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 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 you are here. 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 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 uncovering that. But you know, I get rightfully the questions of what do we do once we uncover it, right. Wha- 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 want to 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 will have both good and bad emotions. You are going to have thoughts that lead 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 thought and as soon as we find one it's like whackamole 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 that 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, when you learn to love people, when you put yourself out there. All of those things are byproducts of living your fullest life. And we will 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. 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 vice 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. If 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 podcasts 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 mode so that we can 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 in 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 cuz it's, I mean, I can't control it but I start 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, like 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 attention 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 that 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 you 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 can 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 change. 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 b*tch 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 a**hole 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 say, like my boss definitely had some uh power trip moments. There was 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 la-di-da life is great. Rainbows and butterflies. Nobody wants toxic positivity. We do not wanna be positive all the time. Right. But I just wanna us to be very conscious when we want to be angry, when we want to be outrage, 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 ladder 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 like 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 b*ullsh*t. Your brain is a pretty smart thing. So when I say practicing thoughts on purpose, 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 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 am. 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 and it's like what is the opposite of this? How is the opposite true? So in my case, it was 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 guys, I I came up with a laundry list when I first did this exercise. I was like oh 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 manage 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 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. When 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'm 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 cuz 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 agreed? 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 realize 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, 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 in my business. That's 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- work. It's gonna be good enough. It's gonna be fantastic. Like it forced me to get over perfectionism cause I was like I don't have the energy to keep re-recording 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. 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 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? And 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. Is a common one that I hear a lot. I just 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 can take 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 the 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, because 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 an 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 mining that brain for some thoughts to think on purpose. And if you want help with this, we go through a process in Pave Your Path where 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 cuz a lot of times you'll 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 you can join me in Pave Your Path, doors are gonna open next month. Get on the wait list. You can go to lessonsfromaquitter.com/paveyourpath. Can't wait to see you in there. I'll see y'all next week.

Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode, share it with someone else. I promise you know somebody who also hates their job and wants to quit, so why not share the love? And if you want to come follow along for more, come join me on Instagram at LessonsFromAQuitter and make sure you say hi. I'll see you next week for another episode.