Podcast Notes from This Episode

Background

• What is your number one New Year’s Resolution? 
• Might I suggest that your resolution should be to become conscious of your thoughts?

Our Unconscious Thoughts

• Ninety-five percent of our thoughts are unconscious or as if we were on autopilot.
  • Sometimes that serves us well, like when we automatically complete the steps of brushing our teeth.
• In other ways, putting our thoughts on autopilot does not serve us.
  • When we unconsciously think things like…:
    • “I am overwhelmed”
    • “What I do is unimportant”
    • “I can never catch up”
  • …etc., ask yourself if these are really conscious thoughts that you are deliberately choosing or if they are unconscious thoughts that are just holding space in your brain and are never actually resolved.
• These thoughts often make us feel incapable, tired, burned out, unfulfilled, overwhelmed, stressed, or anxious, but we don’t really know why we are holding on to them.
• We must take action to eliminate these thoughts or we will have no forward-moving momentum and we stay stuck in the emotions attached to the thoughts.

Become Conscious of Your Thoughts

• If you become conscious of a thought and find truth in it, but do not take action, it will become one of those programmed, unconscious thoughts that soon become accepted beliefs.
• However, if you stop yourself when you become conscious of a thought, you can choose to accept it or take action to change it.

Make 2023 the Year you Become Conscious of your Thoughts

• Notice how your thoughts affect your relationship with yourself, your husband, children, and your friends.
• Do you have a script of unconscious thoughts that just chips away at your self-esteem, your marriage, or other relationships?
• If you find you have the same complaint day in and day out, ask yourself, “Why am I not doing something to change?”

Set Your Goals

• What kind of goals do you want for your marriage, your motherhood, your home, and yourself? 
  • State your life goals clearly and write them down.
• List out all of the things you think you need to do in order to accomplish those goals.
• Pick one goal from each area of your life and break it out into smaller, “do” goals (“do” as in action), and then write those “do” goals out.  What steps do you need to complete in order to fulfill one of your larger goals?
• Once you have your annual goals listed and the “do” goals needed to accomplish them, break your year into quarters and chose one annual goal (with its accompanying “do” goals) to complete.

Bring Conscious Thinking to Your Goals

• You can only accomplish your annual goals when you live with conscious thinking
• Do not allow yourself to be swept away by either the actions or inactions that do not contribute to your goals or the thoughts that keep you stuck.
• When you have the conscious understanding of why you are doing what you are doing, it is much easier and you will find joy.

Final Thoughts

• Our happiness depends on us being conscious of our thinking.
• Take charge.  Be conscious.  Set goals for the life you want and use intentional thinking to make those goals a reality.
• Then watch your life changes and moves in the direction of what you have always wanted.