495. Why Your Thoughts Matter

Welcome to 2025. I am so excited to go on a journey with you this year of evolving yourself, improving your life, and becoming the next version of you. And I wouldn’t be doing justice to the work I do if we didn’t start out by really diving deep into why our thoughts matter. Whether you’ve heard me talk about this before or you’re brand new, this deep dive reminder is meant to focus us on what makes the most impact in our lives, in our day-to-day experience, and in what we’re creating for the future. And that is, far and away, our thoughts. This is episode 495, Why Your Thoughts Matter. 

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to jodymoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? Jodymoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to 2025. How are you feeling today? And it’s such an interesting time of year, I think. I find it really fascinating to observe myself at this time of year and to observe people in general, what’s going on in the culture and the zeitgeist. And I’m thinking of all of you, and I just wanna call out some things. 

So there are some people who get a lot of energy and excitement around the new year, I feel like. People who see this whole, like, let’s start with a clean slate. It’s the beginning of the year. Let’s set some fresh goals. Let’s go again, kind of energy. Awesome, love that, if that’s you. If that’s not you, that’s okay. 

I find that another huge group of people, maybe even more people it seems like to me, although I’ve not officially studied it, have sort of a drop or a lull in energy around this time of year. Maybe it’s coming out of the holidays and now we’re in the heart of winter where it’s cold and dark and there’s not a holiday to look forward to, a big holiday anyway, and whatever goes along with that for you. Maybe it’s just feeling bad about the things that you think that you should be doing. 

When you hear people talk about New Year’s resolutions or goal setting, you use it instead of the tool it’s meant to be, you use it as a weapon against yourself to judge where you’ve fallen short in the past. There’s maybe some seasonal things happening and some literal chemical hormonal depression that tends to set in for people at this time of year. 

So wherever you’re at with it on the continuum, it’s okay, all right? I’m glad that you’re here. I wanna talk to you today about the power of your thoughts. Now, if you’ve been listening to me for very long, you know that this is something I talk about a lot, but I don’t want you to think, I already know this, I’ve heard Jody teach this before, because this is stuff that I already know as well, and yet, every time I do a deep dive and remind myself of why my thinking matters so much, and I really explore all the ways that it’s affecting me and my life and everything I might want or need, then I become re-inspired to focus on my thinking. 

So that’s what I wanna do today. I wanna light a little fire under you in terms of paying attention to your thoughts, and I’m gonna give you some how-to, because understanding that it matters is one thing. I think it’s actually 80% of what we need, because a lot of it you will just do intuitively. But there is still that 20% where having some tools and strategies and knowing where to get started is gonna be really helpful. So that’s what we’re gonna do today. 

I’m so glad that you’re here. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you pushed play today. I think there is a message here for you, and I hope that you will receive it, and it may not have anything to do with the words I say. The words I say just may help to put your head in the right spot to receive the wisdom and inspiration that is meant for you. So with that, let’s dive in. 

Now, your thoughts matter. You know this, even if you’re brand new to me and this is the first time you’ve pushed play on a Better Than Happy podcast episode, you have heard other people in the past, in whatever way, tell you that your thoughts matter, that your attitude matters, that the more positive you can be, the better your life will be. This is not a hard concept to understand. This is not even a hard concept to buy into. But why? What exactly do we mean by that? And in what ways does that affect our life? 

So again, please do not write this off. I keep thinking back for some reason to a conference I went to years ago, it was maybe three years ago, and it was a business conference, like a marketing entrepreneurial type conference. And so there’s a big focus on marketing and strategies for online business, you might say. And I ran into somebody that I knew there, somebody that I had done some work with in various ways and who I would consider a friend as well, somebody that I respect, who I feel also respects me and my work. 

And this guy, who’s a gentleman, had been to this conference before in years past, and it was my first time attending, okay? So he says to me, and that over the course of the three days we would be at this conference, he said, there’ll be some stuff that’s like the whole mindset, whatever, and I don’t really need that. I really just need the tactics and the strategies. And I thought to myself, that’s what we all think. And we’re wrong about that. 

Because I can tell you that the more you let yourself absorb the mindset stuff, the raw motivation kind of stuff, the tactics and strategies become so much easier. I’m not saying we don’t need tactics and strategies. I love them, actually. And I think they’re helpful, and I think we do need them. But you won’t be able to execute them effectively, and not to mention, you’ll be able to find your own tactics and strategies when your head is in the right place, okay? And so we’re not just talking about business today, and we’re going to talk about all the different areas of your life. 

But if you’re kind of that person that’s like, I don’t really need that mindset stuff, just give me the tactics and strategies, just give me a chance today. Just open your heart and open your mind to what I’m about to teach you. 

Alright, I have three reasons I want to dive into that your thoughts matter more than either you or I could ever wrap our heads around. And the first reason is that what we’re thinking is creating our current reality. Literally, your life, your experience of the world around you is because of what’s happening in your mind. 

I got on the scale this morning. Who else got on the scale this morning? By the way, I should mention I’m recording this on January 6th. It is a Monday. It is, in my mind, the beginning of the new year, even though the new year was technically six days ago. But you know, I saw a reel on Instagram that’s like, you don’t need to start your resolutions until Monday. Come on, what are you gonna do? I’ll start on a Wednesday of getting egg whites, hold the toast, hold the potatoes, extra fruit. Come on, that’s something you do on a Monday. 

So anyway, today’s Monday. Today I got on the scale for the first time in several weeks and the scale was up about four pounds. Okay, now that does not create any feelings for me. Seeing the scale be up four pounds from what it was two and a half-ish weeks ago when I last got on it, three weeks ago maybe, doesn’t make me feel anything. 

It doesn’t make me feel discouraged. it doesn’t make me feel validated that I knew that was going to happen, right? That kind of like, yeah, that’s what I thought. That kind of validation feeling. It doesn’t make me feel anything. It doesn’t make me feel relieved that it’s not up 10 pounds. Getting on the scale is just a neutral thing that happens. And the scale reading four pounds higher than what it did three weeks ago doesn’t make me feel anything. 

What makes me feel something is what I think next, what I tell myself, the story I create in my mind about myself, about my past, about the food I’ve eaten, about my body today, about what’s possible for me in the future, about whether I’m good or bad or weak or strong or a healthy person or an unhealthy person, et cetera. All of those thoughts or sentences, the meaning making that happens in my brain is what gives me a feeling. 

Now, the reason we give the credit for the feeling to the number on the scale is because it all happens so quickly, so instantaneously. We immediately have a dozen or so thoughts that go through the brain and we feel the feeling that creates. And then we say, when I get on the scale and it’s up four pounds, I feel so terrible. I feel so defeated. I feel so guilty. But it’s not because of the scale. It’s because of those sentences in your brain. 

And by the way, I’m going to tell you how I felt. I didn’t feel terrible, but I used to always, if I would get on the scale and it was up, I would always feel terrible. I’m going to tell you why I didn’t feel terrible in just a moment. But before I got on the scale, I weighed four pounds more than I had the last time I got on the scale. And I didn’t feel terrible. You know why? Because I didn’t know about it. I wasn’t able to have thoughts, stories, meaning making around that number on the scale. 

That is how I know that the scale or my body or my weight doesn’t make me feel anything. I feel it based on what I think, what I make it mean. Okay? And so then people will say, don’t weigh yourself or don’t get on the scale ever. Some people will say. certainly don’t get on the scale every day because then you’re gonna feel bad. Now, you don’t have to get on the scale if you don’t want to. That’s one way to manage your thoughts is just not to give yourself the opportunity to have thoughts. And I’m fine with that if that’s what you choose. But I want to get on the scale because I want to be aware of what’s happening with my body. 

So if you have a reason that you want to measure something, then the scale doesn’t have to make you feel bad. Your thinking is what makes you feel bad. You can change your thinking. Your thinking is creating your current reality. Now, because I know this, and because I know that my body and my health and the scale is one area where I have to choose intentionally what I’m gonna think, and that choosing intentionally what I’m gonna think matters tremendously, I take time to decide in advance what I’m gonna think. 

I work with coaches to help me find believable thoughts. I’m not talking about positive affirmations that you don’t believe. I purposely slowly decide what I’m going to think when I get on the scale. And I will just tell you at a coaching session earlier this week, or I don’t know what day it is, last week, I guess it was, with my coach, where I told her I haven’t got on the scale in a while, I’m kind of nervous about it. And we talked through, okay, what do I think I weigh? If I weigh that amount, what am I gonna make it mean? If I weigh less than that, what am I gonna make it mean? If I weigh more than that, what am I going to make it mean? 

So I already went into it equipped with a believable, intentional way of thinking about myself, my past, my future, my body, my health, all the things that come up for me when I get on the scale. Okay, and that is the only reason why, for me, with the scale, I can get on there and not feel defeated, discouraged, frustrated, like I used to, because I already decided in advance. I already choose a thought, okay? 

For example, my thought that my coach helped me to decide was that if the scale was at the number I thought it was going to be, which is what ended up happening, it was about actually a pound more than I thought it was gonna be, but it wasn’t five pounds more than I thought I was gonna be. We kind of took a guess together, right? And it was right around there. And I decided if that were true, that I was gonna make it mean, oh, I know my body pretty well. Isn’t that so much better of a thought than, oh, see Jody, because this is what I was tempted to believe. I told her, I’m gonna get on, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be up for ish, five maybe pounds. 

And I’m gonna want to think, see, you’re not a healthy person. You’re just going back to your old ways. You can lose weight, but you can’t maintain it. This is too hard, you’re never gonna get it. That’s what my brain was wanting me to believe, right, my default brain. But that would create a terrible experience for me. 

So I decided instead to think, if it’s up about what I think, I’m gonna think, oh, I know my body pretty well. And if it’s lower than I think, I’m gonna think a thought like, huh, I must be lowering my weight set point so I’m actually able to get away with indulging quite a bit and still maintain a certain weight set point. That’s kind of cool. If it was up even more than I thought, I decided, with the help of my coach, to think, all right, well, we had a lot of fun over the holidays. That was enjoyable, right? Let’s get back to it now. Let’s take good care of ourselves. 

My point is you can decide in advance because what you’re thinking is creating your current reality. Now, we don’t always get that opportunity to know, oh, there’s an event coming up, there’s a circumstance going to happen that’s going to make it difficult for me to think in a useful way. I get that, okay? Just stay with me. I’m simply trying to illustrate, first of all, the point that your thinking is creating your current reality. Nothing outside of you is creating your current reality. 

The reason this feels so tricky, again, is because depending on what source you go to, we have an average of about 60,000 thoughts per day. I just looked it up again today, and the study that I found online today said 60,000 thoughts per day. That’s a lot of thoughts. You do not have to manage all of them, but the average person, according to this study, has 75% of those thoughts are what they called negative. 

Now, I don’t know what they mean by negative, but we could take some guesses, right? And that 95% of those 60,000 thoughts we have per day are repetitive, meaning they are the same thoughts that we have most days. They are the same thoughts we’ve been thinking for years. This is what Joe Dispenza would call your personality, your memorized patterns of thinking. 60,000 thoughts you have per day, 95% of them are just repeat of thoughts you’ve been having for years, if not decades. 

And that is what makes up your personality. It’s how you feel most of the time. It’s how you show up and behave and interact with other people in the world most of the time. And they just happen by default, unless you choose to focus on changing your thoughts. It’s not even difficult to do. I’m going to tell you how in just a moment. But remember, your thinking is creating your current reality. 

So if you are walking around thinking that your life is hard, I want to tell you something, my friend. Your life is not hard. Your thoughts are making your life hard. And I’m not trying to take away from anything that might be challenging that’s going on for you. I’m not trying to diminish the amount of compassion that you deserve, the amount of praise you deserve for showing up and trying things. You deserve all of that. 

I’m just telling you that your thinking is either making it harder or making it easier, period. What’s not an option that most of us think is happening, we think we’re just observing the world around us. Like, let me tell you about my life. It’s hard. When somebody tells me this, let me tell you about how hard my life is. What I know they’re about to tell me is how challenging it is to live in their brains, to operate in the world with the thoughts that they are thinking. 

They are not telling me about their life to the extent that they think they are. They are telling me, they are revealing to me the thoughts that they are thinking. I promise you this is true. This is true with the little tiny mundane routine things that happen in your life all day long, and it’s true with the big unusual circumstances that come along from time to time. Let me tell you what I mean. 

When you walk out of your bedroom or your bathroom, wherever you walk out of first thing in the morning, I don’t know what your morning routine is. My routine is I get up, I get in the shower first thing, and I get dressed, brush my teeth, whatever other kind of maintenance needs to happen on my hair, my makeup, et cetera. And then if I have to get kids up, I get kids up, sometimes in the middle of all that, right? And then at some point, we all land kind of in the kitchen to figure out, do we need breakfast? Do we need to pack lunches? What needs to happen for us all to start the day? Do I need to drive kids to school, et cetera? 

I kind of think of it as like landing in the kitchen, ready to figure out the rest of the day. So when you land, wherever you land, if it’s in your kitchen or wherever, you have thoughts, right? I walk into the kitchen and first thing I notice is the condition of the kitchen. Are there dishes in the sink? Did the dishes get done last night or not? Are the counters cluttered with stuff? Is there some kind of food on the counter that needs to get thrown away? 

Did the dogs get a hold of something or get into something that they shouldn’t have? Are there sweatshirts and jackets that got left out all over the place that should have been put away? My kitchen happens to be attached also to a little living room area. So I notice if the couch cushions got put back where they’re supposed to go and the blankets got put away, or if everything’s just scattered and the chairs are a mess. 

I just notice all that and I have tons of thoughts about all of it, right? I have thoughts about myself as a mom, as a woman, as a housekeeper, as a person. I have thoughts about my home, whether or not it’s big enough or nice enough or clean enough or needs something done, if we should fix it up in some way, or I have thoughts about the people that I live with, namely my children and my husband. I have thoughts about the pets. I have thoughts about all kinds of things, right? Just by seeing that. 

Now, I would tell you that I’m just observing. Oh, the kitchen was such a disaster this morning. I was so overwhelmed when I walked into it. Or the kitchen was so clean and organized. I’m so glad that we did the dishes last night and that I tidied up before I went to bed. I feel so much more peaceful when I walk into a kitchen like that. That’s what we say, right? But it’s not the kitchen making me feel that. all the sentences in my mind, the judgment of myself, the judgment of my family, the judgment of my house, that all of that judgment makes me feel terrible. The kitchen doesn’t. 

You know how I know? I focused on this years ago when I was first growing my coaching business and really absorbed in this work all the time. And my life looked a little different. I lived in a different place. My kids were different ages, but I noticed I would get done working in my bedroom, which was doubling as my office at the time, and I would walk out and the house would be a disaster and I would feel the feeling rise up in my chest. 

You know the feeling? It’s kind of a hot, pressure-filled frustration, angry resentment is what I would call it. And I got tired of that feeling. And I was trying to change the world around me, like, get the kids and the family and whoever else to keep the house clean and it wasn’t working. And so I decided to practice what I preach and change what I was going to think when I walk out and the house looks like that. 

And you know what I realized after going through a slow process? This isn’t just like, I don’t know, you guys, just think positive, not what I’m saying. I went through a really slow detailed process to decide what I was going to think about it. But what I landed on was, I have such a full life. Because I realized I want those kids. I want that husband. I want this house. I want them to have toys and blankets. And I want pillows on my couch. And I want food for us to eat. And I want dishes for us to eat off of. I want all this stuff. 

I have so much stuff that I want. And I have a life that I want. And I have relationships that I want. And I have people that I want. And you know what happens when you have a full life? Gets messy. It doesn’t all go in a linear order. Things don’t always get put where they’re supposed to. So I started instead walking out going, I have such a full life. 

Now again, that for me was a thought that was believable, that brought me a feeling of gratitude and abundance. And it doesn’t mean that we don’t work on cleaning up better and teaching people to put things away and all of that. I just decided I don’t want to have a current reality where every day one of the 95% of my repetitive, what is 95% of 60,000? I don’t know, math is hard. I don’t want one of those thoughts to be, oh, I have to do everything around here. It’s always such a mess. That’s just a terrible feeling thought. And it doesn’t clean up the house or get people to help more. It just punishes me. And if you have that thought, then it’s punishing you. 

And I just wanna invite you to notice, first of all, that what you are thinking is creating your current reality. So like I said, we could go through your whole day and notice that, from how you land in the kitchen, to what you think when you drop those kids off at school, to what you think when you, I don’t know, what else do you do in your day? 

When you go to the gym and you see your body in the mirror, when you run into a friend or a neighbor, when your dogs do whatever your dogs do, when you think about what you have coming up ahead. If you have a job, when you go to work, when you see your coworkers, when you sit down at your desk and open your computer, when you open your email inbox, you have thoughts. We all have thoughts. When you get a text message from someone, those thoughts are creating your current reality. 

And if you’re not paying attention, your brain will gravitate towards negativity because your brain thinks that matters. Your brain thinks that’s preventative. Your brain thinks all kinds of things I’m gonna get into more in just a minute. But 75% negative thoughts and 95% repetitive thoughts is for the average person that’s unaware of this. 

You are not that person anymore. Even if all you do is listen to this podcast episode, I just made you aware that your thoughts are creating your current reality and you can’t not know that now. And so it will immediately shift things for you, even just a little bit, okay? 

So again, just to sum up this point, and then I’m gonna go on to point number two. We are doing much less observing of reality than what we think. What we are actually doing is meaning making of the reality around us all day long. There is such a thing as reality. There is, or there are, I should say, things that happen. There are objects, there are people, there are words that get said. There are real things that happen in the world. But our experience is not because of those real things. 

Our experience is because of what we decide to make them mean. The meaning that we assign, the stories that we assign, the stories that we associate with those things, and what they mean to us about ourselves, about our relationships, about our future, about our past, that is what’s creating your current reality, okay? So let’s talk about the second reason why your thoughts matter so, so much. Your thoughts matter because your thoughts determine where your energy is going to go, okay? Your brain is very good at being efficient. It is going to focus on what it believes is the most relevant thing in your life. 

I’m always so fascinated by how much our names are relevant to us, right? If I am walking through an airport, there are all kinds of announcements happening all around me. Announcements about flights, departing or arriving, or baggage, or announcements about somebody left something at the security checkpoint, please return to claim your item. Like all kinds of things like this are happening, right? 

Announcements, there’s a lot of other sound happening at an airport too, but I always am kind of fascinated by this, the way that the brain can just filter most of it out. Now, there are certain things that it pays attention to. So if there’s announcements saying that somebody left a cell phone at the security checkpoint, my brain hears cell phone and thinks important. Cell phone, important. Leaving a cell phone behind, problems, kind of major problems. We’re so dependent on them. That’s how we would get anywhere. That’s how we communicate with people. That’s how you pay for things even. It’s just a really critical device. 

So when I hear cell phone, even if they said somebody else’s name, I would stop and double check and make sure I have my cell phone because my brain hears that as relevant. If they mentioned some other item, like if they said somebody left a pair of headphones at the security checkpoint, please return to claim them. And I wasn’t traveling with headphones that day. And headphones aren’t really that critical. If I lost them, that might be inconvenient. It might cost me some money and some time to replace them, but it wouldn’t inconvenience me nearly to the level of losing my cell phone, right? 

So my brain might just filter that out as irrelevant. And when we hear our names, back to what I was saying originally, our names are so relevant to us because we believe that the information is meant exactly for us if someone’s saying our name. So if they got on the intercom and they said, Jody, you left your ID, please come and get it, that would catch my attention. But if they said, Jody Moore, would catch my attention even more. It’s directly meant for me. 

And the reason I’m bringing this up is because our energy, and what I mean by energy is your attention, your focus, right, in that example I just gave you, a little part of my energy or my focus goes towards that announcement if I hear them say, Jody Moore, you left something at the security checkpoint, please return to claim it. Or if I hear them announce my flight, the flight headed to whatever destination, and that’s the destination I’m going to, I pay attention. It’s relevant to me. My energy goes there for a minute. 

I give a pause in my focus and attention to hearing the announcement, and then I might change my behaviors and give some of my time, some of my effort, some of my strategy, my ability to strategize, my ability to find solutions, to problem solve. I’m gonna give to the things that feel relevant. Now, the reason I’m using the word relevant is because if we go back to the stat we had before, about 75% of our thoughts being negative, the brain then believes that those things are relevant. 

In other words, worth pausing, worth focusing on and hearing and giving some energy and attention to. So if I walk into the grocery store and I think that they’ve done a terrible job on this day of managing the grocery store for whatever reason. Maybe I noticed that, let’s say I walk into Target and the dollar bin is a mess. This is not to pick on Target. I’m not saying this actually happens. Just a hypothetical example, okay? 

Stuff is all mixed up. It’s not organized by item. And now nobody can find anything and it’s not very appealing to look through. And I start thinking, that’s not great. They should clean that up. They should organize it. Because I don’t really wanna look through it when it’s such a mess and that they’re not gonna sell as much product. That’s poor management. It doesn’t look good. It’s not the way you should run a Target store. It’s not the way the dollar bin is supposed to be. 

This is what we do. We have thoughts and opinions about how everything should be, right? Then now what my brain has heard is that whether or not this Target store today is doing a good job is relevant. So I might start noticing other things as I walk through the store. I might notice other things that are out of place, or how the staff isn’t behaving in the way that I think they should, or the registers aren’t. There’s not as many registers open as I think they should have. They should definitely have the self-checkout open. Why is self-checkout not always open? 

That is actually something my brain thinks is really relevant. Either why does this store not have self-checkout or why is it not open? Because I wanna go through self-checkout. So I’m putting some attention and energy onto what is wrong with this store. Now, is that where I want my energy and attention and focus going? Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it’s useful for us in our lives to put some energy and some focus around what’s wrong and what could be better. 

But most of the time, it’s a no. Most of the time, me noticing how Target is mismanaging their products has zero upside, unless the manager’s asking my opinion, or unless I’m gonna take the time to sit down and offer some suggestions, and maybe they’re gonna implement them, and now my Target store is gonna get more organized, which is usually not the case. 

Usually, we’re just walking around complaining. We’re not gonna talk to anyone about it. We’re not gonna do anything about it. We’re just gonna waste some of our energy, direct it towards something that is so not in our control, not our business, not worth our time to try to change and implement and affect. And this is why we’re walking around so frustrated and miserable. 

I keep hearing people say on all kinds of podcasts and shows and things, that it’s a hard time for people right now. There’s a lot of hard things going on. And I just wanna offer to you that what’s hard is the way we have mismanaged our brains. That is why so many people are struggling. It’s not because the world is harder. I really don’t believe that the world is harder. I believe the world has changed, but I believe in some ways it’s harder and in some ways it’s easier than it’s ever been. It’s not because times are tough. It’s not because of something going on in our country. It’s not because of even something going on in your family. I promise you. 

It’s because our thinking has gotten sloppy and we are wasting, we are giving so much energy because of where our thoughts are. We are giving so much energy to what we don’t want. We are wasting our brain’s ability to generate solutions and ideas and strategies on things that are not ours to own. 

Mel Robbins has a new book out there, which I haven’t read yet, but I did just listen the other night to a podcast interview she did on it. And she calls it The Let Them Theory, right? And her theory is, okay, those people are, you know, they’re not running the grocery store correctly, they’re not running Target the way they should, for example, okay, well, just let them. Or if somebody in your family is judging you, let them. 

And the idea, and she doesn’t, I didn’t hear her, at least in the interview, quite articulate it in this way, but I love so much the concept, because what she’s saying is stop wasting your energy and your thinking and your focus on trying to control something that you can’t control. Now, again, this doesn’t mean we can’t influence people. We’re just talking about where is the majority of your focus? Where’s your energy going? 

Is it going to a place that is like a waste of your energy? If you’re putting your energy towards something you hate, it’s a waste of your energy. I would much rather you put the energy towards what you love. And by energy, again, I mean your focus, your amazing brain, your heart, your ability to receive inspiration and answers and have ideas. I want it going towards what you love, not towards what you hate. I want you to focus it on what you like, not on what you dislike. I want you to focus it on what you want, not on what you don’t want, okay? Because where your energy flows, the result grows. 

Yeah, I just made that up, it rhymes. Okay, where your energy flows, the result grows. Many other people have said many different versions of this in the past. I just like to remind myself, wait a second, what am I growing? And by growing, what I mean is it becomes amplified in your experience. It becomes more a part of your life. It becomes more a part of those 95% memorized thoughts that you have. It becomes part of your personality sometimes. Sometimes it just becomes part of what feels quote unquote normal in your life, in your relationships, in your family, in your home, in your community, et cetera. Where your energy flows, the result grows. 

We don’t wanna grow the things that we hate or dislike or don’t want. We wanna grow the things that we love, the things that we do want. You have to choose what you’re going to focus your energy on. Now, this brings me to the third reason why your thinking matters so much, okay? Because some of this happens in a sort of what people would call woo-woo metaphysical way. I do believe that. I do believe some of it is hard to track or trace or articulate or know exactly why or how that thing grew in my life. But it does happen in major ways, okay? 

But a portion of it also happens in a very tangible, linear, obvious way. And that is because where our energy and focus is going to direct how we show up, how we behave, how we spend our time, what we do, et cetera, okay? So let’s go back to the very first example that I gave. 

I got on the scale this morning. I already decided in advance what I was gonna think and I’d given myself three possible circumstances, like the scale is what I thought it was gonna be, it’s below or it’s above. It had to fall into one of those three. And so I’d already decided what I was gonna think. I created a much more pleasant, peaceful experience myself by choosing that in advance. But also, operating from that space determines what I’m going to do next. 

Whether or not I’m going to eat the way I want to be eating today, or if I’m going to throw the towel in and go, forget it, I can never change, and keep eating junk, right? Whether or not I’m going to go for a walk. Those are the obvious ways, but it happens even in small, subtle, we don’t even really consciously think about it kind of ways, like conversations that we have with other people, what we notice when we’re grocery shopping, what I think and feel if and when I feel hungry, how I dress that day. 

Am I going to get dressed and respect my body by putting something that in my mind feels like the way I would dress a body that I respect? Or am I gonna stay in my sweats and my t-shirt all day because I feel discouraged and I continue to reinforce to myself that my body is not worth taking care of? It’s the little tiny things that we’re not even aware of because we can override some of it, right? 

We can behave in a way that serves us even though we felt discouraged. And people will tell me this all the time. They’re like, no, if I just accept that it’s okay that I gained four pounds, then I’m not for sure not gonna go to the gym. And you can override that. And they say, I wanna go to the gym because I gained four pounds and because I’m discouraged, not even because I gained it, but because I’m discouraged and frustrated that I gained it, that’s what gets me to the gym, okay? 

So you can do that, you can override it, you can try to compensate for your beliefs through action. But what I’m talking about are all the little, teeny, tiny, other little sub actions or the way in which you do it that matters because of what you’re currently thinking, because your thoughts matter. 

Okay, so to bring it all home, I’m gonna give you the three reasons why we stay stuck so that you can get some movement here. The three reasons why, again, for most people, according to the study I found online this morning, 95% of our thoughts are just repetitive of the ones that we’ve been having in the past, and 75% of them are negative. That’s a lot of negative thoughts, okay? 

So here’s the reason why, it’s three things again, and I’m gonna go through these a lot faster because I know you don’t have all day to listen to my voice, so I’ll bring it home here. The three reasons we stay stuck are number one, because we’re unaware, number two, because we’re resistant or shaming ourselves, and number three, because it feels like the best or only way to think about a topic, okay? So if you’re unaware that you are simply thinking thoughts all day long, you are not observing the world around you very much, there’s a little bit of an observation happening, a tiny little bit that happens through our senses, things that we see, taste, touch, smell, and hear, okay? 

But everything else after that is a thought. And that means, and by the way, we’re all this way. We think that we are simply observing reality when what we are doing is interpreting reality and deciding whether it’s good or bad, right or wrong, relevant or irrelevant even we’re filtering some of it out. But when you become aware that it’s all thinking, then you gain a certain level of authority. 

Number two, we’re resistant to being aware of it because of the judgment then that we have right after, right? When I try to empower you with the idea that it is your thinking making your life amazing or making your life challenging. Either way, it is your thinking. You don’t have an amazing, full, abundant, blessed life. You just have positive, abundant thoughts at times, okay? And when I try to make people aware of that, and again, 75% of the thinking is negative, then immediately they feel bad about it. 

They think that what I’m saying is that they shouldn’t be thinking these negative thoughts. They shouldn’t be wasting their energy on what they don’t want. And that’s not what I’m saying. That’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is you don’t have to. You don’t have to think about it in that negative way. It’s not the only option. You don’t have to direct your energy towards something that you can’t control. Not only do you not have to, but it’s not useful like your brain believes it is. 

Okay, so it’s very different to say I shouldn’t be thinking this or I don’t have to think about it that way. That’s not the only way to think about it. It’s not the only option and it is going to create my current reality and what happens in the future. Okay, which brings us to number three. It feels like the reason people are just repeating their thoughts is because that feels like either the best way to think about it or the only way they can consider thinking about it. 

That’s why a lot of what I do here on this podcast is try to offer you alternative thoughts, alternative ways to think about things. And how do we know what is the best way to think about it? It depends on you. It depends on what feels good to you currently. I should say what feels like the way you want to feel, because I don’t believe feeling good all the time should be the goal. But how do you want to feel about this particular circumstance? How do you want to show up for it? And what do you wanna create in the future? And what emotion would be required for you to create that? That’s how we determine it. 

These are complicated layers of things that are individual, and that’s what we do in coaching. That’s what I get the honor and privilege of helping people to do, is number one, become aware. Number two, become totally compassionate and open and not shame themselves, not resist where they’re at, just understand we’re all just human beings, but then to understand that it’s not the only option. 

In fact, there are hundreds, if not thousands, or millions of other possibilities, and that the one you’re choosing might feel necessary, might feel important, might feel like the appropriate way to interpret a circumstance. That’s only because you’ve been thinking that for so long, and those 95% of your memorized thoughts are driving. That’s what I got for you today, my friends. Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of the podcast. I will see you next week. Bye-bye.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: jodymoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s jodymoore.com/freecoaching.