Free Yourself From Your Thoughts

This is blog #2 in a series about Your Inner Power. You can read blog #1, Your Power, here.

Once you establish a gap, a space between you and your thoughts and emotions (see last week’s blog post, Your Power), you then get to be the witness of your internal experience as it plays out.

Ta-da! The curtain is lifted, the secret is out - you now get to see how your mind and emotions and body have been operating on autopilot!

Brace yourselves - this can be jarring. It can be quite confronting.

When we start on this journey of being the observer to our internal experience, it can be shocking to see the subconscious thought and emotional patterns that have been running our show behind the scenes - oftentimes since we were very young children!!

But this is where it gets exciting - because this is where your power really gets activated if you choose to then change those patterns you have been operating within.

The first step, as I explained in last week’s blog, is to be that neutral or gentle observer of your internal reality. There’s a reason I shared that Unconditional Love is the most powerful force there is (read other blog here). We cannot change when we are in judgment. Judgment is againstness, is friction, is the opposite of love. Love is where true change happens. Unconditional love is where all possibilities exist. Love is what can dissolve anything and transform everything into something that feels even better. Judgment and love cannot exist at the same time. Therefore, approaching ourselves with neutrality and a loving accepting energy is foundational to every and any effective inner work or change we desire!

When we come from this space, truthfully change is already occurring. Just by approaching ourselves as the witness from a gentle observing position, we already have freed ourselves from the full unconscious grasp of the dynamic we are observing. By witnessing the thought or emotion, we no longer ARE that thought or emotion in the way we operate… we can never again think or feel in that way again without noticing it. By witnessing, we have moved the pattern from unconscious to conscious. It no longer controls us. We now have power over it. And truthfully, I have shifted out of many patterns over the years simply in the observing of them. AND, this has happened for me more and more with practice and experience in working my inner world.

After observing and doing it from a space of neutral, unconditional love - “nothing is either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so” -Williams Shakespeare - we next get to exercise our power of choice. One option, of course, is to observe a thought, accept it as truth, and do nothing about it. But if we never change our thoughts, our reality will never change. 

The most important thing we can do is to question the thoughts we think. “Is this thought true?” “Is this the absolute ultimate truth?” Or even, “Do I want this to be true?”

I remember the first time I learned that just because I thought something, it didn’t make it true.

It was, up to that point in my life, the single most paradigm-shattering experience I’d ever had. 

I was near the beginning of my healing journey (read more here), and it was one of my first experiences with mental health therapy. I was sharing some incredibly deep and personal things with my new therapist and told her that because I survived cancer as a child, I had to live my life to the fullest for the other kids who did not survive cancer. I was, in essence, describing the burden of survivor’s guilt that I had carried with me since I was a child.

I don’t recall the exact words she said, but essentially, it was, “No you don’t. Says who?”

This moment is imprinted in my mind. I floundered, fumbling for words. I had always known that to be true, that I had to make the most of my life for the kiddos that didn’t survive like I did…

It took just that moment, that question, for my entire perception of life to begin to crumble around me. 

She challenged me further, as that entire life framework slipped from my fingers - no one had ever said so. I had made up that belief, that thought… I had made up that entire burden and carried that paradigm for myself. 

I was too muddled, too confused to speak, to make complete sense of it fully in that moment, even that session.

As the days went on it thawed, as I absorbed the realizations that would change my life & path forever.

No one ever told me I had to live for the children that didn’t survive cancer. 

But the implications were larger - I believed something for much of my life, and suddenly - it wasn’t true? That wasn’t reality?? Something different was true???

This is one of the reasons I am such a proponent of therapy for those that feel called to it - it was the first in removing a piece that eventually led to fully unconstructing so many false or unpleasant life beliefs I had collected and subconsciously was slave to throughout my upbringing.

THIS is the power of witnessing our thoughts.

THIS is the power of bringing them from subconscious to our conscious awareness.

THIS is the power we have once we have identified them.

The survivors guilt I had been carrying dissolved quickly after that session. I saw through the illusion those thoughts had created. It wasn’t truth. I didn’t need to carry those lies around that felt so shitty anymore. 

WE CAN CHOOSE IF WE STILL WANT OUR THOUGHTS TO RUN THE SHOW.

WE CAN CHOOSE IF WE WANT THEM TO BE TRUE FOR US.

WE CAN CHOOSE IF WE WANT THESE THOUGHTS TO BE OUR REALITY, OR:

IF WE WANT TO OPEN UP TO SOMETHING GREATER.

SOMETHING MORE EXPANSIVE.

SOMETHING THAT FEELS MORE SPACIOUS, MORE FREEING, MORE COZY, MORE LIKE - 

HOME.

BREATH.

FREEDOM.

SAFETY.

RIGHT INSIDE OF OURSELVES.

WE GET TO CHOOSE OUR THOUGHTS.

WE GET TO QUESTION EVERY THOUGHT INSIDE OF OUR HEAD.

It begins with first observing them.

Then gently loving ourselves and the thought in neutrality.

Next, questioning the thought - do we want this to continue to be true for us?

THEN, we get to choose something different. Choose something NEW.

This is what my next blog post will cover.

CREATING A NEW REALITY FOR OURSELVES.

Starting with our thoughts.

Enjoy becoming aware of your subconscious thoughts - sending my blessings of grace and encouragement with this process!

P.S. I worked with a life coach for much of my process of unraveling old thought and emotional patterns and creating new ones. It starts often as deep and incredibly uncomfortable work. I recommend finding support through the process. If you’d like to explore how working with me as your life coach could support you as you move through this discovery journey, click here.

So much love,

Jenna