We all have an inner critic. It’s that negative voice we hear on repeat. I call her the mean girl in my head. It’s the condescending, negative thoughts that replay in our minds day in and day out. More than likely, you have the same set of negative thoughts running through your mind each day.
Do our thoughts matter?
Does what we focus on matter?
Is there any way to change or get rid of these nasty, mean thoughts that consume us?
I’m so glad you’re here because the answer is YES! You can take control of your mind and the thoughts you think. And it may not be as complicated as you believe it is. You are not stuck, mama. There is hope for you!! Grab some tea or coffee, a pair of headphones and get ready to be encouraged, informed, and inspired to create change in your life by starting with just one thought.
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
(0:00):
Hey mama! Welcome to Her Pursuit, where we simplify time management and uncomplicate productivity, all while finding ourselves again in mom life. Does juggling all the things leave you feeling exhausted and burned out? Do you want more balance between mom life and time for yourself and wish you could just get it together?
(0:21):
Motherhood can be overwhelming and isolating. And while creating routines and managing your time is hard, it’s not complicated and you don’t have to do it alone. My mission is to help you find yourself again and create simple routines all while growing in your faith. I’m Cason, and I’ve been there. I completely lost myself when I became a mom and everything felt like one big, hot mess, but through simple baby steps and mindset shifts, I began to reclaim my time, energy, thoughts, and ultimately, my life.
(0:50):
If you’re ready to trade chaos for calm and take tiny steps of action, then you’re in the right place. You’re about to step into the woman and mama God has called you to be, friend and finally live in freedom with confidence.
(1:02):
That girl is inside of you. And we’re going to find her together through Her Pursuit.
(1:13):
Hey mama. Welcome to another episode of the podcast! I’m so glad that you’re here with me today for part four of our February series. We’ve been talking about how to love yourself well, I titled it Loving You because we’ve been talking about things like self care, loving our bodies, setting boundaries, and today we’re going to be talking about why the way that you talk to yourself matters.
(1:35):
Do the thoughts that you think matter? Does your self-talk matter, does your internal dialogue and narrative matter? And I think that we all know the answer to that is yes, of course it does, but it’s not always easy to know and understand and practically live out in our lives, how to change it.
(1:53):
Like what do we do about it? How do we change the narrative? How do we step into a new story? How do we rewrite and rewire those thoughts that maybe we’ve thought our entire lives? It’s not an easy thing to do. I’m not going to lie to you. It’s not, like this isn’t a show that’s sharing a bunch of hacks and quick how-to’s and easy cut to the chase type deal.
(2:16):
This takes work. And this has been a process I have been on in my own journey for years. Now not with the same things, necessarily. Some of them are the same, but I’m also working on different thoughts and rewriting different narratives that have to do with different areas of my life. And I think that that’s what I want you to hear is that there is hope. It may feel overwhelming when you’re starting at first.
(2:39):
Like, where do I start because of my mind and my head, my thoughts feel like one big jumbled up pot of like spaghetti noodles that’s just all over the place, all interwoven and tangled and bunched up and bundled up. And the very first way that I want to encourage you the very first step that I’m going to advise anyone ever, when they feel like they’re dealing with that sort of overwhelm is to reach out to someone who is trained, who has the background and the knowledge and the capability to help you untangle these things and take it apart and look at it for what it is, and maybe rewrite some of these thoughts.
(3:19):
I can only speak from my life experience, what I’ve learned, but I’m definitely, always going to advocate for counseling and therapy, if you feel like that’s something you need, there’s no shame there. I have been, I have gone when things were quote, unquote, fine. Nothing was really wrong or triggered, but it was something that I did. And honestly, something that I need to get back to, to just work through, you know, the different things that I’m working through now, like I just said, but please know, there’s no shame in reaching out to someone who is able to help you work through those things.
(3:54):
And I know as moms, we are the last person on our list. We are the last ones that we make sure are taken care of. But this February series is about Loving You. So this is one way that you can love yourself well is to have someone come alongside you. Have someone who will hold you accountable and has the knowledge and the expertise and the years and years of training to help you work through these things.
(4:17):
So I have to put that little note in the beginning, and I also want us to dive in to some things that I have found to be helpful in my own life. Maybe some things that you can try in your life, just some questions to ask yourself, some things to work through. But always remember if it starts to feel too heavy, if it feels like too much, if you feel yourself shutting down or you don’t know what to do and how to process with these things that may come up for, you always reach out for help.
(4:42):
There is nothing wrong with that. We have to normalize getting help for our mental health and taking care of our mental health. So I want to start with kind of the spiritual and it’s going to be woven into this episode kind of throughout, but I want to talk about the spiritual side of things here as a Christian mama. You are at war, so you have the Holy Spirit living inside of you.
(5:07):
You are doing your best to follow Jesus. You are trying to get into the Word you, want to follow Him. And the enemy does not want you to have any part of that. He does not want you to know God more. He doesn’t want you to walk out your faith. He doesn’t want you to take steps of faith. He, most of the time is going to attack the mind.
(5:30):
Joyce Meyer, and I’ve never read this book. A friend told me that it is really good, but Joyce Meyer wrote a book called The Battlefield of the Mind. And I just think that when we can see the mind for what it is, when we can see our thoughts for what they are, that for me is empowering. And I hope that it empowers you as well.
(5:47):
When you can kind of recognize the game, the mind games that I like to talk about, because Satan is going to attack you. And you’re going to believe the same lies that you tend to believe over and over and over. Like, if you were to evaluate your thoughts for one day, if we could just only focus on our thoughts and the things that come up as we are going about our daily lives, you’re going to find that you have this internal dialogue, you have this internal narrative and the typical voices…
(6:14):
The typical responses or thoughts, the automatic thoughts that come to you, that you may not even recognize those things are centered around a central theme. So maybe it’s that you don’t feel like a good mom and maybe throughout your day, all the things that you’re doing or when things don’t go right, or you feel like you failed, then those are the thoughts that you tell yourself.
(6:35):
So it’s centered around this one thing, and that one thing is different for almost everybody, but there are at least three categories or buckets that all the negative thoughts can fall into. So we don’t feel capable. We don’t feel loved and we feel helpless or hopeless. So your negative thoughts will fall into more than likely one of those categories.
(7:02):
And I believe as Christian women, once we can recognize those things and when they’re coming up and when they’re kind of really loud and taking over our mental space, when we can call it out, then we can replace it with truth, but we cannot fight, we can’t engage in the battle if we aren’t even aware of what’s there.
(7:22):
So for me, half the battle was making time and space to sit and think about or bringing awareness to as I’m going throughout my day… What are things that come up? What are the thoughts that I tend to think? And for me it was,” you’re a hot mess. You’re not a good mom. You know, things will never change.
(7:42):
This is just how you are.” So what does that look like for you when you are really frustrated about your day or when you have reached your breaking point? What kinds of things are you thinking? What thoughts typically invade your mind? Maybe whenever you are trying to go to bed at night and you’re laying down and it’s really still and quiet and things start to come into your mind.
(8:06):
I know there’s a lot of things that come into your mind, but if you start to think more on this and bring awareness to it, and also if you pray and ask God to show you, I fully believe that He will reveal those things to you. And that is so huge in being able to fight back.
(8:22):
Because if you don’t know what you’re fighting, if we don’t know what we’re fighting against, how can we fight back with. We, we can know who we are in Christ. We can know what God’s Word says, and we can, we can quote Scripture and repeat it in our mind. And I feel like that is very helpful to do, but we want to fight back specifically with those attacks that the enemy is making on our minds. Your thoughts become your reality.
(8:47):
That’s how powerful they are. You can believe something for so long that it becomes your truth, because what you think directly influences how you feel and your behaviors. So if you think you’re hot mess, this is my go-to example. If you think you’re a hot mess, you’ll feel like a hot mess. And then you’ll act like a hot mess, which reinforces that belief that you must just be a hot mess.
(9:10):
And you can insert whatever phrase or whatever kind of mom you want to hear. Like you’re a failure. You’re not a good mom. Anything. If you’re continually thinking you are that thing, or you’re not that thing, then that’s what you see evidence of in your life. It’s what you notice. It’s what grows and is reinforced.
(9:28):
And that is who you become. So for years I believed I was a hot mess. Well, I was, that’s what I became, but at my core, that was not my identity. Does this makes sense? I think you can live out of alignment for, I mean, I, I guess your entire life or majority of your life, you can walk within characteristics and identities that aren’t truly who you are, labels if you will.
(9:53):
But because of one thought that you allowed to take root, it seeps into your whole being and becomes who you are. Even though you may not have even noticed it taking root. It’s the craziest thing. And that’s why we have to be on guard. We have to be so aware and we have to be prepared to engage in this battle.
(10:10):
Recent neuroscience has found that your mind is the boss. I nerd out over this stuff. Your mind controls everything. I love to learn and research all about it. So fascinating to me. And I’ve really dove into this whole topic and idea a couple years back. And when I began to better understand my mind and how it works, everything changed.
(10:31):
I’m learning to understand these concepts because it’s so cool. And it’s almost like enlightening and empowering because I realized I was being tricked, kind of like I’d fallen for one big lie. Most of who I was at that point had been based, was being based on false beliefs, and Satan in my own mind had me convinced there was no other option.
(10:52):
There was no other possibility for me in my life. This is just how things were, how they would always be. I was so stuck. My mindset was so fixed. But God. Aren’t you thankful for His mercy and how He uses circumstances in all kinds of situations to lead us back to Him, because He got my attention. Let me tell you, and I’m going to share more of my story around that season of life soon.
(11:15):
So make sure you hit the plus button, the follow button, subscribe, whatever you need to do to the podcast. So you don’t miss that episode. But I think that God uses things in our lives, circumstances and situations to kind of shake us and get our attention. That was a turning point for me. I was like, “okay, enough is enough.
(11:33):
This there’s gotta be more to this. This is not… I know at my core, there’s more,” and maybe at your core, you know how you’ve been living and the thoughts you’ve been thinking aren’t really who you are, but you don’t really know how to shift it. I’m going to link to an article that interviews Dr. Caroline Leaf. If you struggle with anxiety, if the mental stuff interests you, if you feel like you have a mental mess, you have to listen to her.
(11:56):
I have learned so much from her over the past few years. And I found an interview that she did online. There’s an article. She explains the difference between the mind and the brain, because most of us probably just think it’s one thing. I know I did a couple years back before I really dove into this.
(12:11):
They’re the same, but they’re, they’re not. So she says the mind works through the brain, but is separate from the brain. The mind uses the brain and the brain responds to the mind. The mind also changes the brain. People choose their actions, their brains do not force them to do anything. Yes, there would be no conscious experience without the brain, but experience cannot be reduced to the brain’s actions.
(12:34):
The mind is energy and it generates energy. That’s what your mind does through thinking, feeling and choosing. It is our aliveness, without which the physical brain and body would be useless. That means we are our mind, and mind and action is how we generate energy in the brain. So I feel like I’ve experienced this reality firsthand in a way, when I read this article, it reminds me of how I felt almost every day during that season of life, because when you’re just surviving, when you’re just barely getting by, for me, at least things were really foggy.
(13:08):
Almost dull. And aside from having no energy, literally, I feel like no energy was being generated within my mind. I should say the positive con, not the con where you truly feel alive and vibrant and you really can’t explain it. Like I can’t put into words until you’ve moved from this place of survival mode, gone from surviving to thriving and actually feel like you’re truly living and really feel a lot.
(13:34);
I just didn’t really feel much then. And I was just kind of existing, you know, maybe you’ve been there and maybe, maybe you’re there now, but maybe if you’ve been there and now you’re not, you, you understand what I’m saying. It is kind of hard to put into words, but I feel like I’ve learned how to generate positive energy within my mind that in turn affects my brain and my body.
(13:54):
I’ve learned to direct my thoughts and take control, most of the time now. Obviously we still, we’re not ever going to be perfect, but I’ve learned to better do this and retrain thoughts and essentially rewire these thoughts, how to think and what to do. And like I said, I know that it probably sounds crazy.
(14:14):
I’m really oversimplifying the whole process, but she goes on to say, knowing your mind and brain are separate puts you in the control seat, because you can learn to manage your thoughts and actions. Ultimately it means you can choose what you build into your brain and how you choose to change what’s already built in.
(14:32):
This is good news. When you learn, she says, when you learn how to manage your mind, you can make feelings of depression, stress, anger, and anxiety work for you. Instead of against you, you bring balance back into your brain and life. Now she, she’s not saying, and I’m not saying that you just need to will this, like, you need to just stick this out and tough it out and just do this thing all alone.
(14:57):
No counseling, no therapy, no medications. That’s not what she’s saying. So do not hear me. I feel like the church has done a terrible job, at least for me growing up, in the messages that are heard, feeling like that, the reason you have anxiety and depression is because you don’t have enough faith.
(15:12):
And I feel like there are a lot. This is a very, very touchy subject. My opinion on it, which is a not biblically trained or non-medically educated opinion. So keep that in mind, just from my life experience of someone who has struggled with anxiety, majority of my life, I just didn’t understand it. And I didn’t know what was actually going on, what was causing it.
(15:36):
I felt powerless. I felt helpless. I felt hopeless. I felt stuck. And there was no one who was telling me these things. That you can choose what you build into your brain and how you choose to change what’s already in there. You can learn to manage your thoughts and actions. I didn’t know how to do that.
(15:54):
And so I did need medication for a season. I did have intense counseling and therapy for a season. And like I said, I need to go back just because just kinda like maintenance mode because there’s nothing wrong with talking to someone. That’s literally all therapy is, is you go and you talk to someone about all the things that you’ve been bottling up or suppressing from yourself and the world and acting like you’re fine when you’re not. Or maybe, you know, you’re not and this person can help you work through these thoughts and work through your feelings and, and help you connect the dots as to why…
(16:27):
Where it’s coming from. And then once you have the understanding, then you can work to rewire and retrain the way your brain works. But this is the power of your thoughts. It’s the power of your mind. And it’s, it’s very powerful. And when you can harness the power and make it work for you instead of against you, it is so empowering.
(16:49):
It is so freeing and that is possible for you. Hear me when I say that is possible for you. Every morning when you wake up. I did not know this before. I started digging into all this research and science. Every morning when you wake up, new nerve cells, they’ve been created and they are just waiting. They’re kind of like little babies that are just waiting to be trained.
(17:10):
They can either be used for positive thoughts or negative ones. So they can, and I’m very much oversimplifying this, but they can kind of fall into old thought patterns and tell you the same stories over and over, or they can be used for a new thought pattern and you can decide you want to create a positive thought or a different thought.
(17:32):
And I think it’s so cool that in the Bible, it says God’s mercies are new every morning. He gives you the opportunity to begin rewiring your thoughts every single day. Isn’t that so amazing? Lamentations 3 verse 22 says the faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is His faithfulness.
(17:50):
His mercies begin afresh each morning. The brain is not fixed. Your mind and your brain is not fixed as is. You are not stuck. You are not stuck. You are not stuck. I like want to make a banner and just like, or a flag and just like wave it around because for the longest time I felt stuck. Like, there’s just no where to go, because I don’t know how, I don’t know where, I don’t know what, I just don’t know.
(18:17):
And so I’m stuck here. I’m stuck and your brain, tells you, you’re stuck. You’re stuck. And your thoughts tell you you’re stuck. You’re stuck. But if you take these thoughts and I’m going to, I’m going to kind of give you like a little bitty exercise to do in the mornings. If you take these things and you start to think a new thought.
(18:34):
Over time, you’re going to notice how things start to shift in your life. The new cells that you have each day, they can be redirected to a new, a new belief, a new habit, a new pattern. That is possible for you, friend. It is possible for you because it’s how God has designed you. It’s how He created us. And it blows my mind.
(18:55):
Is this blowing anybody else’s mind? I hope that it is. You hold so much possibility within yourself every single morning when you wake up. Every single day. So, you know, I believe in a mini morning routine and the power of getting centered and grounded before you get started with your day. And this is part of the reason why it is truly powerful.
(19:16):
So when you wake up, here’s the little exercise that I want you to try to walk through in the mornings. And it’s hard to do it because you automatically pick up your phone or feeding a baby or get up to get dressed or go to the bathroom, whatever it is. But in the mornings, try to bring this to your attention.
(19:32):
Maybe you write yourself a note. Maybe you create an alarm that says… Ask these questions or think these thoughts when you wake up, bring awareness to the first thought that you think. What is the very first thought that runs through your mind? For me then, it was almost like, “oh no, I can feel it in my body already.
(19:52):
There’s the anxiety. There’s the heart racing. I feel the dread. I feel the overwhelm. I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to get out of bed. I don’t have any energy.” And slowly and I mean, very slowly, I began to catch myself in the middle of that thought and I would say, no, this is what I’m focusing on.
(20:12):
And I’d speak truth to myself. I’d think on truth. And I want to challenge you to do that same thing. Maybe you set your phone wallpaper or write a thought you want to think and put it on a post-it note on your mirror, your coffee maker, beside your bed, wherever. Wherever you need to that’s going to get your attention.
(20:30):
And if you’re going to do this, please take a picture and tag me on socials or send me a DM. Let me know, because I want to hold you accountable. And I want to know that you are actually taking steps to change these thoughts and I’m cheering you on. I want to be able to cheer you on. So taking one thought captive and making sure that it’s positive, truthful, uplifting, right, honorable.
(20:51):
Philippians 4:8 says, “finally, whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, whatever is commendable, anything that is excellent, anything worthy of praise. Think about these things.” Think about these things, make sure your thought falls into one of those categories. And I promise that this is going to change your life.
(21:13):
It sounds so simple. It sounds like it’s really not going to make that big of a deal or a big difference, but it does. Okay. I want to leave you with one more reminder from Scripture. It’s from Romans 8 and it says, “those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh. But those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death.
(21:39):
But to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.” And I know that’s what you want in your life, friend. I know that you want to live an abundant life. I know you want to walk in peace and that is waiting for you. You just have to choose. It’s your choice how you live, what you set your mind on. So make sure that you are holding yourself accountable.
(22:03):
Get into the community group. And let us know if you need accountability, let us know the thought you’re going to think every day, this week, every morning, whenever you wake up, what thought are you shifting? And what are you shifting it to? When you set your mind on the things of the Spirit, there’s a life in peace, and I’ve seen the evidence of this in my own life firsthand.
(22:25):
There is hope for you. Your thoughts do matter. How you think, the things you think about yourself, the way you talk to yourself, the thoughts that you think matter and they affect you every single day in all kinds of ways. So paying attention to this, taking ownership of this, and living intentionally in this way is a huge way that you can love yourself.
(22:47):
And I pray that you’ll do that before you go. If this show has encouraged or inspired you in any way, the number one way you can help me is to leave a written review letting other moms know how this podcast is impacting your life and motherhood. Then send this episode to some mom friends. Thank you for joining me in the mission of spreading messages, just like this one to moms around the world.
(23:09):
If you’re looking for a community of like-minded mamas to come alongside you, support and encourage, join our Facebook group by searching Her Pursuit or by clicking the link in the show notes. Come share with us what you’re taking away from this episode. What stuck out to you. I can’t wait to hear from you.
(23:24):
I’m so grateful to have you on this journey with me and I’ll see you next time, mama.
