2. Mind Your Mind: The Story You Are Living

Summary:You've been living inside a story — and chances are, you didn't write it. In this episode, we explore Yoga Sutra 1.2 and the connection between your thoughts, your feelings, and the results you're creating in your life. You'll learn why the mind defaults to old conditioning, why story isn't the enemy, and how leading with the heart changes everything. Awareness of your thoughts is always the first step — and that's exactly where we begin.Transcript:Most of us were never taught to question our thoughts. We just inherited them and started living according to those thoughts as if they were proven facts. Hey, it's Kelly G, your Radiance Coach. Welcome to the Embodied Radiance podcast, episode number two.  In the first episode, we talked about the power of presence, how the now practice is a way that we can return to being present in this moment.Notice, open, wow. So here's what becomes possible once we're actually here. We can start to tune into the stories in our mind and get curious about how those stories are shaping everything. The stories that are playing in our mind are made up of thoughts, and today we're gonna talk about what your mind is doing, why it's doing it, and how we can work with it instead of being unconsciously run by it.And this is where yoga and life coaching meet in a really powerful way. So let's go back to the traditional text of yoga philosophy, the Yoga Sutras. And if we look at Sutra 1.2, it tells us that the overarching purpose of yoga is to still the fluctuations in the mind. The long-term goal here is to create peace in our minds.Now, our minds are always moving. They're generating thoughts and stories and reactions, but even more frequently than that, they're recalling thoughts that we've had previously, especially thoughts that we've had a lot of times. Our minds are recalling stories that we've been taught, that we've heard over and over, the subconscious messages that we've received through advertising and through entertainment.Yoga isn't telling us that the point is to stop the mind or to have no thoughts. And in fact, this is a common misconception that frustrates a lot of people when they're trying to learn to meditate. Because the mind has thoughts, the mind pulls up stories, the mind runs all over and notices things. It's constantly processing so much information. So when we sit down to meditate and there are still thoughts, that doesn't mean anything has gone wrong.That's a whole other conversation, but it stems from this misnomer that we should be able to just have big periods of no thoughts at all. So the point isn't to just have no thoughts. The point is to no longer be unconsciously ruled by conditioned patterns in your mind.The work is to begin to notice what your mind is doing so that you can then choose. This is the basis of living your yoga practice, and it turns out life coaching has tools that can support exactly this. The mat gives us the space to open ourselves to this practice, to meet ourselves just as we are from a place of loving acceptance. And coaching gives us tools to dig in with curiosity when we're off the mat and in our real lives.So in our minds, when we start noticing what's happening, we're gonna see that there is a process that occurs. In any given situation, we're gonna find ourselves in a circumstance, an interaction. Whatever it is in that moment, our mind is going to have a thought about what we're experiencing. That thought is then going to influence how we feel.And as humans, we are feeling beings, even if we're not sure or we don't recognize that we are. We are very much driven by how we want to feel or avoiding how we don't want to feel. So those feelings then create our actions. They drive our actions. We either do something or we do nothing. Either way, that creates a result in our life.And this process happens all throughout the day, over and over and over, without our conscious awareness if we're not looking for it, and it all begins with a thought.And when we don't tune into our mind, it's going to default to old patterns, inherited stories and beliefs, conditioning that was chosen for us by the world around us. And spoiler alert, allowing your mind to unconsciously run using stories that you didn't choose for yourself can cause a lot of problems.Those problems are what I call mind drama, not as a judgment, but as a description. The mind doing what minds do when they're left unattended. And to conserve energy, your mind is going to use messages that you have absorbed from your family, from schooling, from our culture, from religion, from media and entertainment... and those can become your default story.Until we choose to tune in and see what stories our mind is telling us, most of us are living out a narrative that we never consciously chose for ourselves. When we're living according to a narrative that we didn't choose for ourselves, it gets in the way of our remembering who we truly are. It gets in the way of our ability to show up in the world from a place of authenticity and creativity. It can block our power and our ability to make the impact that we believe we can make in the world.Now, stories aren't the problem, but unconscious stories are. Remember, stories are just made up of thoughts, and the human brain is a meaning-making machine. We understand the world through stories. We connect through stories to ourselves and to others.And the thoughts that we have, the stories that we tell ourselves impact every single relationship that we are in with others, with the world around us, and with ourselves.Many of these stories are not our own. They are stories that we were born into, and they're full of expectations and rules that we didn't create.And those expectations and rules subconsciously direct how we live our lives. But when we start to notice and take control of those stories, we can also use our thoughts, use our stories to create safety and impact and healing.The goal isn't to erase the stories, it's to become the author of them, and that means that we must also be open to the possibility that we can change our thoughts.As we start minding our minds, I wanna offer one other important guideline. We must also tap into the wisdom of our hearts to lead the way. The mind is such a powerful tool, but wisdom lives in both places. When we bring our heart into this process, we move out of the mind's analysis and into deeper embodied wisdom, something more integrated, more whole.What we're after here is what I'm calling compassionate responsibility, taking ownership of what our mind is doing and creating without using what we find against ourselves. Shame and blame are not helpful here. We're gonna come back to this concept of compassionate responsibility in a future episode because it deserves its own real space. But for now, I invite you to hold it as this intention, curiosity over criticism when we're noticing the stories we're telling ourselves.So let's take a moment to tune in to a simple thought awareness practice. I want to invite you into the now practice to set yourself up in this moment. Notice what's happening.Notice where your mind is. Come into this moment. Open your posture. Open your body, your mind with a full breath in and out. And then wow yourself. Think of one thing that is working for you in your life right now.Now, from there, I invite you to bring to mind something, anything in your life right now that feels a little stuck or heavy, a little frustrating, something that is rubbing against youAnd then get curious and ask yourself, "What is the story you're telling yourself about this situation?" Not the facts necessarily, but the meaning you're making of what's happeningAs you do that, I invite you to just notice. No fixing, no judging, no blame or shame. You're just gathering information here, looking at what's happening And finally from here, place your hand on your heart and ask yourself, "Is this story mine, or did I absorb it or inherit it?""Does this story move me forward or is it keeping me stuck?"You don't have to have the answer to those questions right now. I invite you to just let them live in you, and this can be the beginning of starting to notice, getting curious about the stories that your mind offers to you as you move throughout the day. And doing that from a place of compassion without blaming or shaming or shoulding or criticizing yourself for anything that you see.This is the practice, to notice, open and breathe, to be your own friend as you unwind the patterns that may be guiding your life that you didn't even choose. Yoga Sutra 1.2 tells us that yoga is about what we do with the mind. And now you have a coaching lens to support that because awareness of your thoughts is where everything begins to shift.Thanks for tuning in. And until next time, I invite you to keep minding your mind with the support of your heart. It's all a practice in letting your life shine.Music by Rory Gardnerwww.yourradiantsoul.com