Ep #53: Stop Entertaining Crappy Thinking

You are listening to episode 53 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you stop entertaining shitty thinking. Alright, let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hey my Confident Coaches. How’s everybody doing out there today? I hope you’re doing fabulously. I’m doing pretty darn good. It’s November. I actually am recording this in the past, so I’m not entirely sure, do we know who the president is yet? Do we know? I don’t know. Do we know? You’ll have to tell me.

So, I’m doing fabulously because there’s something to be said about being ignorantly blissful and not actually knowing how everything’s going on. So, I can just kind of be myself right now. You guys know more than I do.

And I really just want to dive into today’s topic because it’s about something that always kind of baffled me about something that one of my coaches always says. And I was like, “I don’t know how to do that.” I brought it up with my one on one coach and she was like, “Hi, Amy…”

So, here’s the interesting thing. It’s kind of an advanced topic. But the solution is super-simple, which is what my one on one coach was trying to share with me. Like, there’s this thing and I thought it was so advanced and so hard and was so intricate. And she was like, “What if the solution is super-simple?”

By the way, what if the solution is super-simple is a great question to ask yourself all of the time. Because nine times out of 10, the solution is super-simple. I love simple solutions. They’re kind of like the best solutions, are they not? The simpler, the better, and the more we can keep things simple for ourselves, the more we can keep them simple for our clients as well. What if your client’s solution was simple also, right? But that’s a podcast topic for another day.

What we’re talking about today is this idea that we have these certain thoughts that keep coming up over and over again. And they’re typically shitty thoughts. They’re typically crappy thoughts. And it’s just like, things that come up over and over and over again. We know they don’t serve us. And yet, we freak out when they do or we still believe it or something like that.

And I have – so, my business coach, my sales and marketing and business coach, my mastermind coach, she’s always saying things like, “I just don’t even entertain that thought.” She’s like, “This whole thing right there, I just wouldn’t even entertain it.” So, I’m always like, “What do you mean, you wouldn’t even entertain it?” What does that mean? Somebody tell me.

Remember now, I want to be really clear, I am a master certified coach and my brain will be like, “I don’t know what that means. I’m confused. I don’t understand.” So, that right there is part of just being a normal human being, that I don’t know how not to entertain a thought, be something that must be hard and must be complicated.

And when I brought this up with my one on one coach – she works with me to go through all the things I’m learning with my other coach in the group setting and all the other work that I do in my life, and we just go deeper. And she reminded me of the simplicity of the solution. Because really, what she was pointing out was what was I making it mean when my other coach said, “I just don’t even entertain that thought.” To me, I was making that mean that she just wasn’t even having them. Like, she just wasn’t even allowing those thoughts in the room.

So, I think it’s really important to understand that first and foremost, there are certain thoughts that you will have over and over and over again. And you probably know what yours are. I’ve done a podcast episode before on fault obsessions. That might be something along those lines. And they’re just things like, “I’m not good enough. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m behind. There’s never enough time.” They’re kind of thoughts that are – you think them so often that they’re just kind of wired into your brain and just understanding that you will always have thoughts that come back over and over again.

Now, the first time you become aware of these thoughts and you realize that they’re not factual, they’re not circumstances, but they are in fact a thought and not all seven and a half billion people on the planet would agree with you. The first time you have that realization, we do want to put them in a model.

If episode 53 is your first episode with me, you may not know what the model is. And that is just the coaching tool that I’ve talked about extensively throughout this podcast that I use all of the time in my coaching about differentiating circumstances from your thoughts about those circumstances and then how those thoughts that you’re having drive your feelings, your feelings drive your actions, or lack of actions, and your actions or lack of actions create your results. So, it’s CTFAR, circumstances, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results.

So, you’ll want to put those thoughts in a model and flesh out that model. So, what I mean by that is I used to love to just think, “I don’t have enough time,” and I would state it so factually as if it were a circumstance. But when I run it through that filter of, “Would all seven and a half billion people on the planet agree that I don’t have enough time?” No, they won’t.

Because you want to know what? There are busier people than me. There are people who work three fulltime jobs and have kids at home and do this and take care of their parent and do this. It’s so subjective, “I don’t have enough time.”

So, as soon as I realize that it is a thought, it is not a fact, it is not a circumstance. I can put that into a model and when I think, “I don’t have enough time,” how does that make me feel? It makes me feel anxious, antsy, anxious, right? And when I feel antsy and anxious, I bounce around to a bunch of different things. I’m either antsy and anxious and kind of bounce and bounce and bounce and bounce and I don’t ever finish any one thing. Or I actually shut down because I’m too anxious, I’m too antsy, and then I will zone out on Netflix or Facebook, right?

So, the result, of course, that I get is I don’t have the time to do what matters most to me. So, the thought, “I don’t have enough time,” actually creates the result of me not having enough time to do what’s important to me.

So, the first time we have any of these kinds of thoughts, it is super-important to put them into a model and see what they create for you. How does that make me feel? How do I show up on that action line? What kind of things do I do and not do? And ultimately, what’s the result that I am creating in my life by choosing to think that?

Once you see it in a model, then you get to decide, is this a thought that I want to keep thinking? Do I want to continue to think that there’s never enough time? I could. No one’s telling me that I can’t. But as soon as I put that into a model and I see what it’s creating for me, I see that that thinking creates the result of me not having enough time for what matters most to me, then I need to go, “Maybe that’s not a thought I want to continue to believe.”

And here is the thing. Maybe it’s not a thought I want to continue thinking versus maybe it’s not a thought I want to continue to believe. This is where that entertaining certain thoughts gets us a little caught up. Because the fact of the matter is, I’m going to keep thinking it. Remember, I will always have thoughts that come across over and over and over again. My real work is to stop believing it once I decide I don’t like the result that it’s creating for me.

Now, a lot of times, what I do, we might practice – there’s a process that I teach inside my mastermind. So, I’m the creator of the Confident Coaches Mastermind and there’s this concept that I teach in there that is the process of how to believe on purpose. And it’s a two-step process.

You not only have to believe something new. You have to unbelieve something old. So, I want to unbelieve that there’s never enough time while I’m also learning to believe that there’s enough time to do what matters most, or that there’s plenty of time to do what I need to do. So, it’s a two-step process.

And that’s not what this podcast is necessarily about. But know that there is this process of that. There’s a bunch of tools that you can use to unbelieve a thought and to start believing a new thought. You can sit in belief, you know, sit in the new belief and the feeling of that new belief. You can learn how to stay in the negative thought and really see what that’s creating for you so that you just can’t deny what that’s creating for you anymore. There’s quite a few tools that you can use there.

And at some point, you keep having these thoughts, you’ve sat in them, you’ve done the process of unbelieving, you’ve done the process of believing. You’ve decided you want to let them go and they still keep coming back.

The fact that they keep coming back is not a problem. So, the first thing about stop entertaining your shitty thoughts is understanding that these shitty thoughts, once you’ve decided that they are in fact a shitty thought and you don’t want to keep believing it, you don’t have to make the presence of them be a problem. And that’s what I was doing when I used to say, “I don’t understand how my coach can just not entertain a thought anymore.”

I was making that mean that she doesn’t even have them. And of course she has them because she’s a human being. There are certain thoughts that are so hardwired into your brain that you will continue to think them, not because you have to believe them anymore. Not because you’ve decided they aren’t true, but because it’s just your old computer program that just keeps – it’s there. It’s like an old familiar tune. It’s like an old song you used to love and it’s still going to come around every once in a while. You just don’t love it anymore.

And that’s because your Helga brain, that’s your inner cavewoman, that’s the primitive brain tucked up behind in the back of your head, she is wired to keep you safe. She is wired to keep you in the cave, to keep you from going too far out of your comfort zone. So, she’s going to keep throwing these thoughts at you that she knows have worked in the past. She’s going to keep throwing them at you. Of course she is.

That is not in and of itself a problem. You just have a thought scrolling. You know how in the news – and of course, we’re probably watching… you’re either not watching any news in this month or you’re watching a lot of news. You know that news scroll, there’s a scroll of news going across the bottom of your screen. I like to think of my thoughts that way, that there’s just a constant scroll of thoughts going at any given time. What is it like, 40,000 thoughts a day, 60,000 thoughts a day?

Most of them are so random and don’t even have anything to do with anything. A lot of them are these old thoughts that we think over and over and over again. Some of them are new thoughts that we’re sitting and practicing. There’s all kinds of thoughts going across that news scroll.

So, the idea of not entertaining certain thoughts just means they’re scrolling in and I just let them scroll on by. They come into the room and I just let them – it’s like an old comedy. I open up one door, I let them in, I open up the other door, I let them out. I don’t have to let them take root. I don’t have to let them drop out of that scroll and drop into a model that creates a feeling and drives action and creates a result. At any given time, I can pull that back out and I can let it just keep on going, put it back up into the thought scroll.

I don’t need to fondle them. I don’t need to continue to put them in a model. These are thoughts I already know what they create. This shitty line of thinking, I’ve already put them through models before. I already know what they create. I don’t have to fondle them. I’ve already done that work, right?

So, this podcast specifically is about, what is the actual work to be done to just let those thoughts float on by? What’s the actual process of not entertaining the shitty thinking? And the answer to that, my friends, can be found in parenting. What? Wait, who? Yeah.

By the way, I’ve used this reference a lot before, but when I think about parenting, I think I’m a pretty damn good parent. I like my parenting style. I love the way that I do it. People in my life have all kinds of opinions about how I parent and I just let them have those thoughts. There’s so many ways in which parenting is a great analogy that I rely on when it comes to thought work, coaching, running a business. And this one,100%.

Because I want you to imagine this. I have a couple of kiddos, a 21-year-old stepdaughter and then I have two boys, one is fourteen and one is almost 12. So, I’m going to use those two as the prime example of how to not entertain a thought, by using the parenting model.

Okay, teenage boys – one’s technically a preteen. One is a new teen. They have a lot of unreasonable requests. They say a lot of crazy ass shit, don’t they? Do you have one of those? Is yours a girl? Is it a boy? I don’t even care. Yours might even be a toddler, I don’t know, your toddler or your teenager. Either one of them make a prime example for this, right? They have unreasonable requests. They are relentless. And yet, what do we do? As an example right now, both of them see, to think that they should be able to get an iPhone 12, I want an iPhone 12.”

My 14-year-old, when we went on vacation to the beach – did you guys hear that podcast episode, two episodes ago? We went on vacation to the beach, which by the way we got evacuated by a hurricane, but that’s a whole other story – he actually tried to convince us that he was going to stay home and not go on vacation. He’s 14. He spent an entire day asking me if he could stay home by himself while we went on vacation.

What else do your crazy-ass children say, “I want a PlayStation. I want an iPhone. I want to stay home on vacation. I want a cookie. I don’t want to eat my broccoli. I only want to eat dessert, I want a car for Christmas,” and they’re 11.

My 11-year-old, he doesn’t want a car for Christmas, but he has this – he loves to joke with me that he wants to be a drinker of some kind. Like, “I want a beer.” No, no you’re not getting a beer. And that is what we do.

What do we do in these moments when these humans that we love say ridiculous things to us? What do we do? We don’t entertain them, do we? No. No, we do not. Do they still keep coming up with it? Oh yeah. They still keep asking us for this thing. We still love them. And it’s also like, “No… I see your request. I love you. And no, not going to happen.”

I don’t even entertain the idea of giving my 12-year-old an iPhone 12. I didn’t even entertain the idea that my 14-year-old was going to stay home by himself for a week while the rest of us went to the beach, “I love you, but you’re kind of crazy and the answer is no.” That’s how you don’t entertain your children. That’s how you don’t entertain your shitty thinking.

I realize, side note here, that I am equivocating. I am equivalating – I’m something. I’m setting up an analogy – I’m also making up words – that shitty thinking and my 14-year-old son are the same thing. But you know what, sometimes they are.

But here’s the thing. We’ve got to parent that Helga brain and her shitty thoughts the way we would parent our unreasonable toddlers and teenagers. They’re always going to be offering up crazy stuff to us. But we just don’t buy it. We love them. But we don’t say yes.

And if they throw a fit, “Of course, I still love you. Let me know when you’re done. I’m still going to be here.” Allow yourself to feel the emotions of having a temper tantrum should one come along with that unreasonable request.

What is parenting at its heart? It’s firm but loving. Like, I love this crazy human in front of me with their completely ridiculous request. And it’s still going to be a no from me. I don’t go on and on and like, “Who does he think he is every time he says that? I can’t believe he would ask me for an iPhone 12. I can’t believe he would dare think about that. How crazy is this?”

I don’t go on long tantrums. I don’t get indignant with him. I don’t get furious with him. I sure as heck don’t feel ashamed of myself that he would ask this crazy request of me. No, instead I’m just like, “Oh, you’re so cute and kind of silly and the answer is no.”

No, I don’t go on and on for days. I just know that this is an unreasonable human being who is asking for things because why not, and they are going to keep asking for things because why not, and I can love them and I also don’t have to entertain it. And this exactly how we handle those shitty thoughts that you think over and over again, that you’ve put into models multiple times.

You’ve practiced believing what you want to believe instead. You practice unbelieving it. And Helga is going to continue to offer these thoughts to you in that thought scroll and you’re just like, “I love you, thought. I see you, thought. And it’s a no from me. Oh, aren’t you so cute… and no. Bye.” We just let it go.

We don’t have to be mad that it’s there. We don’t have to be indignant that it’s there. We don’t have to throw a tantrum about it being there. We don’t have to feel shameful or judgmental with ourself that it’s there, just like we wouldn’t do that with our kiddo. We don’t have to do that with the Helga brain.

Like, of course he’s asking for ridiculous things. Of course, she keeps saying ridiculous things. It’s what they do. Honestly, the only difference between your toddler or your teenager and your Helga brain is, eventually, those real-life kids grow up. Unfortunately, Helga won’t.

The rest of your life, she’s going to be in there, offering you unreasonable thoughts, shitty thoughts that you’ve already run through models. She’s going to keep serving them up and you just do not even have to entertain them anymore.

Your ongoing work is to be able to recognize that this is one of those thoughts that she’s given you multiple times that’s showing up in your thought scroll, and that in that moment, as you go, “Aren’t you so cute, and the answer is no.” How about we just practice that this week, my friends? “And the answer is no.”

When your Helga brain wants to offer you that line of thinking that you’re so familiar with, “I’m behind. I don’t know enough. They’re farther ahead than I am. They know more than I am. This never works. Maybe I need to change my niche…” sorry, I just coached a client on that today and I was like, “No, no you do not need to change your niche.” I’m pounding on my desk.

No, that’s just going to be a no from me, and I don’t have to entertain you. These lines of thoughts, once you see what they’ve created for you, remember that you can parent them when they come back, “I see you, I love you, you’re so cute, and it’s a no from me,” alright?

That’s your work my friends, “And it’s a no from me.” Practice that this week on those thoughts that you know that keep coming up, they’re shitty, they’re crappy, you know what the create for you. Stop entertaining them. “It’s a no from me.”

Alright, my friends, okay. So, until next week, let’s go do some epic stuff.

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