30: Small Thoughts Need Big Muscles

[00:00:00] Shanenn Bryant: Welcome Jealousy Junkies. 

[00:00:02] Shanenn Bryant: If this is your first time here, I am your host Shanenn Bryant here to share my jealous experiences with you. The good, the bad, mostly ugly, but that's okay. I'll be the one to say it. I'll be the one to expose how our brains work and talk about the thoughts we have. 

[00:00:24] Shanenn Bryant: But I do encourage you to talk about it too. Open up a little bit about what you're feeling, maybe in the Facebook group or with a really good nonjudgmental trustworthy friend. Or in one-on-one coaching with me. 

[00:00:38] Shanenn Bryant: There's a new place that you can open up and I'll share that announcement towards the end of the episode. So, make sure to stick around so you don't miss that announcement. 

[00:00:49] Shanenn Bryant: I want to share with you today why it's important to recognize your thoughts and how to make them more valuable to you. I hear a lot of times and maybe I even thought it in the past about, you have to change your thoughts, you know, have different thoughts, create different thoughts. And while I do believe in creating new thoughts, I also recognize that sometimes we can't help the thoughts that pop in our head. Especially in a jealous moment. 

[00:01:21] Shanenn Bryant: We have a hard time stopping the thoughts in our head. However, there is a way that you can make thoughts more valuable, create additional new thoughts, and make them more valuable to you. And so that's what I'll be talking about today. 

[00:01:35] Shanenn Bryant: A while ago I hired a personal fitness trainer. I've dabbled with a couple different trainers in the past, but it just didn't really fit. In one instance, I wasn't a hundred percent into it. I mean, I just wasn't giving it my all. And in another, I just didn't feel like I was making any progress. But I wasn't going to give up. I just knew I needed to find the right fit. 

[00:02:04] Shanenn Bryant: Because as a coach myself, I do believe in the importance of working with a coach or a mentor or a therapist or personal trainer, whatever it is, if I'm feeling unsuccessful in my life. I try to be, you know, smart enough to understand like, hey, this isn't my area of expertise. And I need someone to lean on. Somebody who's already went through the experience or they're several steps ahead of me or they have studied it much longer than me. And I just feel like it's important to have that. 

[00:02:37] Shanenn Bryant: I also know, especially when it comes to personal fitness, I won't push myself as hard, so I needed to find the right one. And thankfully I finally did. And here’s how I knew it was the right one and how it ties to your thoughts and the tips that I'm going to share with you today. 

[00:03:00] Shanenn Bryant: If you're a client of mine, or if we have been on a Clarity Call together, maybe even in the Facebook group, one of the things that I do is reassure you. Reassure you that you're going to make progress, that you can have transformation because one of the biggest thoughts most people have that holds them back is the thought. that they can't do it. 

[00:03:24] Shanenn Bryant: "I'm just never going to get over this jealousy thing." "I'm never going to get any better. Um, I'm always going to be this way." "I've tried this, and it didn't work. I've tried that, and it didn't work" or some version of not trusting in yourself that you can make the changes. And so I'll often say, you know what, that's okay. I have enough confidence in you for the both of us. 

[00:03:50] Shanenn Bryant: So in one of my very first sessions with this trainer that I found, his name is James, he was explaining to me the basics of weightlifting and how it works. How you have to get the fundamentals down first, you know, make sure that you're lifting the right way and you have the proper form, all of that good stuff. And it made sense to me, but here's how I really knew. Here's was the kicker. 

[00:04:17] Shanenn Bryant: He takes me over to show me squats. I'd done it with him before. And he just wanted to make sure that I had the proper form and then he starts to load up the bar with weights and what looked like a lot of weight! He must've seen my face because he looked at me and said, "Don't worry. Based on your weight and size, and I've watched you do these before. I already know what you can do at this point. I know how much you can handle. So I've got that covered for both of us. You just focus on your mindset."

[00:04:49] Shanenn Bryant: Oh, okay. Well, I mean, that was it for me. I just knew like right then and there he is my trainer for sure. He's speaking my language. Signed, sealed, delivered. Thank you very much. Where do I sign? 

[00:05:04] Shanenn Bryant: So, I was working out the other day with James and always towards the end of my session, I have my crunches to do. I'm now at 200 crunches a session. I've been doing four sets of 50 crunches every session. But that day after the 200 crunches, he says, okay, you’re going to do something new and elevated, And then he hoists me up, like on this bar where I put my arms through these straps and I'm kind of just hanging there. 

[00:05:35] Shanenn Bryant: And I have to lift my knees to my chest. And I have to do four sets of 10, lifting my knees to my chest. 

[00:05:44] Shanenn Bryant: Okay, look, it might not sound like much to you just hearing the description, but it's so hard. Especially after I just did 200 crunches. My abs were already on fire. And about halfway through my set I noticed my hips and my thighs started burning. When I mentioned it to James and asked him, like, why are my thighs hurting now? Shouldn't it just be my abs? And he says, "oh, well, that's your larger muscles coming in to help out your smaller, weaker muscles. It's a natural thing that your body will do."

[00:06:18] Shanenn Bryant: A light bulb went off in my head. I was like, oh my gosh. That's how I can explain this to the jealousy junkies, this topic that I wanted to talk about today. That's the perfect comparison to help me explain this concept. So as soon as my session was over, I sat in my car out in the parking lot. And I just started to write everything down, in the notes in my phone, like exactly what he said and how it ties to the topic of our conversation today. 

[00:06:50] Shanenn Bryant: A big piece of overcoming obsessive jealousy that people may not realize is increasing your self-awareness. Self-awareness and self-management are key to not just overcoming obsessive jealousy, but a lot of things. Those are the two big areas. Part of increasing self-awareness is being able to identify your thoughts and getting really curious about them. Getting curious about my thoughts is how my journey started. That was the first starting point of just being curious. So first identify them. Then get really curious about them. 

[00:07:31] Shanenn Bryant: And I've mentioned this in a recent episode, but when you have a thought, you should run those thoughts through the two questions that I laid out in that episode. So, one, is this thought true? 

[00:07:43] Shanenn Bryant: And two, if it is true, is this serving me in a positive way? I cannot tell you how many times working with clients, just hearing people talk and my own experiences. 

[00:07:55] Shanenn Bryant: I'll have a thought and I'll think it's just law. You a hundred percent do it too. You have a thought; you just feel like it's true. That it's black and white. It's a hundred percent true how the world is. And oftentimes it is not true. The thought you're having is just a thought that you've created and made up. So, the first thing is, is the thought true? And once you've gotten really curious about that question, then the second question is, okay, even if it's true, is that thought serving me?

[00:08:32] Shanenn Bryant: You still want to start there with those two questions? But now take it a step further Your thoughts are what generates your feelings. What your partner does or doesn't do, or what someone at work does is just an event. It's just a circumstance. There's no good. There's no bad until you put a thought to it. Then that causes you to feel a certain way about it. And if you don't have self-management skills, and now you've thought the thought. Which then you tie a feeling to it and you don't have self-management skills as jealousy junkies, that's when everything hits the fan, right? Like, oh crap. Look out world. 

[00:09:22] Shanenn Bryant: If your thoughts lead you to feel unappreciated, for example, your actions might be to cry or to seek attention. 

[00:09:31] Shanenn Bryant: Think of these types of thoughts as your default thoughts. I call them first degree thoughts. It's just those ones that we keep going back to over and over and over again and getting the same results. Why? Because they're the same thoughts generating the same feelings that generate the same actions. You just keep going back to those same thoughts that generate the same feeling that then you do the same thing. 

[00:09:57] Shanenn Bryant: And you just keep repeating that pattern. It's easy for your brain to give you that same thought because you just had it yesterday. You just thought the same thing. So it's there. It's easy. It's convenient for your lazy brain to go, oh, let me pull this thought again and serve it up to her. It seemed to work yesterday. Um, I gave it to her yesterday. I gave it to him yesterday and that's what they wanted. That's what they needed. 

[00:10:25] Shanenn Bryant: So, it's just the same thoughts, but what we have to recognize is that it's just your default thought. And recognize the default action that happens when you have that thought. 

[00:10:38] Shanenn Bryant: When I have this thought, it's leading me to do this thing or these things, these actions. 

[00:10:44] Shanenn Bryant: What about if you created a new thought? 

[00:10:48] Shanenn Bryant: What actions would happen then? 

[00:10:52] Shanenn Bryant: How would you operate in the world if that was different? Like what kind of results would you get if you had a different, stronger, more valuable thought? 

You can use the power of O.N.E to think of different options for your thoughts, or new, more powerful thoughts. And once you have that new thought, okay, now what actions? What, uh, what do I do differently if I were coming from that thought versus my original one? My smaller weaker one, my default thought. 

[00:11:31] Shanenn Bryant: Now I have this new, more powerful thought that's coming in to change the outcome and help push progress along and take over for that smaller weaker default thought that I initially had that's not getting you any progress. That's not getting you the results that you want. That's not getting you closer to the goal and a happier relationship and being more calm. 

[00:11:57] Shanenn Bryant: Just using those smaller, weaker thoughts is what keeps us doing and getting the same thing. And it's easy for us to do because we just stop there. I don't know if you've ever seen or done this trick. I feel like I remember it from school, but maybe I was older when I saw it. Where they tell you to kind of like twist as far as you can or like twist your head around as far as you can. 

So then everybody does it once and then they go, okay, now this time push further past. And every time people are able to turn their head further than the very first time. It's just because like, we just give it a go. 

[00:12:48] Shanenn Bryant: But then when you recognize, like you don't have to stop there, you actually have the power to go beyond. To do better. To be stronger. To have more valuable thoughts than just those ones that are coming up every single day. And so we get stuck saying, I can't do this. I'm not going to get any better. I'm not this. It's because we keep relying on the same old thoughts and wanting it to progress and move us forward. 

[00:13:24] Shanenn Bryant: Or we may try something one time and our old thought kind of comes back into play. And then we think it doesn't work. It really is a skill to go, okay. Here's my default thought. Now I need to consciously bring in that stronger, more valuable, more powerful second thought. 

[00:13:49] Shanenn Bryant: To kind of push this home or give you an example, I'll share something that happened a few weeks ago when me and my husband went out to eat. And what I'm going to share with you. I use this all the time. And I just happened to use it a couple of weeks ago and I'm still impressed with how amazing it is. 

[00:14:14] Shanenn Bryant: A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went out to eat. It was a Saturday night. We were so excited because since we returned from our trip to Costa Rica in January, we have been eating very close to as clean as possible. Uh, not the full thing, but much different than we were. And so we were excited to take one evening to really go out and enjoy a meal. 

Now my husband is the calm, quiet one of the two of us and I was particularly excited to be out and about for a date night. The waiting room, because it was Saturday, of course it was jam packed. And they said it was going to take like 25 to 30 minutes. And the only place to stand was in the aisle that connected like the hostess area where people were already sitting and waiting and the bar area. So, it was really loud. They had the TVs on. It was also close to the kitchen and the sound from the kitchen and people just having a conversation, with all of that, it just made that area really, really loud. 

[00:15:27] Shanenn Bryant: At one point, I said, very loudly and excitedly, apparently I said, "I don't know where to stand I'm. So in the way." My husband kind of flips his head around at me pretty quickly, leans over towards me and went "SSShhhhh.."

[00:15:45] Shanenn Bryant: Oh! My whole mood took a nosedive and my blood pressure skyrocketed. 

[00:15:55] Shanenn Bryant: I mean. No, he didn't just shush me. 

[00:16:00] Shanenn Bryant: I want to use this scenario of him shushing me as an example of having a default thought and bringing in a new, healthier, more powerful, more valuable thought. 

[00:16:14] Shanenn Bryant: So, when he leaned over and did the shush, I instantly felt mad. I was so pissed that he did that. And I thought in my head like, seriously, how rude. My body language completely shifted. I turned away from him and I just started staring at the TV on the wall. I have no idea what was on. I wasn't really watching it. I just knew that I wasn't speaking to him, and I didn't want to look at him. And I wanted him to be very well aware that I was ticked. 

[00:16:55] Shanenn Bryant: And also staring at the TV or doing that type of thing is something that I very much did in the past when I felt jealous. And I did think for a second, like, oh, is he going to know what I'm upset about? He should know, because getting jealous in that situation is not something that I typically do any more, but. I mean, I'm sure he's got some PTSD from it and maybe he would think that I got jealous. 

[00:17:26] Shanenn Bryant: I wanted him to know that I was upset, but I didn't want to have to say anything. That's always my whole go-to. So it doesn't just happen with jealousy apparently. Um, that's my go-to as well when I'm shushed. 

[00:17:44] Shanenn Bryant: So, I'm just watching the TV monitor and I could feel my eyes start to well up a bit. And I thought, oh, Okay, hang on a second. Timeout. I've got to put the brakes on here. Because originally, I was ticked. I was mad. I felt like my emotion, my feeling, is mad. I am angry. 

[00:18:12] Shanenn Bryant: When I started to get the tears. I had to get really curious. I went back to like basics and got really curious about what was going on with me. I thought I was mad. 

[00:18:28] Shanenn Bryant: But as I mentioned before, usually your initial thought is not right. Usually that initial thought is your just default thought. We often don't expand our emotional vocabulary very big, so we go to just those like mad, sad, angry, depressed. 

[00:18:46] Shanenn Bryant: We go to those general ones. So I questioned it like, okay, wait a second. My initial default thinking is that I'm mad. But I have some tears. And I have learned over the years for me, tears are a sign that I'm embarrassed. I used to say all the time. I cry when I get angry. But actually, that's not true. I cry when I think I'm angry and I'm actually embarrassed. Which was the situation here. So I realized like, oh, I'm embarrassed because I was excited and pumped up and then I got shushed. 

[00:19:28] Shanenn Bryant: In the past, what would have happened is I would have been upset with my husband for shushing me. And my thoughts would have been he's a jerk. He ruined the whole night. Look what he did. He made me feel stupid. He doesn't want to be around me. He's embarrassed by me. I would have went all the way down the rabbit hole. 

[00:19:53] Shanenn Bryant: I know now that it's embarrassment. And so I pulled out my trusty trick that I haven't talked about yet on this podcast and that's the power of just deciding. 

[00:20:11] Shanenn Bryant: Just deciding to not be upset about it. 

[00:20:15] Shanenn Bryant: Yeah. Like think what if I just decide I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to be upset. I'm not going to feel embarrassed. I can just decide to not make this mean anything. To not go down the rabbit hole. It's just a circumstance. And I'm not going to be embarrassed and I'm not going to think he's a jerk for it. And I'm not gonna think he's embarrassed of me and I'm not going to think that the night is ruined. 

[00:20:48] Shanenn Bryant: I'm not going to think that I need to tell him how rude it is to shush people. I'm going to just decide to not be upset about it. And guess what. 

[00:21:02] Shanenn Bryant: A minute later, I was turned towards him again and said how excited I was to be out to dinner and on our merry way to our table we went, and the end result was that we had a delicious meal. We had fun. We laughed. We enjoyed the food. 

[00:21:22] Shanenn Bryant: All because I brought in a more powerful thought. A more valuable thought for me. A thought that's going to help push me to get better results then, if I had listened to that smaller weaker thought. Just like your muscles do. Just like your body is naturally made to do. 

[00:21:48] Shanenn Bryant: I cannot tell you, when you make that decision, just how powerful it is. Like it almost, there is not much magic or like magic wand or poof or any of that in this work that we're doing. When you're fully committed to like, I'm just going to decide I'm going to change this dynamic. 

And I'm just going to not be upset about it. I'm deciding and I'm moving forward and I'm, I'm not going to make it a thing. It is so powerful, and it still blows my mind when I use it and it works and everything turns out this way. It is the best!

[00:22:29] Shanenn Bryant: Now. You might be thinking. Well, it was rude of him to say that. And the fact that you're just ignoring that and just, oh, I'm just going to decide and everything's going to be, you know, rainbows and butterflies and unicorns. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying to just let everything that your partner does or says go by and just decide all the time that you're just not going to worry about it and not having conversations about it. But if you really think about it, most of the time, it's not that deep. Like it just really isn't that big of a deal. 

[00:23:12] Shanenn Bryant: But we make it kind of a big deal. And what makes it a big deal are all of those thoughts that I mentioned in the rabbit hole of oh my gosh, he's embarrassed by me. Oh my gosh. Now the dinner's ruined. Oh, my gosh, he doesn't want to be out with me. I'm so such an embarrassing person or he so rude. I don't understand why he speaks to me that way. Why would he do that to me? He clearly is ticked off at me. Like whatever it is, those are all the thoughts that make it such a big deal. In the grand scheme of life in the grand scheme of our marriage and being together for 13, 14 years now, is him shushing me in a waiting area at a restaurant really worth, not just having an argument with him, but also is it really worth me believing all of those things? 

[00:24:12] Shanenn Bryant: Like, is it worth me believing that he's embarrassed by me? That he, oh my gosh, he's embarrassed by me all the time. And, you know, what most likely would have happened had I kept on that track that like he was embarrassed by me.? Guess what? 

[00:24:29] Shanenn Bryant: I would have started noticing every beautiful, attractive server in that restaurant. And then probably some jealousy may have come out who knows? Who knows how different that night would have ended.? What I know is it was great. We had a great time. We had so much fun and I'm not saying that you just ignore everything. 

[00:24:56] Shanenn Bryant: Because I can communicate his opportunity to change when my heart, isn't beating 90 miles an hour. When I'm not all fired up and think that I'm mad versus embarrassed and you know, already, I'm not even tackling the right feeling that I feel much less at a place to have a conversation about how he should act . I, at that point, don't even have control over how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking much less have clarity to have a conversation with him about shushing people. 

[00:25:32] Shanenn Bryant: So. I don't want to say we're just going to ignore everything and I'm just going to decide that, hey, that's no big deal and I'm not going to be upset about it. No, we actually did still have a conversation about it. But from a way, way different place than when I was staring at the TV and had my body turned away from him. 

[00:25:54] Shanenn Bryant: We actually had a good laugh about it. And I know that my husband wasn't trying to be mean. And in fact, during the conversation, and he explained like, sorry about that. I just knew that you didn't know how loud you were being. 

[00:26:11] Shanenn Bryant: And I knew there was a couple sitting right there trying to enjoy their meal. And I just knew that you didn't know how loud you were being, because it was so loud in the restaurant. He wasn't embarrassed by me. He isn't embarrassed by me every time we go out. It wasn't all of that drama I had in my head. 

[00:26:31] Shanenn Bryant: Deciding not to be upset is one of the most powerful tools that I have used. And as I said, every time I do it, I'm still amazed at how simple it is and how wild it is that it works. So I highly recommend to try it and just decide. 

[00:27:01] Shanenn Bryant: To break down what was discussed before I fill you in on the exciting news. Really consider the first thought you have as your default thought, your first-degree thought is probably a smaller weaker thought that your brain is serving up because it's one that you've thought over and over again. And extend yourself past that initial thought and bring in a more valuable, more powerful thought to help out that initial thought. 

[00:27:39] Shanenn Bryant: And if you think about it in the way of like, okay, what is the more powerful thought that I need to bring in to rescue this weaker thought that initially came in to sort of rescue this situation? To rescue my mind and help out those smaller thoughts. Just how your body does. How your larger muscles come in and help rescue. Help out those smaller muscles that we don't get as much traction from. That you don't get the momentum, the power, the progress forward from all of those small ones. 

[00:28:20] Shanenn Bryant: And practice, just deciding. I'm going to decide that I'm not bothered by that. I'm going to decide that I'm not going to be upset about this. If you want to try it on other things, I always recommend trying new techniques on things that aren't jealousy in the beginning. 

[00:28:43] Shanenn Bryant: Maybe it's your kids and they made a mess. They spilled something or who knows what. Whatever the situation is, but you know what... I'm just going to decide I'm not going to freak out about this. I'm not going to worry about it. I'm not going to get upset about it. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole. I'm just going to decide. And that's it. So, you can just decide. 

[00:29:07] Shanenn Bryant: Just like you can decide on this next opportunity for you. Okay. Drum roll, please. I have an announcement. 

[00:29:16] Shanenn Bryant: I have a new program coming out, and this is your opportunity to make the decision to take that first step forward. It is a live, virtual, group, eight-week program called Dump the Junk. 

[00:29:31] Shanenn Bryant: At the end of last year of 2022 through the first couple weeks of January in 2023, this year, I worked with an incredible group of women who were beta testers for this Dump, the Junk program for me. They have helped to work out the kinks. They brought some great ideas into the program. 

[00:29:56] Shanenn Bryant: They provided some really valuable feedback on what worked, what didn't work well, what they loved, what they liked. And one of the amazing things is they also showed me the power of this program. Of getting other people together to have conversations and to be able to share to where some of them, still to this day, are connected. They are supporting each other. They lean on each other when they're having those jealous moments and they're connected still and leaning on each other. 

So they really showed me the power of this program in a lot of different ways that I didn't even expect. I sat down with them for an interview to just chat about living with jealousy, what changes they were working on and their experience with the Dump the Junk program so you will be hearing from them very soon on their episode of Jealousy Junkie. 

[00:30:59] Shanenn Bryant: But now, right now, I am officially opening the doors for the live, virtual, eight-week, group program Dump the Junk. If you're listening to this podcast in real time, the doors are now open. 

[00:31:16] Shanenn Bryant: The program starts Wednesday, April 26th, 2023. We'll meet live, once a week, for one hour over Zoom, and I'll provide both training lessons and coaching each week. So we'll do a deep dive into your thought patterns. We'll give you processes to use to start changing your jealous habits and get you to start operating as the non-jealous person that I know you want to be. 

[00:31:44] Shanenn Bryant: I'm so excited for this for you. I'm so excited for you to take the opportunity, turn that focus to yourself. It's one hour a week. That's it. And it's only $497. Eight weeks, you get one hour a week of lessons and coaching, and you get to be in a group with other people. 

[00:32:07] Shanenn Bryant: And you'll hear on the podcast episode coming out with the beta testers for the Dump, the Junk program, that was a huge thing for them. Of actually opening up and having other people that are going through those same experiences as they are and having someone to actually talk to about it. So I'm excited for you for. $497, the doors are open right now. 

[00:32:33] Shanenn Bryant: Don't be one of those who waits until the last minute. There is limited seating so make sure you go to jealousyjunkie.com/dump or you can simply click the link in the show notes. 

[00:32:46] Shanenn Bryant: I can't wait to see you inside Dump the Junk program. Go enroll today. And until next time, take care and remember.... don't shush people. It's not nice. Okay. Maybe I'm not over it.