Choose your thoughts = choose your day!

Last week I shared with you an invitation to have daily time apart from your phone for the sake of your health, relationships and many other things.

I also promised that I would share with you how I stepped back from being negatively triggered by an email for the whole day.

So, here goes.

It is common knowledge that your thoughts create your feelings right? Such a simple concept to grasp on an intellectual basis yet quite a difficult one to adopt when you have got in a rut with a series of thoughts that you operate your life by.

One of the thoughts I used to have on a regular basis, particularly when something didn’t go my way, was this:

‘This always happens to me!  Why does it never work out the way I want it to?’

Not the most positive thought to have is it?  And you can imagine the abundance of positive feelings it created in me – not!

Fortunately, this thought cycle happens less and less for me now as a result of the personal development work I have done over the years. When it does happen, I am able to ‘bounce back’ quicker and stronger.

This is what happened last week when I read my emails at 6am in the morning!  I was triggered and the old thought of ‘this always happens to me, why do things never work out the way I want them to?’ came into my mind.

I instantly felt like crap!  My heart sank into the pit of my stomach and I felt so worthless and useless and, well… crap!

But stop!  Remember, I told you last week that I was able to step back from being triggered. Here is how I did it.

I used ‘The Model’.  

This is something I learned from Brooke Castillo of The Life Coach School.  Please believe me when I say this model has been life changing for me, especially when I am faced with situations that threaten to trigger my ‘I’m worthless’ thought cycle.

The way it works is this.  We all have positive and negative models and we get to choose which we focus our attention on.  For me, last week, my negative model went something like this:

Circumstance – I have received an email

Thought – I am not happy about the content of the email. This always happens to me, why do things never work out the way I want them to?

Feeling – Crap, worthless, useless, naïve, foolish

Actions – Spend time mentally drafting a scathing response but never sending it, scroll through LinkedIn and Facebook fuelling my feelings of inadequacy

Results – end the day still feeling crap and having taken no positive or massive action with moving my goals forward.

As soon as I realised I was choosing to be in the negative model, I immediately focused on creating the positive model instead.  It went something like this:

Circumstance – I have received an email

Thought – I kind of expected this response and I appreciate the honesty of the person writing it.  This is a valuable lesson for me to have learned at this stage of my entrepreneurial journey

Feeling – motivated, determined, focused, compassionate

Actions – responded to the email professionally, took several steps to move forwards on my business goals that day, re-read my ‘little book of feedback’ to remind myself of the positive impact I do have

Results – ended the day feeling proud of myself for bouncing back, acknowledging the lesson learned and moving forwards from it.

If you would like to hear Brooke explain The Model in more detail, click here and have a listen to her podcast.  I would highly recommend it.

So, there you go, how to pull yourself back from a day of negativity. Choose your thoughts = choose your day!

Have a great weekend and remember… it is time to Burn Bright, not out!

Donna x