Anxiety Coaching Jan 2018

Oh, yes.

You should take it as a compliment that I got drunk and made fun of the way you talk. You should think about the consequence of your magnetic field being a little too strong. And I got a boyfriend, he's older than us. He's in the club doing I don't know what. You're so cool, it makes me hate you so much. Whiskey all night, sunset and wine. You've ruined my life by not being mine. You are so gorgeous, I can't say anything to your face. 'Cause look at your face. Ooh. And I'm so furious.

You guys left my music, huh? How do I sound? Can you hear me? Strip my gum out. Who do we have on? You're awake for this one.

Oh boy.

Can you hear me? Can— all right, so can you hear me? Ray, can you hear me? I'm on my, uh, I'm on my, um, device here, so—

Hey, Stormy.

Okay. All right. Let's get started. Um, I sent out that poll and it looks as though— it's interesting because I said on the poll that we're going to talk about controlling. I didn't talk about controlling what on purpose. So I thought that we would probably this week talk about controlling thoughts. And I know a lot of us struggle with thoughts. A lot of us that deal and have anxiety struggle with our thought processes and how we think. And so I thought maybe we'd go through that tonight. A lot of times for us that struggle with anxiety, we get so hung up on our thoughts that they control us rather than us control them. So I think that one of the things that we need to come to an agreement with and understanding about the way we think, specifically us that struggle with anxiety— I got— I have Taylor Swift staring at me, so I'm gonna throw away. I played the gorgeous song because that's how I feel about most people in my life, specifically all you guys. So Anyway, um, so a lot of us, what we do is we, we, we, instead of us control the thoughts, we have the thoughts control us. And I'm going to give you some secret sauce here. So if you have a pen and a notebook, I want you to write this down. Okay, are you ready? You can't control your thoughts. It's impossible. It is virtually impossible to control your thoughts. Now what you can do is you can take your thoughts captive. Right? There's a difference. There's a difference between controlling your thoughts and keeping— and taking your thoughts captive. And I want to explain that a little bit tonight because a lot of times we get so bogged down and so bent out of shape on what our brains are telling us and what our minds are telling us that what happens is our thoughts control us rather than we take the thoughts captive.

Right.

And do something with them. A lot of times what happens with us, we— I don't know if you guys can see this. You guys can see this? You want to take a snapshot of this if you want? You guys get a snapshot of that? What happens is we, due to situations in our life, trauma, um, a lot of us have trauma in our life. A lot of us have, uh, parents that weren't too well to us and What happens is our schema, the way we think right here, our schema is typically from 1 year old to 6 years old. That develops our thinking processes, that develops our schema. Our schema is what is also known as our values and the way we view the world. Interesting enough, science tells us and data— can't see clearly the words. Oh yeah, you know what I'll do is I'll send this, I'll make this into a PDF And then I'll post it on the group chat. And it really, it talks about your schema, it talks about your thought processes and how you think. Again, a lot of times science will tell us that between ages 1 and 6, you wouldn't think that a lot of stuff happens with your thought processes and your thought patterns, but a lot of stuff happens in between then. That's why a lot of us— kids will watch what we do, and they'll develop their values and develop their thinking patterns around watching what folks do. So we got to be very, very careful, especially if we have any small kids, on how we really portray our life and how do we live life at that age. teenage or even to adulthood, but those traumas can happen. But typically, a lot of times what happens is your thought patterns and the way you think, your schema, your values, how you see the world determines what happens to you later in life, right? So, if it— like for me, I don't remember this point in my life and nor do I want to remember a lot of it at that time. A lot of you guys do know that I come from a divorced family. My mother and father split when they were 6 months old, so I didn't have a father figure. What you may not know is my mom married— and if you guys don't know, I'm from New York, right? So I grew up in New York, but I lived in Seattle for 20 years. So I'm a Seattleite with a New York accent, and now I live in Atlanta. I'm all confused, right? So I'm just good for anxiety. I'm all messed up that way. Anyway, my mother She actually married— I'm, I'm writing a book right now, actually. My mother married a captain in the mafia. And, um, if you don't know what a captain is in the mafia, a captain gives the orders for hits, right? So in the '80s when I was growing up, the, uh, the mafiosa, um, within New York was pretty, really big. And I was part of— my dad was in the part of the Savino clan. He was a Savino. He was a captain in the Savino clan. So I saw things and I heard things that I probably shouldn't have heard and saw, to be honest with you. I thought it was pretty cool as an adolescent, right? I thought it was pretty cool that my dad had a new Cadillac or a new Lincoln, or we moved into a new house, or we moved into a new condo, or, you know, all this other good stuff. I thought it was pretty cool, but later in life it really took a toll on me. Growing up in that environment. Having said that, even my mother got married to him when I was eight years old. But my I developed my schema, and I developed the way I think. I developed my values in between when my mother was divorced, right? When my mother divorced my father, she moved. She moved from California, went to New York, and I was only six months old at that time. But I do remember going back and forth to to um to uh um. different babysitters. I remember being sexually assaulted by a teenage woman. She was 16. I must have been maybe 5 or 6, and she had me touch her in inappropriate places. And I won't get into that because I don't want to trigger anybody. But having said that, my developed— my schema was developed then, right? So the way I think, my values, the way I see the world was really, really predicated on that. So what happens is a lot of times is our schema can be changed. Our values can be changed over time, and it takes a lot of work for us to change those values. Now, how does all this tie into our thoughts? What happens a lot of times is we have these thought processes that penetrate our values. And what I mean by that, I'm trying to put this in non— so I'm trying to put this in layman's terms that I would understand. Because I'm pretty lame that way. But we have thoughts at us, right? We have thoughts at us, and we can take those thoughts captive. Let's say, for instance, I know a lot of us struggle, even myself, struggle with the feeling of inadequacy, right? Or feeling inadequate or feeling worthless or not good enough or things like that, right? So we struggle with those areas in our life, and what happens is we can We can't control our thoughts, right? We can't control the way we think. We can't control what's coming at us, but what we can do is we can take that thought captive. And the way you talk, the way you take that thought captive is let's say the thought of inadequacy comes to me, right? Like, Ryan, you have no business doing, doing a Facebook Live with these people, right? You know, you're inadequate. You don't have the education. You don't have the experience. You don't have this. You don't have that. I got those thoughts all the time coming at me. And so, because of that, I take those thoughts captive and I do the very things in which the thought tells me not to do or do the very things the thought tells me to do, if that makes sense. So, whenever I do a Facebook Live or an Instagram or, hell, if I coach you and I'm meeting with you, I am scared stiff before I do any of these because my brain is coming at me, the feelings of inadequacy. and the emotions of that inadequacy, coming back to the schema, coming back to my values. When you're 2 years old and your mom's rather— your mom is— and I vividly remember times in which my mother would just go out because her escape was her alcohol, so she drank. And so because of that, I remember being 3, 4 years old and having my 6 and 7, 8-year-old brother Right. And so, a lot of times what happens is our schema, the way we think, my inadequacy goes back to really what was developed between 1 and 6, right? And so, what happens is I feel that inadequacy, I think that inadequacy, then once I think that inadequacy, the emotions come in, right? So, the feelings set in. When the feelings set in, that's where we get trapped. That's what happens because now our feelings actually becomes an emotion, right? It becomes something stirred up in us. And a lot of times what we do is we stop, right? We stop and we become just stuck in that thought process, right? In that thought pattern. Take for instance, I'll use me as an example. Whenever I have those feelings or those worries of inadequacy, I do the very thing it tells me not to do, right? So if I'm coaching or if I'm doing a talk, or especially if I'm doing a talk in front of a lot of people, like if I'm going in front of a lot of people and kind of discussing my life and those types of things, I feel really, really inadequate because my feelings will It all starts with my thoughts, right? My thoughts come in and kick in. So how do you control thoughts? You control thoughts by doing the very thing, by doing the very thing, by doing the very thing it tells you either not to do or to do. That's how you control thoughts. You control thoughts by taking the thought. Captive, right? So if you're writing this down, I want you to write this down, that you cannot control thoughts. It's impossible to control thoughts. Your feelings of inadequacy, your feelings of hurt, your feelings of pain, all those thoughts and emotions coming at you. What happens is you need to take those thoughts captive even though you might be feeling it, right? My feeling of inadequacy is a real hard feeling. It's a feeling. Some of you have seen me react to that feeling of inadequacy on Instagram, or someone attacks my integrity about coaching or whatever. I don't have the education or the insignia or whatever, right? So what happens is I take that personally. It becomes a thought in my head. I have 2 types of reactions, right? Typically. and some of you guys have noticed this, and I'm trying to get better at it, is my re— one of my reactions is just anger. So I'm just going to take it out and lash on you, and how dare you say that, and you're a flipping therapist, and you don't do— you know, so really, that's not really the proper way to do that, right? The proper way to do that is to understand that, you know, people have their biased opinion. I understand that people have their view on, on what's good and what's bad. People have their view on, on my credentials or what I'm good at and what I should be doing and what should I not be doing. So it's really, it's a change of mindset, right? And we change our mindset by continuing to do again what the thought is telling you not to do or telling you to do. Right. So that is how you, that's how you overcome, um, our thought patterns, right? We take those caps, we take those thoughts and we, and we affirm them or we don't affirm them. Right? And the way you affirm them or don't affirm them is by doing or not doing what the thought tells you to do. There's an exercise I like to do with thoughts. So here's the— I don't know if you guys can see that. Can you guys see that? Do you see the situation? Thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, behaviors. Do you see that? So what you feel is what you do, how you think How you think and do affects how you feel. Right. So this is kind of what I'm talking about, right? And a lot of times, again, in those thoughts and those feelings and emotions, they're all real. They all have a purpose and they all have a meaning behind them. But to overcome them is, or to quote unquote control them, is to take them captive and do the very thing that they're telling you not to do or tell you to do. What happens to a lot of us is our thoughts tell us to do things that feel good, right? They tell us to do things to— a quick fix. Like, you know, if you're struggling, have a glass of wine. Or, you know, do this or do that coping mechanism. I'm just throwing things out. But they'll tell us to do these coping mechanisms that we've generated and we've come accustomed to but are not healthy, right? They're not healthy coping mechanisms. And a lot of times what happens is once when we do that, when we do those coping mechanisms, because that's what we know, the guilt steps in. It feels good for a little while, right? Yes, it feels excellent for that time being. It feels, it feels right. It feels good.

Right.

However, intellectually, we know that that's not healthy, and we know that long-term it's probably not the right thing to do. So then guilt sets in, right? And then once guilt sets in, it's an endless cycle. It just goes and goes and goes, right? You feel bad, the emotion kicks in, you go do the coping mechanism. You feel bad, you do the coping mechanism. You feel bad, you do the coping mechanism. And it just is guilt. trap that we're in. So again, the key to this thing is that you got to practice, right? So like tonight coming in here, I don't know if you can see me sweating, but coming in here every time I get in front of a Facebook Live or an Instagram Live, or if I coach you one-on-one, I have to do my breathing and my mindfulness.

Good stuff.

Before I meet with you, right? Because I want to make sure that, A, I'm I'm saying things that are— I can articulate what I'm trying to get across. I don't mumble, because I mumble a lot and I know that. So, I, or I'll use um a lot. So, there's those types of things that, or I'm just not giving the right information or I'm not helping at all. And so, because of that, my inadequacy kicks in, that thought kicks in, which then kicks in the emotion and the feeling, and then I don't feel like doing it, right? Every time I— Listen, if I coach you, I don't feel like doing it. These Facebook group, Facebook teachings. I don't want to. I don't feel like doing it. If I if you're my coaching group, I don't feel like doing it. I just met with a dude that's having marriage problems with his wife, giving him marriage advice. I I don't like doing it. I just I just it just I just I feel inadequate. But I do the very thing it tells me not to do, and and with time I've I've become more comfortable. And in time I become more confident and in time I become more educated in what I'm actually trying to portray and articulate. So there is an exercise that I'd like for you to kind of go with me. What I'll do is I'll bring him. Everybody know, who's this guy? Everybody know who this guy is? Can you message it? You know who this is? Nobody? You guys are still with me, right? All right, so what I like to do with them is— I don't know if you guys can see this. So what I like to do is I actually have a little one I keep around, um, and this stuff is kind of stupid, but it makes total sense, um, if you do it. But a lot of times what happens is what, what we need to understand and learn is We need to treat thoughts as an object in which is not good, not bad, right? Even though our thoughts might be telling us things that we don't like to hear and we don't like to take in, but if we do, but if— it's only bad if you affirm it rather than take it captive. So what I like to do with this type of exercise with this is think of this as a thought, right? Now, the thought is agnostic. It's neither good or bad depending on— it's only good or bad unless you accept it, right? So what I like to do is, as I'm viewing the thought, I become really, really good at this actually in my mind. I become really, really good at this where if a thought will come at me, even the thoughts of inadequacy, What I'll do is I'll take the thought captive and I'll just view it from afar. And I'll view it like an object, right? I'll view it like this. And I'll just— I'll watch it. And I'll just watch it be there. And then what will happen is, as I watch it, as I don't participate in it, I just observe it and I watch it. What happens is it slowly just goes away. Right, but it can come back and it can come at me again and I view it and I observe it and then I just watch it and then it goes away, right? Or, you know, I'll view it, I'll watch it and it go away. And so what happens a lot of times, one of the things that I'll— that I coach on is I'll have this— what I'll have is I'll have someone get not, not so much like this big guy, but like A small device like this or something like that. Like whatever, some small device. And what I'll do is when a thought happens, I'll have them refocus their attention to the object.

Right.

And then what happens is— it's kind of like when I had you guys journaling, but this is real more focused on the actual object. What we'll do is When the thought comes after— now, this is kind of hard. I know thoughts come at us all the time. I get it. I understand it. That's why, that's why I have you write down your thoughts and then write down the, the, the, um, the main, the main, um, points of those thoughts. Uh, and so I know it's difficult. I know it's hard. And hopefully this is making sense, but you want to get to a point where you see the— you see your thoughts. Especially the bad ones that we have, it's just a thought, as an object, right? Or what I do sometimes, and you can do this along with me or you can just watch me, what I'll do is I'll close my eyes. I'll take a deep breath. And the thoughts are coming at me, right? And what I'll do is I'll picture the thought going down a kind of a stream. Or even like a balloon. So I'll just sit there for a second. This only takes about a second. And I'll just, you know, like the thought of inadequacy, and I'll just watch it like a balloon come, and I'll visualize it, and I'll attach it to the balloon, and I'll just watch it float away.

Right.

So I become really, really good at becoming an observer rather than a participant by affirming these thoughts, right? And these thoughts, just like this does right here, the thoughts become emotions, right? Then they become sensations. Then they become behaviors. So, and that's specifically thoughts. Now, we can get into how feelings might come on, but feelings are mostly, they're mostly generated by the way we the way we think and the way our thought processes are. And so what happens again is I kind of— I'll teach folks to view things from afar and become an observer of their thoughts rather than a participant in their thoughts. So you become a participant— Can you repeat that? Well, what happens, Deborah, is the thoughts that are coming at you, So if you have multiple thoughts coming at you, you probably have an underlying theme between those thoughts. And if you have an underlying theme between those thoughts, you can focus on the theme. Or if you have multiple thoughts coming at you, I wouldn't really pick an object. What I would do is I would visualize a stream with logs going down the stream, right? And you're attaching those thoughts to that stream and you're watching it float away.

Right.

Or if you have balloons. I like balloons 'cause it's real easy for me to visualize. I just, and I'm holding the balloons, I'm holding the balloons and I'm associating or attaching those thoughts to those balloons, and then I visualize it going away, right? I'm not, the balloons are not, the balloons are not forcing me to do anything, right? As a matter of fact, that's how I'm controlling them, right? I'm controlling the thoughts because I'm not affirming them. I'm letting them go. And because of that, what happens a lot, I got really, really good at this. Now granted, I still battle, like I talked about with my inadequacy, but I had thoughts that were a lot worse than that inadequacy that helped me along that process as well, right? So learning how to disassociate, you want to talk about disassociate, disassociate myself from my own thoughts. And I do that with either objects or the visualization of a balloon. Now, this typically works when you're— when it's coming at you, right? The thoughts are just coming at you left and right. You're worthless, you're fat, you're inadequate, you're worth nothing, you can never do anything right, or you're angry, or you're whatever. All these thoughts are coming at you, right? Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. They're all coming at you. And what happens there is you can, you can themalize that— themalize, if that's even a word. You can theme them and then theme them and how you disassociate yourself with them is you visualize yourself just attaching them to balloons or attaching them to an object and watching them float away. Right. And what will happen is your brain— this is what happens, especially for us that have OCD— is what happens with that is your brain gets tired. Your thought processes, they get— they become less because they're not winning. They're not forcing you to do the very thing that they're telling you to do or telling you not to do. Right? And so because you are doing the very things that they tell you to do or tell you not to do, right, then they become less, less intense. And as they become less, less intense, your anxiety of those thoughts go down. Yeah, little bubbles. That's right. So yeah, it, it doesn't really matter. What you want to do is you want to learn to disassociate yourself with that thought, however that might be. If that's with an object, if it's with a balloon, if it's with bubbles, if it's blowing bubbles, if it's whatever it might be, that's what you— that's what we want to do is we want to disassociate ourselves with negative thinking, with negative thoughts. That's how you conquer negative thinking, right? Is you either— you take them captive by again doing the very thing it tells you to do or it tells you not to do. That's how you conquer Our negative thoughts. Is that helpful? I'm gonna send this out. I'll send this out, and then I'll send this out. Um, was there— there was something else I wanted to show. Um, I'm sorry, I'm just looking through my notes. Yes, I have plenty of notes.

Oh, geez.

I can't find it.

Dang it.

I can't find it. Okay. I can't find it. Alright. So, what time is it? Who has questions for me? I don't have my watch or nothing. Any questions? I don't even know who's on with— who's on with us?

I'm on.

Kate, Deborah, Renee, Stormy, Stitch. That's right, Stormy, that's Stitch. All right, anybody any questions around the thoughts? Here's a— that's what I wanted to show you. So unhelpful thinking styles. You guys see that? You guys see that, I guess? So, I'll send, I'll send this out. This is unhealthy thinking styles. And again, our thinking styles, they generated between ages 1 and 6, even though many of us don't remember that time. And some of us, it's good that we don't remember those times. And a lot of times, you know, it's interesting, a lot of times what I found with people is they have, They have a warped sense of self, meaning that they, they either— a lot of us have situations in which we were held with no self-esteem, right? So we were held, we were regarded as, as, as just an issue, so to say. And the other time, so what happens is our world, our world becomes, you know, Our world becomes nothing's important because I'm not important. And then the other side is we were everything. We always got what we wanted. Everybody always catered to us. We always, we were the center, we were the center of attention. And then we get into the world and the world doesn't treat us at the center, center of attention. And we lose ourselves. We feel worthless. We feel like we are not good enough. We're not quote unquote perfect. So there's 2 sides, right? A lot of people, they have 2 sides. They either were the center of attention and they got what they wanted every time that they asked, and every time the world was all around them. Typically happens in families that have single kids and one kid, or just— there's different situations, but that's typically one area. we had no world and no one cared about, you know, what was going on in our life. So that's generally the 2 facets of people within negative thinking world and how we think. And again, this can be changed. That's the point of all this, right? With help and with guidance and with understanding and with hard work, these things can be changed. And, but a lot of us gotta put the work in. A lot of us gotta make the changes. to do that. So, you know, my thought processes have changed. Not only did my faith drive that change, but understanding more about myself and understanding the art of different forgivenesses and different things, it allowed me to make those changes. All right. You guys have any questions? Yeah, all or nothing. All or nothing. So unthinking— unhelpful thinking styles, all or nothing, sometimes called black and white thinking. I'm not perfect, I have failed. Either I do it right or I— or not at all. Now, if that's you, Deborah, that's one of the negative thinking styles. All right, come with me. Your questions? You got any questions? Your life in a nutshell. Uh, we're working on it, girl. We're working on it. I thought this was your life in a nutshell. This one. You see that? See the tornado? That's my life in a nutshell. This is me right here. I'm an emotional— I'm an emotional reasoning. This is me. I wear everything on my— I wear my heart on my sleeve. So, um, listen, my detriment, actually one of my biggest issues is— one of my best qualities is my biggest issue. I don't know if I talked about this. No, you didn't. But one of my best qualities is I've grown to fall in love with people. And one of my biggest disadvantages is I've grown to fall in love with people. Um, because I think like that. I'm such an emotional person. Typically what happens with emotional people is they take things— oh, they take things out of context and they take things literally. So, you know, that's part of understanding what other people are going through and other people are thinking. Emotional people like me don't really care what other people are thinking or what they're going through because it's all my world. It's my world or no world. So I had to really change my thought and change my pattern around that thinking process. So Stormy, my parents always told me to look at the negative. And the positive will result. I don't know what type of negative thinking style that pertains to. So, told you to look at the negatives and the positive will result. I don't know if that's a negative thinking style. I don't know if you think like that. If you think like that, that's actually a pretty good way to think. So, but my likelihood, the likelihood of that is that you don't think like that. And that's part of the anxiety that we have. But that, that actually is a pretty good way to look at it. That takes practice, right? A lot of us are— it's funny because my wife thinks I'm a pessimist, but I don't think I'm a pessimist at all. I believe that I'm a realist. I look at— my lens is realness, right? So you can see that in me. I'm real about who I am. I expect realness with people I deal with. And so when I get fake smiles, or especially on Instagram, guys, when you see like a 20-something-year-old or a 30-something-year-old that is half nude and she's got the flipping filter thing going on and she's showing half her breasts and she's saying that she has a good time, the realist in me only sees a broken heart or a—

A lie.

messed up upbringing and someone that wants to be, um, looked at and fawned upon and gloated over. That stuff just drives me insane because I can see the fakeness in that. Um, so yeah, don't get me on a tangent here. So anyway, yeah, I don't think you— yeah, I don't think you probably think like that, um, Stormy, and that's okay, right? That's— it's okay that— listen, guys, it's okay that we don't think a certain style, right? We don't need— we're not robots. We don't need to all think alike. We all have different ways that we interpret the world. We all have different days, different things, and different situations, and different traumas, and different things in life that have affected us. And that's okay, right? And so because of that, that doesn't mean that we're right. That doesn't mean that we can't change. That doesn't mean that where we're at and where we're stuck in we can't make the necessary changes in our life to overcome where we've come from, right, or the things that have been done to us. That's the key to a lot of this is learning that our past doesn't define us, right? Our past should strengthen us. And so a lot of times a lot of us need to really forgive ourselves first, right? You see me talk a lot about forgiveness, and a lot of times what we need to learn to do is forgive ourselves first. Right? And understand that we've made bad choices in our life and made bad decisions in our life, and we've had unhealthy relationships or unhealthy coping mechanisms or unhealthy whatever, and be okay with that. Accept that, right? And then start making the necessary changes in our life. So we all need to think like— we all need to think alike, and we all come from— these are all different styles, right? No style is better than the next. They're just all different styles. Having said that, these styles have all came— oh, listen, this is one thing that we all have in common, right? Especially on our group is we're all, we all struggle with anxiety.

Right.

So all these different styles have come to one conclusion, right? An anxious life. And so what we need to do is we need to change our style a bit, you know, I'm, I'm an emotional guy. And because I'm an emotional guy, I feel things. I, I, I, it's just how I am. I'm not going to become now this hard, stern person that doesn't, you know, that doesn't feel anything, that doesn't cry, that doesn't have emotions attached to things. Don't— I don't have passion on what I do and, and love on people. I'm not going to change that. But if it's unhealthy, if it's unhealthy for me, I just need to fine-tune it, right? Just switch it up a little bit and take those thoughts captive rather than affirm them. Make them obey me rather than me obey them, if that makes sense. Yeah, well, life is all about, you know, you're gonna have more stormy negatives coming at you than positives. And we just need to understand that and have a different thinking style, right? Just not a different thinking style, but a way to handle those thoughts and handle those things that come at us. Personally, I think you're in school, right? I think you're, I think you're in school and hopefully you're not still struggling with the agoraphobia. And if you are, message me and we can see, we can chat about that as well. Okay. Well, we're on the questions. You guys have any other questions? Any other questions for me? I wish I can see, like, people typing, but I can't see people typing on these things. Any other ones? I'm staring at the text messages. Well, the, the, the comment section, should I say. Any other comments? Yes? No? Maybe? Alright. I'll give you 15 seconds. Hopefully, it was as helpful. Again, I'll send out the I'll send out the various documents that I just referenced. And hopefully, you guys can, can take a snapshot of those and see what I'm talking about. Again, how do you, how do you— so what if the thought, what, what if the thought won't go away? I guess, You need to— okay, great, Renee, thank you. Um, so Deborah, the thought won't go away. So there's a couple things you can do. Um, as the thought won't go away, that's part of the control, right? And so what you're trying to do is you're trying to get rid of something that— you're trying to get rid of something, you're trying to control it by making it go away. And we just went through this Talk around you can't control your thoughts. What you can do is you can make those thoughts obedient and not affirm them, right? So how do you do that? You want them— you want it— you want them— you want your thoughts to go away. You want that— that you want that one thought to go away. Do the very thing in which it's telling you to do or to not to do. That's how they'll go away. And what happens is, is, is as you do those things, like this, right? So this is my thought. My thought— I'm waving, right? Well, my thought can't control my wave, right? My thought can't tell— my thought can't control me moving around. It can stay with me, right? It's with me. My thought's still here. My thought is right here, right? My thought is telling me things that I don't like about myself. You know, my thoughts tell me, you're inadequate. Right? You have no clue what you're doing. You're a fool for even doing stuff like this. These people are— they don't get you. You're inadequate. You're worth nothing. You have no education. Right? So the thought's telling me this, but I'm still doing. I'm still coaching. I'm still working with you, even though the thought is telling me. Right? So that's one of the things in which we got to understand that we can do life And we can hopefully ask— you can still hear me, right? Hopefully. We can do life even though the thought's with us, right? So how do you get rid of the thought? Maybe you never really get rid of the thought. What you do is you still do life with the thought, right? So that's a good exercise to have, right? What I'd like to do if I had another person here, what I would do is I would, I would have— I would like— I can't do it, so I'm going to explain it. But this is a good exercise to show you that the thought is still with me, right? With me, but I'm still living life. I'm still doing things. I'm still, I'm still coaching you. I'm still— even though the thoughts tell me I'm inadequate, right? And what happens a lot of times is— A lot of times is we embrace, we embrace the thought and we, we hate it, but we just, you know, we, we just embrace it. We just, we just don't do nothing, right? And so we embrace it, we hug it, we love it, even though we say we don't want it, right? So we get comfortable with feeling a certain way and having a certain way of thinking other than— and we say we don't like it, right? So, but that's the problem is we can still have the thought. You guys still with me, or is it froze? You guys still listening? Hopefully. So you can still have the thought, right? The thought is still there. The thought is still with you, but you're still living life. You're still doing the very things. Okay, so you're still doing the very things. Does that make sense? You're still doing the very things Right, that the thought is telling me that I shouldn't do.

Okay.

Does that make sense? Hopefully that's helpful. I like to use an object like this because a lot of times this is how we need to view the thought, right? It's just there. It's just lingering. I accept it. It's not going anywhere. It's just, it's just with me, but I'm still doing the very thing that it's telling me that I shouldn't do. Right? Or I should, or I, or I either I should do or I shouldn't do. And so that's the, you got to get really, really good at that, right? You got to get really, really good at doing the very thing that tells you not to do or tell you to do. That's how you control it. That, and we need to be okay with the thought not going away. Now there's some things that I know that I worked with Katie on and you and I coached together. So I want to start working on those particular modalities around thoughts. And you could probably reach out to her to discuss what I've done with her. But hopefully it's helping her. But, you know, we just need to be okay with the thoughts, right? What we want to do is we want to get rid of them, right? We just want them to go away. We don't want to deal with them. We don't want to fight with them. We don't want to do anything like that. And what happens is— This is the crazy thing.

Right.

I wish I had another one, but he comes with friends, right? When we fight, it gets worse, so they come with friends. So that's why we have multiple, multiple flipping thoughts come at us. We fight him and then other thoughts come right at us. And so he brings a gang of, gang of buddies with him, right? That's what typically happens. Yeah, that's exactly what happens. So you got to get comfortable with still living life even though you have the thought, and that's how you beat it. That's how, that's how, that's how, that's how we win. That's how you control your thoughts, by not controlling them. It's a party. Yeah, it's definitely a party. Okay guys, um, uh, good live tonight. I thought we'd have more people, but that's okay. Because you guys have showed up and I'll save this for others to view. And then I'll send out a— I'll probably do next Thursday again. I got to check my schedule though. I got to check my schedule, but I'll probably do next Thursday again so we can go through this. And of course, message me if you have any questions, message me. Deborah, I'd message Katie on kind of what we went through with her. During her coaching yesterday. That's okay, Beck. I'm gonna save this anyway so you can view it. Sorry about that. And I would encourage you, Beck, to take a look at this after I get off, and then we'll go from there. So I'll send out a poll on what we want to talk about next. I have some things in mind I want to go through. I don't know, Crystal's not on, right?

No.

I don't think Chris is. Let me reach out to her. Um, I wanna see if she's, um, if she's up to doing something with me as far as, uh, doing something online or maybe, anyway, I'm talking out loud. Okay. So, uh, again, I'm saving this. Uh, Beck, I would review it if I were you. Um, uh, Deborah, if you wanna know what I did with Katie, you could probably reach out to her. Hopefully there's some benefit there. I think that we— geez, you guys just got here, dang it! You missed my whole life. Crystal, I think that you and I are meeting next week, so I want to chat with you about that, about the modality that we were talking about doing on Facebook Live. I just want to meet with you first to kind of see if you're okay with that. If not, maybe Katie, maybe you and I can go through around what we did with each other Last night. So anyway, um, sorry if I gotta jump off. Sorry, Crystal. I encourage you to take a bit, watch this. I think it's about 35-40 minutes long. I went into different thinking styles and different, different methods of thinking and how you control thoughts. And so view it, and hopefully that it's helpful. So anyway, sorry about that. Let me know if this time doesn't work. This time doesn't work, and maybe later in the day. 7-ish might work better. Let me know, and we can switch that as well. So I want as much participation as possible. So maybe, yeah, maybe 7 o'clock is better for some people. So anyway, I'll talk to you guys soon. Again, if you need me, reach out to me, and we'll talk to you later. Take care.

Bye.