You can have control over your thoughts. Seriously. And I’m going to tell you how to do it, right here, for free!
Interested?
I’m going to explain it as simply as I can, with an analogy….
Imagine your mind as an untouched, grassy hilltop.
In this imagining, you are facing a difficult task and you don’t really know how to complete it. A very particular thought then pops into your head: ‘I can’t do it.’
I’m going to turn that thought into a goat…a Thought Goat.
Now you have an ‘I Can’t do it’ Thought Goat wandering around the grassy hilltop (your mind).
Even so, you begin the difficult task until it gets hard, and again the thought occurs; ‘I can’t do it.’ Your first Thought Goat is followed by another Thought Goat. You and I both know that once we have a particular thought, we tend to have it again. And again. The Thought Goats multiply.
Soon you have 5 Thought Goats and it won’t stop there. These goats march in the same direction, squashing the grass as they go. Eventually, they make a little path called the ‘I can’t do it‘ path.
See how easily the Thought Goats multiply? You only have to repeat the thought a few times to have more goats, and the more goats there are, the more they wear down the path. Before you know it, the ‘I can’t do it’ path is a dirt track that is easy to see in the long grass.
More and more Thought Goats appear as you tell yourself that you can’t do things. Soon enough, the dirt track becomes a wide and well-worn road and you end up with an established highway called ‘I Can’t Do It’ and it is such a good road that the Thought Goats prefer to run up and down it all day at top speed.
The result is that your brain will default to the ‘I can’t do it’ highway whenever you have something to do/attempt/complete, especially if it’s challenging.
Here are more pictures of Thought Goats at work to help you get the idea…
Let’s stop talking about goats and make this about your THOUGHTS. Below is an illustration of how your brain develops over time as each new thought gets more traction.
It starts at untouched grass getting squashed, then new thoughts build a track, then the repetition of that thought gives you a highway. As your brain gets used to having the same thought over and over, your results will be increasingly determined by that thought.
The most established road gets the most traction in how you do things.
The road may be positive or it may be negative. YOU create the road with your thoughts and YOU get to decide which thought road you will build.
Your thoughts always determine the results you get.
Where are your thoughts taking you at present?
Let’s give your mind a positive pathway to counteract that original thought of ‘I can’t do it.’ This will be the ‘I can do it’ pathway.
See how simple it is to create a new path with a message that supports you? You can easily do the same thing, starting with one little Thought Goat.
The great news is that the old roads will soon grass over once the Thought Goats stop using them. Here’s a picture to show you how a thought road can grass over and be forgotten…
You have the ability to create as many supportive thought roads as you want to have in your mind. You also have the ability to allow any unsupportive thought roads to grass over.
All you have to do to accomplish this is to get conscious about the thoughts passing through your head. Watch out for them. Be aware of them. Catch the unsupportive/negative thoughts and decide to let them go. Replace them with new supportive thoughts.
Every time that old thought resurfaces, quickly block it and pop in with a supportive thought. If you catch yourself saying, ‘I can’t do that,’ quickly block that thought and say to yourself, ‘I can do that.’
Imagine your doctor tells you that you must stick to a diet that includes no foods containing gluten. You might at first respond by thinking, ‘No grains? No bread? No pasta?! I can’t do that!’ You might even tell the doctor that it’s impossible. However, when you change your thoughts to, ‘I can do it. It won’t be fun, but I can do it,’ you’ll have different results. Now you will be ready to discuss your new diet with your doctor without that limiting, negative thought pattern getting in the way.
Here’s another example. Your Discipline Coach tells you that you must go to bed at 10 pm every night. You know it’s good for you and that you’ll get the 8 hours’ sleep you’re currently missing out on. In theory, you agree to the idea, but your mind keeps telling you: ‘That’s so early! You can function on less sleep; don’t listen to her.’ The result is that you continually stay up late and bear the punishments that result. Eventually, you’ll tire of this…
In an instant, you can change your thoughts to something supportive, such as: ‘I enjoy going to bed early. I am getting 8 hours of sleep every night.’ When you think this way, your body must follow suit and do as your thoughts intend. You will naturally go to bed at 10pm and eventually, the idea of staying up past 10pm will no longer occur to you. That’s how you’ll know the old track has grassed over.
Remember to rinse-and-repeat this technique often: override those off-track thoughts and replace them with supportive thoughts a hundred times a day if need be. It will work eventually.
This is how we train our brain to work FOR us and not AGAINST us. You will get a little taste of this when you work with me as a discipline coach, because I know that we must get your mind working for you before you’ll see the results you want in life.
