How to change your old repetitive thoughts
You’d probably heard the famous phrase commonly attributed to Einstein (even though it seems it’s not his saying): “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
It might not be Einstein who said this, but whoever did, it certainly made an important point…
I’m sure you are also familiar with the idea that every day we have about 60,000 thoughts (more or less) and that out of all those thoughts, about 80% of them are repeated every day, and from those 80% that we keep on repeating in our heads, another 80% of them are negative…
How is that for an insane thought???
Really! We are just playing over and over the same bad movie in our heads day after day, and we expect to grow!!!
How can we GROW and CHANGE while running on the same OLD scripts?
How can we become a BETTER VERSION of ourselves if we don't UPGRADE our own software??
I like to think about it in this way, your brain is like your cellphone, and your mind is the software that runs it. Every idea that you have in your mind is like each app in your phone. And you have A LOT of apps running…
My phone just reminded me that there is a new software update that needs to be installed. And I know that I need to install it so it keeps running smoothly without slowing down.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had a notification system telling us that we need to upgrade the software in our brain? That the old version is not longer working?
Well, I think we do have an awesome notification system… FEELINGS.
Your FEELINGS are your NOTIFICATIONS.
When you feel anxious about something, your phone (brain) is sending you a notification. It's giving you a signal that something is not running smoothly with one of your apps (thoughts), something is asking for your attention. Maybe you need a software (mind) upgrade?
What do I mean with that?
Imagine that you have to speak at a meeting and give a presentation. Let’s imagine that you are not comfortable speaking in public, you’ve done this in the past and you remember how bad it was, and thinking about is just making you freaking anxious.
Should you ignore your feelings of anxiety and do nothing? Or should you listen to the notification and start asking questions about it?
If you ignore your anxiety, the day of the presentation arrives, and you have to enter in that room and speak to all the attendees while trying to avoid a meltdown because in your mind you are just replaying the old movie of yourself at your previous meeting screwing it up.
You are trying to look calm, trying to remember everything that you want to say, and trying to control you stuttering and your nerves…and you suffer through out all the presentation wishing it’s already done…or you even get sick just thinking about it and you don't even make it to the meeting…
If instead, you stop and listen to your anxiety, you can start asking yourself questions.
Questions like: what is it that I don't like about doing this presentation? Am I comfortable with the material I need to present? Do I feel confident in my knowledge? Is there anything I need to study and prepare further? How can I reduce in any way my anxiety? What if I can replace the anxiety with excitement? What is the worst that could happen? How can I decrease the risk of looking foolish again? What’s under my control?....
There are thousands of questions that you could ask yourself if you STOP and THINK about the feeling you are having and WHY it’s there.
And asking all those questions is basically doing an UPGRADE to your software (MIND).
When you stop and feel and take the time to EXPLORE that feeling WITHOUT JUDGING yourself, you are allowing yourself to GROW.
You are getting out of your old routines and old ways of thinking and expanding into new ways of seeing things so you can react differently in a situation where you weren’t confident before.
You INSTALLED a NEW SOFTWARE and a few new apps.
You got rid of some of the old apps and created space in your brain for growth.
Now, going back to the 60,000 or so thoughts in your brain that you keep on running again and again, that are keeping you doing things in the same way and are keeping you stuck repeating same behaviors…
How do you stop repeating those same thoughts so you can change?
The same way as we just did: You do a software upgrade.
You EXPLORE your thoughts.
You start bringing AWARENESS to your daily actions.
See what is in repeat mode. OBSERVE your routines.
And then, start by CHANGING ONE THING.
If you always go to work using the same route, your thoughts will be running on repeat most of the time, because you have the same stimulus coming at you at the same places every day.
You see the same coffee shop on the way and that makes you think about their awesome muffins, you see the same billboard that reminds you about something familiar, then your mind goes to the same thought of the day before where the same billboard reminded you of the same…you are just going on repeat.
And, sometimes your mind even disconnects and you drive automatically and by the time you get to work you don't even remember how you got there…
So, what can you do?
Pay attention the next time you drive to work, see if you get the same type of thoughts when something triggers you. And then, the next day, take a different route to go to work. Change something.
Just by changing your routine, you’ll have to pay more attention and you’ll be more focused in the new task, you’ll be breaking down the trail of repetitive thoughts.
You will be installing new apps and renewing your software.
All starts with curiosity. By exploring what is it that you are thinking and what is it that you are feeling.
Now let me know below, have you ever noticed that you think the same whenever you see the same trigger? Have you ever arrived to a place without remembering how you got there? Do you remember an instance where you paid attention to your feelings and did a software upgrade to address those feelings?
Share your thoughts below, I want to hear from you!!
xoxo,
Sofia