038: Spring Cleaning For Our Thoughts

Do you have a negative thought that you often find yourself thinking? We all struggle with these from time to time but you don’t have to let these thoughts overtake you.
In this episode, I am talking about spring cleaning your thoughts! The goal here isn’t to only have positive thoughts but instead to get rid of the thoughts that aren’t serving you.
I talk about where you can start with spring cleaning your brain and thought life and I even share a few of the thoughts I’ve decided to eliminate from my life.
What you’ll find in this episode:
A segment on keeping it real
Why the goal isn’t to only have positive thoughts
Where to start with spring cleaning your brain
Thoughts I’ve decided to eliminate
Read the transcript of the episode below:
 Ep 38 Spring Cleaning for Our Thoughts

While you might be doing some spring cleaning around your house today, we're going to be doing some spring cleaning around our brains. This is episode 38: spring cleaning for our thoughts.

Welcome to the Committed to Create Podcast. I'm Lisa Funk, and I am so excited to hang out with you here as we talk about the power of creating with our hands and our minds. I like to keep it real, remind you that you are not alone and share specific ways that creativity and mindfulness can help us live even more meaningful and joyful lives.

I am so glad that you're here.

Hello, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad that you're here. This is episode 38, and I'm excited to chat with you more about spring cleaning and what spring cleaning our brains looks like.

First, we are going to have a segment called Keeping It Real.

So for today's segment, I just wanted to share a little bit of a life snippet from recently. I did not release a podcast episode last week, and you may know that that's semi unusual for me. I'm pretty consistent with releasing a podcast episode every week. And what happened was that we went on a trip in our trailer for spring break and we had some major car trouble. And it was really frustrating and hard.

And the whole time I was thinking, this feels like a podcast episode one day, but it might be a little too fresh still. I don't want to say traumatic, but it was definitely challenging. And we ended up extending our trip because we were getting our car fixed while we were on vacation and it all worked out.

It all worked out and now I'm back and it's all good. But I just wanted to keep it real and let you know that we don't have to believe the lie that we can never miss or that we can never take a break or that we can never miss a Monday. I don't know if that's like your favorite saying then it's totally fine. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But, I think that sometimes we have to give ourselves a chance to be human and to have things be different and just not to hold ourselves to some standard that is sometimes impossible.

Now, while we were on our trip, I was kind of wishing that I had just brought my podcast microphone with me and that way I could have recorded on the road. I have done that before, but. It's all good. It's all good. And here you are back with me again.

The other thing I'm going to keep it real about in this little segment is that I am probably going to have to pause the recording to sneeze like 10 times. Do any of you get allergies in the spring? Oh my gosh.

Here in Arizona, the trees by us, these Ash trees are beautiful. They lose their leaves in, like, January, and then they start coming back and, of course, flowers are blooming and there's pollen in the air and I'm not sure exactly what it is, which element there, or maybe all of them that affects me so much, but I just have terrible allergies.

So I do take something for it, but it doesn't always last all day. And I just find myself sneezing like crazy. So I never had allergies until I moved to Arizona. I don't know what the deal is. We went to California for spring break and I was fine. I don't know. Is it because I grew up there and lived there for so long? But I had no allergies when I was there.

I don't know what it is, but anyway, we're just keeping it real today. I'm so glad to be back and to share this episode with you.

All right. So for today's episode, we're talking about spring cleaning, we're talking about thoughts. And if you've been around here for awhile, you know, that I believe that our brains are so powerful and that their job is to try to protect us. Their job is also to create thoughts. Sometimes our brains do this without us realizing it.

Sometimes we try to get into the driver's seat and inform our brains of what thoughts we would like to think. Sometimes I like to compare this to being on autopilot or on GPS. And, you know, we just are kind of going wherever our brain is telling us to go. But sometimes we don't realize that someone put the wrong address in.

Have you ever had this happen? Where you put the address in, but it went to a different city or a different, it was like west instead of east or, something got mixed up and sometimes you're just on autopilot and you're just following the GPS for a while before you think, wait a minute, this is taking me in a really weird direction. This is taking me in a direction that I do not want to go at that point.

We have to stop be intentional and really figure out where it is that we want to go make sure that it's the right place and double check the directions and the way to get there. And I just like to compare that to our brain and our thoughts and that we just, most of the time follow whatever the GPS is telling us. And that works for us a lot of the time. And I don't believe that we need to stop and, you know, pull the car over every street and triple check every single turn.

Just relating that to our thoughts. It's not like we need to stop every minute and think, wait, hold on, what thoughts did I just think. Are those good thoughts? Are those helping me? No, it is a lot of work to become aware of your thoughts and to try to change them. And I don't think that that's the goal. I don't think that the goal is to become aware of every single thought you're thinking and try to change them to all positive thoughts.

That's just not the goal. For me, and it's not possible anyway, because we're human and we're going to have hard experiences. And we're going to want to think things that aren't always positive. I don't want to think amazing thoughts about someone. I love passing away. I just don't want to, I want to be sad about it.

I want to feel bad. And so for me, there are thoughts that are appropriately negative for me. If someone says something I think is hurtful, I'm okay to feel sad about that. That is not something that I necessarily want to change to where I'm going to say. That's fine. They can say whatever they want. I don't care.

No, I still am okay with believing that that doesn't feel good. I don't like hearing that. And I'm aware that that's a thought that I could possibly work on or change. And that is what we're going to talk about today is, what thoughts do we want to become aware of? And what thoughts do we want to maybe clean out and evaluate and say, is this a thought that I would like to keep? Is this serving me? Is this helping me? Or is this a thought that I maybe don't need to hold on to?

So I want to talk about thoughts obviously, and just how they really do affect how we feel.

And I don't necessarily subscribe to the belief that every single feeling or emotion or sensation we have comes from a thought. I think that our feelings can be affected by our physiology by or hormones by exercise or movement. I think there are a lot of different things that can affect how we feel. But I do believe that when we think certain things, it does affect our feelings for better or for worse, and that it is helpful to begin to be aware of what thoughts our brain is coming up with.

So now it'd be a good time to review the motivational triad. Our brains' motivational triad, which I talked about in some of the early episodes of this podcast, and the three things that our brain focuses on are seeking pleasure, conserving energy, and avoiding pain. And so we can understand that a lot of the thoughts our brain is going to naturally come up with are related to trying to protect us.

And when you think about it, it makes sense. You know, for so many years, it was really important for us to be able to scan for danger and to be aware of something that might be going to attack us or needing to keep eating and conserving energy and all of that makes sense for why for so many, you know, thousands of years that our brain would be wired that way.

The thing is that now that we aren't trained to avoid saber tooth tigers, some of those go-tos for our brain don't always serve us. But it is helpful to understand, oh, my brain is just trying to protect me because it's trying to help me avoid pain. That's why it's coming up with that thought. Or it's trying to help me to just seek pleasure and not necessarily do the hard work or face the challenge or, oh, my brain is just trying to help me conserve energy, which is why it may be worried about me following this goal that may seem unnecessary.

So like I said, I don't think it's really the goal, especially not at first when you're learning about thought work, I don't think it's the goal to try to be aware of every single thought that you're going to have. I mean, they say that we have like 60,000 thoughts a day, so that's not going to be possible anyway, but I don't think that our goal is to try to just pay attention all day long every day.

I do believe that thoughts can affect us, which is why I believe so strongly in mantras and affirmations and sayings, because it's a very effective and quick way to create great thoughts, powerful thoughts that can serve us so well without needing to evaluate every thought we have decided if it's a good one, try to change it.

It's like, no, I know that I want to have these positive mantras. I know that I want to have these beliefs. And so that's why I'm going to focus on them and try to inform my brain. That's like typing into the GPS where you want to go and making sure that the directions are correct. That's being intentional with the way that you're using this machine of your brain.

So that is part of why I came up with the Guide to Mindful Lettering and the Daily mindful Lettering books. I have created one that's about living with love, and it has 30 days of affirmations, all about self-love and love and compassion for others and for your community. And it's so powerful and people have just been loving it, which is why I have been working on the next edition of Daily Mindful Lettering.

And I am so excited to be able to share that with you. Soon, I'm still working on it, but it's coming together and I can't wait for you to get it into your hands. I really got a lot of amazing input for this edition and I think you're going to love it.

And so that is why I focus on these Daily Mindful Lettering books. It's a way to inform our brains. It's a way to put those thoughts into our head of where we want to be focusing. So that our brains, don't always just default to avoid pain, seek pleasure and conserve energy.

So. What I want to talk about today is all right. Well, we want to spring clean our brains a little bit. We wanted, you know, get rid of some of the thoughts that aren't really serving us, but we don't want to try to keep track of every single thought. So where do we start?

And I want to suggest starting with a repeat thought, a go-to thought, a thought that comes up a lot for you that may not be serving you. And you may think, okay, well, how do I figure out what that thought is?

Well, I talked about how our thoughts do cause our feelings. And so I would pay attention to when you're not feeling good. When you might have a recurring feeling that doesn't feel helpful and there are plenty of negative feelings that we have, but sometimes it feels like an appropriate negative emotion.

So it feels like, my daughter didn't make the team for that thing, and I am really disappointed about that. That feels appropriate to me. And that's, like, an emotion that I feel is valid and that I'm okay with feeling that way. Or I found out that someone I love is sick and I'm feeling really sad. That feels appropriate, and I feel good about that.

What I'm talking about are the times when you're feeling negative emotion, you're not feeling good, but it may not feel appropriate for the situation. It may feel exaggerated for the situation dramatic or super frustrated or annoyed, or it's something that kind of comes up again and again. It may be it's irritation with yourself or with other people that you just think, you know what, that, isn't how I want to feel that isn't serving me or helping me in any way.

So those are the thoughts that I want to talk about. And I am going to share with you several of those thoughts that I have had and some that I still have and want to do some spring cleaning on.

So I'm going to share them as examples. You may not share these same kind of negative go-to thoughts, but I'd like you to just think about it when you're kind of spiraling or you're in a bad place where you don't like where your brain is going, give attention to the thoughts that it likes to go to.

We all have those thoughts that our brain is like, ooh, I know what to say. Now I'm going to get really annoyed. And this is what I'm going to say every time. And it's like, okay. And I am not here to tell you that you need to get rid of certain thoughts. You can keep all your thoughts, like if things are working for you and you're like, you know what I am, I'm good. Then you're probably not listening to this episode.

For those of us who sometimes have moments where we'd like to feel a little bit better, change our perspective, change our mindset so that we don't have unnecessary suffering over something, this is for us.

So one thought that I used to think that I decided did not serve me and that I wanted to clean out and eliminate from my vocabulary was "I'm such a bad mom."

Now, if you're not a mom, or if you, you could say, you could fill in anything like, I'm such a bad student, or I'm such a bad wife or whatever it might be that you might say to yourself. And we say these things without even realizing it. And we say it sometimes this kind of self-deprecating, we think that it's the right thing to do, or we're being, you know, humble or we're trying to just be honest with ourselves.

We feel terrible. Maybe we say something to our kids that we regret. We kind of lose our cool, or we don't fulfill their expectations or, you know, we don't have the perfect Pinterest leprechaun trap PS, I do, like,zero for St. Patrick's Day. I'm actually not a huge holiday mom. So for those of you out there who love it, keep loving it, keep doing it for those of you out there who are like, I really don't want to do that.

That feels really awful to me. You know, you don't have to do it anyway. There are lots of reasons why our brain might go to that and say, oh my gosh, I'm such a bad mom. When we maybe feel disappointed with ourselves.

And I just found that it never helped me. It never improved the way that I felt it never inspired me to want to be better. It just made me feel shame. Anytime you're feeling shame. It's really helpful to try to pinpoint what thoughts are causing that shame.

So for me, that thought I'm such a bad mom. It just, wasn't helping me. And I really decided that I was not going to think at anymore. I was not going to go there anymore. That wasn't going to be part of my vocabulary. And so I just don't say it. I don't say it. I don't think it.

And it takes a while. At first you catch yourself. You start saying it and you're like, I'm such a bad, oh Nope. You know what, I'm doing my best. So it does help to sometimes have an alternate to go to when you're going to stop, because you're like, okay, I don't want to say it, but it's still kind of in my mind right there.

It's like, you know what? I'm not such a bad mom. I am always trying my best and my best is all I can do. And it's great.

So. That is one phrase, one thought that I have cleaned out. I do not think that anymore. I think that I am the best mom for my kids. I think that I mess up all the time and that it's okay. I love to apologize to my kids. I shouldn't say love, but I do really aim to and try to apologize often to my kids when I do something that I wish I hadn't, and it's still a positive experience for us.

And I once heard a parenting teacher talk about how making amends with each other, repairing our relationship causes so much connection and that we're not supposed to be perfect. And that when we kind of, come to each other in our imperfections and ask for forgiveness and forgive each other and everything, it can make our relationship so much stronger. And I'm like, um, I'm in, I'm in for that because I'm not perfect and I don't need to be perfect and that's not what I'm going to expect of myself. And so I have to that thought out.

Another thought that I have cleaned out of my brain is, "I am so busy." I decided a long time ago that it did not serve me at all to believe that I was busy or to be busy or to think about being busy. It just, it just didn't.

I know that it's kind of popular to be busy. I know it's kind of popular to talk about being busy. And some people think that it's a badge of honor to be really busy and I just don't.

So I decided I want white space in my life. I want time to be able to go over and help a friend if they need it or hang out with my mom when she comes over, I don't want to be like, oh, hi, sorry. I don't really have time. I got to go do this thing.

Now, I'm not throwing shade on anybody who finds themselves in that situation a lot. You do you. This, you know, some of these thoughts may or may not apply to you. For me. I just thought, I don't want to be busy. That doesn't feel helpful to me to think that I'm busy. It's not improving my life in any way.

I actually don't want to live a busy life. I want to live a life where I am present. I'm not rushed. I don't feel frantic. I don't feel panicked. That feels so much better to me. So that means that subconsciously I also start making choices that make my life less busy because I'm not busy. I really am not.

And some people will say you have four small children, you run a business. And I say, I know, and I really am not busy. If you saw my day to day, I spent a lot of time with my two year old and we go to the park and we hang out at home in play and we watch Muppet babies and we go to the store and we do all kinds of fun things.

He loves to draw. So I often share his drawings on Instagram in my stories, because they're so cute and I love how he doesn't care if it's perfect, he's not trying to meet some unrealistic expectation of being able to like do brush lettering on the first try. He just loves the experience of drawing.

I just love that. So anyway, that's this total side note, a little tangent there, but I really am not busy. And it feels so good because that is the life that I want. And so I decided to clean that thought out from my brain and eliminate it. I just don't ever say that anymore. And it changes how I feel and it changes how I plan out my time and my days. And it's the best.

I highly recommend this trying this out because it can be such a go-to for people. When someone asks, how are you doing? Oh, good, busy as always, you know, just so busy. And I challenge you to not say that. And a lot of people will say to me, oh my gosh, I'm sure you're so busy. And I just say, no, I'm actually not busy. I'm actually not busy at all. It's so great. And it just feels so good.

So again, that's personal for me, but feel free to borrow that if that seems like it might bless your life.

Another thought that I decided to get rid of is the thought "I can never do anything right". Now, I'm not saying that it doesn't ever come up for me, but I used to go to this thought more regularly. And it was when I was frustrated. If someone, you know, might have criticized the way I was doing something or was unhappy that I had forgotten to do whatever they might have hoped I would. And I would say, oh my gosh, I just can never do anything right. Maybe I was even disappointed with myself for doing something imperfectly, and I just found it didn't help me at all. Didn't inspire me. It didn't make me want to change. It didn't make me feel a negative emotion that was appropriate or felt useful.

Sometimes negative emotions are useful. Sometimes it feels useful to feel uncomfortable about certain things. And then there are other negative thoughts that are not helpful at all.

So believing I never can do anything right, again, that's causing some shame and it's just not helpful.

Another thought along those same lines is "what is wrong with me?" That seems like such a benign thing and such a benign thought. You might be thinking, oh, come on, Lisa. That's not a big deal. All of us say that when we mess up, oh gosh, what's wrong with me?

And, you know, that's just a way of like, you know, being humble or realizing that we're not perfect or whatever. And if it works for you again, great.

But for me, it's like, our brain loves answering questions. And so if we say what's wrong with me, our brains going to be like, what's wrong with you is that you can never do anything right. What's wrong with you is that you always make this mistake and you're always late and you're not dependable or you're lazy or whatever your brain decides to tell you, but we don't want our brains to answer that question. It is not going to inspire us. It's not going to make us feel good or help us to improve it. Isn't at least not for me. And so that is a thought that I have gotten rid of, and it is so much better.

Now, there are also some thoughts that sometimes we share with other people or some things that we might say that aren't helpful either. And this is one that I still am using, this is one that I still use regularly that I have not cleaned out yet. And that I have decided I want to clean out.

And the phrase is, "what were you thinking?"

You guys, this is my go-to thought. This is my go-to phrase. When I'm frustrated with my kids, when they do something, I just immediately say, what were you thinking? What were you thinking?

I mean, I'm not talking about anything wrong. I'm talking about like a major thing that feels big. Not just they forgot their water bottle or something like that, not that rude, but I'll say that and it doesn't ever help. They're never like, oh, you know what? I was thinking, this.

Now if I want to try to problem solve and get to the bottom of what was going on, there are other more helpful questions. And even maybe the same question in a different tone or coming from a different emotion might be helpful if I were to say, okay, so, you know, you got really upset. Tell me what you were thinking. Maybe the same phrase could be used, but when I'm saying it, the way that I normally say it is not helpful. Let me tell you.

And probably because it induces some shame. I am seeing a pattern here. So that thought has to do with other people. And it's one that, like I said, I haven't cleaned out yet, but I'm going to work on it. Hopefully I will really see a difference because I don't want to go to that thought or that saying, and so I'm going to have to come up with another one or something else to go to when I want to say, what were you thinking? I'm going to think about that.

Okay. Next up is another thought that is in reference to other people that doesn't serve any of us. And that thought is "if he loved me, he would dot, dot, dot" know what to do. If he loved me, he would do this or that. She would do this or that. They would do this. If they loved me, you know, blank, fill in the blank.

I just find that this doesn't ever help. And I'm not saying that we can't ever feel bad for ourselves. I'm not trying to eliminate every negative thought in the world.

But if there's a thought that you go to regularly, like, maybe you get frustrated with your partner quite a bit. And you notice that every time that you get frustrated, you think, oh, if he really loved me, he would do this, or if he really cared. And I just find that that's just not generally very helpful because for the most part, our partners do care and there are other reasons why they may not know what would be helpful or why they may not be doing what we wish they would.

Last thought that I wanted to share that I still want to get rid of is "why do I always have to be the one to... blank." I don't know. I'm still thinking about this one because I say it quite a bit when I'm frustrated about something. And I don't know, I do want to get rid of it. I do think that it would be helpful for me to come up with a different thought because it just, isn't helpful for me to focus on something that, I mean, what does that even mean?

You know, it's like, why do I always have to be the one to remember to buy the birthday presents? Or I don't know, whatever, fill in the blank, whatever the thing is for you. And that was just something that I, that I thought of another thought that I kind of go to sometimes that may not be super helpful for me.

So I hope that as I have shared some personal experiences with eliminating and cleaning out my brain and cleaning out different thoughts, that maybe you have thought of some thoughts that aren't serving you that are go-tos for you, that are thoughts that you kind of turn to easily, that you find yourself repeating and that are either bringing on shame or just increasing a spiral of annoyance or frustration that isn't a road you want to keep going down.

So I encourage you to just, you know, pay attention next time you're feeling negative feelings and see if there are some thoughts that aren't helpful that you may want to decide, you know what, I'm going to clean that out and see how it feels. See what thoughts are not serving you.

And I'm going to say that all of the negative thoughts about yourself probably are on that list. I really don't think it's ever helpful to talk negatively about ourselves.

Okay. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. If you are interested in doing some mindful lettering to increase the positive thoughts that you have, go over to hand lettered design.com. You can check out our Guide to Mindful Lettering and our Daily Mindful Lettering book. We will soon be adding another edition of that. I can't wait to share more about it.

I always appreciate your reviews for the podcast. I read every single one and they make me so happy. And I also love checking in with you on Instagram. I am at hand letter design over there and I just am so grateful for this community.

You guys are the best. I can't wait to talk to you again next week.
Links:
Daily Mindful Lettering Book
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Jennifer L. IN LOVE!! What a perfect idea! I am a plant mama too, like Lisa. I also manage a great deal of anxiety. I got into lettering a couple years ago as a creative outlet and discovered a multitude of treasures in the lettering community! This book that Lisa created with her daughter is just perfection! It's all the feels for me! Thank you both!!!
Cinthanie C. EXCELLENT BOOK! I really enjoy taking a minute each day to slow down and apply my hand to something that is not only emotionally supportive but relaxing and fun to do!! The mantras for everyday are very helpful for me. Thank you for your work and bringing such a high quality product into my life!
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038: Spring Cleaning For Our Thoughts

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