We think thoughts all the time.
It’s the nature of thought to float in and out of our consciousness.
When you notice a particular thought, and examine it, and analyze it, or argue with it,
This thought will pop into your brain more and more often.
Before you know it, you believe this random thought
That you chose to pluck out of the endless stream of thoughts.
You start to identify with it
And it becomes a part of who we think we are.
When I coach, my primary goal is to invite my clients to question these beliefs
That they think are them
But are really just thoughts they chose to adopt sometime ago.
I suggest to them that they can decide if they still want to keep them.
It’s so much fun
Because there’s never a right or a wrong.
It’s all neutral.
Until we decide it’s good or bad.
I recently reconnected with a former client.
She told me that it was helpful for her when, while we were coaching,
she chose to adopt the thought “It’s possible to eat dessert every day and lose weight.
This was not a habitual belief of hers.
But because she chose to be open to this being possible,
and she felt really hopeful about that thought,
She has made it come true.
She eats dessert whenever she wants, and she’s maintained her thin body without struggle.
We took all the emotional charge away from dessert
Because her thoughts about dessert were making her fat.
Dessert in itself is neither good nor bad.
But her worrying thoughts about it
Caused her to secretly and shamefully binge when no one was looking.
So she was eating the equivalent of dessert anyway.
I don’t always recommend that a client adopt the thought that it’s possible to eat dessert every day and lose weight.
Some clients tell me that they absolutely have to be able to eat dessert every day.
In this case, opposite belief, but same outcome.
I would invite them to consider never eating dessert again.
And we’d look at what she’d make that mean, how that would feel, and how it would impact her life.
With this client, I may suggest that she consider a reality without dessert.
For her, believing that dessert is essential to her life is causing her problem.
Becuase she wants to believe it’s essential
and she’s so scared it’s going to be taken away from her when she goes on diet
She secretly and shamefully binges when no one is looking.
Both ways, my job is to show my client their mind
All the thoughts that are stampeding through her brain
And all the arguments/opposing thoughts she tries to use to free herself.
When true freedom is right there for the taking.
She doesn’t have to believe any of these thoughts.
Once she realizes that none of these thoughts are her
That thoughts are just things
Randomly passing through our consciousness
And that all she has to do is… nothing…
Then her inner wisdom will guide her to eat just the right amount of dessert for her just right body.
And losing weight will be as simply as not believing anything you believe.