How to stop negative thoughts in their tracks.. 

Today I wanted to share with you a personal story so that you can see some practical application for a lot of the mindset topics that we’ve been talking about for the past few months. It’s easy to listen to a podcast, nod your head in agreement, acknowledge that you want to be doing what they’re talking about, but then actually choosing to apply that new knowledge or new insight is a whole other thing. 

It’s where the rubber meets, the road, it’s where extraordinarily normal living comes into play because you are choosing it. You are not letting your negative thoughts spiral out of control. It’s a conscious effort that you have to make. 

No matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, no matter what you’re doing,  things are still going to come up that will frustrate you, or annoy you, or just don’t go according to plan. Hello, 2020 – we experienced a lot of that.  

My goal with this podcast is for you to always feel empowered by the things that I share and not defeated. Because I get it can be really frustrating when you’re on this personal growth journey and you’re learning all these new ways to handle your emotions, and uplevel, and really enjoy your days, but there are times that it’s really hard to choose those things. It’s always a choice – and that’s why I want you to feel empowered because no matter what’s going wrong around you, you always have a choice in how you’re going to handle it. 

The difference is before you were almost oblivious to it. You knew something was wrong and something was off but you didn’t necessarily know how to change it. Then you started working on a more positive mindset and started embarking on this personal growth journey and now you have more insight and wisdom as to how you can handle certain situations better. But With that knowledge comes the responsibility to ACT on it. You can’t pretend like you don’t know anymore, you can’t unlearn that knowledge, once your eyes are opened you can’t unsee it. Which can be both a blessing but also a source of frustration at times. Because now you have this newfound insight and wisdom on how to handle those negative thoughts or habits, whereas before you couldn’t see them. And the frustration can come because now that you have that knowledge, what are you going to do with it? Are you going to choose to uplevel, or are you going to choose to ignore it and stay the same? 

This brings me to the story I wanted to share with you guys today. A few weeks ago my mom and I took my two older boys on a Christmas trip to Gatlinburg. I’ve always heard that it was super magical at Christmas time so we decided to go. I left my 18-month-old at home with my husband so we could have a little more freedom to do activities with the big boys, like tubing and riding the ski lifts in town and staying up late and all that kind of stuff. It made my two older boys feel really special to have a trip just for them. The first two days were amazing and truly magical. But then the evening of the second-day things started taking a turn for the worse. We drove about 30 minutes to Pigeon Forge to eat at this restaurant that everyone raved about, we were super hungry but the wait was over 2 hours long, then we start calling and driving around to other restaurants which had equally long wait times. We were literally eating all the slim jims that we could and goldfish and animal crackers that we had in the car. We hadn’t eaten lunch because we were tubing and we really only had donuts and muffins that morning. Finally, we found a place almost 2 hours later had we just stayed and waited in line we could have eaten at that other restaurant, but none the less we finally found a place – it’s not where I would have chosen or driven that far to get to, it was some kind of deli. As we were sitting there at the table waiting for our food, I started spirling. I started second-guessing myself on the length of our trip and we telling myself should have just done one night and left, I was annoyed that we didn’t leave at 4 to go to dinner at 6. I was frustrated that we even drove to the next town over even though it was my idea and we should have just stayed in Gatlinburg. Then I started really missing my little guy Hunter. This was the first time I had left him overnight and I was regretting it. At that point, I had to go into the bathroom to pump, which I don’t like and don’t usually do because I just nurse on demand and I had never left for a long period of time before where I would need to pump. We go on our weekly date nights but that’s just a few hours. So my hormones started going crazy, I was literally crying in the bathroom, pumping. Straight up miserable mom thinking why did I decide to go on this trip its a disaster. I was spiraling. Because the truth is everything about the trip up until that point had been really magical and amazing. One thing was going wrong – we had trouble finding a place to eat and then all of a sudden my thoughts started getting out of control. I realized at that moment I had a choice. Was I going to keep going down this path of negative thoughts and spiraling out of control, or was I going to stop the spiral of negative thinking and choose to find joy and focus on the things that were going great? 

And that’s what I was trying to share earlier is that No matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, no matter what you’re doing, even if you’re on a magical Christmas trip- things are still going to come up that will frustrate you, or annoy you, or just don’t go according to plan. And it’s how you handle those things that will make all the difference. because you can still be miserable in the most amazing places because you have a bad mindset. 

At that moment I had a choice – and I decided to break up with those thoughts that were not serving me well and I decided to look for joy. I came out of that bathroom and turned my attitude around. It was not easy, I wanted to stay frumpy and annoyed. But I chose to uplevel so I could enjoy the rest of our trip. 

The things are, the kids didn’t care about where we ate dinner, they didn’t care that we had to drive around in the car and eat a million snacks, What I have found is that usually when things don’t’ go according to plan its the adults that have a harder time with it because what we anticipated or expected isn’t happening. But I had to remind myself I was doing this trip because I wanted to make amazing memories with my kids. So when it was the most difficult I chose to find a way to enjoy it. When I came back out to the table the boys had come up with a game where they were blowing straw wrappers across the table to score goals. Their laughter was contagious and hilarious. Watching them and laughing with them brought me so much joy. But I very well could have missed out on that because I was having a pity party for myself. There are going to be a lot of moments and a lot of times where you want to feel sorry for yourself and mope around – but when you choose to stop that negative thought loop and decide to choose joy anyway – THAT’S when you will start living an Extraordinarily normal life. 

And for dinner that night my kids had mac and cheese with a side of Cheetos. They were living their best life. They didn’t care that we didn’t get to eat at the iconic restaurant that everyone had raved about. They didn’t care that it took us a while to find someplace to eat, they were just enjoying themselves, being creative, and having fun. And then later that night because I was in a much better mood we decided to be spontaneous and go out at 9:30 at night to ride the lift up to the top of the mountain to go on this incredible sky bridge that was all lit up for Christmas. It was definitely one of the highlights of our trip. 

But Had I chosen to stay in a bad mood, I can almost guarantee you we never would’ve had that moment of spontaneity, I probably would have just come back out of the bathroom, yelled at kids bc they were being too loud laughing. Pouted as we drove back to our hotel and we would’ve just gone to bed. But because I chose to stop the negative thoughts and enjoy where I was, it then led to more joy and more fun!

I hope that through this story, you can see the practical application of what it means to choose joy. And I hope that you feel empowered to know that you have a choice to stop the negative thought loop. 

So this week, when frustrating things happen, or plans change, I want you to know that you have the power to change your attitude and to choose joy!!