In Part One, Resetting Your Love Radar, I explained how our Love Radars work. I introduced an example of a woman who has some old beliefs:
I am not good enough, and
Men don’t listen to me or treat me with respect.
I explained how I use the Self Coaching Model to understand how Thoughts create Results, and how old thoughts and beliefs determine how your Love Radar sends out signals.
Make sure you read it now before you read Part Two. It’s not a bad idea to even go back and reread it now.
So here’s where we left off. If you want better Results, you have to program your Love Radar with better Thoughts. Here’s the example I created:
I am enough exactly as I am today. I know there are good men out there who treat women with respect and are willing to listen.
Today, I’m going to cover what to do if you don’t believe that thought and how to create better thoughts.
So what if you just don’t fully believe that you are good enough exactly how you are today? I’ve got two suggestions for you. First, find a better thought that you do believe. You see, sometimes going from a crappy thought to a great thought is too big of a leap. Think of Thoughts being on a scale of 1-10. One is a super crappy thought and ten is a great thought that feels great. The number corresponds with how it makes you feel.
All you have to do today, is to find a thought that feels better. So in our example, my client Jackie had some beliefs that she was not good enough which made her feel sad, discouraged, inadequate and unwanted. All she has to do to start resetting her radar is to come up with a better-feeling thought that she believes today.
There is no magic formula to creating the new thought. It’s a matter of trial and error. Just brainstorm. Create a list of potential thoughts that feel better than the original crappy thought and that you can believe today. In my example, there were two thoughts, so to keep it simple, I’ll focus on the first one: I am not good enough.
Here’s an example of brainstorming some new thoughts:
There are things about me that are good enough
There are things about me that I love and accept
I’m proud of my efforts to keep growing
You have to keep trying until you find one that feels good, or at least feels better.
Because when you find a new thought that feels better, you will start gradually going up the scale in the right direction. Remember, better Thoughts create better Feelings, which drive better Actions that get better Results. In other words, better thoughts about yourself in relation to love reset your Love Radar.
I said I had two suggestions for you. The second one is to use inquiry to challenge your crappy beliefs. Inquiry is a process created by Byron Katie.
Inquiry is a way of questioning the thoughts that cause our suffering. I recommend you read everything Byron Katie has ever written! But in the meantime, the short version is that just because you think something, doesn’t mean it’s true. So we learn to question our thoughts. So when you realize that you’ve been believing the thought
I’m not good enough,
you begin to question that thought…. is it really true? Are there any exceptions? To start changing our powerful, deeply held beliefs that program our Love Radar, we have to challenge them. This is an active process. The old beliefs formed when we were small, so it was passive. We didn’t really have the cognitive abilities to question the messages we got from our environment. So they formed neural pathways in our brain. Remember the model from last week:
As you can see, a feedback loop is formed, and we keep getting results that reinforce the old belief so the neural pathway gets stronger and stronger. That’s why we have to be ACTIVE in rewiring these neural pathways. We have to consciously create a better thought and then deliberately practice it to strengthen the NEW neural pathway.
So back to being active and challenging the old belief. Is it true? Is it always true? Are there exceptions to when it’s true? Asking these questions helps your mind begin to see that it’s really not the complete truth. It begins to “wiggle” the neural pathway and open up some plasticity in the brain. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change and form new neuropathways.
When you do The Work, Byron Katie’s powerful process for changing thoughts, you are literally contributing to rewiring the neuropathways in your brain. Here are some concepts you can start to practice:
- Simply ask if the thought is true. Is it a statement of fact?
- Identify what happen when you believe this thought. How do you feel? How to you behave?
- What would happen if you didn’t believe this thought? How would you feel? How would you act?
- Can you identify some examples where the opposite of this thought is true?
Here’s an example using the fourth concept. Remember in our example last week, part of her thought was
Men don’t listen to me or treat me with respect
Now make a list of as many times you can think of than a man listened to you and/or treated you with respect. Doing this active process literally starts to change your thinking. I recommend that you do The Work exactly as Byron Katie recommend on her website to get the full benefit.
So today we learned two powerful ways to change the thoughts that program your Love Radar. The first is to find a thought you believe that feels better and the second is to challenge your thought by asking if it’s really true and finding evidence that the opposite can be true. Remember, this is an active process and you must keep at it because those old neuropathways can be very well defined. Also, make sure you’ve used the tools and worksheet from the previous blogs to identify the old beliefs that need to be reset.
