88. Press Pause With These 4 Questions To Challenge Thoughts That Don’t Serve You
Have you ever had a thought that completely hijacks your body? Your heart starts racing, your chest gets tight, and your mind spirals into a funk that makes it so much harder to think clearly or respond the way you actually want to. In this episode, I'm sharing a simple tool I absolutely love to manage my mind, and it's the exact one I used recently during one of the scariest mom moments of my life so far.
The tool is called The Four Questions, developed by author and speaker Byron Katie. It's four questions of inquiry that you can pause and ask yourself about any thought you're experiencing. I walk you through each question using a real, recent moment from my life when I had to calm my nervous system in order to make decisions and act from a calm, steady place. I also share how this tool applies to everyday thoughts like "I'm a terrible mom" or business-building worries like "this isn't going to work."
You'll learn how to use these four questions to get out of any exhausting mental funk and get back to a calm, cool, collected state. Whether you're in a high-stakes moment or just dealing with thoughts that drain your energy day after day, this tool helps you reclaim your time and energy. By the end of this episode, you'll have a practical way to challenge thoughts that don't serve you and step into a more grounded version of yourself.
Ready for clarity and a simple action plan to get your business started? Schedule a free 1-hour consultation with me here!
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why pressing pause to ask these 4 questions is so powerful, even if the initial answers feel like "yes."
How the word "absolutely" can take the teeth out of most thoughts.
The connection between your thoughts, your reactions, and the version of you that shows up.
How to apply this tool to everyday mom thoughts and business-building doubts.
Why your subconscious is paying more attention to those background thoughts than you think.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Have you ever had a thought that completely hijacks your body? Your heart starts racing, your chest gets tight, you get all sweaty, and your mind starts into this downward spiral and you get into a bit of a funk. And then suddenly it's so much harder to think clearly or respond and react in the way that you actually want to. You look back on the experience and you have some regret or some shame about how you showed up when emotions were so high or when that thought was circulating in your head.
When we're in that headspace, we're absolutely not making decisions or showing up from our best, most grounded selves. And today I'm sharing a simple and easy tool that I absolutely love to do a little something that I call manage your mind. It's the exact tool that I used, unfortunately, recently, in one of the scariest mom moments of my life so far, when I was spiraling and desperately needed to calm my nerves and steady myself so that I could make decisions and act from a calm, steady place.
By the end of this episode, I want you to be able to do that too in the most intense, extreme emotions when your mind is racing, and even in the small moments when you are just thinking about something that doesn't serve you. I want you to be able to jump out of it, and this episode is going to help you do that.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
You're listening to episode 88 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast, and today we're talking about a quick mindset tool that I absolutely love. It's one that I lean on for myself and recommend to clients all the time. Because when it comes to our thoughts, everyone can relate to a downward spiral, okay? We have about 60,000 thoughts a day and so many of them go unchecked and unchallenged.
Sometimes the smallest things can trigger the harshest criticism and negative thoughts, especially the ones that logically are completely untrue. But these thoughts just float around in our heads, and they take up mental and physical energy. I talked about this a lot in episode 79. I talked about how when we manage our mind, when we pause and when we challenge some of those exhausting thoughts, we actually gain back so much time and energy.
So today, I want to actually give you an easy-to-use tool to do exactly that: a tool to manage your mind in those moments. Because if we can stop those exhausting thoughts just a few minutes sooner or a couple hours sooner, and let's be honest, sometimes those thoughts go on for days or weeks or even months. They're just constantly living in us and affecting us. If we can get to a steady and calm place sooner, then we can get so much more energy and time back in our lives. Energy that we could use to start a business or be present with our kids or take care of ourselves.
And that's why this tool is so fabulous and so important. It helps us to take a quick pause and get clear about the sentences in our heads so we can get out of any exhausting mental funk that we might be in, and we can get back to that calm, cool, collected state where we are able to make decisions and be proud of ourselves and feel gratitude. So it's not just the big emotion moments. It's also some of these everyday little moments where we are just our biggest critic, and this is a tool to step out of that.
The tool is called The Four Questions, and it was developed by author and speaker Byron Katie. Her work is really incredible. I've read a few of her books and they always leave me feeling immersed in self-love and gratitude at the deepest level. And she refers to her work as The Work. And I'll put links in the show notes at jenna.coach/88 so you can check out her and her work and The Work.
I'm going to share the simplest version of this tool so that you can use it today or tomorrow, the next time a thought that doesn't serve you creeps in and you need to manage your mind. But there are absolutely deeper layers to it. I want you to have what's most practical and useful in real life right now, but absolutely dig deeper if this resonates or if you want to learn more. And not for nothing, I'm not a specialist in this tool. I'm just an avid user because it is so helpful. So I want to share it, but absolutely check out Byron Katie's stuff to go deeper.
So I said, it's called The Four Questions because that's exactly what it is. It's four questions of inquiry that you can pause and ask yourself about any thought that you're experiencing. And I want to walk you through the four questions using a real moment from my recent life. This is recent and it also could be triggering, but I'm sharing it because it was one of those moments where emotions were high, my thoughts were jumping to worst-case scenario, and I had to calm myself and my nervous system in order to serve my child and keep my child safe.
All that to say, everything's okay now. We're all safe, we're all good. But I wanted to use this example because it's the most recent and I know that we can all relate to those heightened moments of parenting. To set the stage, right before traveling for winter break most recently, my youngest son who's 15 months, fell down an entire flight of stairs. It honestly felt like something out of a movie in the worst way possible. So we were sitting together at the top of the steps and he leaned back and just tumbled. Like I said, he's perfectly okay now. I want to assure you.
But at the time, I ended up going to the emergency room with him, and it was so hard to regulate my thoughts. My mind immediately went to all the worst-case scenarios. And one thought in particular that felt so true in that moment was, Jude is not going to be okay.
At that moment, in that moment, I knew that thought wasn't serving me. I knew it wasn't serving me because it was creating a lot of fear and anxiety, which I'll talk about as we get to some of the later questions of the tool. But I knew it wasn't serving me because I was so dysregulated and I had to get my son to the hospital. And I just could not get out of my head.
So we have these thoughts that don't serve us all the time. In those moments, I want you to be able to challenge those thoughts somehow. I was able to lean on this tool on my way to the hospital and it changed everything for me. And I've had this tool in my tool belt for years. And I've practiced it, and I think that's what really helped make it so much more useful for me in that moment, because generally when we're in those high-stakes moments, when we're in those really extreme moments, we're not going to be thinking about that podcast that Jenna shared.
But if you download some of the resources, if you go to the show notes and if you really start implementing this simple tool into your day-to-day life in less extreme moments, I promise you it will come to the surface. It will bubble to the surface in those extreme moments when you truly need it.
So I had this thought on the way to the hospital, Jude's not going to be okay. And I brought up this tool after many minutes on the drive of really just freaking out and not having control of my mind and body, but I was able to center in and pause, know that wasn't serving me and ask myself the first question, which is, is it true?
That's the first question. As I was driving to the hospital with Jude inconsolable in the back seat with a thought on repeat that he's not going to be okay, I found the strength to pause and just ask myself, is it true? Even asking the question itself helped to regulate my mind and body, even just a little bit. Because in that moment, there was a pause which is always helpful, but I think I actually answered the question yes in that moment to be honest with you. And that's okay. The answer to that first question doesn't matter as much as just pausing and asking it, okay? The “is this true?”
And I'll give a little less extreme examples in a couple minutes so that you can see how this happens in every day, in the day-to-day. But we rarely stop to question our thoughts. So the active inquiry is powerful in and of itself, even if the answer is yes, that it is true. In that moment when I'm thinking, Jude's not going to be okay and I ask myself, is it true and I answer yes, that's okay.
Because then there's the second question. And the second question is, can I absolutely know that it's true? Can I know with 100% certainty that this thought is true? Can I know with 100% certainty that Jude is not going to be okay? And this one is so much harder to answer yes to no matter what we're thinking because of that word, absolutely. There are very few things in life, actually, that we can absolutely say are true, thought-wise, I will say. I mean, there's definitely facts of life, but thoughts in our head, it's very rare that a thought is absolutely true.
As I was driving, I couldn't answer yes to that question. Can I absolutely know that it's true that Jude's not going to be okay? No. And of course now we know he is okay, so the answer to the question, can I absolutely know that thought is true, was no.
I want you to think about, maybe just do a small exercise right now, about a thought that maybe plays on repeat in your head before I get to the next two questions. I want you to think about a thought. Just play around with this. Something that might be currently running in your head on repeat or maybe something that really impacted you last week that you were stuck on. And I want you to ask yourself, is it true? And then I want you to ask yourself, can I absolutely know that it's true? Again, just questioning the certainty of a thought often takes the teeth out of it.
The third question, how do I react or how do you react? What happens when you believe that thought? So for me, when I was believing the thought that Jude wasn't going to be okay, I was completely dysregulated. I've talked about this before, but when, on the podcast because I've given a recent example of this as well, but when my nervous system is activated like that, I'm terrible with directions.
In this case, I was on my way to the hospital and I missed an exit. Actually, in fact, I took an exit that I wasn't supposed to take. And got stuck in traffic off of the highway and needed to get back onto that highway where there was more traffic. And I was a wreck.
So this question is so powerful because it shows us that our thoughts create our actions. It's not just the way we are. It's the thought driving the emotion and the behavior. I could have the thought that I don't do well under high-pressure circumstances. That could be a thought of mine, judging how the first half of that drive went. But once I questioned these things, once I challenged that thought, once I was able to pause and get into a better headspace because of this tool, I become a much more grounded person who does well under high-pressure, high-emotion situations.
Because from the beginning, if I had been thinking he's going to be okay, I would have been calm, focused, and present. I would have gotten to the hospital more seamlessly, of course, and I wouldn't have been reacting from fear and anxiety. So that question, that third question, how do I react when I believe this thought is so important to actually see the version of us that shows up, maybe even the version of us that we aren't proud of in that moment when we are believing a thought that doesn't serve us.
The fourth question, and this is the one I love so much, more than all the others, and it is who would I be without this thought? When I asked myself that in the car, even with Jude still crying, I realized that without the thought he's not going to be okay, I would have been calm, clear, regulated, and focused on getting him help, okay? I would have been the mom whose nervous system made him feel safer, right? Our energy matters. It impacts our kids and the people around us.
So after asking that question, I really was able to take a deep breath and commit to showing up as that version of myself until we got to the hospital and experts could help. And thank goodness I was able to do that because we ended up driving across Denver highways in rush hour to a children's hospital, and I had to answer so many questions and recall details. And all the while I had to help him feel safe in that entire experience. It would have been so much harder to do all those things if my mind had stayed in that downward spiral.
So again, the four questions and you can write these down or you can go to the show notes, you can get the transcript at jenna.coach/88. There will be resources to the actual worksheets that Byron Katie has, but the four questions, is it true? Can I absolutely know it's true? How do I react when I believe it? And who would I be without this thought?
I want to take maybe a simpler, less triggering, everyday example because hopefully it's not every day that our kids are getting hurt, falling down the stairs, doing things that are really high-pressure, high-stakes situations. So I want to take a more everyday example. I want to use a thought that maybe pops into our mind every now and then, maybe we don't take it fully seriously or maybe we do, but it's the thought of I'm a terrible mom, okay?
And I've had this thought plenty of times, especially when something happens. I mean, I could easily also have had that thought with the scenario with Jude falling down the steps, too, but I think we have this thought when far less extreme things happen. So there's this thought, I'm a terrible mom. It pops into your head maybe when your kiddo says I hate you or something else normal happens, right? Our kids, they're learning life, and so they say things like that, right?
So we have that thought, I'm a terrible mom. We can ask ourselves the first question, is it true? Probably not. Second question, can I absolutely know that it's true? For anyone who's listening to this episode, the answer's no. I assure you, your brain might want to say that maybe answer yes and beat yourself up, but the question, can I absolutely know it's true in this case is always going to be a no.
How do I react when I believe it? For me, if I'm believing that thought that I'm a terrible mom, I actually shut down. I disconnect. I'm not present. I stop asking for help. I also like disconnect with my kids. So I will also like shut down with my kids. I will be less fun, I will be less interactive, I will have shorter answers, I don't talk as much, I'm not as expressive. All of those things happen when I believe the thought I'm a terrible mom. Kind of go inside myself and just go to this dark, sad place. That's how I would answer question three.
Question four, who would I be without that thought? And even just like who would I be without the thought that I'm a terrible mom? Well, I know for me I would be more joyful, more connected, more compassionate with myself. I'd have a lot more fun. I would honestly be showing up as a better mom. That's the whole point here. Without that thought, we are a more vibrant version of ourselves. We are a better version of ourselves.
If it's a thought that doesn't serve us. We don't want to question the thought, I'm an amazing mom. If you have the thought I'm an amazing mom, do not question it. Do not go through these four questions. It doesn't matter. Live in the space of I'm an amazing mom, like that will serve you all day every day. I guarantee you.
Here's also like what's really important about that last question and why I love it so much is because sometimes you won't know exactly who you would be. You may not know exactly what version of you exists without that thought because maybe it's just always been on the back burner in your mind. But I want you to, when you ask that question, notice how you feel. For me, I feel absolute relief when I ask myself that question. It feels like I have freedom from the weight of that thought.
We think we are our thoughts. We think they define us, but they're just sentences. And we get to decide which ones we keep. And every time you pause and you question a thought and maybe choose a new one, you reclaim your energy. You're able to show up as more present and more calm and peaceful. So even just going through these questions, what I hope that it offers you is a space of calm and a way for you to feel relief from these thoughts in our head that are going a mile a minute, all day, every day.
The biggest takeaway here is that you are not your thoughts. Again, they are sentences. They're just sentences. And you get to choose which ones you believe, which ones you keep. Like the I am an amazing mom, let's keep that one. I'm a terrible mom, let's question it, challenge it, and think about who we would be without that thought, and then allow ourselves to step into that version of ourselves because we've decided to just leave that thought. It's not true.
Your action for this week, I know I always like to leave you with something that you can think about, that you can take action on, that you can go out there in the world and do, okay? This week, I want you to notice one reoccurring thought that drains your energy and gently question it using the four questions. This is not about fixing yourself. We're not forcing positivity. I just want you to create space and relief from a thought that might be holding you back.
This is so important too when we enter into the space of starting a business and doing something we've never done before because there's so much imposter syndrome. There's so much self-doubt. There's so much questioning and wondering, is this going to work? What if I fail? I've never done this before. And sometimes those thoughts serve us. They help us create solutions and feel energized to move us forward. And sometimes, oftentimes, they hold us back.
So a thought for an example of when we're starting a business is and I didn't prepare this one, so I'm just going to go off the cuff, is this isn't going to work. So many of the moms that I work with and talk to like have this worry, what if this fails? And there's a thought, this will never work. Okay, this will never work. Is it true? No, I don't know. Can you absolutely know that it's true? No, I can't absolutely know that it's true that this isn't going to work.
How do I react when I believe that thought? I avoid building the business. I don't talk to people about the business. I don't create my network in the industry. I don't start building the product. I don't start talking to other entrepreneurs in the space. I shut down when I believe that thought that this isn't going to work out.
Who am I without that thought? I'm doing the thing. I'm showing up. I'm trying it out. I'm figuring it out. I'm not just focused on this not working, I'm focused on it could work and let me try and create it and figure it out. Our thoughts are so important and it's so important to not just let those sentences in our head be absolute truths, even if it's something that's just up there and you're not really paying attention to it or you feel maybe you're not paying attention to it.
I would challenge you and say that your body and your subconscious are paying attention to it more than you think. And I know that to be true especially if you haven't created the results that you want, something lingering in the background of your mind, those sentences in your head that aren't serving you, they are playing a bigger role on holding you back than you might think.
So, go out there, action item, think about some of the thoughts that drain your energy. I want you to use these four questions. I want you to keep this tool in your back pocket.
And absolutely, if you want help learning how to manage your mind even more and build emotional resilience and create more freedom in your life and career, in the show notes at jenna.coach/88 there are tons of resources there as well.
It's not just this podcast. I do free webinars and events. I have free resources on there. And I also do a free one-hour consultation so that you can learn more about what might be holding you back. You can talk about your business, feel ignited about your ideas and really see step-by-step what you need to move forward.
So take advantage of all those resources, start asking yourself those four questions and I will see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
When we're in that headspace, we're absolutely not making decisions or showing up from our best, most grounded selves. And today I'm sharing a simple and easy tool that I absolutely love to do a little something that I call manage your mind. It's the exact tool that I used, unfortunately, recently, in one of the scariest mom moments of my life so far, when I was spiraling and desperately needed to calm my nerves and steady myself so that I could make decisions and act from a calm, steady place.
By the end of this episode, I want you to be able to do that too in the most intense, extreme emotions when your mind is racing, and even in the small moments when you are just thinking about something that doesn't serve you. I want you to be able to jump out of it, and this episode is going to help you do that.
Welcome to How to Quit Your Job, the podcast for moms ready to ditch the nine-to-five and build a life and business they love. I’m your host, Jenna Rykiel. Let’s go.
You're listening to episode 88 of the How to Quit Your Job podcast, and today we're talking about a quick mindset tool that I absolutely love. It's one that I lean on for myself and recommend to clients all the time. Because when it comes to our thoughts, everyone can relate to a downward spiral, okay? We have about 60,000 thoughts a day and so many of them go unchecked and unchallenged.
Sometimes the smallest things can trigger the harshest criticism and negative thoughts, especially the ones that logically are completely untrue. But these thoughts just float around in our heads, and they take up mental and physical energy. I talked about this a lot in episode 79. I talked about how when we manage our mind, when we pause and when we challenge some of those exhausting thoughts, we actually gain back so much time and energy.
So today, I want to actually give you an easy-to-use tool to do exactly that: a tool to manage your mind in those moments. Because if we can stop those exhausting thoughts just a few minutes sooner or a couple hours sooner, and let's be honest, sometimes those thoughts go on for days or weeks or even months. They're just constantly living in us and affecting us. If we can get to a steady and calm place sooner, then we can get so much more energy and time back in our lives. Energy that we could use to start a business or be present with our kids or take care of ourselves.
And that's why this tool is so fabulous and so important. It helps us to take a quick pause and get clear about the sentences in our heads so we can get out of any exhausting mental funk that we might be in, and we can get back to that calm, cool, collected state where we are able to make decisions and be proud of ourselves and feel gratitude. So it's not just the big emotion moments. It's also some of these everyday little moments where we are just our biggest critic, and this is a tool to step out of that.
The tool is called The Four Questions, and it was developed by author and speaker Byron Katie. Her work is really incredible. I've read a few of her books and they always leave me feeling immersed in self-love and gratitude at the deepest level. And she refers to her work as The Work. And I'll put links in the show notes at jenna.coach/88 so you can check out her and her work and The Work.
I'm going to share the simplest version of this tool so that you can use it today or tomorrow, the next time a thought that doesn't serve you creeps in and you need to manage your mind. But there are absolutely deeper layers to it. I want you to have what's most practical and useful in real life right now, but absolutely dig deeper if this resonates or if you want to learn more. And not for nothing, I'm not a specialist in this tool. I'm just an avid user because it is so helpful. So I want to share it, but absolutely check out Byron Katie's stuff to go deeper.
So I said, it's called The Four Questions because that's exactly what it is. It's four questions of inquiry that you can pause and ask yourself about any thought that you're experiencing. And I want to walk you through the four questions using a real moment from my recent life. This is recent and it also could be triggering, but I'm sharing it because it was one of those moments where emotions were high, my thoughts were jumping to worst-case scenario, and I had to calm myself and my nervous system in order to serve my child and keep my child safe.
All that to say, everything's okay now. We're all safe, we're all good. But I wanted to use this example because it's the most recent and I know that we can all relate to those heightened moments of parenting. To set the stage, right before traveling for winter break most recently, my youngest son who's 15 months, fell down an entire flight of stairs. It honestly felt like something out of a movie in the worst way possible. So we were sitting together at the top of the steps and he leaned back and just tumbled. Like I said, he's perfectly okay now. I want to assure you.
But at the time, I ended up going to the emergency room with him, and it was so hard to regulate my thoughts. My mind immediately went to all the worst-case scenarios. And one thought in particular that felt so true in that moment was, Jude is not going to be okay.
At that moment, in that moment, I knew that thought wasn't serving me. I knew it wasn't serving me because it was creating a lot of fear and anxiety, which I'll talk about as we get to some of the later questions of the tool. But I knew it wasn't serving me because I was so dysregulated and I had to get my son to the hospital. And I just could not get out of my head.
So we have these thoughts that don't serve us all the time. In those moments, I want you to be able to challenge those thoughts somehow. I was able to lean on this tool on my way to the hospital and it changed everything for me. And I've had this tool in my tool belt for years. And I've practiced it, and I think that's what really helped make it so much more useful for me in that moment, because generally when we're in those high-stakes moments, when we're in those really extreme moments, we're not going to be thinking about that podcast that Jenna shared.
But if you download some of the resources, if you go to the show notes and if you really start implementing this simple tool into your day-to-day life in less extreme moments, I promise you it will come to the surface. It will bubble to the surface in those extreme moments when you truly need it.
So I had this thought on the way to the hospital, Jude's not going to be okay. And I brought up this tool after many minutes on the drive of really just freaking out and not having control of my mind and body, but I was able to center in and pause, know that wasn't serving me and ask myself the first question, which is, is it true?
That's the first question. As I was driving to the hospital with Jude inconsolable in the back seat with a thought on repeat that he's not going to be okay, I found the strength to pause and just ask myself, is it true? Even asking the question itself helped to regulate my mind and body, even just a little bit. Because in that moment, there was a pause which is always helpful, but I think I actually answered the question yes in that moment to be honest with you. And that's okay. The answer to that first question doesn't matter as much as just pausing and asking it, okay? The “is this true?”
And I'll give a little less extreme examples in a couple minutes so that you can see how this happens in every day, in the day-to-day. But we rarely stop to question our thoughts. So the active inquiry is powerful in and of itself, even if the answer is yes, that it is true. In that moment when I'm thinking, Jude's not going to be okay and I ask myself, is it true and I answer yes, that's okay.
Because then there's the second question. And the second question is, can I absolutely know that it's true? Can I know with 100% certainty that this thought is true? Can I know with 100% certainty that Jude is not going to be okay? And this one is so much harder to answer yes to no matter what we're thinking because of that word, absolutely. There are very few things in life, actually, that we can absolutely say are true, thought-wise, I will say. I mean, there's definitely facts of life, but thoughts in our head, it's very rare that a thought is absolutely true.
As I was driving, I couldn't answer yes to that question. Can I absolutely know that it's true that Jude's not going to be okay? No. And of course now we know he is okay, so the answer to the question, can I absolutely know that thought is true, was no.
I want you to think about, maybe just do a small exercise right now, about a thought that maybe plays on repeat in your head before I get to the next two questions. I want you to think about a thought. Just play around with this. Something that might be currently running in your head on repeat or maybe something that really impacted you last week that you were stuck on. And I want you to ask yourself, is it true? And then I want you to ask yourself, can I absolutely know that it's true? Again, just questioning the certainty of a thought often takes the teeth out of it.
The third question, how do I react or how do you react? What happens when you believe that thought? So for me, when I was believing the thought that Jude wasn't going to be okay, I was completely dysregulated. I've talked about this before, but when, on the podcast because I've given a recent example of this as well, but when my nervous system is activated like that, I'm terrible with directions.
In this case, I was on my way to the hospital and I missed an exit. Actually, in fact, I took an exit that I wasn't supposed to take. And got stuck in traffic off of the highway and needed to get back onto that highway where there was more traffic. And I was a wreck.
So this question is so powerful because it shows us that our thoughts create our actions. It's not just the way we are. It's the thought driving the emotion and the behavior. I could have the thought that I don't do well under high-pressure circumstances. That could be a thought of mine, judging how the first half of that drive went. But once I questioned these things, once I challenged that thought, once I was able to pause and get into a better headspace because of this tool, I become a much more grounded person who does well under high-pressure, high-emotion situations.
Because from the beginning, if I had been thinking he's going to be okay, I would have been calm, focused, and present. I would have gotten to the hospital more seamlessly, of course, and I wouldn't have been reacting from fear and anxiety. So that question, that third question, how do I react when I believe this thought is so important to actually see the version of us that shows up, maybe even the version of us that we aren't proud of in that moment when we are believing a thought that doesn't serve us.
The fourth question, and this is the one I love so much, more than all the others, and it is who would I be without this thought? When I asked myself that in the car, even with Jude still crying, I realized that without the thought he's not going to be okay, I would have been calm, clear, regulated, and focused on getting him help, okay? I would have been the mom whose nervous system made him feel safer, right? Our energy matters. It impacts our kids and the people around us.
So after asking that question, I really was able to take a deep breath and commit to showing up as that version of myself until we got to the hospital and experts could help. And thank goodness I was able to do that because we ended up driving across Denver highways in rush hour to a children's hospital, and I had to answer so many questions and recall details. And all the while I had to help him feel safe in that entire experience. It would have been so much harder to do all those things if my mind had stayed in that downward spiral.
So again, the four questions and you can write these down or you can go to the show notes, you can get the transcript at jenna.coach/88. There will be resources to the actual worksheets that Byron Katie has, but the four questions, is it true? Can I absolutely know it's true? How do I react when I believe it? And who would I be without this thought?
I want to take maybe a simpler, less triggering, everyday example because hopefully it's not every day that our kids are getting hurt, falling down the stairs, doing things that are really high-pressure, high-stakes situations. So I want to take a more everyday example. I want to use a thought that maybe pops into our mind every now and then, maybe we don't take it fully seriously or maybe we do, but it's the thought of I'm a terrible mom, okay?
And I've had this thought plenty of times, especially when something happens. I mean, I could easily also have had that thought with the scenario with Jude falling down the steps, too, but I think we have this thought when far less extreme things happen. So there's this thought, I'm a terrible mom. It pops into your head maybe when your kiddo says I hate you or something else normal happens, right? Our kids, they're learning life, and so they say things like that, right?
So we have that thought, I'm a terrible mom. We can ask ourselves the first question, is it true? Probably not. Second question, can I absolutely know that it's true? For anyone who's listening to this episode, the answer's no. I assure you, your brain might want to say that maybe answer yes and beat yourself up, but the question, can I absolutely know it's true in this case is always going to be a no.
How do I react when I believe it? For me, if I'm believing that thought that I'm a terrible mom, I actually shut down. I disconnect. I'm not present. I stop asking for help. I also like disconnect with my kids. So I will also like shut down with my kids. I will be less fun, I will be less interactive, I will have shorter answers, I don't talk as much, I'm not as expressive. All of those things happen when I believe the thought I'm a terrible mom. Kind of go inside myself and just go to this dark, sad place. That's how I would answer question three.
Question four, who would I be without that thought? And even just like who would I be without the thought that I'm a terrible mom? Well, I know for me I would be more joyful, more connected, more compassionate with myself. I'd have a lot more fun. I would honestly be showing up as a better mom. That's the whole point here. Without that thought, we are a more vibrant version of ourselves. We are a better version of ourselves.
If it's a thought that doesn't serve us. We don't want to question the thought, I'm an amazing mom. If you have the thought I'm an amazing mom, do not question it. Do not go through these four questions. It doesn't matter. Live in the space of I'm an amazing mom, like that will serve you all day every day. I guarantee you.
Here's also like what's really important about that last question and why I love it so much is because sometimes you won't know exactly who you would be. You may not know exactly what version of you exists without that thought because maybe it's just always been on the back burner in your mind. But I want you to, when you ask that question, notice how you feel. For me, I feel absolute relief when I ask myself that question. It feels like I have freedom from the weight of that thought.
We think we are our thoughts. We think they define us, but they're just sentences. And we get to decide which ones we keep. And every time you pause and you question a thought and maybe choose a new one, you reclaim your energy. You're able to show up as more present and more calm and peaceful. So even just going through these questions, what I hope that it offers you is a space of calm and a way for you to feel relief from these thoughts in our head that are going a mile a minute, all day, every day.
The biggest takeaway here is that you are not your thoughts. Again, they are sentences. They're just sentences. And you get to choose which ones you believe, which ones you keep. Like the I am an amazing mom, let's keep that one. I'm a terrible mom, let's question it, challenge it, and think about who we would be without that thought, and then allow ourselves to step into that version of ourselves because we've decided to just leave that thought. It's not true.
Your action for this week, I know I always like to leave you with something that you can think about, that you can take action on, that you can go out there in the world and do, okay? This week, I want you to notice one reoccurring thought that drains your energy and gently question it using the four questions. This is not about fixing yourself. We're not forcing positivity. I just want you to create space and relief from a thought that might be holding you back.
This is so important too when we enter into the space of starting a business and doing something we've never done before because there's so much imposter syndrome. There's so much self-doubt. There's so much questioning and wondering, is this going to work? What if I fail? I've never done this before. And sometimes those thoughts serve us. They help us create solutions and feel energized to move us forward. And sometimes, oftentimes, they hold us back.
So a thought for an example of when we're starting a business is and I didn't prepare this one, so I'm just going to go off the cuff, is this isn't going to work. So many of the moms that I work with and talk to like have this worry, what if this fails? And there's a thought, this will never work. Okay, this will never work. Is it true? No, I don't know. Can you absolutely know that it's true? No, I can't absolutely know that it's true that this isn't going to work.
How do I react when I believe that thought? I avoid building the business. I don't talk to people about the business. I don't create my network in the industry. I don't start building the product. I don't start talking to other entrepreneurs in the space. I shut down when I believe that thought that this isn't going to work out.
Who am I without that thought? I'm doing the thing. I'm showing up. I'm trying it out. I'm figuring it out. I'm not just focused on this not working, I'm focused on it could work and let me try and create it and figure it out. Our thoughts are so important and it's so important to not just let those sentences in our head be absolute truths, even if it's something that's just up there and you're not really paying attention to it or you feel maybe you're not paying attention to it.
I would challenge you and say that your body and your subconscious are paying attention to it more than you think. And I know that to be true especially if you haven't created the results that you want, something lingering in the background of your mind, those sentences in your head that aren't serving you, they are playing a bigger role on holding you back than you might think.
So, go out there, action item, think about some of the thoughts that drain your energy. I want you to use these four questions. I want you to keep this tool in your back pocket.
And absolutely, if you want help learning how to manage your mind even more and build emotional resilience and create more freedom in your life and career, in the show notes at jenna.coach/88 there are tons of resources there as well.
It's not just this podcast. I do free webinars and events. I have free resources on there. And I also do a free one-hour consultation so that you can learn more about what might be holding you back. You can talk about your business, feel ignited about your ideas and really see step-by-step what you need to move forward.
So take advantage of all those resources, start asking yourself those four questions and I will see you next week.
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of How to Quit Your Job: A Mom’s Guide to Creating a Life and Business You Love. If you want to learn more about how I can help you stop making excuses and start making moves, head on over to www.jenna.coach. I’ll see you next week.
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