Walking Around Mindfulness: How to Silence Intrusive Thoughts!

In this post you will learn:

1. About how self-limiting beliefs or intrusive thoughts develop and hinder us in the attainment of our goals

2. A practice many of my clients have found helpful in silencing self-limiting beliefs – an outcome that can dramatically improve your life and business

A couple of years ago I was working with a client (let’s call her Melanie) who was a real estate agent and owned a spa as well. She was facing financial hardship and in our coaching sessions repeatedly made comments like “I always screw it up” or “I just don’t have any answers” or “I know I’m going to crash and burn – I could end up on the streets!”. When we talked about what she wanted to accomplish and how to get there, she would often throw up her hands and exclaim something like “I don’t know what to do!”

What was striking about Melanie was that she was fiercely intelligent, accomplished, and well-educated. From the outside looking in I thought of her as both formidable and capable of just about anything she put her mind to. But her lived-pattern was very different from my impression. As we dug deeper into her goals and next steps it became clear she was limiting her vision of what she wanted, and repeatedly refused to engage in problem-solving and action planning. In other words, her fear and self-doubt had diminished her ability to think creatively about the challenges in front of her - she was stuck.

I introduced a practice to her that I originally developed to deal with my own self-limiting beliefs (more on that below) and had refined and adapted over time through working with clients. I called this practice ‘Walking Around Mindfulness’ and it had not only changed my life years earlier, but according to many of my clients had dramatically improved their lives as well.

The practice I originally developed was inspired by Bruce Lipton’s work ‘The Biology of Belief’, as well as many of the teachings on mindfulness and change taught by Jon Kabat-Zinn and Eckhart Tolle. However, as I worked with my intrusive thoughts (and particularly later when I was working with the self-limiting beliefs of my clients), I came to the conclusion that to diminish (and eventually replace) self-limiting beliefs they had to be addressed in the moment – and every time. It was only through disciplined noticing and interruption of these self-limiting beliefs that we could begin to change them into something more positive and self-affirming.

From Bruce Lipton I learned a key piece of the puzzle. As he explains, there are many ways to understand the brain, but for our purposes think of the brain as composed of two main parts – a conscious creative brain and a subconscious brain. As it turns out, the vast majority of our self-limiting beliefs are housed in the subconscious, and most of those we develop by the age of six. Some of the self-beliefs you develop at this early age help you to thrive and survive. However, some of the beliefs you develop are not helpful – these are fear-based beliefs, and because you have been hearing them your entire life, you tend to internalize these beliefs as truths.

So how do we change this? How do we silence those self-limiting beliefs, or intrusive thoughts?

The short answer is presence, or mindfulness. We need to be aware that we are having these thoughts, how often we are having them, and that we are aware this thought pattern is not serving us. Let me now refer back to my own journey. One of my earliest memories is of my father yelling at my mother, and as a four year old standing in front of her telling my Dad to stop. When I was six my parents got divorced and it was the first divorce the community had ever experienced. In fact, I was like a spectacle at school. People would whisper about me as I walked by: “his parents broke up!”  I remember when they told me I was sitting on our couch in the living room and I cried uncontrollably. In that moment, my world changed forever. What was worse, my Mom remarried in a few months and I found out she had been cheating on my Dad – something every kid in school seemed to know too. I did not like this man, and grew to hate him over time. I should mention here that my stepfather was a good man, and I grew to care about him in my twenties – but growing up we warred with each other.

I spent half the time at my father’s and half the time at my mother’s. At my father’s I played an emotional support role (at the age of six) to a severely depressed father. When I would go to my mother’s I had the distinct impression I was an intrusion in their lives. I was happy and successful at school, but as I would walk home from school each day with my best friend Scott (who is still my closest friend by the way), my shoulders would start to sag and I would get this feeling of dread in my stomach. After a few years, my father remarried to a woman who cared very much for her two older sons but wanted nothing to do with me. She tried very hard to make me feel unwelcome – and it worked. I started living full-time with my mother, and again, I had the distinct impression this was not something my stepfather welcomed.

My life was conflict (both emotional and physical), and I grew up feeling like I didn’t have a home. I want to make it clear that both my father and my mother were good people, and both loved me (and although my father passed away eight years ago, my mother continues to be a source of love and inspiration for me).  I just didn’t get the home life I needed. I suspect it was this upbringing that led to the self-limiting beliefs I came to identify much later in life. I remember my friend Scott always telling me that I was too hard on myself. I really didn’t understand what he meant until I was thirty and had my first child, my daughter Breanna. It’s amazing how the birth of a child can change everything. Like most of us who are parents, the moment she arrived I knew I would fight wild bears to keep her safe and happy. And I had enough self-awareness to know that I didn’t want her to grow up the way I did, and repeat my mistakes. I started to pay more attention to how I was feeling, and what I was projecting out to the world. I soon came to realize that my negative intrusive thoughts were constant; in other words, I was beating myself up every day, multiple times a day.  I would tell myself I was not good enough, or I would feel total embarrassment and angst for some social faux pas I had made days, weeks, or even years before!!! Something had to change.

I began a journey of discovery, that was as much spiritual as it was intellectual. I had always been a voracious reader, having read all of Dickens, Tolkien, and Steinbeck by the age of twelve. Throughout my life I would be simultaneously reading at least two or three fiction and non-fiction books at the same time, and this is where I naturally began my journey. I started to read every self-help book I could find, as well as books that explained how we think, and how we can change our thinking. I also explored the concepts of neuro-plasticity and went down a rabbit hole of works from the discipline of neuroscience. I learned a lot. But something was still just beyond my grasp. I knew I was missing something.

I began to read Eckart Tolle, Bruce Lipton, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, and some of the pieces started to fall into place. I knew that the solution to self-limiting beliefs started with mindfulness, and I had the dawning recognition that we are not our brains; that in fact, our consciousness is not housed solely in the brain. Over the years, I have come to realize that although our brains are truly miracles, they can sometimes work against us. This happens when we falsely believe that we are what we think. This leads to overthinking, and the dominance of intrusive thoughts. How we perceive and process the information the world brings us is a full body experience involving not only our brains, but our skin, our organs, and I would add our spirit (if you think this is naïve tree-huggery examine the work of the Heart-Math Institute). In order to silence negative beliefs we have to reconnect to our bodies, to our wisdom, to our intuition, and this begins with mindfulness. When you start to observe your thoughts, you begin to realize that this process involves a different level of awareness.

This dawning understanding brought me very close to a solution, but there was still a key element missing in everything I read and heard. What became very clear to me in my own journey, and later in my client sessions, was that we have to interrupt self-limiting thoughts in the moment, and we have to do so every time they arise. That means if we experience an intrusive thought five times a day, we have to notice and interrupt it five times a day; and if we experience and intrusive thought a hundred times a day, we have to notice and interrupt it a hundred times a day. Why? Because we are trying to retrain or reprogram our consciousness not to send us that messaging. Obviously, the vast majority of us do not have the time or inclination to sit cross-legged in a room with candles multiple times a day (and certainly not a hundred times! Lol). This is when I first developed the practice of Walking-Around-Mindfulness. These are the basics:

1. Notice without judgment

You are sitting at your desk beginning to do work, or pick up the phone to call a client or business partner and you feel that rush of fear or doubt. Notice it, but do so without any critical self-judgment. This is an extremely common experience for people, and although it impacts some people much more than others, it is almost a universal human experience.

When we notice these fear-based beliefs without judgment, over time we train the subconscious not to send that fear-based messaging.

2.    Deep breathing.

When the intrusive thought first happens, simply breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth until you find a natural pattern of breathing. Put your focus on the feeling of cool air coming in through your nose, and the warm air coming out. Your mind will wander, and want to return to its fear and worry. Simply notice that feeling, without judgment, and return to breath. This is a very important part of the practice because we are trying to metaphorically “get out of our heads” and into our wisdom.

These two steps incorporate the practice in its most simple form! Simple! However, there are five nuances to Walking Around Mindfulness that are very important. The simple truth is that your subconscious is very resistant to change, and as Bruce Lipton illustrates, its job, twenty-four hours a day, is to make your thoughts and beliefs come true. So, this is not an overnight shift. This takes time and practice and discipline.

Nuance Number One:

There is a common mistake I see many coaches, therapists and speakers make. They certainly do want you to recognize your self-limiting beliefs, or what they may refer to as intrusive thoughts. However, they then encourage you to identify why you can do this thing that you fear. As an example, I heard one expert tell their client “tell me five reasons why you can do this” in a very affirmative way. If this works for you great! But for most people experiencing fear-based beliefs you are actually making the problem worse with this kind of advice. When you try affirmations while you are in the grip of the fear or self-doubt, you don’t really believe the positive affirmation. As a result, nothing changes and you may find yourself falling into a spiral of shame. You might think to yourself something like “I can’t even do affirmations right”! This advice is a form of malpractice to me because it sets someone up for failure.

So, how do we avoid this? The answer is to go back to breathing. The process works like this:

1.    You notice the self-limiting belief

2.    You begin deep breathing

3.    You practice WAM by noticing the self-limiting belief without judgment

4.    As you continue your deep breathing and return to a more neutral emotional state this is the time when a positive affirmation can be very helpful. I would just personally encourage you not to begin affirmations while inside the grip of fear and self-doubt.

Nuance Number Two:

It is really important that when you notice the self-limiting belief (such as I can’t do this; or, I’m never going to succeed) you recognize that it is a lie – a lie that you developed at an early age and one that has likely been keeping you from achieving the success and happiness you desire. It’s not that your subconscious is some kind of malicious entity purposely trying to sabotage you! Rather, you have developed a self-limiting belief from childhood that makes you afraid of things that you probably should not be afraid of (like building a successful business or career).  When the trigger incident happens that produces the intrusive thought (such as picking up the phone to make a client call), your system goes into a fight or flight state. In a simplified way, your whole nervous system is saying something like “I can’t do this – run!”

So, it is not enough to notice the self-limiting belief – you also have to recognize it’s a lie, and part of a long-standing pattern that is not serving you.

You may be asking “how do I know it’s just a lie?” Let me respond by saying it is the work of coaching to help you explore and answer this question by helping you to question your assumptions, reflect back patterns of thinking that may not be serving you, and explore how you want to show up in the world, and what you plan to do to get there. However, the short answer is that when we are dealing with self-limiting beliefs, we are often accepting the worst possible interpretation of ourselves and our actions. In my experience, the truth is almost always more positive.

Nuance Number Three:

Some of my clients who have begun this practice have initially found themselves feeling drained or overwhelmed. In my experience there may be two causes to this.

First, you may be recognizing for the first time just how often these thoughts are happening and this can certainly feel overwhelming at first. If you feel like the practice is too much for you, then perhaps consider working with a therapist to help you work through and process these strong emotions. If by any chance you feel completely overwhelmed contact your local suicide hotline. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but you may not yet be ready for that journey at this time. This practice has helped many of my clients (and myself) change their life in extremely powerful and positive ways – but no practice serves everyone. You have to find what works for you.

Second, you may be judging yourself for having intrusive thoughts in the first place. One of my clients confessed to me that her thought process during the initial stages of implementing this practice was something like “I shouldn’t be having these thoughts! I am better than this. I’ve been to therapy – I should be past this stuff!” This is one of the reasons why it is so crucial that you notice these intrusive thoughts ‘without judgment’. Remember, self-limiting beliefs are universal. They impact some people much more than others, but everyone has them to some degree. In fact, I’d argue from my experience as a coach that many people are not even aware that they have these intrusive thoughts in the first place, or if they are aware they don’t recognize the impact they are having on their lives. If you are aware of what’s happening, you are already ahead of the game.

Nuance Number Four:

Mindfulness is about full body, full spirit awareness. It is wonderful if you are already aware that you are having intrusive thoughts. That’s a good thing because it gives you the opportunity to change that destructive pattern. The more you can build this awareness the better, and in pursuit of this goal understand that your body is like an early warning system that can help you recognize when you are shifting into the pattern of self-limiting beliefs. When I work with clients around this topic I will often ask them where they feel the fear or doubt in their bodies. Some say their head or neck, others say their heart or shoulders, many say their stomachs. I encourage you to be mindful of the signals your body is sending – this will often be the trigger for you to begin your WAM practice.

Let me take this a step further and explain that neuroscience has taught us that we experience thoughts and emotions through the body. In a future post, I plan to build on this by talking about how emotions are made and ways to regulate them from the perspective of a neuroscientist friend and colleague. He will soon be appearing as a guest on my podcast, Happy By Mistake.

Nuance Number Five:

If you decide to try this practice, understand that it will only have a lasting impact if it is done consistently over time. The beauty of it is that the entire practice could last as little as a few minutes. In fact, I’ve reached the point where I can notice and interrupt and move on within seconds. As I mentioned earlier in this article, this is why I refer to it as ‘Walking Around’ mindfulness. It is mindfulness on the go. In the office, in your den, on your evening walk.

What I want to stress is that transformational change does not occur simply through awareness. We need to change the automatic processing of our mind-body system and we do this through somatic awareness and practices that change the way we think and feel about ourselves and the world around us. Change happens through embodied practices.

The Really Good News!

For me, this practice changed my life. It freed me and empowered me from what had been dragging me down since I was a child. Life has never been the same – I am so happy and so grateful for the opportunity to live my life fully, without restraint.

I hope you find this practice as life-changing as I, and many of my clients have. But it is important to remember that not all things work for all people. As always, when I offer a practice or an insight I do so loosely. That means I am not suggesting this is the right way for you, just that it is something that you may find helpful. If it resonates with you, then try it out – and if after trying it, you don’t feel that it fits, then discard it. If it does fit, then do it consistently. Mindset shifts are like learning a sport. They take discipline and repetition as you build new muscles, overcome challenges in new situations, and in time reach a flow state (flow state is another great topic for a future post by the way!).

What’s Missing from this Post?

Neuroscience

First, neuroscience understands the process above from a different perspective than I have presented, and I think it is important we incorporate this knowledge into the discussion.

But first a disclaimer:

I must admit that I have some deep concerns about our society’s apparent worship of science to the exclusion of other more lived ways of knowing. Most of the scientific community do not believe in anything that cannot be measured. As a result, the wisdom of lived experience is denied until someone is able to conduct a study in a peer-reviewed journal on a shared area of inquiry – and then suddenly, knowledge that we have ‘known’ for decades suddenly becomes ‘real’.

It also troubles me that the scientific community tends to believe they have a monopoly on truth. Over the years, I have repeatedly noticed instances where science has a breakthrough that proves previous understanding was limited or outright wrong – but until that moment, scientists claimed with complete certainty that the previous understanding of the world was an indisputable truth. I’ll expand on this in a future post and give real world examples, but I wanted to touch on this. I think this issue is really important because if we only accept as truth that which has been measured, I believe we deny other ways of knowing that could have beneficial impacts on our personal journeys, and the future of our world.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I would also add that science has so very much to teach us about how our brains and bodies actually work. Neuroscience, in particular, can provide really important frameworks and insight for how we understand personal change and mindset shifts. In an upcoming episode of The Happy By Mistake podcast, I speak to my friend Nicolo Bernardi - brilliant neuroscientist, coach and founder of The Fortitude Academy. Nicolo expounds on the work of renowned neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, and then talks about how this understanding of the brain informs practices we can adopt to improve the way we regulate our emotions. During the podcast, Nicolo and I discuss ways in which we can use this science to shift our patterns of thinking to those that are more aligned with our goals, and with how we want to show up in the world.

Nicolo’s work provides extremely helpful insight into how we create shifts in our patterns of thinking – and his conclusions resonate with the lived experience of transformational change that I have been teaching for many years.

Building Positive Self-Beliefs

Although I touched on this topic earlier in the post, this is a much larger conversation. I want to reiterate and emphasize that awareness on its own is not enough for transformational change. Awareness is the the start of the process of change, and absolutely necessary. I would also say awareness, especially somatic awareness, continues throughout the process of change. However, even if we silence our self-limiting beliefs we eventually (not immediately) need to build up positive self-beliefs and beliefs about the people and world around us. Part of this naturally occurs as we question some of the limiting assumptions we have been making, but there is more to the story. As I mentioned earlier in this post, change occurs through practices - and specifically embodied practices. This idea of building positive beliefs will be touched on numerous times with numerous examples throughout this blog and in The Happy By Mistake Pod. So stay tuned!

Bruce Lipton

The work of Bruce Lipton – who is much maligned in some corners of the academic community, and thus has largely contributed to our knowledge unfettered by the politics and funding of the academic world – has been essential to how I developed the Walking Around Mindfulness practice. In a future blog entry I will talk about his insights and why I think they have value.

Alternatives Practices

In future blog posts, I will touch on alternative practices that you may find resonate with you more than WAM.