How Our Thoughts Impact Our Results

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:08  

Welcome to the executive coach for moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy, while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host Leanna Lasky, McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  0:29  

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today. So sorry, I missed you. Last week, we had the January, cold and flu season impacting our lives quite a bit. We actually went on a trip down to Texas, we used to live in Dallas for 11 years before we move back to Pennsylvania. And so we went and visited Dallas and then I had lived in Austin prior to that. So we went and visited Austin, and it was so good to see old friends and reconnect. And it was just a really lovely trip. And when we came back, we must have picked something up. Because my daughter had strep throat, my daughter and I both had COVID. And it just took a little while to recover. So if you are getting hit hard by cold and flu season, as well, we're right there with you. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  1:26  

So today I wanted to talk a bit about the self coaching model. And specifically thoughts how thoughts get into our brains, how they impact our lives, and how they really drive our results. I've seen this show up several times recently, in my coaching, we just wrapped up the January reset, which was awesome. And I saw it show up there I've seen it show up in some of my one on one clients. So I'd like to talk a little bit more about this. So just a reminder of the self coaching model. To start, there are circumstances and circumstances or neutral events that happen neutral things that are out there in the world, they're not inherently positive or negative until we assign some kind of value to them. And then the circumstances go through filters in our brain. Our brains are meaning making machines. And so they apply meaning to that neutral circumstance. And it creates a thought so often we believe that our thoughts are facts, we tend to believe our thoughts without questioning them. And I'll talk more about that later. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  2:40  

But one of my favorite quotes is Don't believe everything you think, because we often come up with these thoughts. And they've gone through the filters that are in our brains. And we haven't really taken the time to examine the thoughts and the filters to decide if that's how we want to think about things. We just believe what our brain is telling us. So we might receive an email from our boss. And our thoughts are my boss hates me, my boss doesn't trust me, my boss doesn't believe that I know how to do my job. Those are all thoughts. They're not facts, they are interpretations that our brain is creating from a neutral circumstance and probably many neutral circumstances. And then our thoughts create our feelings. So when we think that thought my boss doesn't trust me, we feel a certain kind of way, right? If we read the same email, and our thought is my boss believes in me, my boss appreciates me, my boss is so glad I'm here that generates a different kind of feeling within us. So we can read the same words and create different thoughts in our brains. And those thoughts are going to elicit different feelings. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:00  

And then our thoughts and feelings together, drive our actions they drive what we do. And as we know, our actions generate our results. So I just want you to notice that the thoughts are what kickoff the process and what ultimately drive our results. And in the self coaching model, we talk a lot about circumstances and thoughts and about how circumstances or neutral things. And it's like the neutral circumstance gets passed through our brains, which have been programmed over time, by biology by our parents, by our families, by our teachers, our coaches, our society, our media, and so it goes through a filter and we form a thought about it. This is why two people can look at the same exact circumstance and have completely different thoughts and therefore feelings about what just happened. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  4:53  

I was trying to think of examples about where this shows up. And probably because of the time of year, I kept Coming back to NFL football, if you're not in the United States, I apologize, I'm going to use this example. But a team winning or losing is not inherently positive or negative, right? Because two different people, or 1000s of different people could look at that and have different thoughts about it. So the chiefs, winning the AFC Championship is not inherently positive or negative. But depending on who's looking at it, different people might have different thoughts about that, right? Someone's gonna say, they earned it, they deserved it, the chiefs are my favorite team and come up with, you know, those are the thoughts that they're having, and they're gonna feel really happy and really good about it. Someone else might look at it and say, the chiefs don't deserve to be there, or it should have been another team should have been the Steelers. I mean, that might be my thought. I know a lot of people that I know, and I have the thought it should be the bills. And so of course, if we're having those thoughts, that's going to elicit a different feeling for us, then for somebody who's looking at that and saying, Yes, that's what I wanted to happen. I'm happy that that happened. So just notice that even winning, we might say that's a positive thing. But two people can look at winning, and depending on who's doing the winning, or how they're doing it, or how we believe they'd got there, we might have different thoughts about it, and therefore different feelings. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  6:33  

I'll give another more work example that might be more universal in our workplaces. So let's say the board hires a new CEO, one person might have the thought, I believe in that CEO, I believe in that person. I know their track record, and I'm so happy that our company has that person. And then they feel excited and hopeful as someone else might look at that person at that hire at that neutral circumstance, the fact that the board hired the new CEO and think this person is not right for this job. They might feel worried concern, pessimistic. And, you know, if someone is a part of that search committee, and the person who was hired wasn't their first choice, then they might have thoughts like, that wasn't my first choice, the company doesn't value my opinion. Do I even belong here? Right? Like we might start having thoughts about that neutral circumstance. And those are all different thoughts that multiple people might have about the same circumstance. So then our actions and results stemming from those thoughts are going to be very different. If we're feeling very skeptical, and pessimistic and worried, and believing that this person is not the right person for the job, that's our thought, then we might show up a little bit more standoffish. We might not proactively engaged as much we my question more in the kind of skeptical way. Versus if we believe this is the right person for the job, and we're so excited, we're feeling hopeful and feeling full of optimism, then we might lean into that relationship, we may be more open to learning from that person, we might want to connect with that person more. And those two sets of actions are likely going to drive different results. Right? When we look at like, what is our relationship was that person look like? What does our position in the company look like? How long are we there, we might end up with different results. And notice that it's all based on that original thought about the neutral circumstance. So our thoughts ultimately drive our results. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  8:53  

And now that we kind of see how the model plays out, I want to go back and focus on thoughts because thoughts are what we can change. They're what we have control over. And as one of my group coaching participants observed and said so eloquently, thoughts are the intervention point. So what are thoughts? A thought is simply a sentence in our brain. I'm too much. I'm not enough. I'm a great partner. I'm a bad mom. My employee is lazy. My boss hates me, my partner loves me or doesn't love me. All of these are thoughts in our brains. They're not factually true or untrue. They're just thoughts that we have. Circumstances could be held up in a court of law. While our thoughts our interpretations of those circumstances, the meaning we derive from those circumstances, the conclusions we draw. And the thoughts that we have about different circumstances are influenced by so many things. Our brains are programmed by so many external influences. In our biology, our past experiences, the media, we consume our society, the people in our lives, especially people in authority roles or cultural norms. And all of this, especially during our formative years when our brain is developing and being programmed. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  10:17  

So we can decide whether we want to believe these thoughts or not, once we're aware of them. But I think what happens is, so often, we're not aware of them. And we have to do the work to excavate them to uncover what sentences we're believing about ourselves, about other people and about the world that are ultimately creating our results. So often, our brain is running a program that we're not even aware of, until we start doing this work. So while we're able to get some results in some areas of our lives that we really want, obviously, as high achievers, we're able to do that. But we're also getting results in other areas that we don't actually want. Or we might be showing up in a way, that is not how we actually want to show up. And we might not be able to figure out why or why we keep getting results that we don't actually want. We often have the thought error, that changing circumstances or changing actions will get us different results. But notice that thoughts are independent of circumstances. So we may have different circumstances, we may change our circumstances completely. But what we're doing is taking our same brain. And if we take that same brain without working on our thoughts, we're just going to replicate our results over and over again, this is why you might yourself or have a friend who has multiple relationships turn out the same way. Or they keep attracting the same kind of partner. Because what's happening is they're changing that circumstance of who they're dating, but they haven't done the work to actually change their thoughts. Or you might notice that you change your job, you're unhappy in your job, so you change to a new job, or your location, your own unhappy in one place. So you go to another place. And you find that, you know, certainly there's that honeymoon period where you're just happy that you're not in the old situation anymore, and you're excited and hopeful about the new one. But once you settle in, you feel that same kind of unhappiness once that honeymoon period has ended. And that's because we're taking our same brain with our same thoughts, our same filters and thought patterns into the next set of circumstances. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  12:49  

I kind of said before, but so often thoughts are injected into our brain by another person, or by media, or by a parent, teacher coach. And it's often they were placed there long ago. And until we become aware of them, they have so much power over us. What actually inspired me to write this episode was that I recently coached two different women whose bosses gave them negative feedback about their performance. And those thoughts were planted in their brains, and they remain there. They were put there months or even years ago. And they're still there. And they're showing up for them in their results and actions. And so this was literally one conversation. Both of them had one conversation with their boss. And what they noticed was that the thoughts around that conversation, what they started to believe about themselves as a result of those thoughts, and the conversation was showing up everywhere. So for one, it was impacting her ability to connect with her new boss and her new team. It was blocking her from connection because of these thoughts that she had about herself and her performance that her boss said months prior. And for another, it was causing so much anxiety and feeling really stuck and unable to move forward into a new role. Because she was so afraid that whenever a new person came in to replace her in her current role, that they were going to do a much better job. And she was going to make that mean that there was something wrong with her. And that's why the organization wasn't moving forward in the way that it was supposed to. And it was all because of this conversation with her boss where she believed that she was the problem and She was halting forward progress. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:02  

So for both of them, it was greatly impacting how they view themselves and their work, and how much confidence they bring to their work. These thoughts were planted in their heads by their bosses months ago, and they're still showing up until we notice them in our coaching work. And I think that's why it's so important to take the time to notice your thoughts and uncover what's behind your feelings and actions. So that you can figure out which sentences in your head are directing your life. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  15:34  

So what I want to leave you with are just some questions to ask yourself about your thoughts. What thoughts in your brain are creating your results in your life? Are you aware of what they are? What are you still believing now that might not even be true anymore? What thoughts might you want to change so that you can get different results? So thanks so much for tuning in my friends. I will see you all next week. Have a great week. 

Leanna Laskey McGrath  16:07  

Thanks so much for tuning in to the executive coach for moms podcast. Please like, subscribe or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai