70. Your Thoughts Are Lying to You (Here's What to Do Instead)

Vanessa Calderón: Have you noticed how one thought can completely derail your day? It could be self-doubt, it could be comparison, it could be that little inner voice telling you that you are not enough. We go through life assuming that all of those thoughts that we are hearing are true, that they are who we are. But what if they're not? In today's episode, we are exploring one of the most powerful changes that you can ever make, which is learning to rise above your thinking brain. gonna dive into the science of how your brain is wired and why positive thinking is not always the answer, and really how your nervous system may be shaping your thoughts more than you realize. If you have ever felt trapped in your own mind, this conversation is going to change the way you relate to your own thoughts and to yourself.

Dr. Vanessa Calderón: Welcome to The Authentic Path. I'm your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, Harvard-trained physician and healer. I integrate science and ancestral wisdom to support you in creating the success you desire in all areas of your life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started.

Vanessa Calderón: Hello, friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I am thrilled to be here. few updates for all of you. If you have not yet checked out our new website, calderonco.org, I want to invite you to go play around there, check it out, What we have been doing over the last many weeks, I guess it's been about six to eight weeks, we completely revamped the website and it is so beautiful. You will feel the vibe when you land and you will see how it's really a reflection of the evolution of the work that I am offering out into the world in terms of being in service to the world in a way that it's comprehensive and really encompasses all of the healing work in correlation with the coaching work and the ancestral indigenous work that I bring back into the world. it's really beautiful. It's fun. Go check it out. See for yourself. One other really exciting addition. I brought on a new member to our team, Kelsey. If you are listening, hello Kelsey. And she is just incredible. And I am so blessed to have her. So I wanted to give her a shout out. she's been part of our team for a couple of months now, and she's just amazing. I feel so grateful to have her here. you know, she's really been supporting a lot of the work that we've been doing behind the scenes. So big shout out, big thank you to Kelsey. all right. So we are talking about something that I catch myself telling my coaching clients over again and over again and over again. And I want to bring it to you because once I see something trending in the collective, once I see something that I'm talking about over and over again, I know it's really important to bring out to all of you. And that is this really important. That I'm going to teach you, but it starts with this. It starts with you knowing, with you remembering that you are not your thinking brain. What do I mean by that? You know, I want you to envision yourself as this really beautiful, bright orb of this beautiful, bright orb of light. And as part of that orb of light, if you kind of scan down a little bit, you see your thinking brain. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can watch this. because most of us see our thinking brain, but we are so attached to our brain that we think we are the thoughts that our brain offers us. But when we start to practice zooming out a little bit, when we start to realize and really practice not believing everything the brain teaches us or tells us, then we see that we are actually this essence. We are this white, beautiful orb of light, this essence above the thinking brain. The thinking brain may offer us thoughts, but that does not make those thoughts true. And I think that right there is really important because we get a thought. And when that thought does not feel good, what we label as negative thoughts, we tend to engage in those thoughts. We tend to wrap ourselves in those thoughts. We tend to analyze the thought. We try to figure out where that thought came from. We try to disprove the thought. And we think and overthink and analyze. And what we end up doing is we end up creating a thought loop that is essentially reinforcing that initial thought to begin with. And that is really how it happens. We have a thought, we analyze it, continue to think about it, create a thought loop which strengthens those neural pathways, the connections between the brain cells, and it it strengthens the thought loop. If you are someone who constantly compares yourself to others, who is always judging yourself, who doesn't think you're good enough, who feels anxious, who and maybe it's not all the time, maybe it's just occasionally. When I go to the gym, I start to judge myself. I start to feel insecure at the gym because other people are stronger, healthier, thinner than I am. Or maybe it's at work. When I'm sitting in a meeting with this person, I always start to feel insecure, whatever it is. What I want you to start to do, even right now as you're listening, is just start to think about those moments that activates your thinking brain, that activates those parts of your brain. And again, the invitation is to rise above your thinking brain. And I'm gonna teach you in a second how to do that. Now, before I teach you how to do that, I want you to know why it is that our brain is offering us these thoughts. So I've said this a lot. On this podcast and on my prior podcast called The Empowered Brain, which is our thinking brain is wired to do two things. It's wired to keep us alive and it's wired to do that as efficiently as possible. Okay? So it wants to keep us alive and help us avoid danger, which is why our brain has evolved to have a five to one negativity bias. What does this mean? This means that our brain anchors on the negative, we have a negative thought. We're gonna remember it. We're gonna hold on to it. We're going to perseverate on it five times more than we do with the positive thought. Something good happens in our lives and usually we just let it float by. We don't even pause to celebrate. We don't stop to analyze the good. We only spend time on the negative. Now, if you think way, way back, thousands and thousands of years ago, how did that support us? It supported us significantly. There was a there's an evolutionary reason why our brain has evolved to have a five to one negativity bias. Because if we didn't remember, you know, like if we didn't remember where the saber-toothed tiger hit out or which berries were poisonous, we would die. So we needed to remember the negative things. But now it's actually the source of so much of our suffering. So yes, it was helpful once. But it's now no longer that supportive to us. It's now more a source of suffering. It is important for us to acknowledge when things are not going well, but there's no need for us to perseverate on that. So here's the thing about our thoughts, because it's not just the thought that is the source of our suffering. It's that we think the thought and then we get attached to the thought. We believe the thought to be true. We believe the thought to be true and then we get attached to it. Like, what does it mean? Why am I thinking this? Why do I always think this? And that level of attachment, that right there is the source of suffering. In fact, one of the central tenets in Buddhism is attachment is the source of all of our suffering. And as a solution to this, as a solution to thinking thoughts that don't feel good, I have seen many teachers, many coaches, Many people out there talking about just change your thoughts. Just think something positive, and then you will feel better. And there is a tiny little bit of truth to this, but the sense of positive thinking it doesn't always work. And I'm gonna tell you why. why: because when we only focus on changing our thought, you're missing everything underneath there. Now, I want you to imagine an image of a glacier. What do we see when we're floating along the ocean and we see a glacier? We see just the top part of the glacier. But we never see what's underneath. And your positive thought is just like the top part of the glacier. But there's a lot of stuff informing that thought underneath the glacier. So when you're trying to just change it by, you know, change the thought, change just change the thought, just think something positive. The reason why those positive thoughts don't always stick is because we're not paying attention to everything underneath. All of that stuff underneath the ocean. So I'm talk about what is underneath the ocean, which is primarily your nervous system. So let me talk more about this. but first let me talk about the difference between a thought and a feeling. Because there is a cognitive thought model that is essentially the basis of cognitive behavioral psychology, which I use a lot and talk a lot about on the podcast because I think it's a really helpful tool of awareness. And it's very, very old. It's like I think the first time it was ever found in recorded history was 300 BCE. It's called the cognitive thought model. And essentially it asserts that your thoughts create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, your actions create your results, your results create your actions create your results, and your results are what you create in the world. So, what that cognitive model asserts is that your thoughts come first. So here's the thing though. Is it really true that your thoughts always come first? Now, the science tells us that it's not always true. And that it depends, and it's not as easy as black and white, that it's always a thought or is always the feeling. Sometimes it's the thought, sometimes it's the feeling that comes first. Now, a feeling is essentially a current of energy that's running through what's called an action potential that's connecting your cells together. Okay, so a feeling is essentially two cells that are connecting that are passing energy to each other. So it's a current of energy passing through. Your nervous system. And it takes about 90 seconds or so for that current of energy to run through your body. Now, when that current of energy is passing through your body and something feels not so great, it feels negative, it feels scary, your nervous system is being activated because it senses a threat, that will cause your mind to have a thought. Any current of energy running through your body will cause your mind. To try to make meaning of it and try to have a thought. Now, this is happening so fast within milliseconds, all of this is happening so quickly that we don't even have conscious awareness of what's coming first. Is it the thought or is it the feeling? And so I want to name that for you because there's a little bit of nuance here. It's not just that we have a thought and it causes us to feel bad, or that we have a feeling and then we start thinking negative things. There's a lot of nuance there. Sometimes it's the thought, sometimes it's the feeling. I tell you that because that's going to be important for when we learn how to rise above our thinking brain. Okay, so. I want to talk a little bit more about the nervous system and how the nervous system is creating these feelings in our body and causing those feelings to then go up and and give us a thought. And again, the the whole reason behind this is because in order to learn how to rise above our thinking brain, we need to know what's happening underneath. So sometimes what can be happening is our nervous system is bracing for something. Let's say that you are by yourself and it's a dark alleyway and you're walking in the dark alleyway by yourself, and all of a sudden you get nervous or scared. And the way your body shows you you're nervous or scared is because you tense up or you feel discomfort in your stomach, and that's your nervous system acting. Now your nervous system is sending a signal to your brain that, hey, I don't feel safe here. And then as soon as it sends that your body tenses up, your brain is like, maybe we're not safe. So then your brain starts looking for evidence that you're not safe. There's a dark alleyway. I should be careful. What if somebody jumps out? And then it starts replaying everything you've seen on movies and in the news and everything that could happen to you. And then you start reinforcing the feeling that you're not safe. That is one thought look that could be happening in your nervous system. So when your nervous system doesn't feel safe, it'll send a signal to your body that you're not safe. And as soon as you sense that signal in your body, your brain goes to work to give you thoughts that it is true, to make meaning of the feeling that you're feeling and to tell you that it is true by telling get you start creating thoughts. Same thing if you're by yourself in a subway. I used to take the subway in New York City when I was a resident, because I used to work in the Bronx. Jacoby, go Jacoby. Shout out to the Bronx. I used to work in the Bronx and I lived on the Upper West Side. And so I take the subway in and out of residency. Sometimes I was on the subway by myself at midnight. And I'm so grateful that I was always safe. Nothing ever happened to me. But but of course, like look at what I've seen on TV and everything I've seen on the news. I shouldn't, I'm like a five foot, well, I'm like a five foot 100-pound Latina woman. I shouldn't be riding the subway by myself. But there was no other way for me to get around. I had to take the subway home. We didn't have Uber the way we have Uber now. Anyway, so the point being that that would happen to me. I would sit in the subway at night and my nervous system would act up. I would start thinking thoughts, and I would always have to be like, hold on a second, and and regulate my nervous system. So that is one way that your brain starts to create thoughts. Now your nervous system is so active, it is so smart. That it is essentially scanning the world around you every five to seven seconds, looking for danger, looking for something negative. Again, your negativity bias. So it is our job now as conscious beings to be able to catch when our brain is offering us something that is negative, a perceived threat, when we are essentially safe. Now, again, the reason why this matters is because. We wanna be able to rise above the thinking brain because if we always believe what the brain is offering us, we're gonna get wrapped up in the negative a lot and that doesn't create great feelings in our body. Getting wrapped up in the negative. It doesn't feel good. And it doesn't lead to a very intentional, purposeful, fulfilling life. It doesn't lead to a conscious life. It leads to a life of suffering, of always judging ourselves, of comparing ourselves to others, of thinking things that bring down our frequency, our internal vibration. So the thing that's so fascinating too is To rise above some of the things that your brain offers you, sometimes it could be really easy. I gave you that example of me riding the subway late at night and how I was able to I had didn't I did it so many I did it for four years. So I was able to do it for so long and I was able to create so much safety around it that when my when my nervous system offered me the fear, offered me the tensing, the bracing, I could relax my body and remind myself I'm okay, I'm I'm being vigilant, I'm noticing, I'm safe. I'm going into a car where there's a lot of people. I'm not alone. So I was able to do that and regulate myself. So there are gonna be there are gonna be times that your nervous system gets activated where you are able to regulate the nervous system and you don't get wrapped up in the thought. Another example could be: let's say your kids don't want to eat their vegetables at dinner. It's kind of annoying, kind of frustrating, might sort of trigger you a little bit, especially if you haven't slept, if you're not rested, if you had a super busy workday. It's annoying, but You don't let it overtake you. You're able to change your thoughts around it. So I talked a little bit about when changing your thoughts work. In this instance, changing your thought works. You might get annoyed and you might say, Okay, that's okay. They're just kids. We'll figure out another way. Or you can just tell them there's nothing else for dinner. This is all we're having. But you don't have to get so activated. You don't have to be wrapped up in the idea of whatever your brain is offering you. However, If on the other s on the other hand, let's say I'm going to give you another example that's a huge exaggeration of your nervous system getting activated. Let's say that you just heard or you learned or there was a rumor going around that your significant other is cheating on you. They're having an affair or something. Now, with that kind of activation, your nervous system may get really activated. Now that is a bigger threat to your nervous system. So your kids not eating their peas, smaller threat. Your significant other potentially wanting to get a divorce or anything like that might be a bigger threat to your nervous system. Now, when we have bigger threats and our nervous system is hyperactive, it makes it way harder for us to regulate our nervous system. We cannot just change our thoughts around that because that's not what the nervous system needs. Our nervous system needs something else to be regulated. So in order for us to rise above our thoughts in those instances, we need to do something else. Now, again, I exaggerated those two examples, kids eating peas versus your significant other potentially having an affair or cheating on you on purpose to prove a point. To prove a point that there are times where we can essentially change our thoughts and it's okay. And there are times where there's something else we have to do to rise above the thought. Okay. So again, the invitation here is to rise above your thoughts. So how do we do it? So if so, I'm give you sort of kind of a framework to think about to do it for yourself. And then I'm gonna go through like what do we do when we're really activated, when our nervous system is really activated. So, as a framework to think about, what you wanna do is you wanna be an objective observer of what your brain is offering you. So again, I gave you that image in the beginning of our thinking brain being sort of below us as the essence. We are this like bright white, wise orb of an essence. That's our soul self, this like wise, wise essence. And as part of the essence, there is a brain. That brain offers us thoughts. The brain is not the essence, it's not the core of who we are, it just offers us thoughts. So when our brain is offering a thought, We can come from the place of the wise observer, the wise essence, that soul self, and we can observe the thought. And the way you observe is by practicing a mindfulness technique called noting. You can say something like, I notice that my brain is thinking, or I notice that I am thinking. Sometimes it's helpful to de-identify from the brain. So instead of saying I notice that I am thinking, you say, I notice that. The brain is offering me. I notice that my brain is offering me. Or notice that my mind is offering me this thought. And then you notice the thought. Now, what that lets you do is it lets you notice it from a place of objective observation. Now, when you can notice it from objective observation, you are now pulling yourself up above the thought. You are no longer the thought. It's not that I am insecure. I notice that my brain is offering me a thought of insecurity. What that does is it pulls you up above it, and then you're able to watch it. And when you can watch it, then you can see, huh, that's interesting. You can offer it curiosity. Isn't it interesting that my brain is offering me that? And you can even offer it compassion. Well, of course, it makes sense that my brain would offer me this thought of insecurity. I haven't been in the gym for months. Of course I'm insecure when I'm in here. Because when you can offer it that level of understanding, what that does is it offers the thinking brain self-compassion. And self-compassion allows you to loosen the grip on the thought. So if there was a thought that you were attached to, I'm so insecure at the gym, and then you can rise above it by noting, I notice that my brain is offering me a thought of insecurity. Then offer it curiosity. it makes sense that I'm thinking this. And then you see them the making sense part with compassion. of course I would think that. That by itself loosens the grip of what your mind had on you. Like you're no longer attached to the thought. And that is how you allow that thought to move through your body. That is very, very, very powerful. I'm just getting just practice it for yourself. You don't have to take my word for it, just to go out and practice it for yourself. Now, when your nervous system has been highly activated, because let's say you have a belief that you do not like conflict, and now you have to go have a difficult conversation with your significant other, and you already have the thought you don't like conflict. So you're about to have the conversation and your body braces and you get like, and now you're having all these like thoughts of like, ugh, we're gonna have an argument, we're gonna have a fight, and you're getting ready for that. What you wanna do is you wanna you wanna pause and you wanna notice, I notice the thought that we're about to have conflict. I notice the thought that we're about to argue, I notice my body bracing for that. And then you offer yourself the opposite of your nerve, your nervous system being hyperactive, which is what's happening. To you regulating your nervous system by turning on your relaxation response. Because what's happening when your nervous system is activated is that your sympathetic nervous system, which is the activation part of your nervous system, is turned on. Now, the opposite of the sympathetic nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system. That's your relaxation response. So, what you want to do is you want to turn on your relaxation response when your nervous system has been highly activated. The way you turn on your relaxation response simply is inhaling deeply. Holding your breath and exhaling slowly. Now, the deeper you inhale, the more that you stimulate your vagus nerve. Your vagus nerve is one of the biggest parasympathetic nerves in your body. When you can inhale deeply and stimulate your vagus nerve, and you exhale very, very slowly, the exhalation part is the relaxation response. It turns on your parasympathetic nervous system. That allows you to relax your nervous system. And the more you relax your nervous system, The more you detangle yourself from all of those thoughts. You'll notice if you're like really upset or angry and you take a deep breath and you just slow down, what's happening? You are regulating your nervous system. And when you regulate your nervous system, your brain no longer needs to have a story for what you're feeling. So you turn off those thoughts. Again, try it for yourself. It's incredibly powerful. Now I'm gonna offer you one more thing. And this next thing about to offer you is a bit advanced. But I want to introduce it here for those of you who are ready for it. many ancient cultures believe that our soul incarnates, it comes into human form with the purpose of healing past wounds. So, what do I mean by that? That there is this sort of karmic wounds that we that our soul has, that the only way to heal those karmic wounds is to come into the human form and have a human experience. And as your soul is evolving. it can only heal and evolve through the human experience. And the human experience has pain and has suffering and has those negative thoughts. That's part of the human experience. So if we believe that to be true, that our soul is here to evolve, then it means that everything that we are experiencing in the world is part of what our soul needs for healing, for ev for evolving. And so I think that's really beautiful just on its own. But if that is true, that means that every thought that we're having, every experience we're having, every negative thing we're experiencing is part of the soul's evolution. So maybe we can experience maybe we can say thank you. Thank you to that. Thank you for that experience. Thank you for showing me where else I still get to evolve. And thinking, having that gratitude, that is a really fascinating response to the The trigger or the negative thought or any of that, because we know from studies of functional MRIs that gratitude is one of the best feeling emotions. Gratitude, so again, I mentioned emotions are just a current of energy that runs through our nervous system. And so we're able to measure that current of energy. We can measure the frequency of the currents, the energy, the energetic currents. And we know that when we measure the frequency of gratitude, it vibrates at a very high frequency. That's why people say high vibe, low vibe, something that's high vibe feels good. And gratitude is a very high vibrating emotion. So what is fascinating about this is that because we know that when we are experiencing something that doesn't feel great, and we can just again. notice that we're thinking something, notice that we're feeling something, notice that it doesn't feel great, but still allow ourselves to be grounded, take those deep breaths, practice that objective practice of noting. One other step is offering that gratitude. This is a practice that I do all of the time. I say, okay, thank you for that trigger. Thank you for showing me where I still get to evolve. Thank you for this discomfort. Thank you for this intrapersonal issue that I'm having right now with X person. Thank you. Because this is all showing me where my soul still gets to evolve. And I actually think it's, I think it's all a gift. And I think we're super blessed to experience it. And this is not a way to gaslight ourselves. This is not a way to say I'm not going to hold boundaries or I'm not going to have compassion or I'm not going to try to do something about some and like I'm not going to let people treat me poorly or badly. None of that. It's just to say thank you. For all of it. Thank you for showing me where my my soul still gets to evolve. Thank you. And I think that's so powerful. I was recently reminded of this Alanis Morissette song, and this is what I want to end the podcast episode with. Many of you may remember it. It's a 1990s song called Thank You from Alanis Morissette. I was not a huge Alanis Morissette fan in my teens. I was a teenager in the 90s. but I And even if I had been, I don't know if the song would have hit me the way it hit me now. Because I just didn't have the level of awareness I had then. So she wrote the song Thank you. And what I've come to learn is that she wrote it after having a spiritual sort of awakening moment. She went to India after she had this huge album that was released that was really successful. She went to India and had this like sp- I don't know if I want to call it a spiritual awakening, but she had a very profound spiritual experience. And then she wrote this song Thank you. And the song, thank you, is essentially saying thank you to all of it. Thank you to the good, thank you to the bad. Thank you to terror. Thank you to disillusionment. Thank you to frailty, to consequence, thank you to silence. thank you to the moment I let go because that was the moment where I could handle more. Oof, the moment I let go. Because if you think about the attachment we have to thoughts, imagine what's possible when you let go of that attachment. That is so powerful. So I want to just stop there and I want to remind you that first of all, we are not our thinking brain. You are so much more than your mind. You are this beautiful, wise essence, this beautiful soul radiating above. And you can tap into that wisdom. Every time you detach yourself from your thinking brain, you allow yourself to tap into this higher consciousness. And that's really powerful. I gave you a framework to practice that and try it for yourself. Because that framework is going to support you in living a life that is more conscious, more awake, more in alignment with who you truly are, with your authentic self. That's how you reconnect to your authentic power, which is a power that's grounded in sacredness and divinity. And I think that's just so beautiful and it's available to all of us. Okay, sweet friends. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you next week. Adios.