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Ep #41

Neutralize Your Thinking

Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked you to take a look at your past relationships and who you’ve been in them. That of course means digging up those relationships and memories and looking at what you’re making those relationships mean for you today. And the truth is renegades, you don’t have to make them mean something negative.

The thoughts you have about your past relationships inform how you show up in relationships today. They inform your next moves and perpetuate the beliefs you have about who you can be in relationships. This can cause a lot of pain and suffering.

Tune in today for a quickie on how to neutralize your thinking when you reflect on past relationships. Even if your ex was a selfish asshole, letting that thought trigger your feelings and how you show up in new relationships is optional. As Buddha says, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. I’m sharing how to use the Model to reveal the problems with your thinking so that you can feel the way you want to and get the results you desire. When we neutralize our thinking, we suffer a little bit less.

What You Will Discover:

  • Why suffering is optional.
  • How to neutralize your thinking.
  • What the Model is and what it reveals.
  • How to use the Model.
  • Why the Model is so useful when remembering past relationships.

Resources Mentioned:

  • Join the Modern Renegades email list here!

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Renegades, my sweet little baby seals. Thank you for tuning in. Did you know that Each week when you decide to listen to this podcast you are choosing to evolve. Increase your awareness? Even if it doesn’t necessarily apply in the moment or connect, you can’t un-hear these tools and concepts. You are doing the work. And I want to thank you. Every time a human becomes self aware and wakes up to the world around them a Renegade get its wings. Let’s hear it for the Renegades.
Oh and while I have your attention; I’d like to let you know that my website modern renegades has been published and it’s beautiful if I don’t say so myself. Go check it out; you can sign up for my newsletter. Check out my podcast and blog pages as well as get information about my coaching and my current programs that are being offered.
www.modernrenegades.com I’d love to know what you think of it.

The last few weeks I’ve asked you to take a look at your relationships and who you’ve been in them- which of course means digging up those relationships - the memories you have about them - and what you’ve made the relationship mean. And what those people meant to you and what they meant when they said and what they meant when they did something.
And what you make you in relationship mean.
What you make relationships mean.
And not many of us have the ability to make our break ups and past experiences with our ex’s mean the most wonderful thing about them or us.
Even when thinking this way causes us suffering.
And what I want to teach you today is that this suffering is all optional. That you don’t actually have to look back at your past and make it mean anything negative about you the relationships or the other person.
I know… we all have that narcissistic asshole that we never want to forgive or that divorce that will always remind us we failed or that affair that needs to brought up in every relationship so our future partner knows we’ve done hurtful things.
But we actually don’t have to think this way, Renegades.

Our thoughts and concepts about who we are in relationships and our past relationships cause us suffering and inform our next move perpetuating the beliefs.

When I’m working with my clients the FIRST thing I teach them is a method of thought work that I practice called the model. You’ve heard me mentioned it on the podcast but I will quickly review for all my new listeners. The model reveals your problems - it doesn’t solve them. When you use the model you show you your thoughts, feelings actions and the results you create when you think the specific thought.

It goes like this-
We have circumstances in life- people, the weather, our pasts the world- all the things we can’t control. The things the entire world would agree are happening or have happened. And these things are neutral.
As individuals we each have thoughts about the circumstances or our circumstances. Thoughts are sentences in your brain. They are optional. When you have a thought about the circumstance you create a feeling.
A feeling is a vibration that goes through your body caused by a thought. A chemical releases from your brain creating emotion.
Our feelings fuel our actions. Our actions are everything we do or don’t do. And this is how we get our results in life. Our results are always direct evidence to our thinking.

Here’s an example from my client who is going through a break up.
Stay with me and if you need to go back and re listen. It’s possible that your brain hasn’t thought this way before and it might want to reject the method at first. That’s okay.
When you work with the model you start by filling in one of the 5 spots;
A circumstance thought feeling action or result and you can work from there.
Example: Let’s start with the c line. A circumstance:
C My boyfriend said, “I want to break up It’s not you, it’s me” we can prove this in the court of law- the boyfriend would say , yes, I said that. Everyone agrees.
What did you think when he said that?
The Thought was: They are leaving me because I’m not good enough for him
-How did that feel when you thought?
Feeling: I felt abandonment (put that in the feeling line)
Tell me what you did when you felt abandoned?
This is the action line:
Closed up, didn’t leave my room, stayed home, barely ate, working out a lot, running, negative self talk, replaying everything in my mind, trying to solve it all, delete social media, then look at friends social media who knew us / go back to the places where we used to hang out- then shame myself for doing those things.

What result would you say you created thinking the thought, he left me because I’m not good enough-

I left me-I didn’t take care of my self and sought out proof that I wasn’t good enough for him by looking at instagram and going to restaurants without him - I just kept telling myself I wasn’t good enough.

By working the model we can zoom out and become the watcher of our experience rather than being in the experience.

Start breaking down your thoughts about the circumstance. What you are making it mean when someone says or does something. And ask yourself- what else it could mean… Imagine what else you could think. Could the opposite of what I’m thinking be true? Could his words, It’s not you its me be about him and have nothing to do with me? Or what if it is me? Does that have to mean I’m not good enough? Why am I choosing to think he’s leaving I’m not good enough? What does it mean to not be good enough? What if not good enough wasn’t in my vocabulary?

This will allow you to gain different perspectives… It assists in separating our stories from the circumstances.

I asked my client why she didn’t believe him when he said, it’s not you, its me. Why was she making it mean she’s not good enough. He literally said it’s not you its me which implies this has nothing to do with you. How is your self worth defined by his actions? She didn’t know what to say. I said, when you believe his words mean you’re not good enough and feel abandoned you cause yourself so much suffering.

This is what we do, Renegades. We take the people places and things going on in the world and make them mean whatever we need to to fit in our narrative and align with how we see the world and ourselves in it. We take the words and actions from the world around - the circumstances and translate them to feed our story of who we think we are based on our limited belief systems. We are rarely following the script of a hero.

It’s clear at this moment, my client isn’t ready to believe anything positive about his words or the break up - nor should we rush there. Another habit we have is lying to ourselves with everything is fine. I needed this transformation - and whatever else we tell ourselves during a break up to avoid feeling the discomfort and pain of it being over.

There’s no need to rush out of your negative emotions but I do want you to consider this: are you causing yourself more suffering? Like Buddha said; pain is inevitable. Suffering optional.

I want to take it a step further today- regardless if you work the model or not, I want to offer the concept of neutralizing your thinking. Finding a landing place
between negative and positive.

Can you take the words, the language and remove the ones that give you a charge?

If the circumstance is ‘my boyfriend said “I want to break up; It’s not you, it’s me”

Neutralize it. Boyfriend said words relationship is over.
She still isn’t ready to feel great about the words relationship is over, but there is less emotional charge. Words like “break up” and “it’s not you, it’s me” send her brain off spinning stories around all her break ups and her self worth in the most negative way.

Does this make sense, Renegades? This will give your mind and body a break. Even if you are only neutral for a minute, it’s one less minute in pain and suffering. A breather.

For any of you struggling with an ex, a break up, who you think you are in relationships, Can you look back and only see the facts. Stay completely neutral?
Rather than, I was married for 7 years and that mother fucker cheated on me so I left his ass and now I can’t stand to see him you might try;
I was married for 7 years. We are no longer married. We did these things. I see him 2 times a year.
Does it feel like you are lying to yourself? Without all that colorful language? No but seriously; when you remove some of the language you are used to using - remove the story and your thoughts about it- keep it factual, you remove the emotion. You may find you can have a more direct experience with it when you do this. You will certainly NOT feel the negative charge.
In essence you are removing ALL judgment of them yourself and the relationship the experience and as long as you’re not judging, you’re not in negative emotions.
You are simply present.

Renegades, there’s this thing about feelings. No matter what we are feeling, only we can feel it. When we love someone, the other person doesn’t actually feel our love, but instead their interpretation of what they think of you loving them. When we are angry that other person can’t feel our anger. When we are hurt, we feel our hurt.

So regardless of how you feel about your relationships and the people in them, only you experience those feelings. I’m not here to dismiss your experience or tell you to get over it, the opposite actually. Own your feelings. No one is making you feel that way- it’s your thinking about them. And you may not ever be able to believe good things about or love your last lover, but if you can neutralize the feelings, YOU will suffer a bit less.

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