#21 - Mindfulness in Your Life Part 2 - Thought Download

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

thoughts, journaling, crystal, download, isabella, trisha, discover, feelings, journal, people, episode, feel, life, specific, goal, week, write, text messages, head, emotions

SPEAKERS

Trisha Barita

Trisha Barita  00:02

Hey there, I'm Trisha Barita. I'm a mother of twin girls, a wife, an entrepreneur, a psychology major, a lawyer, and a coach. With all these different roles in my life, in the past, I truly struggled with limiting beliefs in my ability to adequately juggle all these roles successfully, I often would be frustrated that time and again, I let my goals and dreams always take a backseat to everything else I was trying to do. And those dreams always seem to be on the horizon, just out of reach. Until I discovered tools and thought work to help me tackle and learn to balance all of it. Now, I don't let these titles define my limits. I define my balance in life, by how I choose to show up for myself, every day. Am I perfect? Hell no far from it. But I do work every day to believe in myself, and to be present with whatever I experienced in this life, The Good, the Bad, and The really fucking ugly. to own my truth and own my thoughts. I created this podcast to talk about how that noise gets in the way of our goals as women. And now I help women and teach them tools to cut the overwhelm of noise in their life, preventing them from getting the balance they want. If you liked this podcast and want to take my free course to get started on designing your balance, and saying fuck that noise, go to Trisha barita.com, forward slash free course. Now let's get after it. Hello, fabulous friends. How you doing today? So if you listen to a couple episodes of this podcast, then you may have listened to episode number five, this podcast called mindfulness in your life part one, journaling. Well, if you wondered, like where the heck is. That's what I'm doing today. In Episode 21, here we are. So if you haven't listened to number five, about journaling, in that episode, I think it pairs with this one. And I'm not going to repeat all the stuff I said from that episode, I'd love for you to go check it out. You know, it, it definitely dives deep into my love of journaling. And you know, thoughts and different ways of journaling, whether wherever you are in your path of journaling, if you're a newbie to journaling, if you've been journaling for years, you know, it kind of speaks to that. So that's all about episode number five. But here today, in part two of mindfulness in your life, I'm talking about thought downloads. So where to begin? First off the common questions about thought downloads that I had when I started doing them. And when I started having coaching clients do them is that these are the top four questions I think that we that we get. So number one, what is a thought download? Good question. Number two, how is the thought download different from journaling? Which I think is another great question. I definitely had that question. Number three, what is the point of a thought download the I, you know, I think, you know, this can kind of be sort of like, an interesting and I'm gonna explain more about it. But like, once you understand, like, kind of the purpose behind it, I think you can kind of get into why you do it. And I do think you know that you'll see the differences between that and journaling after a hopefully after this episode. So number four, though, is that this is a big one. People are like, Am I doing it right? Am I doing this download, right? I love people are always like, Am I doing it? Right? Yeah, you're doing it right. Sounds like you're doing it right. So I will talk about all those things here in this episode. So let me just take them in turn to keep it super simple. Number one, what is a thought download? And the answer is that no in your head if this is not some cool, geeky artificial intelligence matrix thing, where we physically plug ourselves into a computer to quote download everything out of our brain. So If that's what you were thinking, and you'd never heard of a thought download, please scratch that idea from your head because that is not what it is. It is literally just writing down things surrounding an specific event or circumstance that includes thoughts and feelings. For example, I use that downloads to process specific events or emotions that I have experienced, or I'm feeling for myself, I also use it to have my coaching clients do the same, so for be going over something that I'm coaching on, and I'll tell them, why don't you do a thought download on that and bring that to the next coaching session, or, you know, we might go through it right there kind of verbally discussing what would be in the thought download. So it's to identify the circumstances really, that are all entangled up with your thoughts and feelings. And believe me, when you're really feeling it, it can be all squished together, kind of like those rubber band balls with like lots of rubber bands on them. It's hard to sort of sort out what exactly is going on. Because you may have a lot of emotion connected with a lot of thoughts around a lot of things that may have occurred around a certain event or relationship or something. So that's what a thought download basically is. Some people may describe it differently. But that's that's my general definition of community. Number. I don't want to make this complicated. So number two, how is a thought download different from journaling? So some people may have differing views on this, but I but the short answer is that they are different concepts. I think there are different tools really. I've done a lot of journeyman journaling in my life, which I know I talked about my other episode but and the thought downloads of something that's become a newer thing for me, and it has helped me focus and and really start to move forward connecting, you know what I'm thinking about something in a very specific way. To me, the broader perspective is that journaling is like this Vast, beautiful way to connect with, you know, your thoughts, maybe your feelings, maybe memories. You know, in episode number five, I talk about how journaling can be guided with prompts, even give you a freebie in that episode of journaling prompts to find out how you think or feel about a subject matter or daily check in or can be, you know, a very guided type of thing journaling or can be just totally open, you know, you may just have a book and when you feel like writing in it, you write in it right that's tons of evil journal like that, that's just super common. I've that's how I started journaling. So, and some people jarro like on the daily, you know, they maybe they've created this daily habit that really feeds them makes them feel great. While others may do it, like as they feel it. And so some people write a journal, you know, to themselves, like they're writing a letter to themselves, almost talking to themselves starting that dialogue, that communication of what's going on in their brain. Or some people journal about an experience, like an awesome road trip journal. Those are cool. I haven't done as many of those I wish I had, you know, but because it does help you remember what you did on the road trip of your journaling mealtime, you know, or isn't that the whole Eat Pray Love thing, you know, when she journaled all across the, you know, on the huge travels and everything she was doing, but some people may even journal like a personal, you know, change, like experiencing pregnancy and giving birth, I've seen those before where they had journals. And, and you may have done this, if if you experienced pregnancy, where you wrote down things about what it was like, and the things you're discovering, and all of that, and the excitement about that, and the scary stuff about that. But, um, I could go on and on, but hopefully you get the idea. So if you understand with me that when people reference journaling, you know, it's this broad, huge space that encompasses a lot of different ways of expressing yourself and a written or even artistic way, usually, but thought download, at least, for me, it's much more like a tool inside the big space of journaling. It's, it's very much like journaling. But, you know, to be use to specifically process something you're struggling with. Actually think daily journaling or even just frequently journaling can help you to discover that you have something you're struggling with, that you probably need to work through and to process some thoughts and to to be intentional about them. And you're a part of your focus is to have a more mindful life, a more intentional life. Connecting with your thoughts on a daily basis, these will come up these issues that you may you struggling with and you can see them in the daily journaling. And so then the journaling can really help you discover subjects that you may want to then have a thought download about so. Alright, so number three, what is the point of thought download. So I kind of already went over this, but it's again to begin to process or discover your thoughts and feelings around circumstances in a specific way. It doesn't like in the rubber band ball example, it doesn't really untangle the rubber band yet what we're really just discovering that there's a bunch of rubber bands, and we're gonna put them all down in a sort of, you know, scattered way, in a dump, dump way, just so that we can start to discover what all the different rubber bands are. So let me give you a more specific example to explain. If you're like God, Trisha, this is super vague, I still don't know what you're talking about. Okay, let me give me this example. So let's say there's a woman Her name's, let's, let's call her crystal, and she gets like in a TIFF, or like a small disagreement with her friend. Crystal had invited her friend Isabella to do something on Friday. And her friend Isabella had last minute canceled on her when crystal expressed frustration about it to Isabella via text message, because she had been, you know, Crystal been looking forward to it, and she hadn't committed to other things. Because, you know, she was expecting to go out with Isabella. Anyway, when she sent her these text messages, Crystal thought Isabella was being rude because, as well as return text messages were not really responsive, and were vague about why Isabel didn't go and Isabel just saying really generally that she was too busy as a reason for not going in the last minute cancellation. So all of this bothers crystal, okay. You know, she thinks about it all weekend. And so she spends time with her family. And she's even busy all day, doing fun kid stuff with the kids running around. But on Monday, on her way to work, a pops back up in her head and her thoughts, this whole event that happened with Isabella. In fact, she goes back and reads the text messages and wonders if She's overreacting, but then she decides she's not. And she gets bothered by the whole thing again. And Crystal crystal, you know, spends Monday sort of in a bad mood. And, you know, it starts to bother her more and more, that Isabella hasn't even reached back out to her since all of this right. Especially since it's, you know, on her mind. And so, okay, so I could go on and on about how crystal may continue this cycle the whole week. I mean, it might cause her to be grouchy with loved ones, or, or people that do works with our, it could cause her a buffer. Maybe to kind of keep her mind off, you know, what she's thinking and feeling about the situation with Isabella by buffering with TV, or booze, or food or whatever, you know, which may then cause Krystal to feel guilty about, then, you know, doing that, and then wondering why she's doing these things, and are part of her health plans, such as maybe deciding not to work out, because, you know, she already kind of blew her diet that week, or she had too many drinks the night before. And she may not even recognize or associate the not wanting to work out or doing these things as being connected to her thoughts about the event with Isabella. So what is the solution for Crystal, you may ask? You're probably all asking your thinking, Is it a thought download, Trisha? Because I think that's what you're gonna say. So actually, in this moment, you probably have your own thoughts about how crystal handled things, or how you think she should feel, or how she should be, you know, thinking about this, and you may have thoughts about how her friend Isabella handled this and what you think Isabella should have done. But that's about what is the solution for Crystal? Well, that's not what I would say is the right question at this moment. Crystal is, truthfully, probably not ready to jump to solutions at this point. And why you ask? Well, crystal has not done any thought work. Okay. And she clearly has a lot of thoughts and things going on here. Which is sort of why she's experiencing this all these feelings and emotions and thoughts and, and react Tory actions and kind of spiraling a little. And this is kind of where I can see some sort of regular journaling might run you write into a subject matter to do a thought download about, say crystal gets all the way to the next Saturday. So it's been about a week. She had a bunch of junk food on Friday and didn't work and didn't work out. out and is having thoughts beating, you know, herself up about doing those things that weren't really part of her health goals. So say crystal decides to journal to try to feel better. And in the course of journaling, she may express how she wants to eat better, and how her kids drove her crazy this week, she made journal about, you know, not following, you know, the health ideas that she had for the Wii, or how work is annoying her, but you know what she may also express in the journaling. She may mention, being frustrated with her friend, Isabella, and crystal may start to recognize that she's struggling to process this event with her friend Isabella, well, maybe she won't have that really formal thought about, she may just realize, why can't I let this shake go. That's usually how it goes. And that's when you know, is a good place to start to process these thoughts of the thought download. And when you can't let this shit go, then that's a good place to bring in the you know, bringing that that download. And the best way to explain it is it's a dumping of the thoughts or download of the thoughts around something fairly specific. In this situation, you can tell it really is about while the she had thoughts and feelings and stuff all week long, there's a very specific incident that occurred there. And in, she may have past incidents with crystal that she may put down on the paper, but right at the end of the day, that scene, the main thing that you want to get down on paper is everything around the thoughts and feelings and what actually occurred around that incident. And so it could be like a certain event like this crystal Isabella thing, or it could be around a relationship issue, maybe an argument with somebody that you're in a relationship with, it's not just a friendship, or maybe a family member. You know, so it could be something like about a goal, say you're trying, you can't, you can't get your mind wrapped around you achieving this goal you Why or why you're not taking the steps to achieve a goal and and you just maybe kind of spiral out about it and sort of keep putting it off, then you realize, you know, when I think I have some thoughts about this goal, I need to sort of get down. So some people will do a thought download about a goal. And then they kind of discover, you know, what is going on in their head about it. And it's kind of amazing when when it's something sort of like that, you realize, why am I not? Why am I not doing this thing I said I wanted to do that I told these people I wanted to do why am I not? Why am I not doing that? And that that's usually again, another thing where you may think, Okay, this may be a space where I should download that. Okay, so this kind of leads into number four, though, and the question of people asking, you know, am I doing it, right? The thing is, is that it's really not that hard. So, you know, I'm always telling you not to make it complicated. But I love I love my fellow ladies that are like, we're gonna make it complicated Anyway, please don't do that. Please don't do that. Okay, please don't, please don't go like Am I doing it right? If you're putting your thoughts and feelings and all the things that you can remember that happen, and I preferably get good at this and you're doing a closer in time to when this occurs, you know, you're not, you know, waiting for weeks before you're doing it. But anytime is good, really. You put down everything you remember the facts, the thoughts, the feelings, everything that happened, you know, what it made you do? You know how you reacted all of that, right? And you just stick it on paper. And if you're doing that, and you're doing it right, it's fine. Okay. And just grab the newspaper, open Notepad. Or, you know, grab your iPad or phone even you there's phone notes, usually or like your iPad, a lot of y'all have the, you know, I have those things where you can digitally write on them. So you can even get a journal that's specific for thought downloads, but just whatever. Just focus, dump everything out of your head on a specific subject matter. Dump until you feel like you have got it all out there. And then I say walk away. And then if more thoughts creep up, go back and add to it if you did not write those down. Because that sometimes happens, sometimes you got so much going on that you'll be like initially, put all those things down, and then you'll walk away and you'll realize there's more. Especially if it's taking you a while to recognize you even needed to sort of process this. And the crazy wild thing about our brain right is that connecting to your thoughts sometimes actually requires you to disconnect with them from being all jumbled up in your brain. That's why journaling and thought downloads are both so beautiful. So ideally, this whole practice of unloading the thoughts on paper is just beginning of starting to be the watcher of your thoughts. To start to analyze why you think a certain way this part has to come first. The part about discovering all of this comes before you try to force a solution for yourself, before you try to force yourself to process something, you may not be ready to process. And that's okay. That's all part of the process. Sometimes you need time and space to really get through, you know, difficult emotions, difficult thoughts, difficult, you know, emotions and thoughts about certain situations, and to really analyze it before you can consider that other thoughts may serve you better. And you know, or how you want to handle it if you want to take certain different action steps. But you know, when you start to recognize that you actually aren't processing something that is keeping you from living the life you want to live, pulling your emotions in different directions, distracting you from your goals, you will have this tool to unload these thoughts out of your head. And I can tell you that the thought Download Tool solves Crystal's problems. But what it does is it can be her first step. It can be your first step, and giving yourself a more targeted way to unload thoughts around something you're trying to process. Make sure you could journal about it and eventually identify the thoughts. But the thought download is a way for you to take your toolbox mindfulness and say something is going on with me. AKA I can't let shit go. Why can I let this shit go? And I want to figure it out, you know. And so I'm going to use this tool to get closer to figuring it out. And that's it. By the way, crystals made up. But I can't count how many times I know women who have gone through a spiral like I just described crystal went through and gotten derailed because the record player of their brain plays it over and over again in their head. It's okay and completely normal to experience the record player of thoughts and feelings about stuff that happens in your life over and over again. But you tell me, do you want to keep it on repeat? Or learn how to change the record? And I'll leave you with that. And go get after it. You got this Hey, thanks for listening today. If you enjoyed this episode, and are a woman ready to say fuck that noise, so you can start designing the balance in your life. Go take my free course to get started at Trisha barita.com Ford slash free course. Now Have an awesome day and I'll see you next week.