Episode #1: Two Truths and a Lie

Welcome to the Think New Thoughts Podcast!  In this introductory episode, I share the idea that you have the power to choose the thoughts you want to think, and explore 2 truths and a lie about life coaching: The truth that all thoughts are optional, the truth that what we choose to think creates our emotions, and the lie we often believe that what HAPPENS to us determines how we feel. If you've heard about life coaching and want a quick crash course to find out what it's all about, this episode is for you. 

Download my free PDF:  100 Thoughts You Can Choose To Think if You Want To Find More Joy in Your Relationships

Full Transcript:

I'm Emily Ricks and this is Think New Thoughts, a life coaching podcast to help you find more joy in your relationships. In each episode, I'll share a simple idea that will help you see things in a new way so you can love God, your neighbor, and yourself more deeply than you ever have before. If you're ready to literally change your mind, I think you'll like it here.

Welcome to Think New Thoughts. I'm so glad you found your way to this podcast.

Today's episode is called Two Truths and a Lie. Have you ever played that game? Each person tells three things about themselves, and then you have to guess which two are true and which one is a lie. This is going to be sort of like that.

I'm going to start by telling you three things about myself that are all actually true. And then I'm going to tell you two truths and a lie about life coaching. So three things about myself.

Number one, I'm a life coach. I love helping people think new thoughts so they can feel more joy. Number two, I'm a mom of four.

My kids are 19, 16, 12, and 10. I have three boys and a girl. And number three, I love to sing.

My husband sings. Our kids all sing. We are a family of singing nerds.

So that's three things about me that are all true. Now let's do the two truths and a lie part. Life coaching is centered around the idea that you have the power to choose the thoughts you want to think.

So truth number one is thoughts are optional. Let's talk about what that means. So we live in a world of tons of options.

If you go to a store or a mall, you have millions of options of shoes you could buy, clothes you could buy, makeup you could buy, electronics you could buy. If you're hungry and you want to get something to eat, you could grab a burger or Mexican food or a smoothie or a salad or make something at home or have cold cereal. So many options.

If you want to wind down and be entertained, you can do that on Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Video, Hulu, Disney Plus. You could go to a theater. So many options.

You have tons of options of podcasts you want to listen to, people to follow on social media, trips you could take, books you could read, tasks you could accomplish. Millions and millions of options. And people advertise and market products to you.

But in the end, you get to choose what you want to eat, watch, wear, read, listen to, do or not do. And it's the same inside of your mind. There are millions of thoughts available to you.

And you can choose which ones you want to think. Your parents might want you to think certain thoughts. Your spouse might want you to think certain thoughts.

Certain thoughts might come into your mind. But in the end, you get to choose which thoughts you want to actually believe. Thoughts are optional.

You always have choices. No one else can make you think a certain thought. You have agency to think anything you want to think.

All day, every day. And I'm not exaggerating when I say millions of thoughts. Research says the average human thinks between 40,000 to 60,000 thoughts in a day.

So think about that for a second. Some of those 50,000 thoughts a day might be about where you live. You might think your house or neighborhood is amazing and awesome.

You might think it's too small or too expensive or too far away from family or not far enough away from family. You have millions of options of thoughts you could choose to think about where you live. Some of those 50,000 thoughts a day that you think might be about yourself.

You can think of yourself as not thin enough, not successful enough, not patient enough, not outgoing enough. You can think of yourself as capable, valuable, successful, or beautiful. Some of those 50,000 thoughts a day are going to be about the people in your life.

Your spouse, kids, parents, friends, in-laws, boss, co-workers. And you can think of someone as annoying or rude or draining. And you can also think of someone as interesting, funny, fascinating, or inspiring.

So just like food and movies and spatulas and earrings and everything else in the physical world, you have limitless options of what thoughts you want to think every day. And here's another interesting number to consider. Of those 40,000 to 60,000 thoughts that you're thinking every day, it's like roughly a thought per second.

90% of those are repeats from yesterday. The same thoughts that you thought yesterday are the same ones that you're thinking today, generally speaking. Your brain gets used to thinking a certain way and then just keeps doing it.

It's like driving to the grocery store or to school or home from work. You just kind of go on autopilot. Sometimes we get stuck in a rut of thinking the same things about the same things.

But here is some exciting news that I have for you. Even if you've been thinking the same thought about someone or something for five years, 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, at any time, you can choose to think something different. This is what it means that thoughts are optional.

You get to choose whatever thoughts you want to think. All right. So truth number one, thoughts are optional.

Truth number two about life coaching is thoughts create feelings. So you think thoughts about where you live, about yourself, about the people in your life. And as a direct result of whatever thought you're thinking, you're going to feel an emotion.

So if I think my house is too small, then I will likely feel dissatisfied or frustrated. If I think my house is just right for my family, I might feel content or grateful. If I think of my teenager as lazy and disrespectful, I'm probably going to feel angry and offended when I interact with him.

If I think of my teenager as a future adult, who's in the middle of finding his way, I might feel accepting or patient or hopeful. Thoughts create feelings. David Byrne says it this way.

You feel the way you think. So in other words, there's a direct correlation between the emotions you feel and the thoughts you're thinking. Tommy Newberry says it this way.

Focus creates feeling. So if you focus on what you don't want to happen, you will likely feel anxious or worried. If you focus on what you do want to happen, you might feel creative or motivated.

If you focus on what you don't like about your spouse, you're going to feel judgmental and annoyed. If you focus on what you love about your spouse, then you get to feel love and connection and gratitude. Russell M. Nelson says the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.

How we feel is determined by what we think about. That is what determines our feelings. Okay? So the joy we feel has little to do with our circumstances, but people believe the opposite of this all the time.

They believe that their circumstances cause their feelings. And you can hear it. When they say stuff like, I'm so mad because she said the rudest thing to me.

I'm so annoyed because my kids didn't get their chores done. I'm excited because my son is coming home soon. I'm worried because of the stock market or the election or the weather or the news or the crime rate.

So, but here's the truth. You're not excited because your son is coming home. You're excited because of your thoughts about him coming home.

Because depending on your thoughts, you could actually be feeling dread about him coming home. If you had those sorts of thoughts, you're not mad because of something someone said, you're actually mad because of the thoughts you have about what they said. So two truths about life coaching, thoughts are optional and thoughts create feelings.

Here's the lie. My circumstances create my feelings. This is never true.

What other people say and do what happens in the world never determines your feelings. It feels like it does. But what I want to offer to you is that that's not actually the truth.

You always have a thought about it before you have a feeling. Now you can believe anything you want to. So you can believe that your circumstances create your feelings than the what other people say and do determines how you feel.

But if you want to be in the driver's seat of how you feel on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, and you don't want to give that power away to stuff outside of you that you don't really have control over, I want to offer to you the thought that your circumstances never create your feelings. It's always your thoughts, which is actually really good news in the end because you can think whatever thoughts you want to think, which means you can, on purpose, create the emotions in your life that you want to feel. Now, maybe you already believe this.

Maybe you're already familiar with coaching. Maybe you're like, yep, my thoughts create my feelings. Or maybe you're hearing it right now and you're like, no way.

And so you might say something like this to me. Listen, I didn't feel embarrassed at the grocery store with my kids. And then my toddler started screaming and then I felt embarrassed.

So clearly the cause of my embarrassment is my kids screaming. To which I say, no, actually it's not. And here's how I can prove that.

I have felt embarrassed at the grocery store during a toddler meltdown with my oldest, for example. And in that situation, I was thinking thoughts like, oh, people probably think I'm a terrible mom. He shouldn't be screaming.

I don't know how to fix this. Everybody's looking at me. I've also been at the grocery store during a toddler meltdown with my youngest, for example, and not felt embarrassed at all.

In that case, I was thinking thoughts like, yep, this is what two-year-olds do. He's pretty tired. It's almost nap time.

It must be hard to be two years old. I have lots of tools that I can use to deal with the situation. I wonder which one I'm going to use today.

So the toddler crying at the grocery store, that's the circumstance, is never the cause of my emotions. It's always my thoughts. Always, always, always.

Think of it this way. If the weather is 85 degrees outside, someone might think it's too hot and then they'll feel annoyed. Someone else might say it's perfect weather for getting a tan and then they'll feel excited.

Maybe there's a grade on a test. That grade is a C plus. One person might see the C plus and think my parents are going to be so mad and then they'll feel worried.

Somebody else with the same grade of a C plus might think the thought, whew, I didn't study at all. I'm so glad I passed. And then they'll feel relieved.

So the circumstance of the weather or the grade doesn't create feelings because circumstances don't create feelings. Thoughts do. So I'm going to give you kind of an extreme example just to drive this point home.

And this is from a man named Viktor Frankl. He's an Austrian psychiatrist. And he actually lived through a Nazi concentration camp.

He was a survivor. And he has a really cool book called Man's Search for Meaning. And in there, he talks about the different ways that people behaved and showed up when they were experiencing the trauma of the concentration camps.

And here's what he said. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

I remember reading that when I was a teenager and thinking, wow, if Viktor Frankl can do it in a concentration camp, I can do it too. And I really, really believe that. So nobody can make you think a thought, no matter what you are experiencing.

You always get to choose. It's never the circumstances that create your feelings. So two truths.

Thoughts are optional. Thoughts create feelings. The lie is circumstances create your feelings.

It's never true ever. Only your thoughts can do that. So over the course of this podcast, I want to help you find more joy in your relationships, which you can do by coming to understand your own thoughts and see that your thoughts are creating what you feel.

And then by learning to choose on purpose, the thoughts you want to think so that you can show up as the parent, the spouse, the employee, the boss, the neighbor, the disciple, or friend that you truly want to be in your life. I have so many ideas and I can't wait to share them with you. I've studied at the Life Coach School and the Christian Coach Institute and learned from tons of courses, books, podcasts, and programs.

And I have tools that have seriously changed my life and helped me shift from fear and worry and frustration more toward the spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. I'm an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I love using the tools I've learned in the life coaching world to help me and my clients live the gospel and be more like Jesus, which is what I'm trying to do each day.

I'm going to keep each episode short and sweet, aiming for about 10 to 15 minutes. And I'm excited to share a new idea each week that will help you to think new thoughts. Thanks for joining me today.

I'll see you next time.