“Why can’t I get this?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why is this so hard?”
These are just a few of the disempowering soundtracks that used to play on repeat in my brain.
Getting myself to stick to any kind of healthy behaviours felt like a slog.
And the worst part is, I didn’t realise I was only making it worse by continually asking myself unhelpful questions.
I was problem-focused, running on a fixed mindset, and I never actively looked for solutions.
This kept me in a place where I:
- Never felt motivated to do things like go for a walk or cook a healthy meal – I always had to force myself
- Distracted myself with things like mindless scrolling and snacking
- Constantly entertained negative and self-limiting thoughts
- Wasn’t reaching my goals, and felt like I was wasting my life
I knew something had to change, but I didn’t know how to get myself out of this destructive pattern.
The mindset tipping point:
A few years ago I read “Awaken The Giant Within” by Tony Robbins.
This is when I started to realise I had more control over my thoughts than I had previously thought. I wasn’t “just like this”, but I had learned to be like this after years of conditioning.
Realising my thinking patterns had been learned meant I could unlearn them too. I could start to question my thoughts and ask whether they were serving me or not.
In the book, Tony points out that the questions you ask heavily influence your emotional state.
He says:
“The questions you ask yourself set the tone for your thought patterns, so it’s critical to make a habit of asking yourself positive empowering questions that will lead to empowering thoughts”
Thinking is simply a sequence of asking and answering questions.
If you ask disempowering question, you’re doing to feel disempowered and hopeless.
Disempowered questions include questions like:
“Why can’t I get this?”
“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why is this so hard?”
“Why should I even bother?”
Whereas if you ask more empowering questions, like some of the ones I’m about to share with you, you’re going to start to feel more empowered and positive about your situation, therefore more likely to make changes that align with your goals.
Asking myself more empowering questions helped me to feel more in control of my thoughts, be less reactive, and make better choices. Hopefully they can do the same for you.
7 Questions that will empower you and change your brain
What else could be true right now?
This is the question I ask myself when I’m having negative thoughts or making assumptions that aren’t helpful.
Asking myself, “what else could be true?” gets me thinking beyond my initial thoughts and start questioning whether my thoughts about the situation are true (they never are!)
This question comes in handy all the time, but I find it particularly helpful when I’m entertaining thoughts about not being good enough, or comparing myself to other people.
There are so many scenarios that could be true, yet we often get fixated on the worst case. Always question your initial assumptions.
How might someone else approach this situation?
Most things we do in life are habitual.
Our brain has pre-programmed a set response that has worked for us in the past. In order to save energy, it calls on that pre-programmed response as often as possible. That’s why we tend to get set in our ways and find it hard to build new habits, or create new routines, or think differently to the way we always have.
When we ask ourselves how someone else might approach the situation, we take ourselves out of our habitual routines and start to problem solve. Looking outside the box and considering things we wouldn’t normally can be incredibly helpful when it comes to finding new solutions and moving forward.
I work from home, and if you’ve ever spent a lot of time working from home you might understand what I mean when I say it’s easy to fall into mundane habits. Being constantly surrounded by the same four walls is not exactly a great formula for creative inspiration.
When I asked myself how someone else would approach this feeling, I started noticing other people often work in cafes, the library, or even outside in the park. So I decided to spend some time working at the library to change my environment.
It worked, and now I make a conscious effort to seek out inspiration rather than keeping myself stuck.
What thoughts am I having right now? Are they really true?
This question is particularly helpful when you have strong feelings and aren’t sure why, or you feel like you can’t escape them.
Feelings are often a result of our thoughts in the moment. When we can identify the thoughts leading to our feelings, we can choose to think new thoughts and therefore start to feel better.
A great example here is not feeling motivated to workout.
Even though I want the results, I kept finding myself feeling resistant when it came time to do the work of actually exercising.
When I question this feeling, and ask myself what thoughts are behind it, I can start to learn why I’m feeling this way and therefore find a solution.
Something I’ve learned is there’s always a reason for feeling resistance.
Maybe I am having thoughts about how unfit I am, and one workout feels like it won’t even make a dent in my fitness levels.
Is this really true?
No, of course not.
I need to then remind myself that everyone starts somewhere and every workout absolutely does count, even if I take it easier and adjust the plan. Something is always better than nothing.
What advice would I give to someone else in this same situation?
Compassion is something many of us freely give to others, but fail to give to ourselves.
Self-compassion is a crucial piece of the behaviour change puzzle, because it’s how we keep going when things get tough.
A simple technique for learning the skill of self-compassion is to ask ourselves what advice we would give to someone else in our situation. It can be easier to think of how we might talk to a loved one, then apply those words to ourselves.
This is more important than ever when we step on the scale.
When the number on the scale goes up, our initial reaction is to put ourselves down and blame ourselves for not being “good enough”.
The advice I would give someone else is that the number on the scale isn’t everything. One week doesn’t tell the whole story, and one week of a higher weight certainly doesn’t mean your efforts have failed. It’s part of the journey. How can you make the next best choice and continue working towards your goal?
When I think of what advice I’d give someone else, I’m able to realise the situation is not as dramatic as my brain initially thinks.
How could I make this easier on myself?
Stress and overwhelm makes it harder for us to stick to our habits because we make more reactive choices in the moment. When we are stressed, our brain makes decisions to immediately relieve our stress in the moment, not to align with our long-term goals.
Most of us go for the most complicated route first, particularly with health goals and particularly when we are stressed.
In reality, we’ll see much more success if we simplify.
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
– Confucius
Planning ahead is one way to make things easier on yourself when trying to eat better.
Yet most of us will “plan ahead” by organising an elaborate meal prep routine, or planning daily intensive workouts when we haven’t exercised in months. And if we fail to follow through on these things, we choose to do nothing instead…then we find ourselves making choices in the moment that don’t align with our goals.
We don’t stop to think how we could plan for what’s actually realistic for us and the life we want for ourselves.
Spending a short amount of time to plan ahead can make it easier for future you to make better choices.
But making it easier means planning in a way that considers your known limitations and roadblocks, and thinking about the time and resources future-you will have access to. For example, planning simple and quick meals for days when you know you’ll be tired or busy.
What’s going well right now? Where do I notice small improvements?
Humans have a natural tendency to focus on things that aren’t working or that we’re not doing well. This is especially true for those of us working on new habits or trying to live a healthier lifestyle.
It’s too easy to compare our situation to others and assume we are doing terribly.
When we ask the question, “what’s going well right now, or where do I notice small improvements?” we start to consciously look for those bright spots and notice that we’re not doing as bad as we thought.
Maybe we got out of bed on the first alarm instead of hitting snooze, or maybe we did one extra rep in a workout, or maybe we simply chose to go out for a quick walk instead of scrolling on our phone (high five for that one!)
It all counts and it’s all progress.
If you make small changes every single week, after a year you’re going to have an entirely different life. But when we’re in the middle of it we don’t notice unless we intentionally seek out and notice the changes.
In order to sustain small changes, and for our brain to create a new habit, we must make a point to notice and celebrate our small wins.
What actions might have led me here?
This is about taking responsibility for both our current situation and our ability to change it.
This is perhaps one of the most important mindset shifts we can make. Moving from blame to accountability is an empowering move, one that will change the trajectory of your life and how you feel about it.
It’s impossible to feel confident and in control when we’re blaming external things.
In the past, I’ve found myself thinking, “I did everything right, I have no idea why I’m not seeing results!” But this only led to me feeling helpless and out of control.
In order to change we need to feel a sense of autonomy. This comes from accepting personal responsibility.
When I catch myself in those old thought loops, I like to ask myself, “what actions led me here?” In order words, “how might I have contributed to my current reality?”
If where I am right now is a result of my own actions, it means I also have the power to take different actions to get myself a different result in the future.
Maybe I skipped a few workouts, or I grabbed a few extra snacks, or took a few extra bites at dinner, or had a few extra drinks I wouldn’t normally. Or maybe I simply tuned out and stopped being aware of my actions.
At a glance, we feel like these things don’t matter, but when we sit down to look at our results, there’s always a reason why we got the result we did, and the answer can be found in our daily behaviours. The small choices we brush off in the moment add up over time.
If you find yourself, similar to me, struggling to stick to habits, or just struggling to keep a positive mindset, I believe these questions are going to empower you to make a change.
They won’t come naturally for quite a while, and those old thoughts won’t completely go away. Instead, practice redirecting your brain when you find yourself entering into unhelpful thought spirals.
Keep coming back to these questions as often as you need to.
They certainly helped me, and I hope they can help you too!
