Ep. 133 Superthinking

 This transcript was auto-generated, please forgive any weirdness.

Hi, I am Paula Parker and this is The Mindful Shape Podcast. I help people, specifically women release excess weight and do it really in a way that feels empowering to them and rather than a struggle and sustainable and healthy. So if you are here for that welcome. If you are new to me, welcome, and if you've been around for a while, let's talk about super thinking.

And I'll be honest, this topic came to me. I usually choose the title first, then I brainstorm what I'm gonna say on the podcast. So I titled this one in my Google Docs. That's where I put all my notes, 1 33, super thinking. And immediately I had the thought. Who am I to write this? My thoughts are mostly garbage.

My thoughts are anything but super thoughts. Who am I to tell anybody about super thoughts and how to super think? Okay. But I do love the title, super Thought or super Thinking. I, I like that term. And you know, we just cannot trust our brains because if I listen to that, I would probably not record a single podcast episode.

Ever and you would not be listening to this and the thousands of people that listen to this and get help from it, and those of you who reach out to me and we work together, you would never get help. What's the lesson here? Don't let your brain be in charge. Your brain is a tool. It's a tool for good, right?

We can use it for lots of good, but it's not the boss of you. But often we get this wrong. We either aren't aware of our own thoughts, or if we are, we really don't question them. We think they're the truth. Your brain says, I want pleasure. We reach for a snack. Our brain says we need distraction. We eat something.

Our brain says, that meeting or that task is going to be painful. We avoid it, and we dread eat. That's a term I coined, which is dread eating, right? Because dread is something that we can feel and then we don't wanna feel it, and so we eat instead. Remember, this is not you. This is your brain operating here.

You don't want that. You want natural pleasure, like the pleasure of being able to wear anything in your closet, and more importantly, being in a body that feels good to you, whatever that means for you, your brain. It doesn't, it's not optimized for longer term pleasure. It's wired for immediate reward. We need to understand this.

We need to know how it's designed so that we can stop blaming ourselves for very natural behavior, like turning to food for comfort or soothing. We are mammals after all, and instead we really need to. Tell our brains what to think. Hence the super thinking topic. Otherwise, it will just run some really outdated programs like the program that you're not enough or you're not doing enough, or that you're lazy, or that you're letting people down, or when it comes to food, the chips, the pizza, the cookies that will make you feel better, that will make your life better.

Then we end up overcommitting overindulging, and you know, that leads to just getting burnt out and. Feeling sick and feeling gross, and feeling not good on our bodies. Do not believe these lies. And just like you, I need to practice thinking on purpose. Okay. My brain goes negative too. It often goes negative, and I think that's the case for most people because of the negativity bias that we all have.

And you know, just look around. How often are you or the people around you? Complaining about things, right? Complaining is very common. It's very commonplace in, you know, north American culture. I worked with my very first coach for years, and what I learned without really knowing that I was learning it was the skill of self-awareness.

It has really, I'm kind of almost embarrassed to say this, but it's only recently occurred to me after working with clients for years now, just how much of an underrated skill this is. How I, for one, really have been taking it for granted that I just continually, throughout the day, am checking in with myself, what I'm thinking, how I'm feeling.

That's just my way of being. It feels very natural for me to be doing this. If you are not currently doing this, I just wanna plant the seed here, that this could really be an untapped opportunity when it comes to releasing weight, because it's gonna help you make decisions. And weight loss is all about making decisions about food.

Okay? So as a coach, my job is really to help you do two things. Change what you're currently doing in this case, how you're eating, and how you are being. What I mean by that is helping you cultivate qualities. Like resilience, determination, and self-compassion. And to do that, we need two types of self-awareness, conceptual awareness.

That's, I understand why I do what I do, and embodied awareness. That's I know what I'm feeling. So today, let's focus on conceptual awareness. I understand why I do what I do, the thinking part of it, because I did title this super thinking after all. Okay. I live on Vancouver Island. And I have to say that since moving here from Vancouver on the mainland, the shopping is terrible when it comes to clothing.

I am personally finding a hard time finding clothes that I really like, and I also just, you know, different stage of life, I have less time for it, that kind of thing. So I do an a lot of online shopping, and I'm sure that you've noticed that whenever you buy something online from a company, you automatically get.

Into their sales sequence, right? You start getting all of their marketing emails. Have you ever gone through your inbox and just done a mass spree of unsubscribing? If you haven't, I suggest that you do. Now, of course, don't unsubscribe from my emails, which I know you never would because they're great.

But go through all those other ones and unsubscribe. I want you to think of your mind like an inbox. What are you letting in? How many thoughts are coming in, taking up space? Thoughts that either don't serve you even if you believe them to be true. Like, I really shouldn't have eaten that. That one's so subtle because you think I really shouldn't have eaten that.

And that feels really true, but I just wanna push back and say that it's a, it's leans towards self-rejection. So I recently, I don't normally eat these tortilla chips ever. I don't hardly ever eat them. Just because I ate them once. I was eating them for a while and they just didn't make me feel good.

I was like, oh, these are gross. Very recently it's funny 'cause I was talking to a client about this and I was like, oh, I never eat them. I never eat them. But then very recently I decided I would, I would like just try them. And instantly I broke out, like my skin broke out in a rash. I got hives, I, my eczema flared up.

So I just know that it's either the corn or it's the oils that just, it doesn't serve me right. So it would be very tempting for me to have that thought, or I shouldn't have eaten that. I have so much evidence. I have so much proof, but. How do I know that? Self rejection. How do I know that that is not, it's far away from a super thought.

It's more of a junk thought. And yes, of course, there's no such thing as like a super thought or a junk thought. They're all just thoughts. But it's helpful in this context to think of thoughts this way so that we can think about what's the implication of them? How do they make me feel? Do they make me feel more light and expansive?

Or if I think I shouldn't have eaten that, does it make me feel constricted and tense? That means it doesn't serve me, right? 'cause I'm not feeling better. I'm not feeling more expensive than light, which is what I'd rather feel to be honest. So I don't ever think that. I think, oh, that's really good for me to know.

I was making such a good decision before when I just stayed away from those trips. I definitely will continue to stay away from them. It's not a problem. I don't tell myself I shouldn't have beaten that. I just have more information. Now, think of how many justification thoughts. You have to overeat or overindulge very common ones, or I've had a long day, or I've had a hard day, this won't make a difference.

I'll never have a chance to eat this again. Say you're on vacation or you're at a restaurant, I just want it the, I just want it justification. It goes on and on. Our brains tend toward criticism. They tend toward excuses. Gossip, that kinda line of thinking. These kinds of thoughts are causing you unnecessary suffering.

They cause desire and permissiveness for food, which then of course causes overeating and really impede your ability to reach your desired weight. We can just tag those as junk. Okay. They don't have to play any role in how we feel or what we think. We can just disregard those. Okay. We're unsubscribing from that little sequence.

Oh, my brain is offering up this thought. That's okay. It's just trying to sell me something. It's trying to sell me on eating those chips again. Of course it is. It wants immediate pleasure. Whatever clothing brand that is, Auria, Uniqlo, those are the brands I buy. They're trying to sell their shirts. That's okay.

Just unsubscribe. I know it's there. I'll decide when I wanna be sold to. Okay. I will seek that out. Super thinking is really selling ourselves what we truly want. Give you an example of just how you can kind of reframe or think about things in a different way. I was recently talking to a client and we were talking about this, about like foods and how we're getting really clear on foods that serve us and foods that don't.

And oftentimes it doesn't have anything to do with weight loss. It just has to do with changes in our body and how we react to food, whether we get indigestion or whether we get rashes or things like that. And think of the idea of elimination diet. That sounds terrible. I mean, who wants to sign up for something called an elimination diet?

I don't. That doesn't seem appealing at all. My brain is like, Ugh, that sounds terrible. Sounds like elimination. That's not a good word. Diet, I don't like that word. Versus, oh, let's experiment with this. Why don't I do an experiment in which I'm really curious about? Does this food serve me or not? Because if it doesn't, I really care about my skin.

I care about how I feel. I don't want that food and I really wanna know if it serves me or not. That is really good information for me to have. Notice the difference. We just think of it as an experiment versus an elimination diet feels heavy, it feels like boring, or it feels really restrictive. Another example of this is when I was in my coach training, we would record our calls, our coaching calls, and then.

And then do an evaluation of them after. You can imagine, like anytime we have to evaluate ourselves, it triggers a nervous system response. Automatically, we feel a little bit anxious. Okay. It triggers fight or flight oftentimes, anytime we think that we're being evaluated. So one of the coaches that I worked with, she says, well, of course you don't like doing it.

'cause I noticed I was kind of procrastinating. I wasn't doing it. And I talked to her about this and she said, well, of course you don't like doing it. You're calling in an evaluation. She said, call in an Uplevel party because that's why you're doing it. You're doing it to eval like. Look at it. I almost said evaluate again, but look at it and then uplevel your skills.

So it's an uplevel party. This is something that's like, you're only gonna get better. You take a look, you're like, oh, this was great. This was maybe not so great. Here's what I wanna improve. And then you're upleveling. So again, we're just selling our brains. It's just like marketing to our own brains.

Don't call it an elimination diet. Call it an experiment. Don't call it a valuation. Call it a up-level party. Fill your brain with thoughts that serve you. On the regular, otherwise it will go to those old programs and those old default justification thoughts that we've had, you know, a million times and they're just like super highways in our brain.

And I truly think this is an active practice. We need to, one, yeah, accept that our brain has a tendency to go negative and supply us with some thoughts that don't serve us some junk thoughts. Number two is decide how we're going to think instead. So here's an exercise that I did that I'll share with you in case you are thinking, yeah, okay, but how, how do I do this?

Think of this as almost like a super thinking step-by-step guide. Step one is first, get into a good mood. Okay? We wanna feel, feel the vibes. We wanna feel good. Maybe you, this is after a workout, or you listen to something inspiring, maybe this podcast, or you listen to some great music. You snuggle with your cat or your dog.

You're feeling good. Step two, write out what you want your brain to think intentionally. Like if there were no rules, what would you want to be thinking? There are gonna be thoughts that uplift you, that make you feel expansive, that maybe even feel a little irreverent, like. Who am I to think this? Okay.

Like, you know, I'm not Giselle Butin, but damn, like this lighting is good and I feel good, I look amazing. Like those kinds of thoughts. Okay. And step three is read this list on a regular basis. You might be thinking, is this toxic positivity or something? I don't actually know what that means, what toxic positivity actually means, if I'm being honest.

But it doesn't sound good. Toxic doesn't sound good at all. So I'm not talking about pa, you know, papering over negative feelings. If that's toxic positivity where you're just like ignoring how you feel, that's not what I'm talking about. You must feel. All the emotions as a human being, right? The whole range of emotions, and that includes negative emotions.

We can't avoid that. We are going to feel low, we're gonna feel tired, we're gonna feel frustrated, irritable, in bad moods. I was having problems. I was feeling so great this morning. I'm working on something new. It's got, I'm gonna be telling you about it soon. But I was feeling great. Super pumped up. Then I try to use my, I got a new iPhone.

It's like state-of-the-art iPhone, right? And the functionality just, it has some glitches and there is nothing that will put me in a bad mood or make me frustrated and irritable like tech issues. So right away, like even within the course of a day, your mood can be all over the place. This is normal.

Don't think that you are the only person. Okay, this is totally normal. I had to get myself out of it. I had to go for a walk, come back before I was to record this, to kind of get a clear head. But that's just part of being a human and being able to know yourself and know how to regulate your nervous system.

So all that to say, we don't have to stay stuck in negative emotion either. This is more, when I'm talking about super thinking, this is more about creating this. Intentionality around your thinking as a general practice. You're not necessarily reading your list of super thoughts or like, I like to call them nourishing thoughts to shift your mood.

Although that might happen, it's very probable that that will happen. That's not the intention. This practice is about being intentional about your thinking. It's not to escape what you're feeling or chase a good mood. Here are some I think of as like really high caliber, super thoughts, nourishing thoughts that I really like.

The change begins now rather than I will gradually change. I'll say that again. The change begins now rather than I will gradually change. Even if it's not meant for me, I will be better off or having gone for it. I'm doing enough. I've endured hardships and I'm still here fighting the good fight. I will let go of escaping and instead soften be gentle.

I will let go of chasing and tap within. Harness that power inside me. I am supported. I have more capacity. That one I notice because I've practiced that one. I do feel it. In, you know, in the wild. I do feel it in real life, in the heat of the moment when the kids come home and it's feeling a little bit intense, I just remind myself I have more capacity.

Even when I think I don't, I'm like, no, I, I can stretch. I have a little bit more capacity to be available, to be present, to tidy up whatever is needed. I choose reverence for my body. Discomfort is expansion. All right, so I hope some of those are helpful. Feel free to take notes. Feel free to expand on those and write your own.

Do some super thinking. Have a little super thinking session for yourself. Do it after you know, you put yourself in a good mood, okay? After you've danced around or you've done it your like favorite workout or something like that. That always helps me remember. Energy follows thought. That's why that's one of my mentors, Danielle LePorte.

She is always telling us energy follows thought. So nourishing thoughts only. All right, I'll talk to you again soon. Bye.