How Our Thoughts Affect Our Results

Achieving big results requires a lot more than setting big targets, having the right strategy, or even the resources to achieve our goals…

This week in The CRUSH Method Show we’re deep-diving on How Our Thoughts Affect Our Results with a discussion on mastering your own psychology to achieve greater results.

Often we know what to do, and even how to do it, but we struggle with implementing and following through. In this episode we discuss:

• Why psychology is so important to performance
• The relationship between our thoughts, emotions, and feelings
• How we can “observe” our thoughts, and not necessarily engage them
• How to choose thoughts that support us
• 3 strategies for improving our psychology to support performance
• What to do if negative thought patterns won’t let up

It takes practice and intention to master our thoughts, and while no one does this perfectly, learning to develop the skill of observing and processing our thoughts is the first step toward learning to engage our emotions differently.

Science has shown that we have the ability to shift thought patterns and behaviors through deliberate practice, and it’s through this practice that we are able to steady ourselves through the execution of our plans, to achieve greater results.

While we are not mental health professionals, as coaches, having a basic understanding of psychology is incredibly helpful in achieving goals and higher levels of performance, because at the core of the behaviors that drive us, are the thoughts that form our perspectives and belief system.

When we can see what our thoughts are, it allows us to trace the thoughts to the feelings they create, and those feelings are going to drive much of how we perform…

Have you ever had the thought “I’m not sure I’m good enough for ___?” and immediately felt the heaviness of self-doubt and lethargy set in, and suddenly the wind is completely out of your sails?

On the other hand, when you have something you’re looking forward to, have you noticed how much faster time passes, and you seem to have an easier time following through and completing the job?

The ability to see the thoughts we have without engaging the thought, allows us to decide whether to focus on new or different thought patterns, like intentionally practicing gratitude (that’s the Mac-Daddy of positive emotions per positive psychology studies!) can not only leave you in a better mood, but affect your performance overall in a positive way because you are simply more likely to follow-through on your plans.

The biggest detractor of progress in building a business or improving personal health is failing to follow through. Failing to have consistency in whatever it is would move you forward. And often, high achievers falter because not because they are incapable, but because they are trapped in mindsets that take them off the path of their next big breakthrough and success.

Taking the time to learn how to master our minds, observe thoughts that support, and visualize our success continues to be a key ingredient in our day to day, and is a major factor in any high performer’s ability to achieve their goals.

How Our Thoughts Affect Our Results

Transcript of The CRUSH Method Show - January 24, 2020

Hey, guys, Welcome to the CRUSH Method Show. We're so excited to dig in today. My name is Amanda Kaufman. I'm Chris Lavelle, and we're talking about psychology today. Now I'm gonna preface this whole thing. We're not mental health professionals in any way, shape or form that's therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, in case you're wondering. But as a coach, we do spend a lot of time talking about mindset. And specifically, when we're talking about psychology, we're talking about our tendencies and are thought patterns around what it is that we're thinking in a given moment.

How are we really responding to our environment and the prevalent thoughts that we tend to have. So I'm excited to dig into this because mastering your own psychology is a massive, massive piece of mastering your own performance. Oh, absolutely. So I mean, the thoughts in your head will lead you to success or failure more than any other thing that goes on in your life a day. It's so true. It's not so much the circumstances of what is happening in our lives as our response to those circumstances, and so much of that is really tied into our thoughts and our beliefs around what is actually happening.

You know the stories you tell yourself. And so I think one of the biggest things that helped us in our journey is learning to see our thoughts. And I think there's a big distinction, a big difference between experiencing and participating in a thought and seeing that it is a thought. Yeah, we're not talking about mind reading and things like that. We're talking about being consciously aware of your thoughts and where those thoughts are leading you to think and act in certain ways. And then sometimes consciously changing those thoughts to lead you in new directions.

You want to go in or away from things you don't want to do. So here's here's a model that can really help with that. Often when we are experiencing challenges or we're feeling that feeling of stock or aggravated or frustrated any of those kind of negative feelings. Those feelings have been triggered by a thought, and so if we can first observe that we're having a feeling become aware of we can then start to look at, "Well, okay, what exactly am I saying to myself? What's triggering that ongoing feeling because believe it or not

it's our emotional state that is gonna have the biggest effect on the decisions that we make in a given moment.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Let's be honest. We're emotionally driven creatures, but the emotions don't just happen.

They happen as a result of thoughts. Exactly. So when we're encouraging you to look at your thoughts like,

what thoughts are you having? It requires step one stop. You have to just stop whatever activity you're doing,

because it's really difficult to see how you're thinking when you're in motion. If you spiral into these thoughts,

it's really hard to analyze them and think about where's that coming from? How is that serving me that kind of thing?

So that's why Amanda suggesting stop, stop and become conscious. Aware off the thoughts you're having and the way to making you feel the second piece is to really center and my favorite way to do that,

it's just simply just breathe. What happens when you do that is is you can shift your attention and focus from the thing that is either aggravating or depressing or,

you know, and pull it into your own body and thinking about the breath and you happen to be oxygenating your body as well at the same time about thing to do it frees up mental resources when you do that.

So it will allow you to really step back and observe what that thought pattern really was. 

Okay, So when you do that, how much judgment do you find yourself putting on yourself? In that case,

you know, that's such a great question, because usually it is judgment that we're experiencing. So we're judging that.

Oh, well, you know that that didn't turn out the way I thought it should or should have done that differently.

Or I'm not as good as this person over here or wherever. Uh huh. And it's when we're getting into that should thought pattern and shoulding all over ourselves,

shoulding all over yourself right there. That's what keeps people the most. Stuck from a psychology standpoint is,

is the thought patterns that should be different than it actually is. Yeah, so So when you find yourself in a lot of judgment,

either of others or more likely of yourself, there's probably just some some thought patterns in there that are recurring and reinforcing that keep reinforcing the same negative feeling and then therefore driving the same negative behaviors are and then you get the same negative outcomes.

So mastering that psychology and being able to say Wait, hang on a second am I? Am I in a state of should right now?

Where am I observing a situation and saying, Hey, this should be different than it is. We tend to put all our energy into that gap between what is and what should be.

And instead of saying okay based on what is what do I want to. Absolutely making a conscious decision in that case,

as opposed to a decision based on a feeling bad about yourself or bad about a situation might be one way to describe that.

Exactly So one of the one of the practices that I've had for years You're really good about this too.

So, yeah, just like this is a foundational cornerstone. Kind of a habit for me is journaling,

and it can be just, you know, on a little piece of paper, A little note pad,

or a sticky. Note sticky. It doesn't have to be this big formal process, but it's journaling.

And when you say journaling. What are you talking about there? What do you mean? That could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

I know. And for a long time I resisted doing it because I thought, Oh, my gosh,

I don't want to spend 20 minutes writing like this big long thing. And what it is really is very simply using the language processing centers of the brain to process through and think through the thought patterns.

So often when we're in that merry go round of the thought pattern, that negative reinforcing pattern, we just kind of rehash the same program over and over and over again.

So use journaling is a bit of a kind of a twofold one. It's a pattern disrupt. I'm disrupting the pattern of the thought,

changing your thoughts of it and to really starting to articulate the actual thought that's going on. I think we can sometimes happen is you get trapped in the feeling and you don't really hear the full thought.

That's reinforcing the feeling. Our brain just kind of fills in some of the blanks and accepts that the feeling is there and reinforces Reinforces reinforces negative thoughts exactly.

So by using the language processing centers of the brain when I'm basically doing is I'm disrupting that thought pattern and forcing a different neural pathway for processing the information.

And you know so therefore, when you journal, you know you're might be writing. You've got some kinetic physicality to it,

and there's a different voice that that happens with those thoughts as you drive the clarity. And it doesn't take a lot of time like I've had massive movement in my thought patterns with only 5 10 minutes of journaling.

Okay, well, so it's not something that you have to really overthink, is what I'm hearing. It's something that you want to use.

You want to give yourself some time for it per se. But it's not something where you need to really build a defined structure other than just to force yourself to analyze and think through the thoughts instead of being subject to them.

Is that what I'm hearing? That's exactly what you're hearing. And, you know, I've been using Brendon Burchard's High Performance Planner for Ya,

and I don't get paid to say this, So I'm just telling you, I really like it one of the reasons I really like it is,

he asks some probing questions, and so you can just respond to those questions, which is a form of groups.

They're good prompts. And I find that it really helps master the psychology again because it's asking the right kinds of questions.

I would say that the value of having a coach is that coach is gonna ask you new questions because you keep asking yourself the same dumb questions stuck in a loop.

Absolutely, exactly they ask you new, open-ended questions that caused you to go new directions of thought. And since we were talking to the beginning of this episode about changing your thoughts,

that's very appropriate. Exactly, exactly. So I would be remiss if we were talking about psychology in the context of performance.

If I didn't also talk about psychology in the in the in the stance of mental health as well. Um,

very unfortunately, you know, I have lost friends, and I'm sure if you're listening or most of us,

we've all been touched by by people that are dealing with mental illness and challenges and maybe haven't even dealt with it ourselves so I just really want to encourage you too.

If you're having a hard time disrupting the pattern and it's it's just not getting better, that's the time to call a therapist, call and

get help, get that that help and you can start with your general practitioner, doctor and just explain what's going on.

They've done tons and tons and tons of study studies that show that working with mental health professionals can improve

 situations like depression or anxiety. And I think there's a lot of, um, not just stigma about mental health in our society.

But I think there's a lot of, um, I'm going to self-diagnose. I'm gonna Google search Internet search and how well,

things myself. Speaking of professional and some of that's for shame reasons, people often feel ashamed like they're broken or that good enough,

they don't make that public full disclosure. Guys, the reason we advocate for things like this is we've both been through that and probably will be through it again.

We're human, you're human. It is part of the human experience, unfortunately, but it doesn't mean you have to go through it alone.

I think that's really what Amanda's talking about here. Don't go through it alone when you feel like something like that is going on and you're struggling.

Certainly used the things where you recommended here if you find them helpful. But don't be afraid to go seek additional help.

Professional help if need be. Exactly. And you know, we do talk to a lot of coaches.

So coaches, if you're working with someone and they're not able to move past past traumas if they're not able to really get to that place of that functioning,

recognize that coaching is all about the future. It's all about paving that way for the future. So if you find a lot of your conversations,

they're going back to diagnosing past hurts. It's diagnosing the past and they're stuck in the thought patterns. Exactly.

That's a signal that you should be referring them to a mental health professional in the area. That's what they focus on is getting people functional,

whereas coaches we help him stretch for the future. Exactly, exactly. So that's what we have to say about psychology.

I hope you love this episode be a cool friend share with a few of your friends, and we'll see you next time on The CRUSH Method Show. All best!

Hey there. Thanks for tuning into this week's The Crush Method Video blog. I'm Amanda Kaufman, but I'm Chris Lavelle.

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