Sunday greetings, Killer Bs!
Do you think you know everything there is to know about your THOUGHTS🤔? Well, let’s think again😊!
In today’s episode of the Fitness Matters podcast, we’re chatting about… my office chair🪑?! Yep! Because it sets the perfect foundation for an illuminating💡 conversation about THOUGHTS great and small.
My friends, THOUGHTS create our reality and our RESULTS. So, if you’re not getting the RESULTS you want, it’s time to pay attention to your THOUGHTS!
Tune in now and we’ll dive🤿 right into this fascinating topic.Trust me, the water’s🌊 fine, so let’s GO!
(Don’t wanna listen? Download the transcript here)
Find this episode on YouTube (video below) or on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play.
Can’t see the video? Click here to watch it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/-_MQEhN_zW8
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Ep. 009: FACTS vs OPINIONS: https://getyourgoal.com/podcasts/9-facts-opinions/
Join the Get Your GOAL Coaching + Accountability Facebook group: https://pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal/
Be sure to SHARE this podcast with your friends and family and leave a RATING or REVIEW! 💛
What is a THOUGHT? (Full Transcript)
You’re listening to the Fitness Matters podcast with Pahla B, and this is Episode Number 84: “What is a thought?”
Hello, hello, my friends. Yes, I’m laughing, as I often do, at my dramatic intro. What is a thought? I’m excited about this one today. I’m excited for a couple of reasons, but mostly I’m excited because I know that this is one that is, A) going to be incredibly helpful, and, B) it’s one that’s going to blow your mind. I love it when we have this kind of simple and yet super complex and twisty, I call them onion episodes. I think I’ve referred to this before, where we peel back one layer and then peel back another layer, and then peel back another layer, and find that there’s just another layer and upon layer upon layer. Honestly, on its surface, it’s an incredibly simple answer and I’m going to give it to you right away as soon as I have introduced myself because I totally forgot to do that because I keep doing this, forgetting to tell you who I am.
Hi, I’m Pahla B, your best middle-aged fitness friend. You can find me on YouTube and on any podcast platform where you listen to the Fitness Matters podcast, where every week we talk about the fitness matters that matter to you. This one matters if you are on any kind of a mindset journey and you have heard me or anybody talk about finding your thoughts and how helpful that is in order to get where you want to go. In fact, I hope you listened to last week’s episode about how finding the thought is what can help you get the results that you are looking for.
So what is a thought? My friends, every single thing you think is a thought, and I know you understand that intellectually. I know that you’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “Really? That’s it? That’s all you’ve got for me, Pahla?” Or maybe something like, “Oh, okay, this makes sense,” or whatever. I mean, anywhere in between is also okay. Whatever it is that you think about what I just said is a thought. And by “thought,” what I really mean is it is optional. It is an opinion. It is something personal to you, and it is not a fact.
When you think about it that way, you might be more inclined to argue with me. You might be a little bit more like, “No, a lot of the things that I think I can prove. I have some evidence. I think a lot of the things that I think are pretty factual,” especially as it comes to things that we might think about ourselves. Like, “I’m great at math.” I don’t know why I came up with that as an example. I don’t actually think that I’m great at math, but either way, whether I think I’m good at math or I think I’m not great at math, either one of those is a thought that I have about myself and my ability to do math. There is no objective “every single human being on the face of the planet could agree with it” standard for what “great at math” means.
When we have thoughts like that, that sounds very factual. We convince ourselves that we are thinking facts about our lives. “I’m great at math. I’m having trouble losing weight. I love to run. I don’t really enjoy broccoli.” Some of these examples, honestly, you guys, I’m sitting here and I’m coming up with them off the top of my head. I actually don’t think I’m super great at math. I’m not having trouble losing weight because I’m not losing weight right now. I’m actually doing a great job at maintaining my weight, and I really like broccoli. So sometimes, sometimes I’m just giving you examples so that you might resonate with something specific.
But here’s what I want to tell you about all of those thoughts. The reason we know that they are thoughts and not facts is because facts don’t create feelings for us. A thought creates a feeling for us. Here’s a really simple example of something that we might think about, and the reason I’m telling you this example is because I am literally sitting here looking at my office chair. What we often do when we are going about our lives is we are thinking things that feel very factual because they are related to facts. I have a black leather (not really leather, pleather) office chair that I sit in every day. When I sit in my office chair, I don’t think about the fact of my office chair. The fact of my office chair is that it exists. It is a certain height. It is made of black plastic that is supposed to be soft enough to feel like leather, and it has two arms. It has a back. I can raise it up or down. I can get a little lumbar support. It’s adjustable. It has rolling wheels. I can roll it wherever I want to go because I have a hard surface for a floor. Those are more factual items about the chair.
Oftentimes, when I sit in it though, I will think something like, “This is my favorite chair.” “This is my favorite chair” takes on the patina of fact because I have no need to dispel that as anything other than a truth in my mind. “This is my favorite chair” doesn’t really affect me one way or another except that it totally does. “This is my favorite chair” is a thought. That thought creates a feeling of comfort for me. “This is my favorite chair” creates a feeling of satisfaction, of comfort, of favorite-ness in me. “This is a black pleather chair” creates no feelings for me. That being a fact makes it very neutral. It is a fact. It is objective. It is something that I could prove. Anybody who cared to look at this chair or could look at this chair could measure it, could decide what material it’s made out of, could see how tall it is, see what color it is, see that it has wheels. All of those factual items about the chair can be proven. Everybody could agree on them. But when I think about the chair, when I notice the chair, when I’m sitting in the chair, when I’m talking relentlessly about this chair, what I think is that it’s my favorite chair and that is what makes it a thought.
Now, here’s the thing. That thought doesn’t seem like any big deal, and this is where lots of us get caught up in looking for our thoughts, trying to find our thoughts. I make it sound like such a big deal when I’m telling you, “Oh, well, when you find your thoughts, you’ll understand why you feel a certain way or why you’re doing or not doing the things that you were doing or not doing, and why you’re getting the results that you’re getting.” The thought is the starting point. It’s the spark of it all. But “this is my favorite chair” creates a feeling of comfort and satisfaction in me, but those aren’t especially strong feelings and it doesn’t really lead me to do anything other than sit in my chair when I’m working, or maybe, maybe when I’m sitting in a less comfortable chair, think longingly of my favorite chair, my office chair. But it doesn’t really do much. It’s not big. It’s not an epiphany that this is my favorite chair. It’s just a thought. It’s just an opinion that I have about a fact that could be proven. The fact that the chair exists, by the way, is the fact.
So when I’m telling you to look for your thoughts, to notice your thoughts about things, you probably think that it needs to be an epiphany. It needs to be something monumental. It needs to be something that shouts out, “This is a thought.” But here we come back again to the very first thing that I told you, the thing that I’m going to tell you again, at least one more time. Every single thing you think is a thought. That means that what you are thinking is not factual, based on facts (most of the time), based on evidence that you can find for yourself. Let’s take the example of “I don’t like broccoli.” Well, I’ve had it 18 times in my life. My parents forced me to eat it when I was a child. Don’t like the texture. Don’t like the taste. Don’t like the smell. Don’t like the way it smells when it’s cooking. “I don’t like broccoli” sounds so factual, right? Yet nothing about that is provable to every single person on the planet. That makes it a thought, an opinion.
Now, sometimes we’ll have opinions and we’ll know that they’re opinions. “I don’t like broccoli.” I mean, you know that that’s an opinion because you know that other people do like broccoli. We get that when we are saying that we like something or don’t like something. Okay, that’s definitely an opinion. That’s definitely a thought that we’re having and that feels pretty reasonable. But what about something that feels very factual but isn’t? But feels so factual based on evidence that we can find, based on opinions that we have, based on other thoughts that we can’t quite get under it? I’m going to take my earlier example of “I’m great at math” and I’m going to say, “I’m not great at math.” I mean, it doesn’t matter which way I go on this one. If I have thought that numerous times, it’s going to feel really factual. I’m going to really argue with you if you try and say something like, “No, Pahla, you are great at math.” I’m going to be like, “No, actually, as a matter of fact, I have trouble remembering what things add up to or how to multiply. Sometimes I need to get a calculator out for really simple formulas or simple division. I don’t think I’m great at math.”
Now, when I say it that way, “I don’t think I’m great at math,” you recognize it as a thought. But when you tell yourself something like, “I’m not great at …,” we don’t recognize that as a thought. When we tell ourselves something like, “I’m having trouble with eating the right number of calories,” or, “I’m having trouble sticking to my protocol,” “I’m having trouble with …” I mean, you name it. Honestly, you can come up with examples better than I can because, frankly, I’m drawing a blank right now, and “I’m drawing a blank” is a thought. How is that not a fact? I can prove to you that I could not come up with another example, except that I couldn’t prove that to you. You’d have to take my word for it. It’s something going on in my own head, and that means it’s a thought.
I thought that I was drawing a blank, and that thought created a feeling of desperation because I really wanted to give you another example. But then I didn’t have another example because of the thought that I’m drawing a blank. My friends, your thoughts are powerful, and every single thing you think is a thought. Whatever you just thought about that sentence that I said is a thought. Whatever you think about anything is a thought. Every single thing you think is powerful. It’s creating something in your life.
Let’s come back to the “I’m drawing a blank” statement. It’s interesting. “I’m drawing a blank” sounded very factual in my head. I couldn’t come up with another example, and I thought, “I’m drawing a blank.” That desperate feeling created for me a little panic. It was very fleeting, very tiny, almost unnoticeable, except for the fact that I’m talking about it, so therefore I am noticing it. My heart started pounding. I started trying to cast about looking for a thought, but I am drawing a blank. I had closed myself off from being able to find another example because of the thought, “I’m drawing a blank.” If I would not have thought “I’m drawing a blank,” there might have been some hesitation. There might have been some casting about. There might have been a long silence that I would have had to edit out of the podcast, but I probably would have come up with another example. But my thought, “I’m drawing a blank,” created a reality in that teeny tiny moment where I could not find another example because I thought I couldn’t.
This plays out for you thousands of times a day because every single thing you think is a thought. Every thought you have creates a feeling and some of them are so minuscule, so fleeting, so tiny, you would probably not notice them unless you were really, really, really searching for them. Every single feeling drives actions and inactions, and the list doesn’t have to be exhaustive. For me, the action was casting about for another idea and yet not being able to find one, not really truly looking for another idea, because I had already thought that I was drawing a blank. Your feelings drive actions and inactions, which create results. My result was that I had a blank because I thought I’m drawing a blank.
The reason you want to know what a thought is – the reason why this is so important – is because every single thing you think is a thought. When you think, “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” that’s a thought. When you think, “I can’t find my thoughts,” that’s a thought. And let’s follow that through. When you think, “I can’t find my thoughts,” it’s very much like, “I’m drawing a blank,” isn’t it? But actually, it’s slightly different. “I’m drawing a blank” brought up for me a very panicky sort of feeling. “I can’t find my thoughts,” for me, creates a defeated feeling and then when I’m defeated I won’t do much. I shut myself down, kind of close in, kind of just let myself be in this defeated feeling. Sitting in that defeated feeling creates for me a situation in which I cannot find my thoughts because I am not looking for them. I’m just sitting in my defeat. Every single thing you think is a thought, and I’m going to let you think about that.
My friends, you know I actually want to hear your thoughts about what is a thought. You can feel free to come find me. I’m on social. I’m in my Facebook groups. I’m on YouTube. I’m everywhere, baby. That’s a thought. I hope that this was helpful for you. I’ll talk to you again soon. That sounds so factual, but it’s a thought about the future. It hasn’t happened yet so right now, “I’ll talk to you again soon,” is still a thought. Every single thing you think is a thought. Thanks for listening, friends.
So are you totally loving this mindset work and you really want to do it like every day in order to get your goal? Then, my friend, you need to join the Get Your Goal group. It is my personal and private, very interactive coaching and accountability group, where every day we talk about your mindset and we get your goal. You can learn all about it at pahlabfitness.com/get-your-goal. I’ll see you in the Goal group.
