Episode 94: Thought Capacity

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 94 of them, 100% Awesome Podcast. I'm April Price, and I want to welcome you to the podcast. And I want to tell you that you are amazing and your life is amazing. And just in case you've forgotten, this is the good stuff. I don't know about you, but I think it's so easy to believe that we've got to get somewhere else first before we can enjoy things, right? It's so easy for our brains to convince us that it's going to be better somewhere else. Or like when this particular moment is over, then our life can begin for real, right? But you guys, this is it, okay? This is your amazing, difficult, beautiful, heartbreaking, wonderful life.

Our daughter, Savannah, who is serving her mission in Iowa right now, I can't remember if I told you this already or not, but she fell on the ice on New Year's Eve, and hit her head really hard, like hard enough to get a pretty serious concussion. And so, she's been dealing with the effects of that for the last six weeks on her mission. And on Sunday, as I was fasting, and praying for her, I found myself asking Heavenly Father if he could just heal her so that she could get on with her mission right now, like in my mind, like let her get on with her real mission, like the reason she really went there, right? And I just felt this thought from heaven enter my mind.

This is her mission, this right here, this concussion, it's all part of her mission. She isn't missing the real one, right? Or the better one, or the more productive, or the more purposeful one. She isn't missing her mission. This is it. This is just as much a part of her mission as anything else. And it is the same for you if you are waiting, and wanting to get past the hard parts, or the uncomfortable parts, or the growing parts, right? So, that you can get to your real life and start enjoying yourself, right? And get to the part where you really can do what you came to do. I want you to know you are already there, this is what you came to do, these experiences you're having right now, they are why you came, what you learn in this moment as you navigate this challenge, or overcome this obstacle. This is why you are here, to manage your brain through this, right? And there isn't a place in your Earth- life experience that is any more worthy of your attention, and time, and effort, than here, than right here. And you get to be happy here. And proud here. And you get to enjoy here, and you don't have to wait. And how you do that is always, by the way you think, right?

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Your brain wants to point out all the problems. Your brain wants to identify your failures, and other people's failures, and tell you that it should all be different than it is, right? But the way you think about your life, and your decisions, and your challenges, and your current circumstances, whatever those are, that's what matters. The way you think about all of that is what matters. And in fact, it is the only thing that matters. When I think that this is Savannah's mission, then I don't have to worry, or stress that it should be different. When I think my life was always supposed to be experienced in this body that I'm in right now, that I don't have to notice all the things that are wrong with it, right? When I think that this is all happening for us and I don't have to control the world, or fear the future. Your brain is going to give you one story, right? But what you choose to believe is what matters. What you choose to believe about you, what you choose to believe about the way you've used your time on Earth, what you choose to believe about your worth, and your love ability and, your ability to love others, right? What you choose to believe about your unlimited potential to create anything you want in your life, that is what matters. What you choose to believe is what matters, and that's why I think all of you should be in my next coaching group. I really do.

It will change the way you think, and that's what matters. That is what is going to change your life, okay? So, sign up for a free coaching consultation and get a spot in my next group. I'm going to be opening up applications for the next round in just a couple of weeks. But if you sign up for a consultation, you can get a spot before I even open those up. And you can do that at my website aprilpricecoaching.Com. And also if you want to leave a review for the podcast, I'm going to do like a drawing of everybody who leaves a review, or mentions it on social media. And I'm trying to get a hundred reviews before the 100th episode. And so, I'm going to create a package of all my favorite things, and pick one of you to send it to.

Today on the podcast, I want to build on an idea that I introduced a few episodes back. So, over the last few weeks I have really been thinking about this concept of thought capacity. And I want to share it with you on a deeper level today, because I really think that understanding that every single thought has a certain capacity to create things in our life, and understanding that capacity will help you shift some of the thoughts that you are using, and believing, and thinking right now that aren't really giving you the results you want. And I think that this discussion will help you choose new thoughts more easily. To think about it in this way. So, like sometimes I think our brain just really, really wants to hold onto our old thoughts and beliefs, right? It wants to be right, and it wants to think that we've been right about ourselves even. And so, it's kind of like hesitant to give up its thoughts about ourselves. And so this idea about thoughts having a certain capacity has really helped me to stop judging those default thoughts, and give them up way more easily.

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So, if you remember, I compared our thoughts to a muscle. I was talking about how depending on the capacity or the strength of the muscle, that allows the muscle to lift certain amounts of weight, right? And if a muscle can't lift more weight than that, it's not because the muscle is bad, or uncommitted, or undisciplined, or broken in some way, it's just that that muscle only has a certain capacity that I can hold or lift, right? And in the same way, we have thoughts that we have adopted, or beliefs that we have developed over time and these thoughts only have a certain capacity. They can each only create a certain amount of results in our life. And it's not those thoughts are bad, right? It's not that we're bad for thinking them. It's just that literally certain thoughts don't have the capacity to create any other result than the one that it does.

So, another way to think about this is to just think about like a light bulb, right? Lightbulbs come with a certain capacity to hold the electric current and give off light. So, they're like twenty-five watt bulbs, and there are a thousand watt bulbs that they use for commercial, or industrial projects, right? And if I use a light bulb with more capacity, then it's going to be able to put off more light into the world, right? And notice we don't expect a twenty-five watt bulb to produce what the thousand watt bulb can produce, right? We understand that that bulb only has a certain capacity. But notice how all the time we're always wondering why we are holding these twenty-five watt beliefs, and we can't create the results we want in our life with that. And we start thinking that like maybe we're bad, maybe there's something wrong with us. Maybe we're defective, or undisciplined, right?

I hear this all the time. I'm just undisciplined. I don't stick with things, but it's never us. It's just that we are trying to power our lives, and our results with a thought that has the wrong capacity, right? We're trying to get a thousand watt results with a twenty-five watt bulb. Another example of this is like a car engine, okay? And like, admittedly, I know nothing about any of this, right? But I do know that I cannot pull like a pop up camper, or a boat with a lawnmower engine, right? Like, every engine is going to have a different capacity to be able to pull things and carry things, right? A different ability to move things. And so, if we want to move big results into our lives, or different results into our lives, we are going to have to use thoughts with a different capacity, more power to move things into our lives. And again, I just want to reiterate, like, it's not that your thoughts are bad, and you are not bad for having them. It's just that the thoughts in and of themselves don't have the ability or capacity to create anything other than what they are currently creating in our lives. Each thought has a certain capacity, and since every result in our life is created by the thoughts, we think if we want to create something else, we're going to need to think about the actual capacity of the thoughts we are choosing. We can't have a thousand-watt life lit by twenty-five-watt thoughts. It's just not going to work.

So, when I say like your current life as a result of your current thoughts, I don't mean that in a bad way, or in like a judgmental, or are condemning way, right? Like, why in the world are you thinking that? What I'm saying is that when we really understand that our current thoughts just can't create anything else, they don't have the capacity to create anything else, then it becomes so much easier to give up those current thoughts and think something new.

So, today I thought I would give you three examples of what I considered to be low-capacity thoughts, okay? My coach calls these "zero nutrition thoughts" right? But I like to think of them as like low capacity, like they literally don't have the capacity to create what I want in my life. And so, these are thoughts I see a lot, right? That I think just do not have the capacity to create useful, amazing results in your life. And I'm going to share these with you in the hopes that you will see that, and decide to give them up too.

So, the first low-capacity thought is I've never done this before. This is one of those thoughts that our brain offers us to keep our results small. Well, I've never done that before, I don't think I can do that, I've never done it before, right? And as long as we're thinking this thought, then it's going to be really hard to create awesome results in our life. And the thing is, I've never done it before. Seems really important, right? It seems like really relevant information to have. It seems like pertinent, and valuable to know, and understand, and be aware. Look, we've never done this before, but it is not relevant. Ifyou've never done it before, it doesn't mean anything about what you can do, okay? Doesn't mean anything about what you will do? It is a statement about what has happened in the past, and it seems really relevant to our present, and to the future. But is actually, completely irrelevant. And how do I know it's irrelevant? Because everyone who has ever done something before they did it, they had never done it before. Never having done it before has no bearing on whether or not it can be done

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And so, this thought, which seems so relevant, is keeping you from trying. And what I want you to know is that your brain gives you this thought, I've never done it before because it wants to keep you from trying. It wants to keep you from trying, and it's working, right? It thinks that not trying is a much safer course of action. It thinks not trying will allow you to avoid disappointment, and failure, and rejection. This is all pain that your brain would really love to avoid, okay? Not trying also keeps us from expending any energy. And again, the brain would love to keep us from spending energy. It just wants to save energy in case we need it later. So, I've never done this before, it's just the brain's way of keeping you safe and not trying. But it's a thought that is also keeping you from whatever result and experience you really want to have in your life, okay? It doesn't have the capacity to give you any other result than not trying. That's all that thought can create is like fear to try it because we've never done it before and it doesn't have the capacity to have you do anything other than that.

So, you have to decide that this thought is irrelevant, it may even be true, right? I never lifted weights before I did. I never made 100K in my business until I did. I never loved myself as I am until I did. Your brain might be right, technically you may never have done it. But why in the world does that matter, right? It's totally irrelevant when my brain says we've never done that before. I have learned to say, so, like who cares, right? What I think instead is the only thing that is required here is to believe that I can. The past has nothing to do with it. So, whatever it is you want to do in your life, if you want more capacity to do it, you have to believe you can. And you have to give up the thought, I've never done it before. I sometimes ask myself, what does my future self, the one who has already done this thing, believe, okay? She doesn't believe I've never done it because she knows I have, right? So, what does she believe? She believes I can. In fact, she knows I can,

The next thought that I think is a just a low-capacity thought, is any thought that defines you, or your identity in a limiting way. So, I think of these as like I am thoughts, or I am not thoughts, right? That in a fixed, predetermined way don't allow us to change, and grow, and get the life, and the results that we want. So, a few examples of this are like I'm bad with money, right? It's like an I am statement that's very limiting. It's like defining myself as this thing that like I am bad with money is if that's like the fact of the universe, right? Like I'm five, two, and bad with money, it's just facts, right? Like that's how our brain sees it, right? So, some examples, I'm bad with money, I'm not disciplined, I'm hard to live with, I'm impatient, I'm not good at setting goals, I'm anxious, right? A lot of us will identify ourselves with a feeling instead of like a person who sometimes feels anxiety. We're just like, well, I'm anxious, right? And we identify as that feeling, and we believe these things. These I am statements in a way that seems like they are just like fixed identity characteristics that are unchangeable, and they limit us in a way that don't limit other people. Like there are plenty of I am identity thoughts that are high-capacity thoughts, right? That can be super useful. But notice that if you are ever using one of these, I am thoughts, or I am not identity statements to say like this is the reason that I can't have what I want. I can't have the result other people have, then it is a low capacity thought and it won't have the power to create the life that you want, or the results that you want in your life. And I just want to show you why.

It's because we have the causal relationship between the thought, and the result all wrong. We think like we're getting this certain result in our life, and that makes us think something about our identity. But in fact, our thought that we are this way is what is actually creating that result over, and over again for us. For example, if I look at my bank account, which is the result, the amount in my bank account is a result. And when I look at that I think that that amount makes me draw the conclusion, I'm bad with money. But we have that causal relationship all wrong, in reality, my thought, I'm bad with money, is the thing that is actually creating that result over and over again in my bank account. We cannot think that we're bad with money, and create any other result in our life. It's impossible, right? That thought only has the capacity to create a result that proves the thought, right? The thing is, we all have beliefs about ourselves, and our identity, but our beliefs, which just feels so like solid and true, are just thoughts that we've thought. A lot of times our beliefs are just thoughts that we've thought so many times, in fact, that we no longer have to work to think, they just happen. They seem like truth.

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Our brain has found evidence for them over, and over, and proved them true. And as I heard Dr. Shavon Parratt say this week, we are always creating what we believe the most. And that's so important to understand. We're always creating what we believe the most. We don't believe what we create the most. We create what we believe the most. The belief is the creative act. It is what is creating all the results in our life. But it is always your privilege to ask yourself not if the thoughts are true, but if you like them, if they serve you, if they have the capacity to create the results you want. If you want to be good with money, thinking you are bad with money doesn't have the capacity to create that result. You are so powerful you can believe anything you want, and change any belief you want. But to do that, you have to start by recognizing that these are thoughts and not facts. They are just thoughts that I've thought many, many times, and they aren't actually who I am.

So, no, just the thoughts that you believe about yourself right now about who you are and then ask yourself what capacity does this thought have to create in my life. And if it doesn't create the thing you want, the result you want, then it is your privilege to think something totally different. To think the opposite, in fact, if you want, right? Remember, we create what we believe the most. If you believe you are a good mom, if you believe you are a patient person, if you believe you are good with money, you create exactly that what you believe is creating a reality. And if you want a different reality, a different result than you're getting right now, you need to think a thought that has the capacity to create that in your life.

Okay, finally, the last low capacity thought I want to talk about today is the thought that God is disappointed in me. And that we need to do better, and be better in order to be acceptable and loved by him. And it is a low capacity thought because of what it creates in your life, right? What results does that thought power? All it creates is shame, and frustration, and any good that we try to do when we think this thought is simply motivated by fear, which tends to in fact erode our relationship with him, right? We start to feel like we can't ever do it, right? We can't ever please him, and then we tend to give up and notice that we have created this box for God, right? We've defined him, we've decided how he feels, and how he sees us. We've said his love goes this far, but not as far as me, right? We've projected our own thoughts about ourselves onto him, and assume that, of course, he feels the same way about us as we feel about us, right? And instead of motivating us to be closer to him, this thought actually creates more distance than ever.

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I think that any thought that puts God in a box, and says he must feel a certain way about us because of like what we think, is a low capacity thought. And it just doesn't have the power to create the relationship that we want with him, or with ourselves, right? Because it prevents us from accessing his grace, and his love. It prevents us from extending that grace to ourselves, which we need if we are going to use this Earth-life experience to learn the lessons we came to learn. So, one way that I see this thought getting in people's way is in their parenting, right? I hear clients tell me all the time that they didn't do it perfectly as parents, and their children are making their own choices. And somehow all of this is very disappointing to God, right? They feel that like he must surely be upset by they're getting it wrong, and by their children getting it wrong. I want you to think for a minute about the capacity of these thoughts, and the power that they have to create results in your life, right? Thinking that you got it wrong, and that you shouldn't have, and your children got it wrong, and they shouldn't have is painful.

And the result is it makes us want to give up, makes us want to hide. Our brains are like, well, we've blown it, I guess that's that. And we're full of shame, and we hide, right? Or we try to desperately control our children, and their choices, and then beat ourselves up for all the mistakes that we've made. None of which brings us closer to God, none of which allows us to access his grace, which is the answer to all of it. Any thought that limits God's grace, and ability to love is not only untrue, but it has such a low capacity for creating the understanding, and love, and compassion, and grace that you need in your life, for yourself, and for all the people that you love.

Your children were never supposed to get it right, and neither were you. And God is not disappointed in that, it's impossible. If you need to go back, and listen to episode 72, which is about God's infinite approval of you, do it. We think that we are getting the result of feeling disconnected from God because of our actions, but we are getting this result from the thought that he is disappointed. This thought he's disappointed in us doesn't have the capacity to create anything other than shame, and disconnection. It can't create love, it can't create connection, or grace, or compassion for ourselves or for others.

So, I've given you three examples of low-capacity thoughts. There are a million more, our brains are full of low-capacity thoughts, but you can identify them by noticing what result is this going to create in my life? And then ask yourself, is that what I want to keep creating? For just a minute here, at the end, I want you to notice how badly your brain fights for these low-capacity thoughts, right? Even though they don't have the capacity to create the life we want. Notice how badly our brain wants to fight for them. To explain, and to, like, validate them, and to prove them true. We want to fight for the fact that we've never done it before, or like this is just who I am, right? Or God is disappointed in me. We want to, like, prove that true. But I just want to ask you, why do you really want to fight for the version that you've been? And what those thoughts are creating, or do you want to fight for the version that you want to be?

If we want to have something different in our lives, we have to spend more time believing the thoughts that are going to create that. We spend so much time fondling, and reinforcing, and cuddling those low- capacity thoughts, right? Because they're comfortable, and familiar, and they're so easy to think that they just feel true, and easy, but they just can't create something different. They are incapable of creating something different. They don't have the capacity to do it. So, I really want you to look at your own thought patterns. Notice, too, I spend the majority of my time believing my brain's low-capacity thoughts, or am I spending more time actively, intentionally believing powerful, high capacity thoughts about myself. Thoughts that have the power to create what I really want in my life. Every single thought you have is optional. Every single one, not one of them is required in coaching. We talk a lot, and we ask the question, does this thought serve you? And what this means is like, is it creating the result you want? Does it have the capacity to create the life you want. To help you be who you want to be?

If you have thoughts that you want to change, that your brain just won't let go of, right? This is the question I want you to ask, what result does this thought create in my life, all things being equal? What is its capacity for creation in my life? You are allowed to think any thoughts you want and there aren't any thoughts that you shouldn't think, it's just that all thoughts have a capacity, and the thoughts we choose create the results we have. And so, when you want different results, when you're ready to have another result in your life, you only have to choose a thought and believe a thought that has the capacity to create
it. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome! I love you for listening and I'll see you next week!

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Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today. If you want to take the things I've talked about and apply them in your life so that you can love your earth life experience. Sign up for a free coaching session at aprilpricecoaching.com. This is where the real magic happens and your life starts to change forever as your coach. I'll show you the believing your life is one hundred percent awesome is totally available to every one of us. The way things are is not the way things have to stay. And that, my friends, is 100% awesome!