Welcome to Running to Myself. I’m Trisha Stanton. Life and mindset coach, and your host for this podcast.
16 years ago I ran my first marathon. The process of training for that first race changed my life. This podcast is my opportunity to share some of the lessons I have learned through the many ups and downs of life during my almost 2 decades of running and learning more about who I am. It is my hope that through my stories maybe you will see a bit of yourself as well and find a nugget of truth and inspiration to take with you. Let’s get started.
If you struggle to “get out of your own head” or to let go of a story or situation that is keeping you stuck and in pain, this is the episode for you. If worry is what is keeping you stuck, this is for you. If fear has its grip on your thoughts, this episode is for you.
Last week I shared six steps to processing your emotions. The idea for the episode came when I had fallen during a trailrun a few weeks earlier. While working through physical pain from the fall, I saw the connection to working through emotional pain in everyday life.
I didn’t know then how closely the content would come to align with my own life at the time. As I was finishing up last week’s episode about processing emotions, I found myself right in the middle of experiencing some of my own painful emotions. The pain and heartache would not release its grip on me. The day after recording, still actively processing my own pain, I knew I needed to take this content one step further for those who also find themselves a little stuck right now. It’s time to go deeper. Today I am going to give you some practical ways to direct your thoughts when you feel stuck in your pain.
As before, I want to stress to you that we are talking about situations that you choose to be in or cannot avoid being in. I am NOT talking about situations or relationships that are dangerous or unhealthy for you and need to be ended. That is a different topic.
The steps I shared last week for processing emotions are an essential foundation for emotional health. But what happens when you are using those steps and the pain won’t release its grip on you or keeps resurfacing? Sometimes this is exactly where you are going to find yourself. When you are first beginning to build your foundation of emotional health, you may find yourself here more frequently. If you have spent most of your life up until now stuffing your painful emotions down and trying to ignore them, you can expect that it is going to take consistent repetition of the processing steps before your brain is willing to accept this new way of being.
Nothing has gone wrong. Keep going.
Acknowledge your pain.
Recognize and accept it rather than trying to hide it or ignore it.
Name the emotion your pain takes the form of.
Naming it specifically will help you know what to do with it.
Identify what is causing the pain and then separate the facts of the situation from your story about the facts. This is so important. Do not let your brain keep you stuck in your painful story.
If you do find yourself unable to detach from your story, this is a sign that seeking out a coach or a therapist might be a valuable next step for you.
You will not be able to effectively process your emotions while you are stuck in your story. There are things we cannot see from INSIDE our own story. Having a coach or therapist who can help you step outside of your story and look at it from a new angle will help you see things you cannot see from the inside.
Once you have separated out the facts to look at, notice where the pain is in your body. Is there physical movement or action that will help you move through the physical part of the pain? Notice your breathing. Take a few deep breaths. Finally, allow the painful emotion to exist. Remind yourself that what you are feeling is just an emotion. It will not be there forever. You do not need to hide from it. Sometimes fear of the emotion can cause more pain than the emotion itself.
These steps are the foundation of processing your emotions. The need for the foundational steps will always exist. Now let's talk about the times when you need something more.
When does this happen?
*it’s pretty common when you are first learning to process your emotions to need to use additional tools to support you as you are building this foundational skill.
*You might find that you need additional tools of support when faced with a painful situation that is outside the scope of your normal life. Situations that are life altering and unexpected. Something that may have far reaching consequences in your life.
*If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed by your pain, it is time to go beyond the basic steps of processing your emotion.
There could be other reasons as well, but the bottom line is, if you are using the basic 6 steps of emotional processing that we just reviewed and are still feeling stuck in the emotion, it is time to add a layer of support for yourself. What I am going to share with you is how I use intentional thought direction to manage my mind and process my emotions, on a daily basis as well as during more challenging times.
Even when you are not feeling like you are stuck in your emotions, daily intentional thought direction is a beneficial practice.
I don’t know about you, but when I first wake up in the morning, I am met with an unmanaged mind. My unmanaged mind is like a hyperactive toddler running around in a room full of very delicate glass breaking everything in sight. Upon waking, my brain goes directly into negative overdrive offering every negative thought it can squeeze in before I fully wake and take control of my thought patterns. This used to really concern me. What did it mean that I had such negative and anxious thoughts upon waking each morning? What was particularly interesting to me is that I struggled to get control of my thoughts significantly more on the days that I didn’t have to go to work. It was this that led me to creating a morning routine that allowed me to gently take my brain by the hand and direct it to a more productive path for the day.
I would come to learn that there is a biological explanation for what I was experiencing. As it turns out, our bodies experience a natural surge of cortisol, also known as the stress hormone, in the morning and it is at its highest in the first hour after waking. This can lead to feeling somewhat stressed or anxious in the morning. This made sense to explain what was happening, but I still wanted to break the pattern as quickly upon waking as possible.
On work days I had a set and consistent routine for getting out the door on time each morning. I noticed that on the days my mind and body had an objective immediately upon waking the anxious and negative thoughts were either very short lived or even non existent. I didn't have time to give them the attention that they needed to grow. It was the weekends, holidays and summer breaks when I struggled. I thought that what I wanted was to be able to have a slow start on those days. These were, afterall, my days off. What I would come to discover is that I feel better with a consistent routine to set my mind in the direction that I want it to go, rather than letting it run amok on its own. I didn’t need to get up and go to work to set my thoughts on the right path, but I did need a consistent and intentional routine that directed my mind rather than letting my mind direct me.
My morning routine is simple. I pour my coffee, turn on my oil diffuser with a scent I love, feed the porch kitties, and then I settle in to read my morning devotional, spend some time in prayer and finish that off by writing in my journal. By the time I have completed my time writing in my journal, my mind is clear, I feel energized and I am ready for my day.
As I was developing this routine, my brain resisted. Why couldn’t I just wake up and enjoy the day like everyone else in the world? Why did I have to be so intentional every single day? I didn’t have any good answers to those questions, but I knew that I felt noticeably better on the days I followed my morning routine, so I stuck with it.
I want to pause here and clarify, I am sharing what works for me. You don’t have to do any of these things. The point in sharing this is to encourage you to notice if you benefit from having a consistent routine and if so, find what parts of it work for you. And whether you determine that having a set morning routine benefits you or not, be careful about the first things you feed your mind at the beginning of the day. This is setting the tone for the day ahead.
I am going to talk to you about journaling for a moment. Whether you like journaling or avoid it like the plague, there are benefits to developing a journaling practice. I understand the resistance. It took me years of reading over and over about the benefits before I finally developed a journaling practice of my own. Now, I can’t imagine not having this tool at my disposal. I use journaling to capture my thoughts, and I use it to direct my thoughts. If you are not currently in the habit of journaling, I would suggest beginning by using it to intentionally direct your thoughts. This can be as simple as writing out your goals each day. That is how I started. I had read about the benefits of writing out your goals, so I decided to give it a try and started doing that each morning. I wrote out my goals for that year and also my long term five and ten year goals . To be clear, this was not a task list or a to do list. These were big picture long term goals. This list was a list of the tangible outcomes I wanted to create in my life over the next 10 years. I think I started with about 10. And I wrote the same 10 each day. It didn’t take long to do, so it was easy to get into the routine of completing it each day. Before long I found that I really looked forward to that time of directing my attention to my goals for a few moments each morning. Some days I had a little more time to write more detailed accounts of what realizing some of these goals would mean for me. This simple practice changed the way I viewed my time in the mornings. I found myself wanting to get up a little earlier in the morning so that I could spend more time writing out my goals in detail. I was refreshed, focused and full of energy when I closed that journal each morning. I didn’t know it at the time, but by writing out my goals each morning, I was directing my brain rather than letting random thoughts my brain offered direct me. I began to notice that my days were more productive and I felt more fulfilled and purposeful when I intentionally directed my thoughts patterns first thing in the morning.
As I continued to intentionally direct my thoughts in the morning, I was changing my morning thought patterns. I had developed a habit that would also benefit me greatly when I felt stuck in an emotion and the basic processing steps alone aren’t enough to work through it. You don’t necessarily have to write out your goals each day. The key is to write something that actively directs your focus onto something that is positive, constructive and helpful. Maybe you have a positive mantra or affirmation that you want to write out each day, you can list 5 things you are grateful for. You can write out a favorite Bible verse. You can write your theme word for the year and how you intend to use it today. You can write your intentions for the day. What is important is that you are using the writing to intentionally direct your attention and focus onto something constructive for you.
When you combine processing your emotions with intentionally directing your thought patterns, you will have the ability to get yourself unstuck. I’m not saying that it will be immediate or easy, but I do know that it is a repeatable process that works. There is something about writing that effectively helps to interrupt a looping thought pattern so that it can be redirected. You will have plenty of opportunities to do this within your mind throughout the day when you are not writing, but I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes each morning to journal the thoughts you want to focus on.
When we get stuck on a problem or in an emotion and cannot seem to pull ourselves out of it, one of the things that is happening is that we have thoughts about that situation that are keeping us stuck because in the moment we believe them and we are focusing on them. The thought or belief might even be true, but remaining focused on it is causing unproductive pain and that is why you feel stuck.
One of the first things that needs to be done is to interrupt the painful thought pattern. When clients first start doing this work, they are often reluctant to give up their old thought, no matter how painful it is. It feels too true. It might even be true. I’m not going to try to pry that thought out of your brain for you. Instead, I will ask you to find something else that is also true. If you have 25 thoughts running through your mind, let's find the most constructive one and focus your attention there. You aren’t denying the other 24 negative thoughts, you just aren’t going to let them have the spotlight. Instead, put the spotlight onto a helpful, positive, constructive thought. And everytime your brain wants to run over and pick up one of the negative thoughts (which it will!), just gently take it by the hand and lead it back to the better thought. As you spend more time with the helpful, constructive thought, the negative thoughts begin to lose some of their power. Eventually you will gain the strength to see that some of those old, painful thoughts aren’t even true. Eventually you will be ready to reject some of those old, painful thoughts. Until then, it is enough to continue to lead your brain to better thoughts and every time it strays, gently bring it back. This is how you change your thought patterns.
It takes discipline and intention to change your thought patterns. The discipline to change your thought patterns is developed as you continue to direct your brain’s attention to new thoughts. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t quite ready to reject the old thought. It is not enough to just reject the old thought anyway. When you take the old thought away, a void is created. Your brain will not abide with the void. It must be filled. You must give your brain a new thought and a new focus. I love that we can find the new thought first and practice accepting it and being with it even before eliminating the old thought. This prepares us ahead of time to fill the void when the time comes.
You can expect plenty of pushback and resistance at first. Your brain is comfortable with the old thought pattern even though it is causing you pain. It might feel scary to turn away from the old thoughts. That’s okay, just keep walking over to the new thought and spending time with it. Don’t give up and don’t bully yourself. Just keep repeating the process and you will find yourself developing the skill of managing your mind even in the most difficult situations.
That’s all I have for you today, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Running to Myself. You can find previous episodes on apple podcasts and spotify or on my website www.trishastanton.com. New episodes are released each Monday. You can subscribe on Apple or Spotify to automatically receive each new episode as it comes out.
If you know someone who you think would enjoy this podcast, please share it with them! I will be back next week to share a little more about my journey on the road to discovering my truest self.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about my coaching program or have questions about one-on-one coaching or life coaching in general, please visit my website at www.trishastanton.com or my Facebook Group The Simple Truth Coaching. I would love to hear from you!
Have a great week and remember, Mindset Matters!
