Latest / The Single Doc Mom Podcast / Get Curious About Your Thoughts

Transcript

Get Curious About Your Thoughts · The Single Doc Mom Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Single Doc Mom Podcast, where we explore mindset strategies to help you stop enduring and start enjoying life.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Amanda Queen.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an adult endocrinologist, certified life coach, and your host.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast is completely separate from my medical practice.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is for sharing my personal experiences as a single doc mom.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And though I am a doctor, I am not your doctor.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a substitute for professional care, diagnosis, or treatment.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you have questions about your health or health of your child, please see your own healthcare professional.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And welcome back, lovely ladies.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining me today.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the first weekend in May, and my son is in Chicago for his junior high choir competition.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: They were out on a riverboat cruise, and I think just like parked right in the harbor on Lake Michigan, actually, and it started to snow on May 1st.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: So um, so crazy.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit cold here, but not that bad.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited to see him tonight.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: He gets back, and I want to hear all about his trip.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you guys are enjoying your weekend as well or time and um and getting some better weather.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: In these first few episodes, I want to introduce some foundational principles of mindset work that have helped me and can help you as a single doc mom and just in life in general.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're going to talk about the model, which was created by Brooke Castillo of the Life Coach School.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And what it is, it's C T F A R.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: C is circumstance.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's a fact.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that can be proven in a court of law.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Then we have T, which is the thought about that circumstance.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: Our thought creates feelings in us that create our actions or inactions, as the case may be sometimes.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it also creates what we call buffering, which is where we're trying to avoid something by doing something else like stress eating or scrolling or retail therapy.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And those actions create our results, which then feeds back and proves our initial thought to be correct.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Our brains are powerful and it likes to be right.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: This goes back to that whole whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's essentially a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, you know, looking at how our thoughts and feelings create our actions and results.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts with that C circumstance.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have thoughts about that circumstance.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: The T thought about that circumstance creates our F feeling, creates our A action to create our ultimately our result that goes back and proves our thought to be correct.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And what's so interesting about the way she's broken this down is that it's really easy to confuse the C and the T if we're not actually thinking about it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So we either tend to see the C as the reason for things, or and forget that there's a thought in between there.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because two people can experience the same thing, have different thoughts, and have different results from that.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Or we think our T is the fact and forget that it's really just a thought and that there is a circumstance above that.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And is that really the thought that we want to have about that?
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, could we choose something different?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: We have 6,000 to 60,000, depending on what you're reading and what the literature is and how they're looking at it, thoughts per day.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Most of these are subconscious.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: So most of this is going on without us realizing it.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And just taking a moment to kind of break it down and to see and to become aware of our thoughts can be super helpful.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm an adult endocrinologist, and um this was so apparent to me about that this model and how it works during COVID and that time right after COVID and the lockdown.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I would, when we were back in person, I would walk back in and see people, and there were people that I would see had either gained weight or lost weight.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they both would say it's because of COVID.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this was pre-GLPs, this was before all the big weight loss medicines were really out there.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: So these were people that, you know, for the weight loss people, these were people that had tried to lose weight for years and years and hadn't been able to.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly, because of COVID, quote unquote, um, they were able to lose weight.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were people who may or may not have had a weight problem before COVID, but then came out of COVID saying that they had gained weight again, quote unquote, because of COVID.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And when you look at it, or when I would look at it and you know, talk to the people about it, it was the people that had the weight gain.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: There was a lot of subconscious thoughts about COVID and the lockdown that created lots of fear, feelings of fear and feelings of um scarcity, and it created a lot of actions like buffering, stress eating, avoidance, and um created the result of weak gain.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then in those people that had some weight loss, they often had more conscious thoughts of I'm not, you know, they would state, hey, I'm not having to do my commute every day.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not an hour on the road.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided I was gonna exercise for 30 minutes, or I was going to um, you know, I don't have to eat out for lunch.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're not having things catered in, I was able to make a meal versus the refrigerators right there.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So there were so many and it's too easy to eat.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and there's nothing wrong with either of these thoughts, but is it are they helpful?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Are they useful?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: Are they things that you want to be thinking?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So for now, just getting becoming aware and compassionately curious because it's really easy to judge ourselves or to weaponize this process.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I would encourage you to stay to avoid that and really just be curious.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just become aware, become curious, don't judge yourself.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have so many thoughts all day long.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are useful, some of them are not useful, and just becoming aware can help us on our path of progress.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, going back to that weight example, um, the people who gained weight because of COVID, quote unquote, didn't do anything wrong.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: They just really weren't aware of what their thoughts were creating and how um the subconscious thoughts and they weren't aware of how those were creating the feelings and creating the actions for them.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they're and created the unwanted results.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: We all do this, but we lose our power when we're doing that because we're attributing everything to that circumstance.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when we're attributing things to the circumstance, it's disempowering.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: When we recognize that there's a thought in there, then it becomes more of a choice.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So for now, um, I would love for you guys just to practice, which means doing a thought download or doing a brain dump.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, just getting the thoughts out of your head and becoming aware first.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Notice how your nervous system is.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes just just and how when we're spinning, just getting those thoughts out of our head that we think we need to think all the time for whatever reason to work because we're gonna forget.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm classic for this in the middle of the night, waking up and thinking about something and then not being able to get back to bed.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: In those moments, I actually just keep a pen and paper by the bedside and just write it down.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so helpful to get back to sleep.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: But in general, doing it on a regular basis, um, typically I do it either in the morning or sometimes I do it at night.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just get the thoughts out of the head.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Helps take down that nervous system, helps take down the stress level, helps us, helps me become more aware of what actually is a thought and what's a fact.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times I see it as a fact and it really is just a thought.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then also notice patterns.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And again, just be curious.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: There is no need for any judgment.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's just what thoughts keep popping up.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Are they helpful?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Are they not helpful?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: Are they no longer serving me?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: One thing that I became aware of during this process and through coaching, and I remember being so angry when this person pointed it out to me, but it be it was super helpful to me after the fact.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And when I realized that she was right.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I had had some thoughts that served me well leading up to my divorce, through the divorce, but they weren't helpful for me anymore.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was a couple years past divorce, and I was still thinking a lot of those same thoughts, but my circumstance had changed and my thoughts hadn't.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And those thoughts now were creating, had helped me before, but now we're creating a lot of pain for me and were keeping me stuck.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And when I recognized that, again, it I was not happy about it at first.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what are you talking about?
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Of course this is the case.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as I really thought, sat back and thought about it, it really wasn't serving me anymore.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was able to let go of that and to replace those thoughts with thoughts that helped me and got me to a better place more, both in my life and actually in my relationships.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll revisit the model um over the, you know, periodically throughout this podcast, so that we can see how we can intentionally create results that we want.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, just become aware, just stay compassionately curious.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: If you are tempted to judge yourself for any thoughts that you keep come that come up, and we all do this, we are all guilty of this.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Think like, would you judge your kid for having that thought?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Would you judge your best friend for having that thought?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is probably going to be no, because it's just a thought.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: If that's what you would tell them, tell yourself the same thing.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: You haven't done anything wrong.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: We're all human.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is perfectly normal.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: We all have some crazy thoughts.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: They're just thoughts.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, okay, so for last episode, I said I'd share my funny fails.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and while I'm calling them fails, they're really just more of like funny human moments because we're all imperfect, doing our best job.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But as I tell my kids, I think it's a Brene Brown thing, you know, everyone's doing their best.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as I tell my kids, I'm always doing my best, but sometimes my best is not so great.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so in this particular case, I was late on sending out my holiday cards.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I typically do New Year's cards because I know myself well enough to know that I'm kind of a last-minute person and that the New Year's cards work out better for me.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I was even late for that this year.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was talking to about it at a um basket, my son's basketball game with a friend, and she told me about I think it was either Office Depot or Staples and how she uses them and how they were very quick and inexpensive.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, great, sign me up.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, whatever it was later that day, I tried doing it on the mobile app.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, for whichever one I was using, the mobile app wasn't that great.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of hard to see.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this was what before, you know, a few years ago, and my eyesight was a little bit better, my font was normal and not big.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I still struggled with the mobile app, but got it all done, got the cards back, and then I had actually um picked it up, and I think it was a night that my um kids were with their dad.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we changed out, I gave him a copy of the card.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then he called me later and he was like, Hey, did did you mean to send this from the Johnsons?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What are you talking about?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Yeah, it says from the Johnson family.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Our family last name is Queen.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: My professional name in medicine is Denny.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: There is no Johnson anywhere in our family name.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then I was like, No, you're no, you're wrong.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I thought he was crazy.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then I opened up the card, the package, and I looked at it a little bit more and I was like, oh my God, I just created 200 cards that I plan on sending out this week because I'm that late on getting these things done.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they're all from the Johnson family.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, in this mobile app, something to be aware of for the future.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it didn't have blank spaces, it actually had like pre-filled things, and I missed it.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: I missed that it said from the Johnson family.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I sent out all of my cards that year from the Johnson family.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I used I bought um gold marker or something and crossed out Johnson and put queen and smiley face or something ridiculous.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I put on the outside like gift of laughter inside or something.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: But on the flip side, I think that might be the year that I actually got the most texts back and phone calls back from people that I hadn't talked to and friends that I hadn't talked to on a regular basis in a while, which was super fun.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it ended up being okay, but it was still something ridiculous and funny.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, okay, so I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and I look forward to seeing you in our next episodes.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for your time.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Please follow and leave us a five star review so that others may find us.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, though you may be single, you are not alone.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: See you next week.