Episode 85: Belief Discipline

Welcome to the 100% Awesome Podcast with April Price, you might not know it, but every result in your life is 100% because of the thought you think. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!

Hello, podcast universe! Welcome to Episode 85 of the 100% Awesome Podcast, I'm April Price, and I am so happy to be here with you today. How is it going? How is your ramp up to the holidays coming along? The Price's As usual, we are behind. I think if you listen to this episode last year, I probably said the same thing. In the history of our lives, I don't think we've ever been on top of things the week before Christmas, right? I think it is amazing what our brain thinks is a disaster. My brain has been 100% sure the last couple of days that death is imminent, given my utter unpreparedness for Christmas. But I'm going to hazard a guess that it is wrong, that I am probably not going to die. So, I hope that comforts some of you who are in the same boat as me. We haven't died yet, not that our brain hasn't generated an enormous amount of negative emotion about it.

All right, just last night I was crying again, and saying, "Why is Christmas always up to me?" Right? How did I get the job of putting on Christmas? And somehow, David just has to get himself out of bed on Christmas morning. And this morning, on the way to the gym, I remembered it's because I want to. None of it has to be done. None of it is required. I don't have to send cards, or buy presents, or do any of the things, and my brain is lying to me when it says that I have to. I actually want to do them, right? I like having presents for the people I love to open on Christmas morning. I'd like to send the cards, and let all the people in my life know that I love them, and that I think about them, and that they make a difference in my life. I even like to write the Christmas letter, which is what I'm struggling with, and resisting currently, because when I do that, I get to think about what all of this means to me. What all of this living, and working, and striving, really means in terms of the big picture. And the difference, and the meaning of my life, because Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, and the meaning that gives to all of it. And so, this morning I told myself the truth, I want to do it. And I don't ever do anything that I don't want to do. And the same is true for you. I really recommend telling yourself the truth about it. Okay, so for what it's worth, now onto the podcast.

3:14
So, recently I have noticed something that is coming up for a lot of my clients, and I suspect that it might be something that some of you are struggling with as well. And that is the idea where you might be out there saying, like April, I am trying so hard to believe, but I just can't. Like I want to believe new things, but I just can't. And I feel like I'm just pretending my brain just always thinks in the old way, and these new thoughts are just too hard to believe. So, as I was like making an outline, and thinking about what I wanted to say, I was talking to my daughter, and she's like, "What's the podcast about?" And I said, "It's about how it's hard to believe new things." And she said, "And what are you going to say?" And I said, "Yeah, it's hard, do it anyway." And she said, "Well, that's going to be a really short podcast." So, that's going to be actually the essence of what I want to say to you, but I'm going to expand on a little bit, and give you some other thoughts to think about as well. But the basic idea is, yeah, it is hard to think new things, but I want you to do it anyway.

Okay, so first I want to offer you the idea that we call it "thought work" for a reason, right? There is work involved in thinking new things. We can't just think a thought once, and then expect those patterns of thinking that are so deep, and so ingrained to just change, right? One of your brain's primary goals is to save energy, and one of the ways that it does that is by automating so many of your thought processes, as many thought processes as possible, actually, right? This is how you can drive home without thinking about it, or how you can listen to a podcast while you are making dinner. Your brain is automated, the dinner making, right? It knows the recipe, and knows what goes in first. And your brain can be busy taking in new information from the podcast while your brain, like, runs the rest of the show, making dinner.

So, on Sunday, I was sitting by a family at church, and I got a hold their little baby for part of the meeting. And she was eating cereal stars out of my hand, and she's just about seven months old, so she's just learning the skill of learning to grab the food and put it in her mouth. And so, I would hold one of the little stars in my palm, and it just took all of her concentration to take her little hand, and to be able to, like, make her fingers grip that little star. And then, she had to, like, find her mouth, and put it in her mouth. And then she even had to, like, direct her fingers, you could tell to even let go of the star right there would come back out. And so, it just took so much concentration for her brain to be able to do that. But as it does it over and over and over again, her brain is busy automating that action, right? Someday, she will be able to sit at the couch, and put cereal into her mouth without even thinking about it, right? Your brain likes to be efficient.

So, the thoughts that it has practiced over, and over, and over again, like how to put food in your mouth, it is very good at thinking. And thoughts, like I can't lose weight, or my mother-in- law doesn't like me, or this is hard, or I never have enough time. These are all thoughts that your brain might have practiced a lot. And we aren't going to change those by thinking one time, "Oh, there's plenty of time, or my mother-in-law is allowed to feel however she wants. I like me and I like her." Right? It's not going to just automatically go to those new thoughts. Thought work, is work, meaning we have to do the work to reprogram our brains by introducing the thought again, and again. The thoughts can't do the work, right? I sometimes think that that's what we want, we want the thought to think itself, right? We we want the thought to just appear, we want the thought to do the heavy lifting, and show up when we need it.

7:12
But our thought, remember, is just the tool that we use to get the feelings and results we want in our lives. And all the thoughts that you want to choose are tools that you have to use on purpose. The thought will never do the work for you, it needs you to put it to work. And your brain isn't going to choose those thoughts automatically either just because you've thought them a couple of times. Your brain is going to be really good at choosing the old thoughts, on default instead.

So, I want to point out a couple of things here, first, you are not doing it wrong. You are not doing thought work wrong. If it's hard, and if it takes effort, and energy, and work, that's how it's supposed to be. And number two, just because the old thought shows up while you're doing the work, doesn't mean you're doing it wrong either. The old bar is easy, it's the default. It's not a problem that your brain still knows the way to it, right? It still knows the way to that thought, and nothing has gone wrong. This is how brains work. But the fact that our brain doesn't automatically go to the new thought, and the fact that our old thought keeps showing up isn't a reason to stop thinking the new thought. This is the place where thinking a new thought, simply requires the discipline of continuing to think it. So, I recently heard a quote by Miriam Koba, who is a social justice advocate, and she said, "Hope is a discipline." Right? Think about that for a second. Hope is a discipline. And that is because hope is a feeling, in every feeling we have is created by our thoughts, which means that if we want to feel hope, or any feeling, we have to have the discipline to think the thoughts that will create it.

We can't just wait for the feelings to descend upon us, we have to think, and believe on purpose, with discipline so that we can feel the way we want to in our lives. We sort of think that all the good feelings, and all the good thoughts that we want to have should just sort of descend upon us, or show up in our lives. Somehow, we have an expectation of feeling good and thinking positive. And I'm going to come back to this idea of expectation in just a minute. But I want you to notice that if there are things that you need to feel in order to take action in your life, you have to create those feelings with the discipline, and the work of your thoughts on purpose, right? Hope is a discipline, love is a discipline, belief is a discipline. And when our brain has a hard time believing the thoughts we want it to believe, the problem is not the thoughts, the problem is just our adherence to the discipline of believing.

10:04
Think about your new thoughts, like that little baby picking up those cereal stars, like it's new to this, right? It's fragile, it's just developing the little neural connections. It doesn't have a lot of practice at this activity or this new thought. And when you think new thoughts, your brain is using a ton of energy and effort, and so, it's resistant to that energy expenditure. But keep at it, be patient with yourself. Don't give up. Keep exercising your discipline to believe, right? We have to believe harder, or like honestly, I actually hesitate even using that word, because when we think we need to believe hard, we kind of tighten up, we resist the old thoughts, and we try to like, grip so hard on the new thought. And I don't mean, like, get tougher with the thoughts, I mean, believe harder in the sense of not giving up, working on your belief again, and again, and again, and not being so quick to give up on them. It is hard work and so many times we are just not trying hard enough, or long enough. So, I sometimes visualize my thoughts like a river, right? And that river has been carved by water over time. And so, there is that like a substantial path there that the water knows how to go down. And when we think a new thought were essentially rerouting that river, and in order to reroute a river, there's going to be some digging, and some sweat involved.

Okay, so now I just want to say a little bit more about our old thoughts that show up. So, sometimes the presence of our old thoughts make us feel like we're doing thought work wrong. And I want you to know that it's totally okay if the old thoughts still show up, we just want to spend more and more time thinking the new thoughts. So, I want you to kind of imagine a courtroom where there are two sides, right? There's two sides of thinking, the new way of thinking, and the old way of thinking. And the old way of thinking still wants to present its case, right? It has evidence as exhibit A, B, and C, and a million more after that, right? It has a slew of witnesses, right? And it really wants to get its point across. It's okay, right? But what I want to offer you is that if you have decided to think something new, you don't have to hear the whole case. You are the judge, right? And the defense isn't going to rest, but that doesn't mean you have to give it a lot of airtime. You don't have to hear all the exhibits, you don't have to hear all the evidence. You don't have to spend any time entertaining the narrative of that old thought, okay, you just get to decide. And when the old thought pipes up, you can just say thanks for your input, but no, right?

I'm not going to spend any more time here. I've heard it all before, and I don't need to hear it again, right? And what you'll find is that that case will get weaker, and weaker. And the objections, if you continue to cut them off, and not entertain them, and listen to them, and like massage them, right? Those objections will get quieter, and quieter. We do not have to get mad that they showed up in court, right? They want their say. We don't have to get mad about that. And we don't have to get upset about the fact that it seems like they have more evidence for the old thought than we do for the new one, right? We get to throw all of that evidence out, we don't have to listen to any of it. We don't have to even give it a hearing. We're just like, "Yes, I see you. And I've decided to think another way." So, if you listen to last week's episode where I talked about building my belief in my group coaching program, I was working really hard to believe the thought that group coaching can be even more effective for my clients than one-on-one coaching. And at first, the evidence for one on one like seemed incontrovertible, right? It seemed like enormously swayed to one side of this argument, but I let the case for group coaching be heard over, and over, and over again.

I made lists about why group coaching is the best option for my client. I made lists about how my clients can get faster results in group coaching. I gathered evidence about how all the major shifts in my own life came through group coaching. And I did all this work on why my coaching, and not the container, is what makes the coaching experience so valuable for my clients. And every time the other side wanted to present its arguments, I just said no, right? I've already heard your side, I don't need to hear it again. And I didn't spend any more time with that old evidence. It's totally fine that my brain wanted to offer the old thoughts, but I don't have to give any attention to it. And that's what I want you to think about as you go to build your new beliefs. Strengthen the case for the new thought, stop spending time listening to the opposition. You aren't under any obligation to entertain any of it. You get to believe what you want, and you get to build a case for it.

Okay, and I just want to be really clear that I'm not talking about resisting the old thoughts. They are just there because you've practiced them, and that's totally okay that they're there. They can come to court, right? But every time they show up and want to talk, it's an invitation for us to focus back on the new thought, and to hear that case focus back on what you have decided to believe and why, okay?

15:40
All right, now, I just want to speak to this idea that sometimes we think, "Well, like the old thoughts feels truer. And I want to remind you that those old thoughts feel true only because of the practice you've had, thinking them only because there is like this massive neural circuitry behind that thought and true or just means more efficient. In this case, it feels true because the brain has to use almost no energy to think it. The new thought takes energy and work, and we think that's because it isn't true, but here's the thing. No thought is true, or not true, right? Not objectively. There are easier thoughts to think, and there are harder thoughts to think. But that's only because of the amount of neural circuitry, and that automatic wiring that is connected to that thought. Okay, so just because the new thought is harder, and takes more energy, and more deliberateness, we often want to give up on it. And I just want to say, like, don't give up on it too soon. Like we say, well, it doesn't feel natural, or we feel like we're just pretending, and let's just give up, and think the way we always have. This is just the way my brain is programmed. But your brain is amazing. It has an unlimited ability to reprogram, and rewire itself. Just takes a little work, and if you keep after it, eventually those new thoughts will feel just as true as the old ones once did.

So, to finish up today, I want to offer you one more idea to think about as you go to believe new thoughts in your life, and that is to notice the important difference between expectation and belief. Okay, so to explain this, I want to go back to the experience I was talking to you about last week, right when I was launching my group coaching program. Now, as you know, if you've listened to that episode, I told you that I had worked for weeks to build the belief that I could build, and fill a group coaching program. And on the first day of my launch, I only sold one spot, and my belief just like, poof, just like disappeared. And all I was left with with all my doubts, right? And the reason that I think this was, is that I don't think I really had belief there. I think what I had was expectation, and there is a big difference. I think I had an expectation of a certain outcome, and when that didn't happen, my expectation could no longer exist. And so, that's why I like it just felt like all my belief disappeared. And what I want to have you think about today is that belief, real belief, exists independent of any circumstances of anything that happens. When I develop, and nurture true belief, and do the thought work to get my brain to believe new things, if I do that right, then the belief is actually circumstance resistant. Meaning regardless of what happens in the world, my belief remains, it's resistant to any circumstance outside of me.

Okay, so I have a brother that loves that old movie, "The Man from Snowy River." I don't know if you've seen that, it's so old, but every year when we go to the beach with his family, he brings this movie, and he plays it like a couple of times. And every time he turns it on, all the kids are like, "Oh, my gosh, really? Really. We are watching this again. This isn't that great of a movie. Right?" And they just start whining, and they tell him how it's not that great of a movie. And despite all of the evidence to the contrary and all these dissenting opinions, my brother is like, "You guys are crazy! This is one of the best movies of all time." And he believes it's one of the best movies of all time, and nothing is going to change that for him. Nothing outside of him is going to change this belief. That's what I mean, by having a thought that is circumstanced resistant, right? Nothing outside of us can change that belief.

So, I want you to think about an area of your life where this is true, right? For me, a really good example is the way that I think about God. I have a thought that my Heavenly Father only gives good gifts, something that I believe. And so, when things go wrong, and things go differently, then I think they're supposed to. It doesn't change my belief that Heavenly Father only gives good gifts. That belief isn't dependent on the circumstances, I know that everything happens is a good gift. And if I can't see it in the moment, it's only because I'm looking at it from my human perspective, from my own brain's perspective. And if I could see the truth, I would see that this too is a good gift. And notice, if I didn't really believe this, and I just had an expectation, and I just expected God to give me good gifts, then it would be really easy for expectation to disappear in the face of difficult circumstances. And so, that's what we're trying to create in our lives. We are trying to create beliefs that are independent of the things that happen.

21:00
Okay, so now I want you to think about the things that you are trying to believe about yourself or your life. And just ask yourself, does my belief go up, and down, depending on things outside of me? Does my belief seem to be confirmed, or discounted by the things in the world, by things outside of me? If you find that's true, like your belief goes up, and down, depending on the circumstances in your life, then you might be in expectation instead of belief. You might be trying to use expectation to create your feelings, and fuel your action rather than real belief. And here's why this is important, because when we are just using expectation, we are more likely to give up, and more likely not to do the hard work of creating the life we want. Okay, for example, if I had an expectation at the beginning of the year that 2020 was going to be an awesome year, that would have gone up in smoke by mid-March, right? But if I believed 2020 was going to be an awesome year, then all year, despite the circumstances, I would work to create that outcome. By the way that I think all year long, even in the face of every challenge that comes along. Expectation withers in the bright light of reality, disappears, and it changes with the circumstances around us. Belief, on the other hand, is lasting. It is the force that we're using to create our lives, right?

It's like the scriptures say faith, or belief is the principle of power by which all things are created. So, let's say I want to believe I have an amazing marriage, if it is only an expectation, then that thought disappears when my husband does something I don't like. Or we're out of sync, or he goes out, and gets the ladders, and messes with the Christmas lights, even after you hired somebody to do that. But if it is a belief that I have an amazing marriage, then I do the work to create that with my thoughts. I discipline my thoughts to create the feeling of love I want in my life, even when he gets out the ladder. Okay, so for you, if there are things you want in your life, and you understand that all those things come down stream of your thoughts, then your work is not to just believe in them when things are going right. To not just have an expectation, but to believe even when it looks like it's not working.

Like if we go back to the example I shared about my group coaching program, if I have an expectation instead of a belief that it will be successful, and then it doesn't go the way I thought, I just give up, right? I throw in the towel. I say, "I guess that's just not for me." But when I'm committed to believing I will be successful, then I stay in it. I do the work to build my belief, even when the circumstances aren't what I thought they'd be. And fueled by that belief, I get to work to create the success I want. Belief isn't the easy way, right? When I say to you, your thoughts create your results, I never mean to imply that it's just so easy. Just think happy thoughts. Just believe, and poof magic. Presto! You will get what you want. No, when I say thoughts are creating your results, I'm saying here is where we get to work. You're going to use your energy in your brain to think new things, and interrupt your old thoughts. And then, you're going to get to work believing so that you can create the feelings you want to fuel, all those actions that you need to take. When I say your thoughts, create your results, I mean that you exercise your discipline to think purposefully, so that you can create the feelings you need to do all the things you want to do in your life.

25:03
This is where the power in thought work is for each of us, to move out of expectation and like that hope that what we want will just appear, whether it's in our marriage or in our coaching business, or in our health goals, or in the year that we want to have right. We want to move out of expectation that things will just happen, and we want to move in to belief, the discipline of belief. The kind of belief that is independent of any circumstance, and the kind of belief that will fuel you, to keep creating what you want when things are hard. So, yes, believing new things, believing things that aren't real yet, believing things that your brain can't see is hard, do it anyway, because that is when you will start creating amazing things in your life. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome! I love you for listening. And I'll see you next week!

Applications for my group coaching program Made for More are now open in aprilpricecoaching.com Your brain was program for survival, but you were made for more than that. You were made for more love and more accomplishment and more joy right now. And I can show you the simple way to get all of that. Join me in Made for More where we will spend six-months coaching, and reprogramming your brain so that you can get the most out of this life. And the next go to aprilpricecoaching.com to apply. And I'll see you there!