Episode 87: The Best Thoughts of 2020

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 87 of the 100% Awesome Podcast, I'm April Price, and I want to wish you a very happy New Year, and welcome you to the very last podcast of 2020, which means we made it. Oh, isn't it funny how we compartmentalize things on our mind, right? Like we make these constructs as humans, like days, weeks, years, right? And how in a lot of ways a lot of us just categorized all of 2020 as a mess, and a wash, and we just like really looked forward to starting a new year. And then, as we go to do that, it's kind of apparent that not much is going to change, at least not for a little while. And that, like, life doesn't just fit in these neat little boxes, right? We create constructs around things. We set goals in a new year. We set resolutions for next Monday, and we identify goals for the month of the quarter, but all of these are just like made up constructs. And what we really have is just our life with a fresh start, every single day, and a million do overs within every single day. We are always creating, and we can always choose to create something new, and start over at any moment.

So, over the holidays, we watched the Great British Bake Off, which is like you guys seriously the best show ever. Anyway, somewhere in that last season, Noel, who is one of the hosts, was talking to one of the bakers who was really upset about something that had gone wrong. And he was talking to her about a tennis player named Bjorn Borg. And he said, like, what made him so successful was his ability to forget what had happened before, but it was just this point right in front of him that counted. And he just forgot everything else that came before that, and what came before was irrelevant. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I like that thought, right? And I think it can be really helpful to think about if you are going to go and set new goals in the New Year.

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Right. Don't base them on your past. Don't look at what you have done, or which you haven't done in order to, like, decide what you can do. The past is irrelevant, completely irrelevant. Every moment of your life is a new one, and you can create anything you want. Now, we hold ourselves back with stories about our past, about who we are, what we're capable of, but they are just stories. And because they have already happened, they're utterly irrelevant to what you can create. Now, you don't have to have, like, done a thing before to be able to do it now. Now is what you have, and you just have to decide in every present moment what you want to create with it. Okay, so think about that as you go to set goals for the New Year, set goals based on what you want to create, not on what has happened in the past.

And the other thing that I wanted to say before we get started on the podcast is that, as you know, if you listen to the podcast for a bit, you might have known that I have been suffering terribly with eczema over the last couple of months. And like the week before last, it got to a point where I just felt like I could not stand it anymore, I just like I'm going to peel my skin off, right? And I went to the dermatologist to try a new medication that is an injection rather than a cream or an ointment. And as I was talking to him, he explained, "Yeah, I can get you this medication, and I can help you, and we can try a new protocol. But he's like, but it comes with some bad news." And I'm like, "What's that?" And he's like, "Well, because of the insurance network stuff, you're going to have to pay more for your copay, for your visits." And I was like, "Okay, not a problem." Right? And as I was checking out the office staff, again, like apologised for this increased copay, and I told the girl, "Like you don't understand. Like, this is the best money I have spent all week." Right? Like I would pay anything for relief at this point, I would almost give you my first grandchild, right?

Like I just want to help, and I am willing to pay to get it, right? I am willing to pay for relief. And here's the thing, here's the truth of it, you guys, that is true for each of us. That is actually the only thing we spend money on. We spend money on relief, we are always just spending money to alleviate, or solve for some discomfort in our lives, to solve a problem in our lives. And that's why I spend money on coaching as well. It makes my Earth-life experience less painful, it helps me manage the discomfort created by my own brain as I go to create things in the world. Then that helps me keep creating what I want, even when my brain is begging me to stop.

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So, I think you should invest in coaching in the New Year, because it has such a tremendous impact on every area of your life, like the only thing that causes our pain really ever is our thinking. And that means that if you examine the way you think, you can relieve so much of your suffering, and show yourself where your agency is to change things. You are going to spend a lot of money in 2021, solving for discomfort, and I think one of the best ways you can spend that is with coaching, and really understanding your own mental, and emotional health. I invest a lot of money in coaching every year and it is the best money I spend. And because I love you, and because I just think that you should get to live the life you want on your own terms, I want to encourage you to find a way to make coaching happen for yourself in the coming year, okay? All right.

So, today on the podcast, I wanted to talk about the thoughts that had the biggest impact on me in 2020. These are my top thoughts of 2020. The things that I thought that I think changed my life in the biggest ways, okay? And I hope hearing these thoughts will help you in your life. Feel free to adopt any of them that you want, but I also encourage you to think about your thoughts for 2020. What are the thoughts that you thought most often? What are the thoughts that had the biggest positive impact on your life this year? What are the thoughts that you don't want to take with you into the New Year, that you'd like to clean up and never think again? What are the thoughts that helped you create what you wanted in your life? What do you want to keep thinking?

So, the first one I got in February of last year, I had had what I thought was a really good start in my business in 2019, and I was trucking along, and I was making about three thousand dollars a month. But as January, and February of 2020 rolled around, I found myself really struggling. And in February, I think I had made less than a thousand dollars, and I got a new coach, and I asked her in one of our very first coaching sessions, I said, "Do you think it's a strategy problem, or an execution problem?" Right? Like, is my business strategy flawed, or is it the way that I'm doing it? Is it a strategy problem, or an execution problem? And she said, I will never forget this. She said, "It's a thought problem." And I was like, "No, I don't think so. I'm managing my mind. I just think there's something wrong with my marketing, or my sales, or maybe I need to do Facebook ads." And she said, "No, it's a thought problem. And I was like, "What?"

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And she said something then that changed my whole year. She said, "You think your actions create your results. You think the things you do create your results in your business, your actions don't create your results, your thoughts do. And again, I was like, "What?" Now, keep in mind that this is like two years into thought works, right, a year after certifying as a coach where I had learned the principles to help my clients see that their thoughts create the results, right? And I had a podcast where every week in the introduction, I said, every result in your life is 100% because of the thoughts you think. And I was still like, wait, what? My thoughts create my results, right? Like, it was just so mind-blowing, and that is another reason why I love this work, right? Like it never stops revealing itself to you, like you think you understand it, you think you get it, and then you understand it on a whole other level.

So, my coach said, "It's a thought problem. It's always a thought problem. If you aren't making the money you want in your business, it's because of your thoughts. Your actions will flow automatically from your thoughts. You don't even need to think about what to do. That will just happen when you're thinking the right thoughts." Now, this one idea changed my business, and it can change anything in your life as well. If you don't like the results you have in any area of your life, you don't need to change the actions, I know that's what you think. I know you think you need to change what you're doing to get a different outcome, but you first need to change what you are thinking. Your actions will change automatically when your thoughts do so. You need to examine the thoughts that you think right now, those thoughts are creating your current result, and then you need to choose to think something else, okay?

So, if you want to lose weight, what are the top five thoughts about your weight every day? Do you think it's too hard, or it doesn't matter? Or you're too stressed, or it's too late, or you hate where you're at, or you can't lose weight, right? Those thoughts, and not your actions, are the problem. If you want to love your child better. What are the top five thoughts about your relationship with them that you think every day? Do you think like they're so difficult, and they should be doing it differently, or they don't respect you, or they have so much potential, or like you've screwed them up in some way? Those thoughts, and not your actions, right? It's not what you say and do, or the consequences that you give them, those aren't the problem. It's your thoughts that are causing the problem. It's a thought problem. It's always a thought problem. Find the thought creating the problem, and change it from there.

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Okay, number two, the next thought that had a big impact on me this year came about a month after I got that one. I was at the end of a twelve-week cut, meaning like I had been in a calorie deficit for about 12 weeks, and I was nearing the end of it. And the end is always hard, let me tell you. I was hungry, I was tired, the scale had stopped moving, I was finding myself thinking about food, and eating food most of the time, right? And at one of my check-ins with my coach, I told her, like, "I'm hungry." And I wanted her to feel sorry for me because I felt a little bit sorry for me, right? And I was hungry. And she said, "It's okay to be hungry." And again, I was like, "Wait, what?" She said, "It's okay to be hungry." And you guys, this thought has helped me so much this year. Not because I was in a cut the entire year, and not because I was like always in a calorie deficit and always hungry the whole year, but it was just the idea that it was okay to be uncomfortable.

Hungry is just one form of uncomfortable, but I had a whole year full of uncomfortable. And this thought that it's okay to be uncomfortable is very, very helpful. Like it's like saying it's okay for your brain to protest. It's okay for your brain not to like what you're doing. It's okay if your brain wants you to stop, and then it produces a whole lot of negative emotion for you. It's the idea that my brain doesn't want what I want, my brain doesn't want to be at my ideal weight, or exercise every day, or build a business, or produce podcasts. My brain doesn't want to pray, or fast, or increase my connection with God, but I do. And the price for anything that I want to do in my life is always going to be discomfort, because discomfort is how my brain tries to talk me out of doing any of those things. My brain uses discomfort to get me to avoid pain, seek pleasure, and save energy, right? And so, if I want to have a life created on my own terms, if I want to reach my dreams, if I want to achieve my goals, then the price of that is going to be discomfort. It's okay to be hungry, in other words, it's okay to be uncomfortable. And there is just no other way to get what I want, and I'm okay with that. It's okay to be uncomfortable, and leaning into that is how I get the most out of my time here on Earth, and make sure that I do all the things I really came to do.

Okay, the third thought that I want to share with you, I got when I was getting coached again on my business. And can I just add here that I think it's so amazing that it doesn't matter what we're getting coached on, right? Like, the circumstances don't really matter, what matters is that we are making a choice, right? We are choosing to think on purpose, and that's why this work is so important, like the various problems I have to solve in my life, like literally don't matter at all. It doesn't matter if I build my business, it doesn't matter if I lose weight, it doesn't matter if I get out of debt, doesn't matter if I create a podcast or write a book, right? What matters is exercising my spirit, and what my spirit wants over what my brain wants. What matters is who I become as I overcome those like default thoughts of my brain, that negative emotion that it's always offering me, and choose what I want to think instead.

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So, for me, many of my examples do come from my business, but that is just because that is where my most uncomfortable growth was this year. That's where my brain did the most protesting, and that is where I had to think on purpose, and choose the thoughts that my brain did not want to think. And it may show up in a different area for you, but it is always the same work. It's all spiritual work, the work to overcome our brain, where it's protesting the most, and where our default limiting thoughts are getting in our own way. So, that's why there's also no wrong place to start, or why none of the work we do is trivial or unimportant. It's all spiritual work, in that it's exercising your agency, what your spirit wants, over your natural human brain.

Okay, so this is a thought that my coach gave me over, and over, and over again this year, actually, okay? I can't tell you how many times she said to me, I think you should just decide, right? So, I would be telling her all the reasons why I couldn't believe something, or all the evidence I had that I couldn't do something, or why it wasn't going to work for me. And she would always say, "I think you should just decide." Right? "I think you should just decide that you're a fully booked coach. I think you should just decide to start a wait list. I think you should just decide that it's easier to make 10K than five." However, when she told me that, I was like, "That doesn't even make any sense." And she's like, "Doesn't have to make sense, you could just decide. I think you should just decide that it's easier to make 10k than 5k."

I have to tell you, I decided that, and it actually is. I think over, and over, and over again she would say this to me. I think you should just decide until finally I understood what she was saying. Belief is a decision, it isn't something that you have to warm up to, or have enough evidence for or prove. Belief isn't something that feels incontrovertible, or easy, or just natural. It's a decision. And the truth is, the faster I decide, then the faster I start creating those results, the faster I decide to think something, and believe something, the faster it starts showing up in my life. Did you know you can just decide? You get to believe whatever you want, and you just get to decide that's what it means to have free agency. There's nothing you have to do to deserve it, or earn the right to believe it, you just get to decide. You just get to choose. And that is such a powerful thought. You can just decide to believe you are a person who exercises. You can just decide to believe you're a person who lives at their ideal way. You can just decide to believe you are good with money, and that you have amazing relationships. You can just decide to believe you're a great coach, and that you are a soft place to land. Just decide. The faster you decide, the faster you get to become that thing.

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Okay, the next that I want to share with you, I got while I was in a coaching session with one of my amazing clients. At this time, we were talking about feelings, right? And the neutrality of our feelings, that feelings in and of themselves aren't good or bad, they're just an experience that we have. But as humans, we have such a morality attached to our feelings, right? Like we talk about positive, and negative emotions, and somehow we sort of take that to mean good and bad, and we sort of make it mean things about ourselves. When we have negative emotion, especially, we make it mean something about our goodness, or our worthiness, or immaturity, or our Christianity. Our feelings are really just information about what we are thinking. It's just evidence of a thought that we've had, and that our feelings aren't good, or bad. You just create different kinds of vibrations inside of us, and really the point of our life is to just get good at feeling those vibrations, and increasing our capacity to feel.

And I pointed out how Christ, who was the best of us, felt worse than all of us, right? He felt the most negative emotion, and yet he was the best of all of us. He was perfect. And that led to the realization that actually Christ was very good at feeling bad. So many of us tried to avoid our emotions, we try not to feel. We resist them, we avoid them, we run from them, we react to them. But Christ couldn't avoid those negative emotions when he suffered for our pains, and afflictions, and sorrows, and sins. He couldn't avoid the negative emotions. In order to perform the Atonement, he had to feel all of those emotions, those experience had to be felt by him. And what is so remarkable is that he had the capacity to feel bad. He knew how to feel, and process emotion, and feel it in his body without needing to run from it, or buffer from it, or change it in any way.

And when we feel our negative emotions in our body, when we feel them, and process them, and have that experience, we are in fact following him. We are emulating him. We are increasing our capacity to feel. While we are here on Earth, we are trying to increase our capacity for this divine ability, we came to get good, at feeling bad. And that is the thought that changed so much for me this year, like in a year where there was so much negative emotion, I recognized that I didn't have to change any of it. I came, in fact, to learn how to feel bad, and I could just feel it. I could process it. I could allow it to vibrate through my body, and actually just increase my capacity to feel. And it helped me understand the suffering of other people as well, it helped me see that it's not pointless, it isn't arbitrary, we are all at different levels of ability for feeling bad in our curriculum. Our individual curriculums have been designed so that we can strengthen, and increase those capacities. We came to Earth to get good at feeling bad, and when we do so, we are actually following Christ, and we are accessing, and strengthening those divine attributes within ourselves.

Okay, the last that I want to give you, I got just last month, and that is the idea that my self- concept, the things that I think about myself, are the most important thought choices that I can make. So, self-concept is just our collection of thoughts about ourselves, our beliefs about ourselves, like the way we would describe ourselves, and define ourselves in the world. And depending on what we think about ourselves, what we think about who we are, that changes the way that we interact in the world. Most of us are waiting to believe things about ourselves. We are waiting for the evidence first, but we have to believe we are that thing before we can do that thing. And where I think that this application is so powerful is when we look at Jesus Christ, because when he started his ministry, he introduced himself as the Savior, as the Messiah long before he did any saving work, long before he saved his people, he declared himself to be their Savior, to be their Messiah.

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And then, because he declared that that's who he was, he showed up in the world as that person. And in fact, when he went to perform the saving act, he had to believe that, that was who he was, or he couldn't have done such a difficult thing. Christ never could have performed the saving act if he waited to see if he could do it before he called himself the Savior. So many of us think that our self-concept is just wishful thinking, or arrogance, or like just delusional. But having a high self-concept is required for the work that you want to do in the world. We can't carry ourselves as that person, and do the things that that person would do unless we believe we are that person, right? We don't last, we don't stay through the hard times, we give in to our doubts, and our fears. We have to believe first, we have to believe we are that person first. And so, the things that you think about yourself, before you do something in the world is the most important work that you do. Whatever it is that you want to do in your life, the way you think about yourself is the most important part of that you need to start thinking about. This is who I am, and this is what I do.

The other day I saw a clip from a documentary, and I think it was the Jonas Brothers, but I could be wrong. Anyway, Nick Jonas, I think he got this question from a fan that said, like, "I really want to be a songwriter. How do I become a songwriter?" And he said, "How you become a songwriter is you be a songwriter. You decide you are a songwriter, and then you be one. You write songs." Right? We have to be that person, and do what that person does, so whatever area that you want to work on, I want you to really define that for yourself, and decide on your self-concept. What do you want to believe about yourself? This is who I am, this is what I do, before you even do it. And like I said before, there is no right place to start, or no better priority to work on. It's all important, and it's all spiritual work. So, just pick a battle, right? Pick a battle where you want to put work in, and think about who you would need to be to succeed in that area of your life, and start to think, this is who I am, this is what I do, and start thinking of yourself in that way without any evidence.

Now your brain is going to protest, right, our brain, it's such a jerk sometimes, right? It's kind of like that double-edged sword, right? It stops us from doing things in the world because it's scared that we're going to die, and then, like, beats us up for not doing that thing in the world, right? It tells us, like, we can't think we are that, because we haven't done it yet. But it was the one that stopped us in the first place. So, you've got to just ignore your brain, you just have to decide this is who I am, and this is what I do, okay? Whatever you want to work on, I want you to really work not from the action line, but from your self-concept, what you want to believe, right? What does the you who has succeeded believe they are? You get to think about yourself any way you want, and you actually need to in order to get the result you're striving for. This is who I am. This is what I do. These thoughts are so powerful, and they are the thoughts that will help you become anything you want in your life.

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Okay my friends, that's what I have for you today, my top five thoughts. The five thoughts that changed my life in amazing ways in 2020. I hope they will help you, and yours. It's only ever a thought problem, it's okay to be uncomfortable. You can just decide to believe whatever you want. We're here to get good at feeling bad. And this is who I am, this is what I do. How would your life be different if you adopted these thoughts in the coming year? Remember that you have an unlimited capacity to become in any way you want, and you will do that through your thoughts. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!

Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things that I've talked about and apply them to your life sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever. Believing your life is 100% awesome is totally available to every one of us. And as your coach. I'll show you exactly how to do that so that you can truly love your Earth life experience the way things are is not the way things have to stay.

And that my friends is 100% Awesome!