Last week I wrote about taking on the role of the “watcher” or “observer” of your thoughts. You need to know what’s going on inside your brain before you can make any changes!

If you have any questions about how to do this or are struggling with the concept, please either leave a comment below or email me at hello@katrinaubellmd.com.

Once you’re on the lookout for how your brain interprets or applies meaning to your experiences every day, it’s time to dig deeper.

It’s time to separate the facts from the “drama.”

Usually, when we look at a problem we have in our lives, such as weighing too much or eating to dull our emotions, we think the problem is a circumstance. It seems and feels like a fact in our lives. Like “I am 40 lbs overweight.”

But it’s ultimately a thought.

I can almost hear you thinking, “Say what?!? How is that not a fact or circumstance? It seems very real to me!”

Circumstances are the actual facts about something. They are completely neutral and have no judgment applied to them. They are not open to interpretation and everyone in the world would agree.

So not everyone in the world would necessarily agree that you’re 40 lbs overweight. There might be people who think you only have 20 lbs to lose or that you look awesome as you are. Others might think you have more like 50 or 60 lbs to lose.

The actual circumstance in this situation is what the scale reads.

The scale is a scientific instrument that’s only measuring the gravitational pull on your body at a certain point in time. If the scale reads 200 lbs, then everyone in the world could look at it and agree that at this one moment in time, your body weighs 200 lbs.

The meaning that we assign to 200 lbs is the thought.

So deciding that 200 lbs means you’re 40 lbs overweight is a thought!

This might all sound like semantics, but it’s everything.

When you start to realize that every problem in your life that seemed like a circumstance problem is actually a thought problem, you start to take back control of your life. You are accepting that you, and only you, have the power to change your experience of your life by choosing how you want to think about it.

And this is excellent news!

It means that you are not at the mercy of your surroundings.

Nothing and nobody in your life has to change for you to get the results you want.

One of the most powerful, life-changing things you can do is to question every belief you have about yourself, your body, your weight, and your life.

A belief is simply a thought or series of thoughts that you’ve thought over and over again so many times that you believe it. It is optional!

You might have a belief that with your current busy life, it’s impossible to reach your body’s natural, ideal weight and maintain it. That belief comes from thoughts that you have repeated over and over. It might seem very factual to you – like you’re just reporting the news!

But the good news I can offer you is that that belief can and should be challenged.

The first step to determine why you believe that is to do what’s called a “thought download” or a “brain dump.”

To do a thought download or brain dump, take a sheet of paper and write down all your thoughts about that belief. Keep asking yourself “why?” Why can’t you lose weight? Why can’t you maintain your goal weight? Why does your current life make it impossible? Write all of this down. Try to keep writing about this subject for 5-10 minutes to get it all out on paper. Truly, empty your brain contents about this subject!

Then, go through thought by thought, from top to bottom, deciding what the facts or circumstances are. What is actually neutral and without judgment? What would everyone agree on?

If you have to be at the office from 8:30 am – 5 pm because that is what’s expected of you and it’s written into your contract, then that is a circumstance. If you work too many hours, then that is a thought….because not everyone would necessarily agree that it’s too many hours.

Write a C (for circumstance) next to the facts and a T (for thought) by the thoughts. No doubt, you will realize that the problem is not your life but the way you’re thinking about it.

Now, it’s really tempting here to decide to change your thoughts to something more positive immediately. Once we get the sense that we’re creating our own misery with our thoughts, we just want to feel better right away!

But I really want to impress upon you that before you switch to more positive thinking, it’s first important to follow these thoughts that aren’t serving you all the way through to their results in your life. We need to really see what we’re creating in our lives before we’re in the right position to choose more useful thoughts.

And that’s exactly what I’ll teach you about next week!

If you have any questions about the difference between a thought and a circumstance, please message me in the comment section below.

And hey! Have you grabbed my “Busy Doctor’s Guide to Effective Weight Loss?” If not, click here now. You’ll also be added to my email list so you’ll never miss a blog post.