How To Win The Private Battles In Your Mind~Part 3: Environment

Should we always trust that voice in our heads? No way! Our brains are actually wired up to sabotage our efforts to change! Sometimes our mind uses our environment to get us to stop doing any new behavior simply because it’s new ~ even if it’s good for us, or even our life-long dream! Today we are going to learn the tricks that our brains play on us to get us to stop running, meditating, whatever thing you’re trying to make habitual. Finally, you can win the battle in your head and get whatever you want into your life…for real and for good!

This is part 3 of a 3 part series. I think you’re going to be quite surprised as to how your mind is actually tricking you into giving up and you might not even realize it!

*Note to listener: I had some microphone troubles on this episode. I apologize for the fair audio quality.

In this episode we will learn:
~How your ego uses your environment, to do lists and worries to get you to stop meditating, running, writing, whatever it is that you truly want to be doing!
~Recognizing which voice is telling you the truth
~Flower Meditation

The Host for this podcast: Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW The Stress Therapist and Author
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Quotes:
“The worse you are at meditation, the more you stand to gain.” -Cheri Augustine Flake, LCSW Interesting Mentions:
Primordial Sound Meditation Chopra Center
Heartwood Refuge
Heartwood Retreat Center : location for Cheri’s Georgia Mountain Retreats

The Reluctant Medium: Dr. Maria Rothenburger
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[00:00] Hey, beautiful people.

[00:01] What’s up?

[00:02] So it’s part three of a threepart series today. We’re talking about the tricks that your brain plays on you to try to get you to stop doing a behavior that you actually want to do. Yeah, your ego and your brain are working against you. And once you know what these tricks are, you can get the upper hand and win those private battles in your head. It’s season six tips and tricks that this psychotherapist wants you to know. So relax and settle in and listen up because your stress therapy session is about to begin right now. Hey, beautiful people. It’s time for some stress therapy, a podcast about how to meditate and get better at stress for people living in the real world. Finally, a place to park my 25 plus years of experience of working as a psychotherapist in the mental health field. And now, your host, me, the stress therapist, Sherry Flake. Okay, before we get into the thick of it, we’re going to take a teensy tiny break. Be right back.

[01:26] Okay, so here we are. We made it to week three. I’m going to tell you the third way that your brain tricks you and gets you to stop doing whatever it is that you want to be doing. And in this case, it’s meditation. If you want, like an overview of why this is so important, just listen to the first couple of minutes of last week’s podcast about your body and how your brain uses your body to get you to stop doing whatever behavior that you want. The short version is your brain thinks sameness is safety. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been doing totally unhealthy behaviors forever. If you lived through that, that’s good enough for this part of your brain. This part of your brain is obsessed with survival. And so if you want to sit in meditation, it’s going to get really cranky and your ego is going to start to bring up all the very quote valid I’m making quote marks right now, reasons why you should come out of meditation. And the third one is your environment. Now, out of the three, you’re going to pick one that probably resonates the most with you. I have found this with my clients and my retreat attendees and for me, environment is this one. So when I first started meditating, I was a horrible meditator, which, if you’re really, really bad at meditation, the bonus is you have the most to gain. That’s how our brains work. The harder it is for you, the more you space out during meditation and bring yourself back to the mantra or whatever anchor you’re using, the more your brain changes. I mean, it is really cool. So anyway, when I first started out, I was so bad at this, I did not understand what people meant about watch your breath. I was like, what in the world that did not resonate with me at all. It made me nervous. I got anxious when I meditated. We should probably talk about this on another podcast because that happens a lot. A lot of times people get anxious. I was one of those people. And I would just start fantasizing about all the other things that I quote, should be doing. I would be shooting on myself just like I did just then when I said I should do a podcast that’s done this, right? So it’s all a learning process. So this is how it would go down for me, right? I would sit in meditation. And at the time I had a primordial I can put Deepak Chopra’s little program in there. It was like primordial meditation. And I had a Primordial meditation teacher and he was helping me learn how to meditate and make it habitual. And this is how it was going down. I would go to meditate and then all of a sudden, I would have the best idea I’ve ever had for a client, for the book I was writing, for whatever. It was like this amazing thing that I had to immediately write down, right? Okay. So I would go and write it down. I started keeping a pad of paper and a pencil next to my meditation space so I could write things down in the middle of my meditation because I started having these great ideas. So I go to my teacher and I tell him this, and he’s like, oh, man. He’s like, Those ideas, they’re already all there. You’ll remember these ideas after the meditation. Your brain is trying to get you to stop meditating by getting you these really good ideas. I was like, there’s no way I’m going to remember these good ideas afterwards. And he was like, no, really, you have to try it. And he was absolutely right. I got these really good ideas and I would remember them. And after the meditation, I would write them down. Well, once I started getting the upper hand on this, my brain started getting even more sophisticated. My ego got really good at pulling me out of meditation and using environment because this is the hardest one for me out of the three. My environment thoughts while I’m meditating will always be something like, oh, I should thoughts like, I should make the lunches, or I don’t have time for this. I should be doing this thing instead, like making dinner or thinking about it or checking the email or I really need to run this errand. There was always something in my environment that needed attention more than meditation. And so I then decided to change my mantra to this is all I’m supposed to be doing. And I’m not kidding you. It was like two years. That was my mantra. That’s how bad the environment was coming on me to get me to stop meditating. So I would say, this is all I’m supposed to be doing. So after I dealt with the having incredible ideas. And before I came up with this idea of using this mantra, this is all I’m supposed to be doing, my brain got really savvy in, alarming me and scaring me out of meditation by using my environment. And so I would be sitting there meditating, and then all of a sudden I would hear myself think, did I leave the front door open? Did I leave the oven on? Did I leave the refrigerator door open? I should go check. It like these alarming is someone walking around downstairs, like, really trying to alarm me. And so I started doing this mantra, this is all I’m supposed to be doing. This is all I’m supposed to be doing. And when those thoughts would come up, I would be like, oh, alarming thought or scary thought or checking thought. I didn’t want to give it, like big words like compulsive thought or obsession thought or anything like that because I didn’t want to give it any sort of diagnosis. It’s just labeling as like, oh, that’s a planning thought. Like, yes, I do need to run that errand, but not right this second, right? And that helped dissipate those thoughts. And it got better, okay, because I didn’t just believe whatever thoughts were coming in about my environment. And I talked to venerable pandawadi up at Southern Dharma during a retreat a couple of years ago, and she said that she kind of sees it like and I know I’ve mentioned this before because I think it’s really cool that she sees it like being at the center of a flower, and she is the center. And each petal is one of the things that comes up in your environment that you can move your thoughts to. So, like, she would have a thought about paying the rent for the monastery or something, and she would actually physically feel herself lift up that thought and be like, oh, that’s a task thought, right? Label it and then put it out in front of her as one of the petals. And then she would just go around releasing all of these thoughts in a circle until she was surrounded by petals and able to concentrate and think. Because your brain eventually will get tired. It’s not as strong as you are. It’s subject to earthly limitations, and you’re not. So once you just sort of give it a place to sit next to you, you’re not going to forget about it. But this is all you’re supposed to be doing. This is all you’re supposed to be doing. You can gain that upper hand with environment thoughts. Okay? So now we’ve gone over all of them. Time, body, environment. Which one is plaguing your meditation practice, how are you getting through it? Just sort of like file that away and give that some thought as you move through your meditation, noticing it. Because I’m telling you, once you separate yourself from it and see yourself as separate from it not you, right? Because this is why people have excuses, I can’t do that, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I can’t do this. None of us can do anything if we listen to our ego all day long. Let’s be frank, okay? And would you rather be right about that? You possibly can’t sit through meditation when you’re just a person who can’t meditate because people tell me that all the time. Or would you rather be happy and reap the benefits of meditation? I mean, for so long, I didn’t even know what that meant. I’m not kidding you. Like when people would say, would you rather be right or would you be happy? That didn’t even make sense to me because I was so obsessed with being right. I was so obsessed with filling up my head with thoughts that I believed every single thought that came into my head. I thought there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I thought I was sick. I thought I was stuck. And once you start challenging those thoughts we talked last week about the lobster, once you feel uncomfortable and know that that’s your sign that change is available to you, you’re not going to believe the empowerment that you get from this. You will feel amazing and wonderful and powerful and awesome, and you won’t be eating cough drops before bed anymore. And you’ll be able to make your little petal flower imagery in your mind and move on and meditate anyway. So let’s do that now. Let’s meditate right now, together now. It’s okay. So find a very comfortable space sitting up so your body doesn’t get the upper hand right off the bat. It might come in later, but at least you’re starting off in a very, very comfortable space. You’re setting an alarm that’s not alarming, so time doesn’t get its chance to weasel in there and tell you that you don’t have enough of it. And we’re going to go ahead and do this flower meditation where your beautiful self is the center of the flower. We’re going to use the mantra, I am that. So we’re concentrating on the idea, the message that you are listening to the holy and divine part of yourself that’s connected to all other living beings. This sentient holy part of you, ham SA, is the mantra. And if you have thoughts about your environment or other things you should be doing, you’re going to simply label it. That’s a planning thought, that’s a task thought, whatever it is. And then you’re going to place that thought outside of your little inner circle, your little inner flower, and place it out as a petal. And you might have 50 petals by the end of the meditation, or you might have three. It doesn’t matter. You’re just going to simply place them aside for now. I’m putting this aside for now. Going around your beautiful selves in a sook, creating your flower, creating your petals in these little halo of flowers and petals, remembering this is all you’re supposed to be doing. Sam SA I’ll be back in a little while to guide you out yourself, to let go of the mantra, let it float away from your awareness. Coming back into this time, into this moment, moving your body around a little and remembering where you are and what’s going on, noticing your flower of thoughts around you, knowing that you can get back to all of them and it’s still not time to get to them just yet. For now, take a long, slow, deep breath in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth. Allow yourself to awaken. Cleansing breath in your nose. Let it all go out of your mouth. Take one last beautiful breath in your nose and out of your mouth. And when you’re ready, you can open your beautiful eyes. I so hope this was helpful for you. I hope that you are able to pinpoint which one of these three things pull you out of really doing any behavior. But certainly in meditation, is it time? Do your thoughts become obsessed with time? Is it the limitations of your body and how you just physically can’t hang? Or is it your environment? You have too much to do, you have too many things going on. Other things are more important. Make sure that you are listening to I’m making quote marks. Who is talking to you? And if it’s your beautiful self, it’s probably a message that keeps you in alignment with your purpose, with what you want, what you desire, who you want to be, what you’re doing, all of that. And if it’s your ego, probably just trying to get you to do the same old thing stay stuck, stay trapped, all of that. And it’s definitely not associated with a good feeling. It’s associated with a bad feeling. To remember the number one thing that you have to do in order to change any new behavior is to feel good about it. And if you need proof about that, just talk to anybody who’s played Pickleball lately. So I will leave you with that. I love you to pieces. Have a lovely, lovely day.

[22:34] Before I go, I want to tell you about another Ethereal Network of Shows podcast that I think you’re going to love.

[22:43] Welcome to The Reluctant Medium, where we cover the gamut of out there conversations with an open mind and a curious heart. We want to talk about it all. From psychic phenomena to beings, from other star systems, from energy medicine to out of body experiences and much more, you’ll find a great balance between grounded, science backed topics and others that science hasn’t quite caught up to yet. From the explainable to the miraculous, we want to know about it. I’m your host, Dr. Maria Rothenberger, a psychotherapist by trade and a reluctant spirit baby communicator. And hey, even though I’m a medium, I’m not buying everything folks are selling. I just have a voracious appetite to know more about what I call the world of the weird, and maybe I’ll try a few things on for size. Join us on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube at The Reluctant Medium. We’ll see you there.

[23:37] How y’all feeling after that stress therapy session? Good. Awesome. Check out the show notes to connect with me, the stress therapist on social media, at the Stresstherapist on Instagram, and at Stresstherapy on Twitter. You can always go to ilovetherapy.com to find out about meditation and yoga retreats and other offerings that I have there. If you live in Georgia and you’re ready to be one of my clients, go to my website to find out how you can sign up for a free face to face consultation with me. At the very least, jump on my mailer so you don’t stress or miss one thing. Until next time, have a lovely, lovely day.