As challenging as this may be, I am keenly aware that feeling better and moving into proactive action means knowing HOW to catch ourselves when we start to buy into a few types of thoughts that will predictably imprison us in cycles of hate or fear or paralysis, every time we engage in them.
I woke up 2 days after the election noticing how often I had been able to ACTIVELY USE my concept of the “ONE THOUGHT behind all emotional pain” and its variations that I call “The 4 Toxic Thought Traps” to recognize and turn around these mind-made creators of chronic anxiety, depression, addiction, and unproductive or self-destructive anger.
I felt so blessed to know these SUPER SIMPLE SUPER HELPFUL constructs about thought–and also keenly aware that many don’t. With that realization. I sat up in bed and immediatly started working on a way to share them with you, by composing a few emails and GIVING you a little book that makes a big difference.
Using the same simple logic that little book shares, one client came to me the morning after the election and said she had kept herself from plunging into despair and getting knocked completely off-balance by using my concept of the ONE THOUGHT.
Since she found that thought underpinning each big emotional charge that would start to take her over, she was able to use the processes she learned in our Thought Detox Challenge to keep from going down the rabbit hole after it.
She saw that she had come to understand an important teaching of mine for herself: That behind all this pain, there’s just ONE basic belief driving the bus!
Yes, ONE THOUGHT: “This should be different than it is.”
Which the mind re-states from its survival perspective as “I NEED THIS TO BE DIFFERENT THAN IT IS!” (past, present, or future) causing a flood of fear, rage, or hopelessness in our bodies, even when nothing is happening in the moment except this mind-made story.
But once you spot this thought–and its 4 variations or “Toxic Thought Traps” I’ve identified, you can stop the downward spiral and start to breathe again.
Whether it’s the outcome of an election, someone else’s actions, or even your own past decisions—when your mind argues with reality, it unleashes a cascade of emotional chemicals we experience of stress and suffering. We convince ourselves that in order for us to feel OK, the world, others, or even we ourselves must be different.
It’s important to feel your disappointment or loss in these situations, but its also important to relieve your own suffering by acknowledging that the emotions are caused by mind-made concepts, conditions, and interpretations of reality (i.e., without them, you wouldn’t feel this way, like dogs or babies or someone who hasn’t heard the news). In short, they constitute what Byron Katie calls an “argument with reality.”
It was a great revelation and relief to me to finally see that these thoughts—not the people or events I was blaming—were the true source of my situational suffering.
And yet… it was still suffering.
Till we use a quick, systematic process, and find a manageable truth: The suffering isn’t caused by the situation itself, but by the thoughts we’re holding onto about it. When our minds resist reality with thoughts like “It shouldn’t be this way,” “This is terrible,” or “We’re doomed,” we create our own distress RIGHT NOW.
But there’s hope. 💝
By catching yourself in that one thought, you can break free from the prison of fear, anger, or helplessness.
And here’s the really great news: once you learn to recognize this thought and the four toxic traps it creates, you can free yourself from the prison of fear, worry, and disappointment.
The simple images and explanations I share in my flipbook, Escape the Prison of Your Thoughts, will help you break free from the toxic thinking that can feel like a kick in the stomach, and find peace plus the gifts contained in that unwanted unfolding reality–no matter what’s happening.
Get your free copy here and start seeing through the thoughts that are stealing your peace.
Get your FREE Copy
Stay tuned for my next email, where I’ll introduce the first two universal Thought Traps that we’ve all engaged in. They sneak up on us and take away our vitality, clarity, and joy.
Sending you much love & strength. And hoping you’ll please post on our Happiness Hacks FB group if you’d like support from our community or thought detox coaching from me. You can also book a NO-MATTER-WHAT Discovery call with me that I trust can help.
🙂 Shawn
Helping You Find Peace in Chaos
P.S. IMPORTANT: Taking care of the thinking that causes our big emotional charge does not mean we are condoning bad behavior or that we cannot take action or advocate for our beliefs… in fact, getting out of our own way makes us MORE efficient and effective because we are no longer separating from life’s grand “unwanted” unfolding–which holds the key to our self-evolution.
Instead, we become free to respond from the highest place as we connect to each moment of reality as it shows up–instead of the mind-made meaning we project onto it. We can create eyes-wide open strategies for handling different possibilities with logic and love. We do not NEED gut-wrenching, mind-made fear or debilitating anger to stay motivated; they only drain our life force.
CLICK HERE to get your Free Flipbook: Escape the Prison of Your Thoughts: The ONE THOUGHT behind All Emotional Pain and Its 4 Toxic Traps.