You Are Not Your Thoughts

When I was brought to the edge or some might call it a life crossroads. I had one of two choices to make; I had to choose to RISE or FALL!  

I chose to RISE! 

The life changing moment for me, was when I truly realised I was not my thoughts or my stories. That moment when I realised, “Yes, I am good enough.”

Yes, you can believe it or not but one of the kindest acts you’ll ever do for yourself is to arrive at an understanding that you are not your thoughts. I’ll say it again. 

“You Are Not Your Thoughts.”

Some experts say that we have between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. That’s the equivalent of about 2,500 – 3,300 thoughts every hour. Other experts estimate approximately 50,000 thoughts a day (about 2,100 thoughts per hour) but either way, the numbers are incredible.

Many of us can cause ourselves huge upset by negative thinking, worrying, stressing about things that never happen and it’s because of those thoughts or those inner conversations we are constantly having with ourselves. Sound familiar?

Know that thoughts are nothing more than mental cognitions. They’re your ideas and opinions, your beliefs about yourself and the world that surrounds you.

Thoughts come from your life experiences. But when you become aware that your thoughts are only thoughts and that they’re not who you truly are, that’s when you can change your thinking and your life to be anything you want it to be.

The word “POSSIBLE” is in the word “Impossible” for a reason, I believe. 

There is so much media coverage about various addictions, however there is very little media time given to the addiction humans have when it comes to their thinking.

Our thoughts have a huge emotional and mental impact on our overall well-being. Many people feel stuck in life with deep-rooted feelings of not being good enough. Thousands of people stay in unhappy relationships or working environments, all because they tell themselves, “Sure who else would want me?” They sentence themselves to daily unhappiness and continue to go around and around in a never-ending spiral of thoughts. 

My Mindset to RISE formula has come from my own struggle and experience of my own thoughts spending 40 years feeling that I was not good enough and truly believing that I wasn’t smart enough. As a consequence of feeling like that, I tolerated a lot of things that I shouldn’t have but that’s a whole other story to be told another day.

One of my Mindset to RISE principles is to encourage you from right now to begin noticing recognising and regulating your thoughts and see them for what they really are. They are just thoughts, no more, no less. They are a string of letters put together to form a word. 

The word which in turn becomes the thought only becomes powerful when you believe it to be true and when you give it a meaning or value. And we all know what can happen next, don’t we?

Emotional upset and distress!

For example, we all know the type of person I’m talking about because each time you meet them they repeat the same story over and over again to you. It’s as if what they’re talking about happened to them yesterday with their narrow bias perspective, but it could have happened years ago to them. That’s a sure sign they are stuck in their thoughts. 

Use my Mindset to RISE formula by practicing catching your thoughts and mentally separating them from yourself. Then you can begin to consciously recognise and decide what value you want to give each thought.

“I’ve done it too and it changed my life completely” and I can help you do whatever it is you want to do too. As a free gift to you, you can download the R part of my RISE formula here https://jacquitaaffe.com/sign-up/  

Let’s RISE together. 

Written by

Jacqui Taaffe 

JT Coaching Life & Career Coach

www.jacquitaaffe.com