The Mind Over Finger Podcast - 206 Life Changing Thoughts: Four Powerful Sentences That Changed My Life

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

In this episode of the Mind Over Finger Podcast, I share four pivotal sentences that completely shifted my perspective, challenging deeply held beliefs and unlocking new levels of growth and creativity. These insights helped me overcome limiting beliefs and embrace life's complexities. If you're interested in exploring how powerful thoughts can create meaningful change in both personal and professional spheres, this episode is for you.   Book your free consultation with Renée HERE Download the transcript from this episode HERE   Mind Over Finger Click www.mindoverfinger.com/coaching to book your free consultation with me. Visit MindOverFinger.com for my online courses as well as free resources on peak performance. Grab my free workshops and PDF downloads by going to www.mindoverfinger.com/resources. Connect: https://www.youtube.com/@MindOverFinger https://www.facebook.com/mindoverfinger/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/mindoverfinger https://www.instagram.com/mindoverfinger/     THANK YOU: Most sincere thank you to composer Jim Stephenson who graciously provided the show's musical theme:  Concerto #1 for Trumpet and Chamber Orchestra – Movement 2: Allegro con Brio, performed by Jeffrey Work, trumpet, and the Lake Forest Symphony, conducted by Jim Stephenson.

You're listening to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, episode number 206. Welcome to The Mind Over Finger Podcast, where we dive into the world of mindful music making, peak performance, and crafting a purpose-driven life and career. I'm your host, violinist, certified performance and life coach for musicians, and your guide to unlocking your full potential, Dr. René-Paul Gaultier. I have something really fun for you today. In episode 204, I talked about willingness, a feeling that can really help us accomplish goals and reach our dreams. And today, I want to talk to you about thoughts. Because if you've listened to past podcast episodes, namely episode 153, 154, and 155, you know that thoughts create our feelings,

feelings fuel our actions, and actions create our results. Therefore, a feeling like willingness is generated by thoughts. And as we grow up, there are a lot of thoughts that we start to believe. There are a lot of stories that we believe. There are a lot of thoughts that propulse us forward, and there are a lot of thoughts that hold us back. And what I wanted to do today is share with you four thoughts that had a really profound impact on my life. Thoughts that changed my life. And one thing that I would be really curious is if you're here live with me right now in Facebook, is share in the comments some thoughts, some sentences that throughout the years change your perspective on things. So if there are specific sentences or thoughts or mantras

that had a powerful impact on you and really changed things for you, I would love to read what those things are. So one of the things that we're talking a lot in the music mastery experience right now with my clients is that sense of alignment. We're studying the work of Martha Beck and that idea that there is an essential self inside of us that knows what we want and knows how to get us to a place where we feel fulfilled and accomplished and happy. And I find that these four sentences, these four thoughts that I'm going to share with you really helped me connect with that essential self, that part of me that feels at home, that feels happier that feels fulfilled that knows what it wants they really shifted things forward for me

and there are many more of course there's more than four thoughts that had a powerful impact on my life but those came at a time when I was ready to receive them they lended powerfully and they really created powerful feelings that generated a lot of actions and results for me And I hope that this can be a little bit of inspiration for you today to find these thoughts as they come in your life and use them as fuel for motivation, for action. The first thought is only just one word, and it's one question. Really? I'll never forget the moment as I was in a coaching session with my then coach,

jennifer rosenfeld who's wonderful and i was telling her something i don't know what it was i don't remember precisely but it was some limiting belief like but i can't just do that or i can't quit this or i can't do that and she looked at me and simply asked with a really gentle voice really and a very genuine voice too and there's something about how she challenged that deeply rooted belief that I had that I couldn't do something or couldn't quit something in that moment got me to really shift my perspective wait what really what I'm saying right now is not the truth so that word really made me question what I just said I can't do this I can't start that or I can't quit this. I don't remember what it was. I wish I did. It would make for a better story.

I stated it as if it was the truth. And with this simple word, really? She doubted it. And by seeing her doubt it, I started to doubt it too. And around that time, I was hearing that other sentence a lot. Don't believe everything you think. Don't believe everything you think. and there's something about hearing that little really that made everything come together for me I'm really believing something right now what if I choose not to believe this anymore and that shifted things for me so when you think about this not believing everything that you're thinking when you start to look at the statements that you make throughout the day I can't do this I can't just quit this job. I can't just apply for this other job. I can't just apply for like whatever

it is that you want to do, that you think you cannot do, or you cannot quit, or something you feel like you have no choice over. Don't believe it automatically. Maybe it's true, but insert a little bit of doubt. Ask yourself, really? Is that true? Don't believe everything you think automatically. So this one sentence for me, it really challenged what I believed, my thoughts, and the things that I assumed that were all shaped by my upbringing, the things that were taught to me, what I see done around me. But ultimately, when you question things and you decide if you really do deeply, sincerely believe it, then you make different choices. Well, you make the same choices but intentionally, right? So ask yourself, is what you believe, is that true, right? So that

makes us question our limiting beliefs and it makes us question the negative thought patterns that we have. So for me, it turned the things that I thought were facts and it made me realize that they were just beliefs and that I could question those things. What it can do for you, it can open up possibilities, alternate perspective on the path that you're on. What if what you assume wasn't true? What if for a second you paused everything and you contemplated the absolute opposite? Could that also be true? One of the sentences that I really love from Byron Katie is, who would you be without this thought? I can't do that. Who would you be without the thought, who am I to XYZ? Who would you be without this thought? And I think that there's so much

more that we could do if we didn't believe everything that we thought. So for example, if you want to start a project, start a business, quit a job, apply for a position, and you assume it's not going to work, this is never going to work. Ask yourself, really? Why not? What if it did, right? So start to challenge what you assume about things and explore. I'm not able to do that. Really? Why not? You've done a lot in the past. So I invite you to insert that sentence more and more in your everyday life. When you hear yourself stating things as if they are facts. I can't do that. I can't start this. I can't apply for this position. What it is that you want to do, whatever it is that you want to do, that you think you cannot do, or even more

importantly, that you think you should do, but maybe you don't want to do. Question it. Is that a fact? The second sentence, the second thought that really impacted me powerfully is something that I heard from Brooke Castillo and she said that life is 50-50. And that really landed for me at the time that I heard it. And that's because I think that oftentimes if things don't feel super rosy and super wonderful in our life, we assume that it's because something is wrong, that we're not in the right place or we're not doing the right things. Or we're in certain circumstances and certain things are great, other things aren't. And then we think, oh, it's not right

because there's certain things that aren't quite right. So that perspective of life is 50-50 made me realize that everything is gonna be a mix of positive and negative. Most life experiences are gonna be a mix of positive and negative. I have some examples for you. Think about the first one that came to mind for me

was parenting. how amazing it is, how difficult it is, how wonderful and fun and filled of love and laughter and joy and frustration and fears and anxiety. It's all of those things. It's the whole spectrum of feelings. So for me to change my mind from thinking that if I'm not happy a hundred percent of the time, if I'm not comfortable a hundred percent of the time, if I'm not certain a hundred percent of the time something's wrong, that was really life-changing because I realized that When things don't feel amazing, when they don't feel easy, when they don't feel joyful, that is part of the journey.

That's part of it. I find that extremely reassuring. Happiness, success, pleasure, challenges, difficulties, disappointment. It's normal to experience both. That's the life experience. That's what it is. Another example, practicing. At times it feels wonderful. At times it feels dreadful. And when it feels great, I think we have a tendency to think like, great, I'm onto something.

This is really working. It's a sign I should keep going. When we face challenges in the practice room, then we see this as a sign that this is not right. I'm not doing this right. I'm not right. and then we start to make all sorts of assumptions about why we're not in the right place and we start to really spiral in our mind. So when you can accept the fact that when you're in the practice room, there's going to be a mix of good and bad emotions, doesn't mean that anything went wrong. I think that you can start to feel more at ease with handling and being with all of these emotions and moving forward with all of these emotions. It's the acceptance of negative emotions rather than resistance to negative emotions that's really going to be helpful for you.

Because you've heard this, right? What you resist persists. When you resist the negative emotions, you really start a spiraling of more negative thoughts. And right? Thoughts generate feelings, feelings, feel actions, actions create results. So if you are generating all of these negative thoughts, you're going to get tons of negative feelings that's going to impact the actions you take in all of the results that you get. So when you stop resisting the negative feelings and you accept to live with them, you welcome them, you receive them, you explore them, you thank them for what they're teaching you. You thank them for what they're showing to you because they're giving you clues as to what's going on, right? That's a whole other episode unto itself. So I'm not going to

dive into that right now. But feelings will give you clues as to what's going on. When you receive them and you accept all of them, the good, the bad, and the ugly, this is when you have real control over your experience, and you're living the full life experience. So this resistance to negative emotions creates more suffering for you. Another thing that Byron Katie says that I love, another saying by Byron Katie is, when you fight reality, you lose, but only every time. and I just love that because it is true when you fight reality you lose but only every time so what is happening right now what are you feeling if it's negative it doesn't mean that anything went wrong it is giving you information it's giving you data as to what you're thinking

so you can start to receive these feelings and thank them for what it's teaching you and learn from that and manage it and move forward. And those negative moments will make the joyful one ever so much more delightful and delicious. So life is 50-50. When you're experiencing negative emotions, nothing went wrong. That's just part of the journey. And we need both. We need both. The negative emotions, as I said already many times, teach us lessons and they're a compass that helps us gear our next actions. They show us where to go next, what to experiment with next. So I encourage you to embrace these negative emotions. Embrace the whole spectrum of the emotions you're going to experience.

The beautiful ones, the delicious ones, and the negative ones. This is what creates a full life. It's really understanding that difficulties, frustration, fear, anger are just as much a part of the journey as joy, happiness, laughter, ease. So life is 50-50, my friends. The third sentence that really powerfully impacted me is another one that I heard from Brooke Castillo in a coaching. And I forget what the topic of the coaching was, who she was coaching, but she just said

that in passing. And for me, I feel like the world stopped. I muted the coaching and I wrote it down instantly. And it's been posted on my wall ever since. It's, I don't know is nothing but a lie the brain offers to keep us comfortable. Saying, I don't know is nothing but a lie your brain is telling you to keep you comfortable. So what happens there? First, let me say that sometimes there are things that we don't know.

Very complicated math equations. There are facts about lives. I don't know if you ask me how many, what's the population of Monaco right now. I don't have this fact. I really, literally do not know that fact. That's okay. That is not what I'm talking about here. What I'm talking about is the more emotional, know. I don't know. When someone asks us a question and we're avoiding or like we're avoiding the truth or we're avoiding a deeper understanding. What do you want to do? I don't know. What do you want to do with your life? I don't know. What do you want to do next? I don't know, right? So what happens there is we don't want to look for the answer often because we don't

believe we're allowed to think what we think or we don't think that we are allowed to want what we want or we don't believe that we're capable of creating what we want. Maybe we're afraid of failure. Maybe we are also just trying to avoid the reflection on a difficult topic. The impact of this sentence happens, you know, it can be felt on a daily basis when you're inside of the practice room. Something's not working and you tell yourself, oh, I don't know what to do. that's always going to be a lie there's many ways that we can overcome that one of the things that you could do is start by saying okay i'm saying that i don't know what to do but what do i know and you start with one little thread of information i'll give you an example of this

specific i don't know situation i was sitting in a theory exam years ago and we were analyzing a very difficult Hugo Wolf lead. And I sat down to do this exam and I look at the music and I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I don't know. Like, I don't know how to do this. I can't do this. I don't know. Um, but not doing it was not an option, right? I want to pass the class. I want to get the degree. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, oh my goodness, I don't know. I don't know what to do. And then I told myself, but, but what do I know? Let's, let's find something that I know in there so I found a chord that looked exactly like a dominant chord followed by a tonic chord I was like well I know that and I'll start there and let's see if I look before that

you know probably could be a predominant chord I'm guessing let's go and see if that fits the my theory here and I look at it and yes indeed it did and then from there I just pieced together together the things that I did know. So from feeling overwhelmed, looking at a problem and feeling like I just want to give up because I'm overwhelmed, it's too much. The thing is, it's not that I don't know. It's that I needed to slow down and find a place to start. And often that's what we need to do in life. So what do you know? Where can you start? If you're in a situation, you're in the practice room, things are not going the way that you want. And you're saying, I don't know what to do.

Well, what do you know? That's one thing that you could do. Another thing that you can do is trust yourself, right? If you did know, what would the answer be if there was no wrong answer what would you say right now like what theory would you put forward the thing is we know more than we think but we often avoid making a decision we're afraid to confront our feelings it's scary to take action right there's fear uncertainty or discomfort so it's easier to say i don't know what to do we don't want to make the decision

often we don't trust our own judgment we're afraid of making mistakes so this is where the i don't know in your life come from that fear of making mistake not trusting your own judgment fear uncertainty discomfort fear of confronting your feelings and fear of making the wrong decision and all of this is really holding you back a lot of time what happens is that we start to rely on others for certainty and then we're living other people's lives instead of our own so I want you to take the look back inside every time you feel like saying I don't know to someone or to yourself? And start asking yourself, but what do I know? And if I knew, what would I say? And if there was no wrong answer, what would I say?

If there was no wrong decisions, which one would I make right now? And when you go inward and you seek wisdom from inside the answers usually come but you have to go in and give it time so don't be afraid to face something uncomfortable don't be afraid to take responsibility and have this trust that you know more than you think right so i don't know what to do I don't know what I want. All of this is a lie that your brain offers to keep you comfortable. As I said, deep down, sometimes we know what we want also, but we think that we're not going to be able to accomplish it. We are fearful of the discomfort of how challenging something is going to be. We feel like we're not allowed to want what we want. We're not allowed to think what we think.

all of that is holding you back. So pay attention. If you slow down and you pay attention and you actually know what you want to say, but you don't feel like you should or can, I'm here to tell you to trust yourself and move forward. Having this understanding that you know more than you think and the answers are there if you pay attention long enough to find them. so here are some sentences that can help you i want to give them to you one more time because i don't know is really a shield that you're using as stopping you from making decisions and stopping you from making progress so when you hear yourself say i don't know you can say something like well i don't know yet but where could i find the answers where would the information

for this be? Ask yourself, what do I know? So let's say I feel like I don't know what to do, but what do I know? Then if you knew, that's a really great question that I get asked a lot in coaching and that sometimes I ask a lot in coaching as well. And I don't know if my clients hate it as much as I hate it when my coaches ask me, but oftentimes if I tell a coach I don't know and they say, but if you knew, what would the answer be? There's usually an answer and it's usually a good one. So if you knew, what would the answer be? And then there's no bad answer. There's no bad decision. So if that's the case and you trust yourself, what would you say and what would you do? So I don't know is nothing but a lie your brain offers to keep you comfortable.

you do know trust me you do know that last sentence is the reason not to do it is the reason to do it the reason not to do it is the reason to do it and for me this one goes with another sentence by Gretchen Rubin which is the opposite of a profound truth is also true and what that did for me is to make me understand that a lot of times the reason why I don't want to do something is the reason that I should do it. The obstacles or the fears that are holding me back from taking action are the reason I should take this action because if I'm afraid of failure or I'm afraid of discomfort, this is actually probably the direction for growth for me. This is probably what I need to face, what I need to learn. So the reason not to do it is the reason to do it

sparks amazing reflections for me. And I would like to challenge you. Next time you feel like there's something that you shouldn't do ask yourself is the reason not to do it maybe the reason I should do it so when you confront a situation let's say I'm going to give you an example let's say you're offered a big concert it's a little bit scary a big hall very difficult repertoire with people you would really love to play with, but you're intimidated by for a big audience. And you're tempted to say, no, why? Oh, I don't have enough time. The music is very difficult. Am I really at that level? What if you are? And what if all of the reasons for you, you're thinking you should not take that gig? What if there are the reasons that you should take it?

what if learning this repertoire is precisely what you need what if playing with these people is precisely what you need so always look at your reasons for not wanting to do something and see if those are the reasons why you should do it and sometimes you shouldn't of course But for me, this sentence really helps me challenge, again, going back to that very first sentence, it challenges my assumptions of things. So another reason, for example, another example, I should say, taking an audition. Sometimes we make a list of reasons why we shouldn't take an audition when in fact we're just afraid. We're afraid of failure. So maybe signing up for this audition would be the right thing to do right so ask yourself are there reasons

why I don't want to do this the reasons why I should it's not always the case but it can be so you want to turn the doubts in the hesitations into opportunities for growth and what scares and discourages you might be exactly what you need to face moving forward. So there's many more sentences that I feel were life-changing for me, of course. Inside of the Music Mastery Experience, we have a manifesto with a lot of these sentences, and I have some of them here. One of my favorite is by Gretchen Rubin, Make It Easy to Go Right and Hard to Go Wrong, on how I can make something easy to move forward with by being meticulous and intentional about the way I approach it. Alignment over effort is a big one. He who stumbles and does not quit gains a step, again,

by Gretchen Rubin. And my favorite, my ultimate favorite, is between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth in our freedom. This is one of my favorite by Viktor Frankl. So these are some of the sentences that profoundly impacted my life and by challenging me to look at the assumptions that I had, the limiting beliefs that remained unexplored and therefore just happened by default, to change my perspective on my approach on everything. So here they are again. Don't believe everything you think, right? Ask yourself, really? Is that true? Life is 50-50. I don't know is nothing but a lie the brain offers to keep us comfortable. And the reason not to do it is the reason to do it.

Not always, but sometimes. So remember that thoughts can change your life. As I said at the beginning thoughts generate emotions emotions fuel actions actions create our results if you want to know more about this listen to episode 153 154 and 155 of the podcast and because those thoughts are so important because they're in charge of our emotions be very intentional about the thoughts that you cultivate in your life? What are the thoughts that you welcome in your everyday life? And I want you to look at them, to receive them and explore them and see if those are thoughts that you wish to keep in your life, if they're helpful for you. So I would love to know what some sentences that change your life are. I would love for you to send them to me

if you're here on facebook please put them here in the comments if you're listening to the podcast email me or reach out to me via instagram you can email me at mindoverfinger at gmail.com you can find me on instagram at mindoverfinger also on on facebook at mindoverfinger i'm also on youtube maybe you're watching this podcast on youtube so you can put in the comment below those sentences that were life-changing for you, and this way we can all benefit from it. Sentences are important. The sentences that go through our brain create the life that we have. So it's important to notice what they are, and it's important to intentionally nurture the ones that will help us get closer to what it is that we want and get us to where it is that

who it is that we want to be. And there you have it. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and fellow musicians. Grab a screenshot, share it on social media, and tag me. I'm Mind Over Finger on all platforms, and I would love to hear what your favorite takeaways were.

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subscribe to my newsletter and get everything delivered straight to your inbox. Finally, if you're looking for more resources or personal support to enhance your playing, advance your career, or create a more fulfilling and purposeful life, head over to mindoverfinger.com. You're going to find a substantial library of free downloads, links to my online courses, and information on how to work with me, whether in a group setting inside my amazing Music Mastery Experience program, or through private one-on-one coaching. I'm here for you. Until next time, much love going your way, and à bientôt! Thank you.