by Renee leNobel | Apr 4, 2015 | Divorce
In Lynne Twist’s book, The Soul Of Money, she writes:
For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it.
When I first read the above quote I wanted to know how Lynne Twist knew exactly what was going on in my head everyday when I woke up. My waking up thoughts also ran along the lines of “I can’t do it,” “I don’t want to do it,” and “what’s the point of getting out of bed anyway?”
These were just thoughts and while they never actually stopped me from getting out of bed (my needy kids made sure I would get up), I’ve come to realize that at one point I truly believed these thoughts. It is no wonder that every day felt like a battle and my enthusiasm for life was gone.
Once I became aware of these negative waking thoughts, I started to keep a mental catalog of how often I had them. I started to notice them. I have to say that noticing how often my thoughts were negative was fairly depressing in itself. This led to further negative thoughts along the lines of “I must just be a negative, unmotivated person.”
I did this for a long time. I attached myself to my thoughts and used them to judge myself.
And then one day I stopped.
Because while I was noticing my negative thoughts, I was also noticing how much harder my days were. I was noticing that if I chose to do something else, and it could be anything that would stop me from buying into and believing my negative thoughts, my overall day wasn’t as hard to get through. This became a bit of a balancing act. I did not want to become too busy and lose all time for self-reflection, yet at the same time I had to learn to distance myself and not buy into my negative thoughts or I’d end up exhausted at the end of the day.
I’m not exactly sure when I stopped: a month, two months from the day I first started tracking my negative thoughts? All I know is that I did stop because now when I wake up I acknowledge those thoughts are still there and then I laugh at myself, get out of bed and get on with living the day I want to live.
When you’re in the midst of starting over and trying to change your life, it is important to recognise that the thoughts going through your head do not define you. For me, it took time and noticing to move me past getting drained and sucked into my negative thinking. Eventually something clicked.
If negative thoughts are getting you down, start noticing them and questioning them. Don’t judge yourself when you do get sunk by them and give yourself time to build a boundary between your thoughts and what defines you as you. This is just one step in helping you create and maintain the change you want in your life.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 10, 2014 | Divorce
There are many of negative thoughts out there that keep a person stuck in one place. I know because these thoughts kept me stuck: I let those thoughts control my actions.
One thought that keeps turning up in my life is “I can’t do it.” This is accompanied with “I am not good, smart, ambitious, deserving. (insert any positive adjective here) enough.”
I don’t know when I internalised this thought and then started living my life according to it, but I didn’t discover that this thought was in the driver’s seat of my life until my divorce. Since then I have been aware of this thought and working at ways to not let it rule me. I know it is working because now instead of it being me saying “oh no, I couldn’t do that.” I have people saying to me – “wow, you have accomplished so much…. I could never do that, I not smart, driven (insert positive adjective here) like you.”
I had four people say this to me last week in one form or another and it was quite surprising. How had I gone from being the person saying “I can’t do it.” to the person that is saying to others “you can do it”?
The first step for me was recognising that most of my inner dialogue throughout my life had been defeatist, often verging on self-loathing. I started journaling (I can hear the protests now: “I can’t journal” from some of you reading this. I always thought I couldn’t journal either. I told myself that and guess what? That was pretty self-fulfilling).
Ok, so I started journaling and documenting my inner thoughts. They were pretty negative and then I got self-loathing about that! For about two weeks I was saying to myself, “I can’t do it and how can I ever be expected to do it because I was born self-loathing.” Actually, that might have been more than two weeks.. That was a bit of a vicious whirlpool I was in for a while.
So then I read something else. Those thoughts that I was having? They weren’t mine. Nope. They were put there by society (darn you society).
At that point, it started becoming slightly funny and almost game-like. When my mood started to go down, I would try to identify the thought that was taking me there. And there was always something. Those thoughts are sneaky and can sometimes catch you unawares and send you spiralling down before you notice. That is the game for me, catching them before they do that.
That is essentially all I had to do. It took me a long time to figure it out but I finally did. What is amazing is that it completely ties into the idea that you manifest your thoughts. For a good chunk of my life I manifested “I can’t do it.” and now I am manifesting “I can do it.” It was simply a matter of recognition and belief.
Do you believe and listen to the thought that you can’t do it? Do you often say to others who you perceive to be more successful “but you are smart, driven, lucky etc.” and use that as an excuse as to why you can’t do it? I want to challenge you to recognise this thought for what it is. It is just a thought that is only true because you have made it so. You have manifested that thought in your life.
You can change. I know you can because I have first-hand experience. I have overcome a 40 year deeply entrenched personal mantra of “I can’t do it” within the space of a year.
But only you can do this… and I know you can.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 7, 2014 | Divorce
Do you sometimes think to yourself “I am alone”?
I do. It is usually immediately after dropping my kids off at school on a day that is the start of a five day stretch where they live at their dad’s home.
It doesn’t matter that about thirty minutes earlier they were driving me bonkers with their loudness and fighting and I couldn’t wait to get them out of the house.
As soon as I give them a hug and a kiss goodbye and reluctantly walk away from their school, the thoughts take over.
Here is but a sampling:
“I do not get to see my kids for five days…. actually six if I include Wednesday when they are at school!”
“It is not natural that a mom does not get to see her kids.”
“I can do it, I know this is just a thought.”
“I am sad, it ok that I am sad, it is a sad situation.”
“I have things planned for my time. I was relishing have free time two days ago, remember that feeling.”
“I am alone.”
It is that last thought that really gets me. I don’t know if there is a more unmotivating and devastating thought out there. That thought takes me out of living the day as I want to: with hope, joy and purpose.
So I am writing about this in the hopes of recognising what that thought does to me if I take it on. Awareness if the first step as the saying goes.
by Renee leNobel | Nov 4, 2014 | Divorce
Today I woke up feeling unmotivated. I tried to work for a bit and then decided what I was doing wasn’t getting me anywhere so I took a break.
I pondered the fact that it was cold in my house and the pilot light on the boiler had likely gone out again. I emailed my tenant to ask him to check for me and then I thought about how I should phone the heating and plumbing people to get them to come and do the annual maintenance on the boiler.
I thought about it some more. I thought about how I don’t like having to keep asking my tenant to light the pilot light on the boiler as it’s not his problem.
What was stopping me from phoning the heating and plumbing company? Well, my last few interactions with them have not been pleasant. Last year when the repair person came to do the maintenance in September, my tenant told me the guy texted for the entire hour. Not surprisingly our boiler pilot light kept going out after his visit so I called them back and the same person came again. This time, my tenant told me the repairman actually did some work and not surprisingly our boiler did what is was supposed to do…heat the house. As the repairman left, he told me that he wouldn’t charge me, as if he was doing me a big favour. I recognised this attitude as it is the same one I get from the receptionists every time I call this company.
These thoughts were the ones that had been stopping me from phoning the company. But it was the decidedly more uncomfortable thoughts about how I was inconveniencing my tenant and how I wasn’t being a responsible homeowner that motivated me to phone the heating and plumbing company this morning.
The receptionist was rude. She told me that they are busy in the fall and then grudgingly said that they had availability in two weeks and then she told me that next year I would have to have my service in the spring or summer.
After talking with her I reflected on the fact that it had gone as I had expected. I realise that I have been justifying using their services. They did good work (eventually) and I didn’t know who else to use. I was annoyed. Here I was using a company that clearly did not see my value as a customer. This thought moved me to act. I started searching around and found that there are indeed other companies that do this type of work. I phoned one, and the repair person is here as I write this.
This morning I woke up unmotivated. What got me to act? It was the discomfort that I found myself in. In fact, the more discomfort I felt and the worse it got, the more motivated I became. Not only did I finally get someone in to fix the boiler, I wrote my first Yelp review.
It is difficult to be in an uncomfortable place but today I am recognising that those difficult spots we find ourselves in can be very useful. Use that bad place as a stepping stone to get to where you want to be.
