Hey, welcome to Lessons from a Quitter, where we believe that it is never too late to start over. No matter how much time or energy you've spent getting to where you are. If ultimately you are unfulfilled, then it is time to get out. Join me each week for both inspiration and actionable tips so that we can get you on the road to your dreams. Hello my friends. Welcome to another episode. I'm so excited to have you here. From time to time, I wanna talk about a topic that I realize I've already talked about, but it was a really long time ago and a lot of you are newer and you likely haven't heard the episode. Or if you have and you're like me, you just need to rehear it. And today's episode is just that. I think one of the strongest and most important skills that I have learned is how to think on purpose.
And what I mean by that is for most of us, most of our lives, we are just letting our thoughts happen to us. We don't even know where they come from, they just pop in our head and we don't know where they are and what they mean and why they're there and how to get rid of them. And for so many of us, a lot of those thoughts are very painful and our brain tends to focus on a lot of negativity. And so it's a lot of these questions that don't really lead to great answers. Like, what if I fail? What if everyone's judging me? What if nobody likes me? What if I'll never find that love? Or whatever it is. And it constantly keeps us in this like perpetual hamster wheel of not feeling good enough of trying to prove our worth, of trying to hide, of barely feeling like we're surviving.
And one of the skills that thought work has taught me, and it's taught me a lot of skills and it's helped me in a lot of ways, but I think one of the truly most crucial skills that has helped me build the life I want. And by that I mean put myself out there and build a business even when I was terrified or to create the types of relationships and the community that I wanted that I felt like was lacking or to be the kind of mother that I wanna be. All of it comes from learning how to think on purpose is from learning to direct my brain to where I want it to go, instead of just waiting for it to drag me into the gutter. Where it normally takes me is for me to learn, okay, if I want this goal, what are the things I have to think in order to be able to go after this goal?
What are the things that are gonna keep me motivated and committed and determined? What are the things that I have to think that are gonna get me excited, that is going to push me past procrastination? Learning this skill has changed everything, and it's one of the things that I teach everyone in my community. It's one of the questions if you're on the calls, you know, I always go to where it's getting you to think about how the thing you wanna do is the best thing for you. And it's teaching you how to start mining your own brain. Like the thoughts are there, they're just kind of buried amongst all of the negativity. And so we have to look for it and we have to look for those thoughts and figure out how we create the life that we want with the thoughts we have. If you've been around here for a while, you know that I teach the model, which shows you that your thoughts create your results.
And so when you learn how to think on purpose, you can create the results that you want for yourself. And so I get super passionate about this topic because I think it's just a crucial skill that we're never taught for some reason. And I want you to know it. I want you to learn it. And so I'm gonna replay this episode that I've done from years ago. 'cause I think it's just important to revisit. And if you want to learn how to think on purpose, it doesn't just come naturally. It doesn't just come 'cause we think about it One time, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. We're gonna open doors this month for a special annual price, and I want you to come learn this skill that will impact every aspect of your life that will help you go after every dream you have for the rest of your life.
It is like the one skill you need to really build that life that you want decade after decade. So you can join us at lessons from a quitter.com/quitter club, get on that wait list so you're notified when the doors open and you can start implementing these tools into your life. All right, my friends, I hope you enjoy it.
Today I'm gonna talk about a tool that I think is one of the most helpful tools in learning how to manage your mind. Now, I think that you know what, if you listen to the podcast that I help you kind of uncover the unhelpful thoughts that you have, the limiting beliefs, the mindset that is currently keeping you stuck in people pleasing perfectionism, imposter syndrome, all that good stuff. And part of thought work, I think a very valuable part of thought work is uncovering what is getting in our way, what thoughts are creating kind of the feelings and the actions and the results in our life that are hindering us, that are causing us to procrastinate, get burned out, wear ourself thin.
It's a really important part of thought work. And actually I would say it's probably the vast majority of the work that we do is that I'm uncovering that. But you know, I get rightfully the questions of what do we do once we uncover it, right? Well, how do I find better thoughts? Now I wanna caution you really quickly before we jump into me giving you a tool, is that I think oftentimes people wanna do this too quickly because we obviously, we just wanna feel better, right? Like if I find a thought that's causing me harm or causing me negative feelings, then I have to quickly put a bandaid on it and figure out a better thought that I can think. And I wanna caution you against doing that because that's not the point of thought work. Because when you have that mentality, what you're saying is that there is some place better there where I have really great thoughts and I'm gonna be so much happier.
And as you've listened to this podcast, you know that even when you get there, you'll have both good and bad emotions. You are going to have thoughts that lead you to negative emotions, and that's not a problem. And so I want you to spend some more time just getting curious about your thoughts. Like why am I having this where, you know, why is this limiting belief something I believe? And of course I wanna get rid of the unnecessary suffering that we put ourselves through. But I want us to not get stuck in this same destination addiction of like, Ugh, I still have negative thoughts, I can't get rid of them. How am I gonna get rid of them? As if there's some place we're gonna get to where all of a sudden we don't have negative thoughts. And as soon as we find one, it's like whack-a-mole, just squish it, right?
Go to the next one. Like that's not how it works. And I get a lot of people that come into the program and they just wanna be perfect at it. They wanna find the thought and change it and find another thought and change it and kind of get to a place. And I understand 'cause it causes pain and it's like, I don't wanna feel this pain. But when we learn how to process our emotions, when we learn how to, the thoughts aren't a problem and feelings aren't a problem and I can have negative emotions and still do the things I need to do, there isn't as much of a rush to get away from the negative thoughts. Now that said, obviously there are thoughts that we do wanna change, right? And part of the practice of thought work is figuring out which ones those are, right?
So if you listen to the episode on clean versus dirty pain, there is clean pain that we're gonna have to just live with. There is sadness and grief and disappointment and rejection and all of those things that you will feel as a normal human being when you go after your dreams, where you learn to love people when you put yourself out there, all of those things are byproducts of living your fullest life. And we'll feel those. Now we don't have to feel a lot of the dirty pain, which is the shame and the guilt and the blame and anger and all these other things that we add on to our emotions that cause so much unnecessary suffering. So as an example, you get fired and you might feel the sadness or even the embarrassment of that rejection of that instance. That's totally fine, that's clean pain.
Like we're gonna keep that, we're gonna look at our thoughts about that. But if we have thoughts that add a lot of shame, like I see, I knew I wasn't good enough, everybody hates me. I'll never get another job. But like tho, that's all kind of the unnecessary suffering we wanna clean up. So that is the longest introduction into this tool that I wanna teach you. Because I think when there are appropriate times to want to change our thoughts, people ask me like, how do I do that? And I, I've done an episode on ladder thoughts and that's one way of doing it.
But today I wanna talk to you about thinking on purpose. And what I mean by that. So when we are going through our normal everyday life, we are not typically thinking on purpose. It's a very subconscious activity. That is why so many of us very much feel out of control in our own brain.
We feel as though it's almost like this. I liken it to like a Frankenstein situation where, you know, I hear this all the time where people tell me I can't stop eating. Like I, you know, I don't wanna snack and then I just find myself doing it and I can't stop, or I can't stop scrolling. I know I shouldn't do it. I'm, I can like tell myself that, but in the moment I'm just on it for hours or watching Netflix or whatever your personal advice is. And it can very much feel as though you don't have control of what is happening in your brain at times. And we have to get out of that pattern. We have to like understand one that we absolutely have control even when we're doing things we don't wanna be doing and why we're doing those things. Like we have to stop telling the lie that we're not in control so that we can get curious as to like, okay, why am I eating all of these snacks?
Why am I scrolling social media? So I can see like, of course I have control, I have a lot of negative emotions and the way that I process them is to just scroll Instagram or to eat a bag of chips or to, you know, whatever my personal way of buffering is. And when we can start seeing that, then we can work on the other thoughts. And so for part of the problem is like, how do we get that awareness so we can come out of unconscious thinking so we can choose what we want to think on purpose? And what I mean by that is like our, our subconscious narrative only looks at part of the picture. I've talked about this at length in other podcast episodes, but I'm just gonna give you like a refresher that there's a litany of things that go on in our brain.
Our brain's job is to become as automatic as possible, right? Is to just do things to put us on auto modes that we conserve energy. And because of this, because our brain has to filter through so much information, your brain starts picking up like certain things that are gonna be important to keep you alive. They're gonna be important to your ego, they're gonna be important to what you tell it is important. And it starts using these biases and these filters to filter things that are coming into your brain. So one of those things we've talked about is a negativity bias, right? What humans have a negativity bias because that kept us alive, right? If you're always walking around thinking everything is great and ha like hunky dory, then maybe you're not looking out for the animal that might eat you. So we tend to kinda look for danger.
We look for fear, we think about uncertainty. We look at the negativity of every decision we're gonna make, like how it could go wrong. It's just the way our brain is wired and it has kept us alive. But it's good to know that that like our subconscious mind is gonna constantly think about what could go wrong, what is the bad side of this, right? There's also our attention spotlight that I've talked about at length, where it's like we just only have the bandwidth to think about a certain amount of things consciously. Like our brain cannot handle as much information that comes in. And so your mind starts looking for the things that you tell it are important. Now, one example that I tend to give on the podcast a lot is if you're gonna buy a car, all of a sudden you see that car everywhere, your attention is on that car.
It's not as though that car just appeared out of nowhere. It's that before your brain was filtering through it didn't care. So you didn't notice it. And now that you care about it, you start noticing it, right? And then also we have the confirmation bias, which we all know is that like we look for evidence to confirm what we already believe. We all see this play out every single day in our lives, uh, in politics, in religion, in our worldview. It's like we will look for whatever tells us that we are right. And oftentimes even when we're presented with facts that go against it, we actually just dig our heels in deeper. So we have these biases, we have these like processes that our brain goes through that lend itself to us not seeing the full picture, okay? To only seeing one part of what is happening and a very small fraction of that.
That is why we all just like, we walk around thinking we're being objective, but none of us are. We are leaving out a whole lot of evidence. It's not some like random objective truth that I'm just observing. Like the sky is blue, right? It's like I'm ignoring everything else so that I can find the evidence that will tell me that my, what my brain thinks is true. And oftentimes that's gonna be a negative slant to it, right? That's what I'm like sort, sort of focusing on. So when you see this in play, right, this happens all the time. If you think about it, I want you to think about like a specific situation. Think about your thoughts about somebody. Let's say you have a problem with someone. A lot of us tend to have problems with our boss bosses. So we'll pick your boss. And let's think about like your boss can tell you nine times out of 10 how many great things you're doing.
They could praise you all the time, but if they criticize you, right? If you get one bad review, if something happens where maybe your boss snaps at you or there's a time that you have some kind of bad altercation, that's the thing that's gonna stick out in your mind. That's what you're gonna ruminate over. That's what you're gonna remember. It doesn't matter that the other nine times he told you how great you were, it's that one time that he told you you messed up, right? And we'll replay that. This is what happens with most of us. This is why a million people can compliment you. But if one person criticizes you, you're gonna remember that. I'll tell you right now in my own experience on social media, something that I've been working very deeply on is like, this happens all the time with me is I'll get a flood of amazing comments, messages, people resonating with the work, and then I'll get one that says something that goes against what I believe or criticizes me and I will lose it.
I mean, literally it will wreck like two days for me. And it's fascinating for me to watch because I know all this stuff and yet I can't control it 'cause it's, I mean I can't control it. But I started seeing how like my brain wants to fixate on that. It doesn't matter that all these other people agree with it. It doesn't matter that everyone doesn't need to agree with me, right? I know all these things intellectually, and yet I get so hung up on that negative comment, right? And so when you do that, let's say with your boss, you focus on the time that he criticizes you, and then your spotlight, your attention spotlight ends up going to that. And so every time he's critical of anybody or he says something mean or he says something that you think is a little bit short or whatever, that's where your tension is.
You're like, see, he's a jerk. He's just like this. This is the way he is. He's such a negative person, right? And then you also have your confirmation bias. So you start seeing that evidence everywhere. You start looking at how he's criticizing other people or how he talked to somebody else, you start trying to find more evidence to prove yourself true. And you start creating this picture that your boss is this like mean or overly critical person. And what do you think that does, right? Like you avoid him at work, you constantly think about how terrible he is. You talk about it with your coworkers, you talk about it with your spouse. You constantly think about how terrible it is to work for him and out the office. And that cycle grows. You find more reasons, you find more evidence. You're focusing more on the fact that he is mean and critical.
You avoid him more, right? It creates this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. And I'm not saying that maybe your boss is critical, but we start ignoring everything else and we start focusing just on that, right? And have you ever noticed this that when you start focusing on something like where your attention goes, your energy flows, it starts becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. This happens all the time. Like have you ever had something where it starts out as just like a little annoyance? It might be, let's say your spouse or friend. And as your pick up on it, let's say it's like the way they chew or something. Like you notice in the beginning it's just like, oh god, kid, you just chew quieter and then you just become fixated on it. And every time you're with them and they're eating, it's like that's all you can focus on.
And it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and your frustration grows and it becomes unbearable, right? Like it becomes to the point where you're like, I cannot be in the same room when this person is eating. And it wasn't like that in the beginning. It's not like that person's changed. It's not like their chewing has gotten louder. It's just that your attention is just on that. Your focus has gotten more on that thing. And we all do this. This is what so many of our like problems with our friends, with our spouses at work, with our coworkers. I see this all the time with people that come to me with work. Because when I'll talk to people, it's like they start somewhere and it's fine for a while because their thoughts about it are fine. They're not as annoyed yet. And then it's like they've been there for a couple of years and they start picking up on some things that maybe they don't think is fair or they don't like how it's run and then they just focus on it over and over and over again.
And I did this, I'm telling you, I look back, there was definitely problems where I worked, but I definitely made it worse than it had to be. I mean, I would, it was all I would focus on. I would talk about it nonstop with my coworkers literally every single day. Like our pastime was getting together to about what our boss did or what somebody other coworker did. I would go home and I would talk about it with my husband. And then of course I started dreading going to work, right? Like why would I wanna go somewhere where all day, every day I'm thinking about all of the negative things that my boss does and everybody else in the office does. And it started becoming unbearable. It was like, I hate, I do not wanna get up on a Monday morning and go, and when I look back, I'm like, the day-to-day actually wasn't that bad.
It really wasn't as unbearable as I made it. Now that's not to say that like I didn't actually still wanna leave. I did like there was other reasons for me to wanna leave. I just didn't have to make myself so miserable before making that decision. And when you put that attention spotlight on something, it solidifies more and more as the quote unquote truth in your mind. You start really believing like, no, no, no, this isn't just my thoughts. This is a fact in the world. My boss is an, or this person is toxic, or whatever the thought is. We literally can't separate the fact that that's just my thoughts about this person. And there's other things that are not in my attention spotlight. There's other things that I'm not paying attention to. And until we can zoom out a little bit and learn this skill, learn how to find things to think on purpose, when I stop allowing my mind to just be in this automatic subconscious negativity loop, this like attention on finding the thing that's not working, finding the thing that's annoying me, when I can learn that skill and practice other thoughts, it becomes very obvious that like it's not just the truth, it's a truth.
Like I, I'm not denying that maybe your boss is critical, as I would say. Like my boss definitely had some uh, power trip moments with a lot of office politics going on, but it really wasn't as unbearable as I made it for myself. And that's really all we're trying to do here. What we're trying to figure out is like not, can I be in this place where I think everything is bliss and I have no problems and I'm walking around like ladi da, life is great rainbows and butterflies. Nobody wants toxic positivity. We do not wanna be positive all the time, right? But I just wanted us to be very conscious when we want to be angry, when we want to be outraged, when we want to feel sad, when we want to feel disappointed, when we think like, yeah, that was kind of annoying that he did this, as opposed to like, this is all I'm gonna focus on and I'm gonna make it the bane of my existence.
And I love this quote, Jody Moore. I heard her say this. I'm sure uh, other people have said this, but you have to understand the idea that you are always practicing a thought. The only reason you believe whatever you believe as the quote unquote truth is because you have practiced that thought for decades. Okay? So if you've been at work and you've been practicing the thought that I have no control here, my boss is a jerk, he is completely unreasonable. This is a toxic work environment. I can never get anything under my control. Nobody helps me. Whatever the thoughts are that are unhelpful, if you just keep practicing those ones, that's the result you're gonna get in your life. That's the experience you're gonna have with wherever you're at. And so if you're gonna practice the thought, you might as well practice one on purpose, one that's actually going to help you shift your perspective.
One that might make the situation bearable and not completely miserable, right? And so that's what I want to teach you today is thinking on purpose. And what I mean by that is exactly what it sounds like. I've talked about this in the episode on latter thoughts. The reason affirmations don't work is because you don't believe them, right? So like if you stand in the mirror and just repeat, this is the best place to work, or my boss is fantastic. I feel so grateful for having a job and I love going to work every day. There's a cognitive dissonance in there, right? Your brain's like, no, we don't like going to work. You're lying. And maybe I'll stick with this for a couple of days. But that's about all you're getting. I'm gonna stop this because it's. Your brain is a pretty smart thing. So when I say practicing thoughts on purpose, so what I mean is like how can we mine our own brain?
How can we look at like, what are the thoughts that I do believe I'm just ignoring because my attention is not on that my attention is so focused on the negative that I'm leaving all of this other stuff. That is also true, that is also there, right? It's in the, and like we're living in the, and it's not that my boss is just overly critical, like maybe there's other stuff here. Maybe my boss boss is critical and he's also extremely smart, someone great to learn from or whatever. Like there's also something else there. And so what you want to start doing is not like making up thoughts, not just like picking a thought to practice because it sounds lovely. We're not gonna create a thought that we wish we could believe. We're gonna look for what's there. We're gonna be like, what am I ignoring here?
Where is this attention that I've been putting on? And where do I wanna move this attention spotlight maybe a little bit to the left so I can practice something that I already believe? Okay? And this is what I mean, I, and now I feel like I've talked about this at length, but I think it's a good through line. It gives you guys a good example. But you know, I've talked a lot about my narrative of being lazy. Like there was tons of evidence. It's not as though I was making things up. Like if I told you then, and I'll tell you now, it was the quote unquote truth that I'm lazy because there was actual evidence compared to other people that would maybe put me in the camp of, I don't know, whatever we describe as lazy. Like the fact that I like to take naps and I don't like to wake up in the mornings and that I don't have a lot of energy and I really hate exercise or any activity that really wants me to exert a lot of energy that I've always felt very lethargic.
You know, all of the things that maybe you would consider somebody would think that they're lazy. Now, for me, that was my attention spotlight, is looking at the fact that I wanted to nap all the time, or I was tired all the time. I also have people that would tell me, like confirm in my confirmation biases. Like when people would say, oh my God, you're so lazy. And they'd be like, see, they're right. I'm, I knew it and obviously that was like my negativity bias was just looking for the ways in which I was quote unquote failing. And so it was all there. The, the truth was there. Now, I've talked about it in two different ways. How I sort of overcame this. And when I talk about purposeful thinking, this is what I mean, part of it is looking, it's like, what is the opposite of this?
How is the opposite true? So in my case, it was like asking myself the question and like sitting and really trying to come up with thoughts of like, how is it true that I'm not lazy? And I told you as I, I came up with a laundry list when I first did this exercise, I was like, I, well, I had perfect attendance through school and pretty much college. I had a 4.0 through college. I was always in extracurricular activities. Now they weren't sports, but I was on debate teams and I was doing, you know, student body stuff and all the things that you do in school. I've basically never missed a deadline. I mean, I'm sure I have, but I'm very punctual on time when I show up places. Okay? I, I've talked about how I went to a top 10 law school. I graduated in, in, we didn't really have grades, but I would say the top of my class, like with a lot of honors and high honors in my classes, I worked at a top 10 law firm.
I would regularly do 80 hour weeks. I mean, I did multiple days where I worked 24 hours straight at the law firm, which was fun. I've managed to keep my kids alive. I managed to cook and clean and feed myself and do all the things that a non lazy person does, right? Like I could keep going. And that's the point, like I want you to ask yourself when you have some kind of belief that is causing you problems, especially if that belief is about yourself. But even if it's not, like let's say it's about your husband and you're like, I hear this a lot too, where people say like, oh, he just doesn't care about me, let's say, or he's not reliable. Or we make these like blanket statements and that you could gimme all the evidence of how that's true. And I want you to ask yourself, how is the opposite true?
How is it true that he actually does care about me? How is it true that he is reliable? In what ways? Maybe he's not reliable in the way that I want him to be. Maybe he forgets certain deadlines that are important to me, but he's reliable in these other completely useful and wonderful ways that I don't ever actually ever consider because I'm so busy being critical of the things that he has forgotten. So one way of doing this is looking for like that, like the opposite. Another way is just looking at it differently is saying like, in my situation, I told you guys, like, I've also started looking at how is being lazy the best thing that's ever happened to me. Like there's no denying for me that I have different energy levels than other people, right? Like it wasn't as though I was like, I'm gonna practice the thought that I am full of energy and I love to get up and do things all day long, right?
Like, I'm not gonna sit and say that affirmation 'cause it's not true. And so I started having to, having to ask myself like, okay, let's give my brain that little morsel like fine, I am lazy. What if we greed? But like how is that the best thing that has ever happened to me? And I told you guys, I found a lot of evidence there too. I save my energy for the things that matter to me. I know how to take care of myself with my energy levels. Like now when I rest, when I take a nap, I'm so proud of myself. I'm like, look at you taking care of yourself, then nobody else has to take care of me, right? Like allow myself, I allow my body rest. I take care of my body. I also don't give into a lot of the BS that society puts on women on the shoulds.
I mean, I give into some for sure, but I, I try to limit it like what moms should do, what wives should do, what, you know, whatever. I just, I realized this. I was like, oh, I don't, you know, like so many parents run themselves ragged, like putting all their kids in all the sports and chauffeuring them around to like 400 things and 400 birthday parties. And I'm like, no, not, it's not happening. We can pick one sport. That's about it. That's all we got. And like you might think that and be like, oh, you're such a bad mom and that's fine. totally fine. But it's like part of this is what's gonna be the best for everybody in our family, right? How am I gonna show up the best as a mom if I'm completely run down because I'm trying to be everything to everybody else, or I'm trying to constantly compare myself to other mothers and think that I have to do what everybody else is doing, then I'm always gonna fall short.
But if I start looking at like, this is my superpower is that I am not resentful of my children. I'm not angry at my husband for not doing the things that I also don't want to do. I'm just like, this is what we have the capacity for, guys. This is what we're gonna do. And that's about it. I just like, I don't create a lot of busy work for myself and my business has been such a blessing. I've just noticed, like I focus very much on like what's gonna move the needle forward? What do I have to put out every week? That's it. I don't need to add a lot of bells and whistles. I don't need to do a lot of extra stuff. We're just gonna do the bare minimum. We're gonna do B minus work. It's gonna be good enough, it's gonna be fantastic.
Like it forced me to get over perfectionism because I was like, I don't have the energy to keep rerecording these podcasts. You got one shot. People ask me like, do you do this? Do you just sit and talk? I'm like, yeah, I barely even outline it . I'm like, let's go. This is all you're getting now. Would it probably sound better if I spent hours outlining a hundred percent? Would I quit after like the fourth episode also? A hundred percent. So it's like you gotta know yourself. And so when you start looking at this one, I started looking at like, okay, one, it's not true that I'm always lazy. There's tons of things I do that's not lazy and and lazy is kind of cool. I had so many other thoughts that I could practice on purpose. Like every time my brain went back to, oh my God, you're so lazy, which it does all the time.
It's not to say that I'm like, oh my god. So in love with myself and I never get frustrated with anything I do, of course I do every day. I'm like, oh god, can you just get up and finish this? Right? You're so lazy. I can just catch myself faster and be like, yeah, we're not gonna repeat that story anymore. We're gonna look at how this is a benefit to us. So if we go back to like the previous example when I was talking about your boss, right? Like if you started asking yourself like in what ways is he supportive or fair or kind? He might be critical in some areas, but are there ways, and you might come up with a lot like, well, he did really gimme good reviews on most of my reviews, and he usually does always like thank me and you know, whatever.
Maybe you find like, well, he never emails me outside of work hours. He doesn't really play favorites with other employees. He's not somebody that's like on this like power trip, whatever. But when you start finding like, oh, there's actually evidence that he's not a terrible boss, he's actually a pretty okay boss. Maybe he's a little critical or surly in times, but there's other things about him that are better than other bosses, right? Or maybe you ask yourself like, how is he the best boss for me right now? Even if there are challenges, maybe you come up with thoughts like, well, I guess this I can learn not to need other people's validation. Doesn't matter if he's constantly praising me or not, he is giving me opportunities to take on bigger roles and learn. That's what I'm here for right now. He's super smart and does really amazing work and I get to learn from him.
And that means that I have to put up with a surly attitude. And that's okay if I don't make it a problem, if I don't spend all of my time focusing on that, maybe it's things that I can actually work with. Now, again, I'm gonna say this and people, someone's gonna come I know and be like, well, what if he's abusive? It's like, okay, then quit. I'm not saying you can't quit if somebody is like cussing you out and causing emotional damage. Like even if it's not even that extreme, I don't even care if you just don't even like him, fine, quit you. That's always a choice. But if you're gonna stay, let's figure out a way to not be miserable all the time. Like I say this to the people who end up not quitting and sticking with this surly boss or this critical boss and then just hating their lives every single day.
Like, let's not take that option. If you're really at a place where you're like, this guy's a jerk and I don't wanna work with him, fine, then quit. Or I see this, a lot of people with like people they're married to their spouses or whatever. It's like either decide to leave if it's really as bad as you're making it, or at least try to see the other side the next time your brain says like, I hate my boss. You can redirect it to listen, I'm here to learn from this man. He's smart and he's gonna teach me a lot of things. Or he's so mean. You can be like, yeah, but he doesn't play favorites. There's not a lot of office politics. I can make this work. Whatever the thought is for you, start finding a thought to think on purpose. Okay? Now a lot of you will ask me like, how do I do this?
And I've given you a couple of examples, but I want you to just, when you see yourself in kind of a negative thought loop, when you're trying to make a decision, you're trying to set a goal, maybe you're stuck in a lot of fear and doubt. A lot of you stay stuck in confusion for a really long time. I want you to ask yourself the opposite of the question you're asking yourself or the statement you're telling yourself. So for instance, if you're asking like, or you're saying, I don't know how to do this, or I don't know what to do, what should I do first? Right? It's a common one that I hear a lot. I just don't want you to ask yourself like, what do I know? Right? What step can I take right now? If you have a lot of like, well, I can't make this work right now, or I am, you know, things are too busy or whatever, I want you to ask yourself like, how can I make this work?
What are some ways in which I could take it, maybe a small step? What is clear for me right now? Right? We have a lot of like, I can't do this. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't have the skills. I want you to like start digging a little bit, what do I know? What experience do I have that could help me? What do I know is true about me right now? What have I always been able to create in the past? Start finding that evidence. Go there first. It's not to say that you're gonna ignore this other thoughts. It's not to say that you're never going to think about some ways in which there might be obstacles and there's strategies that you have to overcome or maybe skills that you don't have. We're not like saying that you have to live in la la land.
It's just that so many of us stop ourselves before we even start because we get so overwhelmed with all the negativity of like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to get started. I don't know where to go from this. I don't know who to talk to. And so it's like, of course the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask yourself. And so when you're constantly saying, who am I to do this? How can I start a business? Like you're, you can't. But if you start asking yourself like, what is it that I know? What have I proven up until now? How can I make this work? What experiences do I have? What has served me? What do I love about this, right? We spend so much time thinking about what we hate about it.
Tell me what you love about it. How is this the best decision that I can make right now? Even if I don't get the result I want? Like why is me trying this thing the best thing I could do? Whether it's to learn something, whether it's to see what I'm made of, whether it's to make connections, whatever it is, there are other answers besides getting to whatever destination it is you think you need to get to. And the more you start mining your brain for other answers that are there that you can think purposely, the more you start shifting that attention spotlight, the more everything changes in your life. Because what it does is show you that you have more control than you think. It starts showing you that just because your boss is surly or your husband doesn't take out the trash or you know, whatever the circumstance may be, that does not have to dictate how you feel all the time.
That does not have to dictate the experience you have in those relationships. That does not have to be the reality of your day every single day. And when you can truly get that, it's life changing because then you control your experience. And again, I think a lot of times we think like if I'm happy here, then I can't leave. And I did a whole episode about that. That is not true. You do not have to make yourself miserable in order to decide that you wanna quit the job, that you wanna leave the marriage, that you want to end the friendship. I don't care. Whatever it is, you get to just decide because you're done, because that chapter's over. 'cause there's a million other reasons that you wanna go after something else. You wanna try something, you wanna grow. And oftentimes we think that if I'm, I just have to make myself so miserable in order to have a quote unquote excuse to leave.
And that's the most toxic thought you can ever have because you're gonna then sabotage your life and make yourself really unhappy in order to have an excuse to leave. Trust me, I did it with my job. I literally made myself so miserable so that I could feel like I had other people's permission to quit. Like if I complained enough, then my husband or my parents or my family won't question when I say like, I can't do this anymore. They saw the writing on the wall. I never stopped complaining about it. It doesn't have to be that way though. Like that was such a painful way for me to live. First of all, I didn't need anybody's permission. And second of all, it would be so much more of a empowered place for me to realize that I can control my experience there and still choose to leave and still decide, like, this isn't for me.
I want something bigger. I want something better. I want something new. I wanna try a new experience. And I get to just decide that I want that because that this is my one life and I get to decide what my experience is gonna be. And so I want you to spend some time thinking, find a situation in which you're focusing on the negative and start asking yourself some better questions and start minding that brain for some thoughts to think on purpose.
And if you wanna help with this, we go through a process in pave your path, or I teach you how to start thinking on purpose, how to figure out when you should use it, how to ask yourself questions, how to come up with the thoughts. And we coach on it for six months, we start helping your brain. 'cause a lot of times you all will start this and be like, I can't come up with anything. There's not one thing here. And that's always a lie. And so if you need coaching with that, I'm happy to coach you on it to find those thoughts that you're gonna start practicing so you can start changing that experience. So I want to teach you this skill because it will change the way that you think, which is the most important thing.
So I want you to join me in the Quitter Club lessonsfromaquitter.com/quitterclub. All right, my friends, I'll see y'all next week.
Hey, if you are looking for more in-depth help with your career, whether that's dealing with all of the stress, worry, and anxiety that's leading to burnout in your current career or figuring out what your dream career is and actually going after it, I want you to join me in the Quitter Club. It is where we quit what is no longer working like perfectionism, people pleasing imposter syndrome, and we start working on what does, and we start taking action towards the career and the life that you actually want. We will take the concepts that we talk about on the podcast and apply them to your life, and you will get the coaching tools and support that you need to actually make some real change. So go to lessonsfroma quitter.com/quitterclub and get on the waitlist. Doors are closed right now, but they will be open soon.