Wayne Dyer's weekly radio show co host and producer, along with producing and creating Hay House Radio, putting together webinars, seminars for, like, incredibly crazy, amazing thought leaders. Abraham Hicks, Greg Braden, Joe Dispenza, all of them. So, yeah, I've had my share of education and MBA in how people work and methodologies for change. Eventually, I came up with something. Well, I hate to say I came up with it. It came up with me. I guess I made myself a good enough vessel to receive this information, but it's called flow dreaming. And it's a way that I actively work to change my emotional state, to change how I feel, to change how I think. It's a kind of emotional reconditioning. It's an emotional practice. And you guys, look, we. We do so many things for all the other parts of ourselves. We take our bodies to the gym. We do juice cleanses to cleanse ourselves. We do mental things meant for our mental acuity. We do Sudoku and crossword puzzles and things to keep our minds vibrant. When. When I ask you, do we do things for our emotional selves, for our heart selves? Usually that's just some, like, diminished form of self care. Oh, I take a double bubble. Take a double bubble bath. Take a bubble bath. I took a day off. I had some chocolate. I know. I'm talking about developing something where your emotional nurturing is as important as your body, as your mind. It becomes a part of you, your focus, your everything. And part of that emotional strength and growing your emotional reconditioning. And this is where my life has led me, is to do something like, hey, I'm gonna tackle my negativity bias today. That sounds Kind of silly, like nobody would do that. But it's not that. It's what that leads to. Everything you want right now in your life is directly on the other side of something stopping it. That something stopping it could be your own inertia, your own lack of movement. Why? Because there's lack in there, right? I mean, and it makes sense. You'd be crazy to move forward with something if your mind and your heart are telling you, no, it's not gonna work. Don't do that. Maybe you say something outside me. Well, this thing outside me. And my question is, are you sure? Does that thing outside you have that much power and impact that you are totally walled in a walled garden due to that thing? Or is it just kind of convenient to say, no, I can't because of that? And this is where I want you to loosen up. You know, loosen up and kind of let yourself get free and drifty a little bit maybe. There's a lot of other options and opportunities than you presently see. I know from my work with Flow Dreaming that life has so many gifts, so many possibilities, so many opportunities ready for us, waiting for us. Just. It wants to plug them into your tomorrow, to your next week, to your next month. And the only thing stopping those things from happening is us. How we walk into tomorrow and next week and next month. The feelings, that openness. I know it's easy to say I need to protect myself, Summer. I've been disappointed before. Why would I do this? It's easier to go forward with feelings of I'm not gonna get it right. It's protective, it keeps me okay. I just want you to look at the trade off though. It keeps you okay, but it might be keeping you small. It might be time to stretch and poke at that boundary and say that keeping me safe thing has been going on for a lot of years and it's only gotten stronger. And maybe it's time to reverse course and to allow in some of that fresh breeze of the other way of thinking again. Get back in balance. Positive things are happening to me. Wonderful things are happening to me. In fact, I want you to take the very next negative thought that pops in your head, right? Remember the trick I said is to catch it in the first place. Don't just let it start running around on your yard without you seeing it for like 20 minutes. Catch it the minute it, it steps on that grass, the grass of your mind, of course. Catch it and then immediately say the opposite. No, that's not true. That is a load of horse poop. That is not true. So I'm going to return full circle to my demonstration where I said, hey, I'm starting a new podcast. And the lack thinking in me said, what the heck, man? This is ridiculous. Why would you do that? So I'm going to turn that in my mind and say, because it might be something pretty awesome, it might be beautiful. It might be a way for me to stretch out in new areas and feel maybe less contained and just change things up a lot. I might be breathing in a breath of life and freshness. It might be very well received. Maybe people will forward it to each other and say, yeah, there's something here. It's kind of interesting. Check it out. Maybe all these wonderful things will happen. That's what I'm saying. And I hope it's true. Of course I do everything on my part to make it be something worthy of that. But you know what? If it doesn't happen, that's okay too. As much as I might cry a few little tears, it's okay. Because I know in my life there is always something else that I'll be dreaming of and thinking of and testing and trying. And there will always be lack thoughts that pop in and say, why would you do that? There's no guarantees. Who do you think you are? You can't compete against that. You can't do that. No one's going to love you for that. No one's going to like you for that. There will always be those thoughts. But I've worked and I've practiced. I've done my emotional reconditioning work to the point now where when a lack thought pops in, I am generally able to catch it within. Within at least the first hour, if not within a few minutes. And I pull myself back and I recognize, do I really want to give my future these feelings? Do I really want to be telling my future? Yeah, the crappy stuff is probably most likely to happen because when I am telling my life that when I am leading forward, that's the forward step that I take each moment, my life is going to answer me. And you know, the funny thing about our lives is they don't like us to be wrong. They kind of like to go along with what we think and feel. So my life will say, yeah, okay, well, you know, if you don't think it's going to work out, sure, we can make that happen. That's not a problem. But if I say to my life, my feelings are bright, my hope is open, I will not let lack thoughts be the balance of Who I am instead, I will have positive associations with my future. I will have positive feelings. Things will work out. I am enough. This could be a great thing. We are gonna get this done. We will stick to this. We will get this done tomorrow. Everything will work out in my favor now, energetically, emotionally, that's what life is hearing from us. You ever walk in a room and you can instantly feel like the vibe of maybe someone else in there. And if they're down and grumpy, you're like, ugh. You kind of pull inwards. If you feel like a bright, happy, positive, optimistic feeling, a vibe, you're like, hey, how are ya? How you doing this morning? Morning. How do we know that, right? How, how do we read the energy of the room? They call it reading the room. How do we read? How do we just instinctively know? Well, I have a whole backload of information on that, right, based on energy and, and how we transmit information to each other in a non physical way. But even if you don't buy into that, we know what, how other people feel. Now imagine that you're this person and your future and around you, and everything around you is also reading you every second, every instant. Let's say the universe wants to hand a thousand dollar check to someone. Are they going to handle to the person who's shut down saying, no, I'm not good enough, it's not going to work out, or is it going to handle it? Hand it to the person who says, yeah, everything is great, I am into this, I can do this, I will hold this, I want this, I deserve this. Which energy is open, which energy is closed, period. The most extraordinary effects can happen in your life when you commit to ridding yourself of lack thinking, when you go on a binge of ridding yourself of lack thinking for a week, for two weeks, for a month, for a year, for multiple years, as I have done. And trust me, life will continue to throw things in your way, to challenge you on this doesn't mean you're going to end up with, you know, a bunch of rosy teacups. In 10 years, it might mean you've had some significant challenges. But you see, you've really built yourself up to that point where the bigger the things that life throws at you, the more quickly you're able to shift, pivot and say, I've got this, I'm in a place of abundance. I'm in a place of I am enough. And life is waiting for me to step in and say so so it can reward me. That that is the last winning square on the, you know, Candy Cane Lane board of life. Is that what that, that's called, Candy Cane Lane? No, you know, you know that one, Chutes and Ladders? No, it's Candy Cane something. Oh, God. It's an old game. Maybe you don't remember it. Maybe you do. So I am going to leave you here with a challenge. And the challenge is how long do you want to test yourself on your lack thinking? Do you want to just do like a little quick, you know, hour long test, see how many things flow through your mind where you shut yourself down, hold yourself back, say, no, I'm not good enough, forecast that negative things will happen instead of positive. You want to do that? You can do that or you can pull it all the way to the top of the speedometer and say two weeks. I'm going on a lack thinking cleanse. I am dissolving my negative thought patterns and I want to see what kind of emotional response I will get. Hey, you guys go on a two week juice cleanse. Your body's like, oh, I dropped so many pounds. I feel so vibrant and healthy. You get a response. You will get a response if you do a two week lack thinking cleanse. And how would I do it? I would begin by catching those thoughts. I would write them down as I catch them. I would practice that other little tip I told you, which is to immediately respond with the opposite. Doesn't matter if you don't believe the opposite. Respond. Respond with the opposite. Respond with the opposite. And notice how you begin to change. Notice too if you feel kind of, you know, like, flabbergasted, like, oh, I didn't even know there was that much lack thinking in me. Hey, that's really, really common. There's always more than we suspect because like I said, most of the time we don't even notice those little gnomes dancing around on our lawn. But now you'll see it and you'll purge it and the person you'll end up with is brighter, sunnier, more positive, more hopeful, more willing to take a healthy risk, more generous. Gosh, you know, more of everything good. And that's what I want for you. And that's what I'm going to leave you with. I hope you guys have. You like this, right? This is a new format for me. It's a little bit of teaching. And, you know, I'm going to be interspersing this with some other interesting little bonus episodes along the way. Maybe have some guests down the line. This is, this is all getting Worked out, You know, this is all just fresh off the grill. Please let me know summerlooming.com if you like it. If I get emails saying I love it, I will do more. And you can also, of course, Please, please, please, please. This is the biggest thing. If there was anything valuable I gave to you and you want to give something back. I am not asking for money. I am asking for love. I'm asking for you to just say I liked it. To let me know and to let other people know that for me is the highest value that other people realize. Hey, there's something here. I think you should check this out. And you know how you do that? You write a gosh darn review. That means you go in Google Play or itunes or Stitcher, wherever you're listening and you write a few words like, oh my God, this is absolutely the bomb. This is the great. Or, or you know, you could write, well, she's okay. She's still just warming up. Just write something, leave a review and subscribe. That is what I'm getting at. That would make heart like bulge into like a twice its size and inspire me especially to keep digging in and doing the hard work of producing shows like this and creating them for you, giving them to you. Okay, enough of my request at the end, my love goes to all of you guys. My ultimate respect that you're even on this journey of self discovery. And like I said, like I promise at the beginning of the program in the intro with the music, my goal is to help you become your next most beautiful, gorgeous, fabulous, you know, powerful, fulfilled and passionate self to go through whatever inner transformation needs to be made. Because it can be done and I know it. And as the episodes progress, you're gonna hear more, more and more of my very odd and interesting story. I dripped a little bit of it into this episode, but there is more and I will share that with you so that you know that your transformation is possible and your transformation is ongoing. And who you're transforming into can and will be an ever better, happier, more fulfilled version of yourself. Until next time, my loves. I will see you on another episode of Flow Dreaming. Still kinda Woo woo. Hey. We don't have sponsors for this show yet, but we do have our parent company, my company. It's called flowdreaming.com if you are curious about exploring your full body potential, there are over 250 audio meditations and flow dreams and courses there that can completely reshape your world. So take a quick jump over and check out flowdreaming.com and with that, thank you so much for joining us.